Ceres Holographics' EIC Accelerator HUD: 2025 Plan Against Record

Ceres Holographics makes holographic film that is laminated inside a car windshield so that a small projector in the dashboard can put speed, navigation and warnings onto the glass in front of the driver. In the European Commission's 9 January 2019 cut-off of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the Horizon 2020 pilot of what became the EIC Accelerator, the company won a grant for VIEW-AHEAD, a project to turn its hand-fed hologram copier into a continuous roll-to-roll machine, according to the Commission's list of selected companies, which names Ceres, then in St Andrews, as the only beneficiary of the project. The EU contributed €1,402,301.25 towards a total cost of €2,003,287.50 for the three years from 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2022, according to CORDIS.

The proposal promised a lot. It said a "major European OEM" aimed to fit "at least 2 million" first-generation VIEW-AHEAD head-up displays by 2025, and forecast cumulative sales of 3.9 million hologram units by 2025 and a turnover of €162 million within three years. Seven years later the machine exists and a car maker has tested the windshield, but no production vehicle with Ceres film has been announced, and the company still reports annual losses.

Where Ceres Stands Now

Ceres is an active company. It filed its accounts for the year to 30 September 2025 on 31 March 2026, registered new share allotments on 31 March 2026 and 7 October 2026, and recorded a new person with significant control from 31 March 2026, according to its Companies House filing history. The 2025 accounts say the company received £1,000,000 in December 2025 under an advance subscription agreement, an investment that converts into shares later. How much the 2026 allotments raised is not stated in the filings read for this article.

Commercially, Ceres is still in the demonstration stage. In April 2026 it said it would show, with the US materials group Eastman, what it called the world's largest in-plane display, several holograms in one windshield film, at the Beijing motor show, and described its system as "the only commercially viable and automotive-qualified transparent display solution available today", according to a company announcement. The same release says the technology is "under evaluation" in several proof-of-concept projects with car makers. No customer contract or production programme is named.

The Technology: Putting the Optics in the Glass

A conventional head-up display folds the image from a projector through mirrors in the dashboard and reflects it off the windshield. The wider the picture, the larger the optics, which is why the CORDIS summary says a display covering the driver's field of view would be "too bulky for all but the largest vehicles" and cost more than €4,000. Ceres moves part of that optical work into a holographic optical element, a thin layer of photopolymer recorded with a hologram that bends the projector's light towards the driver's eyes while the rest of the glass stays clear. The film is Covestro's Bayfol HX photopolymer, according to eeNews Europe.

The company's distinctive step is how it makes the holograms. It designs and "prints" a master hologram pixel by pixel from software, then copies it into blank film. In 2020 an analyst at Yole Développement told EE Times that Ceres was, in his view, "the only one having a digital way of replicating holograms for production, with equipment they build themselves". Ceres sells this as HoloFlekt. In April 2024 it showed a windshield film carrying up to three separate displays, each up to 400 mm by 300 mm, one for the driver, one for warnings and one for the passenger, according to Autonomous Vehicle International.

There is a gap between what is shown and what is harder to build. The simpler "transparent display" puts a flat image on the glass. The more ambitious augmented-reality head-up display, which overlays graphics at a distance on the road, needs lens-like optical power in the film, and Ceres still faces rainbow artefacts from sunlight and streetlights there, which Display Daily described in October 2024 as an unsolved problem in the industry.

What VIEW-AHEAD Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The project had two technical aims: adapt Ceres' flat-bed replication machine to work "on a continuous reel-to-reel basis", and prove that the hologram survives integration into the windshield interlayer and lamination. Both were met. The final periodic report, for April 2021 to June 2022, says the machine was built and installed at Ceres' site in Scotland, takes film 1,500 mm wide, had run more than 1 km of film and produced more than 1,000 hologram copies, and that an integration partner achieved the first lamination of a full-size single piece of hologram film into a windshield. The project ended on its scheduled date of 30 June 2022. The company's claim in the report that the machine is "the only machine in the world with its specified capability" comes from its film partner and could not be checked independently.

