Inventions | A Finnish company received significant funding: Soon the windshield can warn of a moose or tell about a good coffee place, the CEO envisions

The road a moose or a reindeer is frolicking on the edge, and the driver won’t catch them. Then the windshield of the car lights up and shows the location of the animals.

This situation, which sounds like a science fiction vision, may become true in the future if the intentions of the Finnish start-up company come true.

“The world can be changed so that it is customized just for you,” reflects the CEO of Distance Technologies to HS Urho Konttori.

He envisioned that the map navigator could draw an exact route to the destination on the windshield. If the driver likes a certain kind of coffee, a coffee offer could pop up above the cafe visible through the glass next to the road.

In self-driving cars, glass could be the canvas of a movie theater.

It’s about is a computer-generated 3D light field that tracks the viewer’s eye movement and head position. With it, digital views are applied to the glass.

HS presented the technology first time in Junebut the prototype is still taking its first steps. This week steps were accelerated by the 10 million euro seed funding the company received.

It refers to the money used to start a company in the initial stages of business. It’s not a huge pot, but who gives it matters. The financing round was led by GV, which is the investment arm connected to Google’s operations.

In other words: One of the world’s biggest internet junkies believes that this can slowly become something.

“They have enormously more patience than a medium-sized investor,” says Konttori.

Patience is needed. Konttori believes that Western car manufacturers could get the technology into mass production in five years at the earliest.

“We are progressing at such a good pace that we will be able to make the product next year.”

Through various funding rounds, the company has received around 13 million euros since the summer. With those amounts, market launches are not yet made.

“This is the middle ground between research and making a product.”

Distance has to take into account a huge number of variables, because the light fields should work flawlessly in rain, shine, fog and pitch darkness.

“We take care that these types of things are in order before we go into the production phase, which then aims for a car X years from now.”

The office does not say with which manufacturers it is working together. It is known that the Korean Kia was involved in the previous pre-seed financing stage.

Motoring is undergoing a major transition as electric cars become more common. In China, cars are already full of imaginative technology, so does a small Finnish startup have colossal opponents?

“If you can make a very good technology and protect it with patents, then it is possible that there is one defensible field.”

That technology should also be mass-produced cheaply.

“We have always kept in mind that the technology must be scalable and its manufacturing costs must be able to be brought down.”

The car company must therefore have something of the same technology available for both the representative car and the affordable model.

When more results are obtained, the next funding round begins. Alternative customers could be found in the military industry and aviation.

It often happens that when the value of a start-up increases, it becomes tempting to sell it. The office claims that it is not the first to put the company in trouble.

“We are very strongly pursuing this as an independent company.”

Is the driving public ready to see one or the other in the windshield?

“This is technology that gives focus rather than distraction.”

That is, the windshield doesn’t shout all the time that those moose might be there, but focuses on one when one tries to get on the road.