(This story has been updated to correct the name of the inventor of the head-up display visor. The inventor who sought the patent is Rinard Ford. A previous version of this story incorrectly said Ford Motor Co. sought the patent).
An inventor, whose last name is Ford, wants to put a driver’s head-up display in your face, literally.
Rinard Ford, an inventor, filed patent no. 20260001397 with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on Jan. 1 for a new version of the head-up display to be implemented through the car’s sun visor. That would mean drivers could deploy the head-up display by lowering the visor and having it directly in their line of sight.
In most modern cars, head-up displays are projected on a screen near the windshield, showing the driver all the relevant information such as vehicle speed, condition of the car and sometimes map settings. The idea is to have the information right in front of the driver so that the driver can keep their eyes on the road directly ahead.
But in the patent, Rinard Ford said traditional head-up displays have some disadvantages such as being “cumbersome and complicated to build and use; not portable and able to be moved from vehicle to vehicle. HUD systems that project onto a windshield can be difficult to read if the windshield is dirty, or if there is strong glare.”
The patent filing said this visor head-up display would eliminate the need to project images onto the windshield and/or to have a projector located on the vehicle dashboard. In certain instances, this head-up display visor is portable and is “affixed to the driver’s conventional sun visor by a clip, thereby allowing a driver to move the device from one vehicle to another.”
The visor head-up display could come in a variety of applications offering drivers a motion detector that senses movement outside the driver’s peripheral vision, Bluetooth connectivity, a microphone, a digital camera, a blood pressure reader, and a UV detector that darkens the visor when it detects increased UV light, to name a few.
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Jamie L. LaReau is the senior autos writer for USA Today Co. who covers Ford Motor Co. for the Detroit Free Press. Contact Jamie at jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. To sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.

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