Allison interviews engineer Kai Hsiang Chen from HCMF Group about their advanced automotive door and glass technologies. HCMF designs entire door structures and integrated components for car manufacturers, consolidating mechanisms like window regulators, door locks, and handles into a single internal board to make doors lighter and simpler.
Kai demonstrates a side window made with Polymer Dispersed Liquid Crystal (PDLC) glass that can switch from perfectly clear to fully opaque using a slider on a display. Allison notes how the system instantly turns the window dark and then back again, and Kai explains that this adjustable transparency is meant to protect occupants’ privacy and reduce sunlight entering the vehicle.
The system’s control display also manages typical car functions, such as raising and lowering windows, and even opening and closing doors automatically. Allison experiences the automatic door closing while sitting inside the car, commenting on how the interface lets her control both the side window and other elements, such as the sunroof, from a central panel.
Kai then shows an innovative sunroof that uses the same PDLC technology, allowing users to change not only transparency but also patterns and animations across the roof. Allison observes different modes where the sunroof shifts from opaque to transparent and displays moving patterns, which she finds more advanced than the usual simple on/off privacy glass she has seen before.
The final highlight is a rear door window with a display embedded directly inside the glass that also functions as a touchscreen. Kai explains possible future uses in taxis, where passengers could see maps, driver information, routes, or play games and videos directly on the window, and even display a driver’s license or credentials.
Learn more at https://www.hcmfgroup.com/
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Transcript of Interview:
Allison: We’re with Kai Hsiang Chen from HCMF Group, and this is a company that designs entire door structures and parts for cars that then they then sell to car manufacturers. This is some crazy cool stuff. Why don’t you start by showing us this panel on the inside of the door, where your normal armrest would be right here.
Kai Hsiang: Okay, so look at this door. We do a lot of products inside, like the window regulator, the door regulator, the e-latch, the flush handle, and we integrate it all into one board to make the door light and more simple. So, look at this glass.
Allison: Glass is perfectly clear right now.
Kai Hsiang: Yeah. So we put a PDLC on that. The PDLC can control the transparency.
Allison: So he’s dragging a slider on a display that just made the entire side window opaque.
Steve: Bring it back
Allison: He’s is making him bring it back. It made him afraid, I guess.
Kai Hsiang: Okay. Yeah, we think that can protect your personal information and prevent the sunlight.
Allison: The sun, yeah. That’s fantastic. That’s beautiful. And it’s an OLED display here, I assume, that we can use to move the window up and down and things like that.
Kai Hsiang: Oh, we can. Yeah, we also can open the window or close and open the door automatically. I close the door.
Allison: Okay, he’s closing the door on me. I’m inside the car. You’re going to hear—oh, it’s automatically closing on me. Okay, that’s pretty cool. Can you still hear me, Steve, through here? Okay, I want to open it. Oh no, I opened the window. And so the outer door handle you were also controlling, right?
Kai Hsiang: Okay, you can see the sunroof system right there.
Allison: Okay, we’re looking up at the sunroof.
Kai Hsiang: Look, that panel can control this panel.
Allison: Okay, I’m going to describe this for the audience. So I’m seeing a fish tank, but now I’ve got a control panel here.
Kai Hsiang: We can adjust the angle.
Allison: I can—what are we adjusting? Oh, so there’s a big horizontal display above me that they’ve done in entertain mode. Okay, that’s more for watching your Hulu. And I’ll try screen off, and I can turn the screen off. Oh, and it closes and becomes part of the roof. Wow. So this is a screen that goes all the way across.
All right. So this is a big display. I’ve got something maybe the size of a 10-inch iPad here in the center of the console. Looks fantastic. All right, now you did the same opaqueness on the sunroof.
Kai Hsiang: Okay, so wait a minute.
Allison: With the control. Oh, he’s going to run around to the other side of the car, it looks like. I’m going to need to get out to do that side too, right?
Kai Hsiang: I’ll come around.
Allison: Okay, but I need to get over there. Oh, I guess only you need to get over there. Good point.
Kai Hsiang: Okay, wait a minute. Okay, so there’s my coworker. So let’s change the—let’s open the sunroof. And the sunroof has the PDLC, and our PDLC can control the transparency and the pattern.
Allison: So he’s closing the sunroof, and now he’s going to control it. It’s opaque. Oh, he’s got a pattern going across it. And let’s see, there’s a second mode. Different pattern. Oh, and now it’s slowly making it—it’s just animating, basically, on the screen. I’ve seen it before where it can be on or off, like opaque or transparent, but I haven’t seen it be progressively transparent.
Now I think the real money shot is what’s over on the left door. Why don’t you go around to that side? Steve, you can see there. So on the inside of the rear left door is what looks like a display as part of the window. And can you feel that on the inside or the outside? Steve?
Steve: No, there’s no seam at all.
Allison: On the inside or outside? So this is a screen embedded in the glass.
Kai Hsiang: Right, part of the glass. Yeah, you see, inside the glass it’s integrated. So here there are three layers of glass, then it’s put inside the glass. And it’s also a touch screen. We think maybe in the future you can install it in a taxi to let the user know where the driver is going, or connect your device to play video, to play games.
Allison: So this is what we’re seeing on here, is a touch screen.
Kai Hsiang: Yeah.
Allison: Seeing a touch screen, we’ve got gaming, maps, you could see the path that we’re on, the driver’s name. That is incredible. And it’s bright. This is a bright environment, and you can still see that.
Kai Hsiang: Yeah, and we think we also can show maybe a driver license when the police pull you over. You can just show your license and your information to him.
Allison: Wow. This is really incredible. So if people wanted to learn more about what you do at HCMF Group, where would they go?
Kai Hsiang: You can go—we have the net—we’re a Taiwan company, so maybe you can have a phone call.
Allison: Where on the web would they go?
Kai Hsiang: On the website. Website: www.hcmfgroup.com.
Steve: That’s hcmfgroup.com.
Allison: There you go. If not, we’ll put it in the show notes. This is really interesting. Fascinating work you do. Thank you very much for your time.
Kai Hsiang: Thank you so much.