A speed reading hovering beyond the bonnet or a navigation arrow pointing towards a junction is already familiar to drivers with advanced head-up displays. Automotive glass has also incorporated specialised features for years, including acoustic interlayers and designs adapted for projected images. For display developers, the opportunity is to build on that experience, giving carmakers more freedom over the size and position of information and the equipment needed to show it. 

Scotland’s Ceres Holographics addresses this through transparent holographic films laminated into automotive glass. Its distinctive contribution is a digitally controlled method for creating large, precisely tailored optical patterns, combined with equipment that reproduces them in volume. According to Ceres, the approach supports multiple display areas and compact projectors without the aspheric mirrors used in many conventional HUD arrangements. 

That combination of optical design and manufacturing expertise is what ZEISS wants to build on. On 8 October 2026, the German optics group announced its acquisition of Ceres, which will join ZEISS Microoptics. ZEISS already develops holographic systems through its ProSight platform, and the acquisition adds complementary technology, specialist knowledge and automotive relationships. The purchase price was not disclosed.

 

Holographic windscreen displays versus conventional HUDs

 

A demonstration by Hyundai Mobis shows what this could look like in practice. At CES in January 2025, the automotive supplier presented a holographic windscreen display developed with ZEISS and installed in a Kia EV9 specifically for the exhibition. Driving information, navigation and music playlists appeared across the lower portion of the windscreen, with display functions intended for both driver and passenger. This was an exhibition vehicle, rather than a production EV9 offering the technology. 

The example also makes “holographic” less mysterious. Occupants see familiar information, while a specialised optical film embedded in the glass directs projected light towards their viewing positions. 

Understanding where those pictures appear is essential to comparing the technology with existing head-up displays, or HUDs. Conventional virtual-image HUDs use an optical system to make information appear beyond the windscreen, while augmented-reality versions can position graphics in relation to the road ahead. Ceres’s in-plane transparent-display approach presents content at the glass surface. 

The distinction brings a trade-off. Thin optical films and compact projectors offer opportunities to reduce equipment space, but content at the windscreen does not share the distant focusing position of a virtual-image HUD. Looking between that content and the road can therefore require the eyes to refocus. Holographic optics can support both architectures, whose viewing characteristics remain different. 

 

How holographic optical films display information

 

Behind those familiar-looking images is a holographic optical element, or HOE: a microscopic structure recorded in a material to control light. Depending on its design, it can perform functions associated with lenses, mirrors or diffusers, such as focusing a beam or distributing light towards a particular viewing region.

In photopolymer films, laser exposure records patterns that change the material’s refractive index; this is the property governing how light travels through it. These structures can respond selectively to particular wavelengths and angles, allowing a thin film to carry out sophisticated optical functions. 

For a transparent display, the film redirects light from a projector towards occupants while transmitting much of the light from the outside scene. A navigation symbol can consequently appear against the view through the windscreen without an opaque screen behind it. 

Ceres’s film is passive and requires no electrical connections of its own, although the projector and control electronics need power. Its optical properties are fixed during manufacture, while the projector supplies changing images. This separates it from an electronic display panel embedded in the glass: the film controls where projected light goes rather than generating the picture itself.

 

ZEISS and Ceres Holographics: complementary optical expertise

 

For ZEISS, this is an extension of a broad optical business. Founded in Jena in 1846 and headquartered in Oberkochen, the group makes eyeglass lenses, microscopes, medical equipment and lithography optics for semiconductor manufacturing. Its Jena-based Microoptics business develops holographic technologies for displays and other applications.

Ceres brings a more concentrated specialism. Founded in 2009 and based in Livingston, it develops thin-film holographic elements and the processes needed to manufacture them, with automotive windscreens a principal market.

Its digital master printer builds holograms pixel by pixel from computer-generated design data. These manufacturing pixels encode optical behaviour rather than functioning as the changing picture pixels of a television, allowing different areas of the film to be tailored to the intended system geometry. 

That flexibility can help engineers accommodate a projector positioned away from the centre of a display area or adapt an optical design to another cockpit layout. Once the master is complete, Ceres’s HoloFlekt roll-to-roll equipment replicates it into production film, separating the slower creation of a customised pattern from the faster manufacture of repeated copies. 

 

What the Ceres acquisition adds to ZEISS

 

ZEISS already has holographic design, mastering and replication capabilities, so Ceres brings complementary expertise to an established operation. ZEISS says combining the technologies and teams will accelerate industrialisation, while Ceres gains access to the larger group’s resources and global reach. 

The potential value lies in broadening the technical options and experience available for automotive programmes. Additional mastering methods could help ZEISS address different display geometries, while Ceres contributes materials knowledge, glazing-integration experience and customer relationships. These are strategic opportunities; the announcement does not quantify resulting cost savings or shorter development times. 

Ceres’s collaboration with Covestro and Eastman illustrates that practical experience. Their work combines Bayfol HX photopolymer, hologram manufacturing and windscreen interlayers. In 2024, Ceres and Eastman demonstrated multiple transparent display areas within fully laminated windscreens, with individual areas measuring up to 400 by 300 millimetres: approximately the size of an A3 sheet. 

ZEISS has also built a supply-chain partnership through its QuadAlliance with tesa, Saint-Gobain Sekurit and Hyundai Mobis. Announced in February 2026, it brings together optical design, film replication, glazing and display-system integration, targeting mass production by 2029.

These industrial partnerships could reduce time to market but there's still plenty of work to do before holographic displays enter the mainstream. Engineers need to ensure readability in sunlight, visibility as occupants move their heads, and optical clarity after the film is laminated into glass. Long-term durability, manufacturing consistency and cost will also determine whether a design reaches production.

Alongside those requirements sits the question of what to display. Bringing a speed reading closer to the driver’s line of sight may reduce the need to look down, but additional graphics can also compete for attention. Passenger entertainment requires suitable viewing control, and safety benefits need validation.

The acquisition of Ceres, meanwhile, strengthens ZEISS’s ability to address both optical design and manufacture. Its commercial success will depend on delivering displays that carmakers can integrate economically and occupants can read comfortably.