The commercial promises did not hold. The proposal said customers wanted volume manufacture shown "before 2021" and cited a target of 2 million vehicles by 2025. By the final report the lead customer had become a US car maker planning a production vehicle "starting 2025", with "at least 2 million cars" by 2027. Four months later the CORDIS results summary gave the start as 2026. In February 2025 chief executive Andy Travers said "We're not in a car yet", that Ceres was aiming for release with "a real customer" in late 2026 or 2027, and that it had tenders out to three Chinese car makers, in an Information Display article reprinted on the Ceres website. No production car with the film had been announced by 7 October 2026.

1. Roll-to-roll replication machineDeliveredInstalled in Scotland, 1,500 mm web, over 1,000 copies (CORDIS report).
2. Hologram laminated into a windshieldDeliveredFirst full-size lamination in 2022; Ford reported completed tests in 2024 (Display Daily).
3. Volume manufacture shown before 2021LateMachine finished in the 2021/22 period; customers then asked for proof by end 2023.
4. Production cars from 2025, 2 million unitsNot achievedNo production vehicle announced; target moved to 2026, then 2027.
5. €162M turnover within three yearsNot achievedAccounts show continued losses; trade debtors of £16,244 in September 2025.

What Ceres Has Achieved Since the Grant

The clearest progress is with suppliers and one car maker. At the SID vehicle display conference in 2024, Ford presented tests of a windshield with HoloFlekt film laminated in cooperation with Eastman and Carlex, and said the performance, impact and durability testing was complete so that integration talks could begin, though it gave no timeline, according to Display Daily. In December 2024 Eastman, Ceres and Covestro signed a memorandum of understanding to explore commercial production, with Covestro supplying the photopolymer film, Ceres the mastering and replication equipment, and Eastman the interlayer and the relationships with car makers, according to eeNews Europe and Eastman. A memorandum of understanding is not a supply contract.

At CES in January 2025 Ceres added Appotronics, a laser projection maker, as a partner for a windshield-wide display, according to Mobility Engineering Technology. Travers said in the February 2025 interview that Ceres was building a second replication machine to double capacity, with plans for two more at Eastman sites; whether those machines exist could not be verified.

The Money

Ceres files small-company accounts, which show no revenue figure, but the balance sheets and notes are enough to follow the money. Losses rose from £432,004 in the year to September 2018 to £961,387 in the year the project began, stayed between £832,800 and £896,006 for the next four years, fell to £546,082 in 2024 and reached £1,177,012 in 2025, according to the filed accounts. Accumulated losses stood at £8,228,692 in September 2025, against share premium of £9,588,696. Equity fell from £2,537,669 to £1,360,657 in that year and cash from £1,734,787 to £1,054,352. Trade debtors, money owed by customers, dropped from £715,769 to £16,244.

Shareholders have covered the gap. The accounts record about £7.4 million of new equity between the 2018 and 2024 financial years, including £1,428,800 in November 2023. Par Equity and Scottish Enterprise are named as investors by VCBacked, which dates a seed round to November 2023. The sources disagree on the founding year: eeNews Europe and EE Times give 2009, while Companies House shows the company incorporated as Ceres Imaging Limited in September 2007. When the grant was awarded, Ceres said it had raised €6.1 million in total from private investors and Horizon 2020, according to Scottish Financial News and eeNews Europe. CORDIS lists no other EU project for the company, and as the award was grant only, no EIC Fund investment is involved; Ceres does not appear in any EIC Fund announcement found for this article.

Why It Matters for Europe

The European Commission's industrial action plan for the car industry of 5 March 2025 names software, infotainment and autonomous driving among the strategic technologies where European manufacturers must stay competitive, according to Covington and Glass for Europe. In-car displays sit squarely in that field. The VIEW-AHEAD report argued that the largest benefit would go to European film, interlayer, glass and projector suppliers. The supply chain Ceres has assembled since is mixed: Covestro is German, but Eastman is American, Appotronics Chinese, the one named test customer is Ford, and Ceres itself is in the United Kingdom, which left the EU in January 2020, seven months into the project.

The Verdict

A grant pays for development, not for a car maker's decision, and on the technical side VIEW-AHEAD was a success that finished on time. But the targets Ceres put in its proposal were its own, and none of the volume or revenue numbers has been reached. Whether a car maker signs before the money runs out is the open question. Ceres and the EIC were not asked for comment for this article. It is based on public records and published statements, linked throughout.