2021 WayRay Holograktor Concept

World’s First In-Car Holographic Displays Break New Ground in WayRay Holograktor

Swiss deep-tech company WayRay has unveiled the world’s first car with ground-breaking holographic AR glazing.

Christened the WayRay Holograktor car, the 4.4-meter battery-electric vehicle has been designed to highlight its True AR™ holographic displays in a coming of age for the deep-tech firm.

The three-seat Holograktor has been conceived as a ride-hailing car and can either be driven conventionally or by remote control via a 5G and satellite internet connection to a qualified driver.

While it is being evaluated for production feasibility, the concept car has been built to highlight the maturing of the breakthrough holographic technology from WayRay.

Taking up a tenth of the in-dash space of a conventional HUD, the WayRay True AR® holographic displays also deliver crucial upgrades in distance to virtual content, color saturation and accuracy. Currently WayRay is the only company in the industry capable of designing and manufacturing complex Deep Reality Displays based on Deep Reality Display® technology, as well as rendering the content realtime around the car using a proprietary True AR™ Rendering Engine software.

Backed by early investments from companies like Porsche, Hyundai and Alibaba, WayRay is using the Holograktor car to emerge from its “Deep Tech” automotive supplier status into the world of new mobility models.

“We see that we have zero competition in that type of displays, and it is clear that we will capture the biggest market share,” WayRay founder Vitaly Ponomarev said.

“We will demonstrate that we don’t want to just be a supplier to the industry, but the technology leader in holography in general, particularly in automotive.”

The Holograktor Car

The WayRay Holograktor car is not only the first car designed around True AR™ technology, but it is also the first car designed around a new ride-hailing business model.

It is the first car in history, WayRay founder Vitaly Ponomarev said, to be designed around content consumption and interaction, as well as holographic glazing.

“This is a car designed specifically for zoomers,” Ponomarev said.

“It’s for people who want to play and want to create and consume content.“

Its unusual single rear seat “throne” layout was inspired by data showing that more than 80 percent of Uber trips were for one person only.

“The idea is that you can choose Uber Black, Uber SUV or Uber Holograktor, and if you choose the Holograktor, your ride will be subsidized by sponsored content, so the price will be much lower,” Ponomarev added.

“That is the concept.”

Even so, the Holograktor concept car cuts no corners and has been engineered and designed from the first drawings to be developed into a production reality.

The Holograktor car stacks its 2,880 mm wheelbase with cutting-edge battery technology to deliver an estimated range of 600 km.

Conceived as a ride-hailing car, its acceleration times are less important than its comfort and technical prowess. Nonetheless, it can still reach 100 km/h in 3.9 seconds thanks to the strength of its single electric motor, with its top speed being limited to 200 km/h.

At 4,416 mm long, the Holograktor is shorter than a typical compact SUV but far larger inside.

The entire car was also designed to showcase the True AR™ holographic technology from WayRay, and each passenger will have access to several holographic Deep Reality Display® HUDs in front and on the side, with each seat being fitted with joysticks for gaming and to interact with the content.

“None of the OEMs have designed that so far, so it’s very radical.”

WayRay Holograktor Interior Design

Its interior has been designed around a novel 2+1 seating arrangement, with the front seats pushed wide apart to provide all three occupants with a clear view of holographic displays.

To accommodate for ride-hailing, all of the glazing in the WayRay Holograktor car is engineered around True AR™ technology.

That concept helps take the Holograktor out to 2,023 mm wide (or 2,029 mm including its digital side-mirror cameras).

It sits at 1,582 mm in height, with the Shrimp feature at the rear of the roof designed to draw attention to the breakthrough technology inside.

“My ambition is to release this car four years from now and make it homologated,” Ponomarev said. “That depends very much on the perception of the market.

“It could be, though, that we just use it as a white label concept to help other OEMs to make cars like this with our True AR™ technology.”

The Holograktor car was designed by renowned hypercar designer Sasha Selipanov in collaboration with WayRay’s in-house team of designers.

“The True AR™ holography was the main driver for the entire design. Every feature and design theme is driven by AR holography, including the Shrimp,” said Selipanov.

“The occupant in the back must look out of the windshield, which is why the driver and the passenger in the front seats are spaced out as much as possible.

“We have 500 mm between the center of the driver’s seat the centerline of the car, which is about 100-150 mm more per side than any normal passenger car would have.

The driver and the passenger are spaced out further so whoever is in the back gets a fair view of the windshield and its True AR™ functionality.”

