I saw Ambilight through POVEC first, an electrochromic sunglasses brand. The owner wanted me to see the technology his designs are built on, but scaled up in a vehicle.
In the car, it was wild seeing the tint change that smoothly and that fast. It went darker than 5% tint in under 30 seconds. From inside the car, visibility stayed clear. From the outside, you couldn’t see in at all. That inside-outside contrast was the most impressive part, especially considering how dark tint usually kills visibility. Same idea as smart eyewear, just applied at a much larger scale.
The technology in the film is really the secret sauce. It’s electrochromic, which is what allows it to darken smoothly, stay clear from the inside, and do it all with very low power draw. The film itself is extremely thin and flexible, way more than you’d expect given how dark it can get and how quickly it responds. What surprised me most was how little power it needed to do all of this.
The heat rejection was the other big takeaway. New cars, especially EVs, are basically glass boxes, or mobile greenhouses. Huge windshields, panoramic roofs, glass everywhere, and very little you can do dynamically once the sun is beating down. Watching how much heat this setup blocked across that much glass made the use case obvious. This isn’t just about privacy or looks. It’s about making those interiors more livable.
After seeing it in a vehicle, Ambilight being connected to automotive programs with Audi and BYD makes complete sense. Cars live in harsh environments. Heat, UV, vibration, long-term exposure. If a material performs there, it explains why the same core tech translates cleanly into smaller, more personal applications.
That’s where POVEC really clicked for me. Once I saw the car setup, the glasses made sense immediately. The smoothness, the speed, the way it blocks light outward without killing visibility inward, and the low power consumption. It’s the same behavior, just closer to your face.
What stuck with me after was how many other places this could live. What excited me was how obvious those next use cases felt. Motorcycle visors. Windscreens. Home and office glass. Any surface where glare, heat, privacy, and visibility all matter at the same time. The thinness and flexibility alone open doors. Add in the low power requirement, and a lot of previous limitations disappear.
Right now, this is clearly aimed at manufacturers, and that tracks. But if this ever becomes consumer-direct, traditional tint solutions are going to feel very dated, very quickly.
Seeing Ambilight in a vehicle wasn’t about judging tint. It was about understanding where a design language came from. The car showed the scale. POVEC showed one translation. This kind of adaptive glass isn’t locked to one category at all. It feels like a material that’s going to find a lot of places to belong.
