CEO interview: Eyal Peso, Gauzy
Israeli developer of smart films Gauzy is also emerging as a leading provider of automotive safety technology.
Gauzy is the world leader in the development and manufacturing of Polymer Dispersed Liquid Crystal (PDLC) Smart Film technology. This smart film changes from transparent to varying degrees of opaque on demand for privacy, custom shading, solar control, and transparent displays. This is being used across the automotive industry for example to replace the sun blind on a windscreen or on a sun roof.
“We are developing really smart electrochromic mirrors, that’s how we started,” Eyal Peso, Co-Founder and CEO of Gauzy tells eeNews Europe.
The film is already used in automotive to control light through the roof, side windows or the windscreen. “That’s a key driver on EVs for our growth,” he says. “We put the nanotech onto a thin film and that is installed on the glass and electronically controlled
It is used by Daimler, McLaren, GM Celestica, with three more OEMs to announce by the end of the year, he says. One of those is Ferrari which is using the film for the roof of its first SUV, the Purosangue.
They are replacing visors for ADAS, working with a few OEMs to install a layer of SPD manufactured with Solvay that automatically tints the area of the windscreen, with sensors that detect sun glare. This can be liquid crystal or a nanotech material called SPD, or suspended particle device, which uses an electrical voltage to change the transparency of the glass and reduce glare and heat from direct light exposure, eliminating the need for shading systems altogether. The SPD technology is licensed from Research Frontiers, in which Gauzy has been a strategic investor since 2018.
“There are many sensing technologies that you can embed in the chassis of the vehicle to detect sun glare. The car also knows where the driver’s eyes are, and in that case you can provide the sun shielding. We supply glass manufacturers with the interlayers and they are embedding into the glass and the Tier One connects that up to the sensors. The smart glass is segmented so you can control areas of the windshield or the roof so the driver and every passenger can control it.”
“We produce the polymers and materials and ship the interlayer, we do all the chemistry ourselves. We are doing that for airplanes and buildings with the same product lines.”
But this has also led the company into smart cameras with AI that replace wing mirrors on commercial vehicles and trucks and deals with leading AI chip makers such as Ambarella
“Removing the wing mirrors saves 40% fuel but that means we had to develop a system to remove blindspots on an ever-changing vehicle,” said Peso.
These wing mirrors are being used on busses in London and New York and retrofitted onto charter buses in the US.
This requires a significant amount of processing power to calculate the display from a standard 2D camera.
“We are replacing a mirror and helping the driver drive safely, and a camera can do everything we need,” he said. “Our technology is self learning, and that’s unique for the commercial vehicle industry. That means we can retro fit, and we are now doing demos on school busses that have been on the road for 75 years.”
The output from the camera is processed by a chip from Ambarella.
“Ambarella is our partner on the SmartVsion 3 system but they are the processor, all the free space calculations, the AI, that is all done in Gauzy – a lot of processors are not powerful enough for what we need. We are using the best LCD displays you can find and the resolution the camera does matter, but not as much as you think. It’s about detecting all the different images. A high resolution camera would need higher processing but we solve a lot of that with good image analysis and it works in snow, tunnels, fog, all of those conditions.”
The technology has gained global traction. “There are 3200 busses in London with no wingmirrors, using our cameras, and the technology is approved to use with all the standards across Europe and the US,” he said.
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