Another string to the WayRay Holograktor car’s technical suite is its ability to be driven remotely, by a qualified driver using the car’s cameras, radar, mapping and sensor suites, leaving the passengers to relax without relying on immature autonomous-driving systems.

That left the question of what to do with the steering wheel, which WayRay solved by sliding it forwards and simply fitting it into a groove in the dashboard.

“We have seen a few innovative concepts of how steering wheels can fold away out of view, but we didn’t want to come up with something ridiculous just for the sake of it,” Selipanov said.

“When it’s disengaged, the steering wheel slides into the dashboard and becomes almost seamless with the rest of the interior.

“The reason is simple: ultimately there will be an airbag there, and the airbag should remain deployable.

“Safety is first and foremost, and that brings with it a certain sense of realism. We always had a production car as our goal.”

WayRay Holograktor Exterior Design

At the core of the WayRay Holograktor car’s design was the challenge of combining the concept car’s enormous interior space with a well-proportioned exterior, all while staying in line with all current and approaching regulations.

Beyond that, the strong triangular shapes and solid stance are a nod to the Russian backgrounds of WayRay founder Vitaly Ponomarev and car designer Sasha Selipanov.

“We right away zeroed in on this Russian constructivism form language,” Selipanov said.

“If you have those early Soviet posters in mind, you can see those brightly colored geometric shapes of triangles and blocks.

“We wanted to create a visual language for WayRay that took Russian constructivism as the base. Coincidentally, the triangular form is reminiscent of a prism, like the Pink Floyd “Dark Side of the Moon” album cover.

“It is a light-ray aesthetic that comes with the triangularity and the prism-like effect, which is just perfectly appropriate for a car built to highlight holography.”

That triangular theme is integrated everywhere, from the 22-inch wheels to the laser headlights and taillights and even to the shrink-wrapped form of the roof Shrimp itself.

While the front doors of the WayRay Holograktor car open conventionally with a slight upward angle, the rear doors contain an integrated B-pillar and open rearwards and upwards, providing the easiest access to all three seats.

Part of the roof is integrated into the rear doors, giving rear-seat passengers an even easier way to step in and out.

Selipanov’s design credits include works on the Lamborghini Huracán, the Genesis Essentia, the Bugatti Chiron and the Koenigsegg Gemera.

The Georgian native, who grew up in Moscow and was trained at the prestigious ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena before being snapped up by the Volkswagen Group, even came to work on the Holograktor car in an appropriately modern way — via an Instagram message.

“I saw a message from Vitaly on Instagram in my inbox that said ‘Hey! Would you like to catch up and brainstorm about a potential collaboration?’” he admitted.

“Outside of being obsessed with sports cars, I’m a science geek and a bit of a physics nerd, and the fact that his company was playing around with deep-tech ideas and bringing them to customers around the world was hugely exciting.

“I thought that as far as non-lap-time-setting cars were concerned, this project was probably as exciting as I was ever going to find.”

The Shrimp

The boxy shape on the roof of the WayRay Holograktor car has been named “The Shrimp.”

It is there proudly for two reasons: to make it clear to anybody who sees the car that the Holograktor is very different from any other car on the road, and to house the holographic system for the rear passenger.

“It’s a unique selling point, and I think it makes sense to celebrate things that are unusual,” WayRay Holograktor car designer Sasha Selipanov admitted.

“Functional breakthroughs such as this one rarely happen, so instead of trying to hide it, we thought we should highlight it.

“It’s a conversation starter as much as a design feature, and it jumps out that this car is somehow not like the rest, and so it initiates a conversation about the True AR™ technology.”

The Shrimp in its current location is, in fact, inevitable, as packaging and ergonomics constraints have led the design team to place it on the roof.

“There were not many options in terms of packaging the Shrimp inside the car. We were constrained by the occupant package and the eye box field of view of the rear passenger.

“We considered a small dashboard-like volume for the rear seat instead, but once the three-seat layout was confirmed, we couldn’t obstruct the doorway or pathway to the seat.”

The reason it needs to be there is that it contains an enormous amount of high-end technology, and it has the ideal focal length for the rear-seat passenger.

Even with the WayRay holographic system needing less than three liters of volume instead of the 20+ liters required by conventional HUDs, it was decided to prioritize the ride-hailing capability over hiding the technology.

There is no Shrimp for the front passengers, though, as the WayRay True AR® technology sits within the dashboard, aiming up at the windscreen, where the Shrimp’s projections aim down from the roof.

Specifications

Model

WayRay Holograktor

Powertrain

Battery Electric concept car

Seats

Three (2+1)

Range

600 km+

HUDs + Side Window Content

WayRay Holographic Deep Reality Display® system

Intended Function