New Automotive Applications for Liquid Crystal Displays

LCD instrument panels incorporating the following new techniques have been developed and put into practical use.

The back illumination using white-light cold cathode discharge tubes, coupled with added dye and twisted nematic LCD panels, represents a liquid crystal display with good visibility and high-quality appearance. In addition, a fast display response time of less than 0.1 seconds at −30°C, and a two-toned display on a single segment have been achieved by the adoption of a heating system and three polarizers.