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If you ever wished you owned James Bond’s Aston Martin so you could activate its frontal machine guns whenever someone cut you off on the road, XPeng has the next best thing. The Chinese car manufacturer has developed an augmented reality game that lets you fire all kinds of emojis at the offenderfrom angry faces to flip-flops to Nintendo-style bombswhich are projected over the entire windshield in 3D space, giving the illusion of actually hitting the cars. While tossing a digital shoe may not be as satisfying as throwing an actual flip-flop, it may actually be beneficial for your mental state. Road rage has become a dangerous epidemic in the U.S., with approximately 92% of Americans reporting having witnessed road rage at least once in the past year. The statistics are sobering: Road rage incidents led to 481 shootings and 777 deaths from 2014 to 2023. Gun violence related to road rage incidents has increased annually since 2018that year, at least 58 road rage shooting deaths occurred in the United States; by 2023, the number had doubled to 118. On average in 2022, a person was shot and either injured or killed in a road rage incident every 16 hours. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Luxurious (@luxuriousbymm) The crazy shootings dont happen in Chinawhere gun access is restrictedbut the rage remains. This is why XPeng CEO He Xiaopeng introduced Road Rage Reliever during last weeks presentation of his new 2025 XPeng P7, a futuristic sedan with a design that gives me serious 1980s Citroën DS vibes. He says the game represents “technology-driven emotion. We used to prioritize technology first, but starting this year we will prioritize experience first, Xiaopeng said on stage, adding that the game is a way to be civilized and experience ‘civilized frustration’ rather than engaging in dangerous behaviors. How it works Road Rage Reliever transforms your windshield into a virtual battleground. But to understand how it works and why it may be so effective at letting you blow off steam on the road, you need to understand the real technological leap here, one that fully changes the driving experience. The car features an 87-inch-wide augmented reality heads-up display (AR-HUD) that covers the drivers entire field of vision and then some. According to its developersXPeng and Chinese electronics manufacturer Huaweithis is “the world’s first HUD solution to integrate AI smart driving.” Its also the first and only HUD of its kind, period. The AR-HUD works thanks to Huaweis self-developed LCoS (liquid crystal on silicon) imaging modules, tiny projectors no bigger than your thumb, which generate streams of light that produce pixels with 12,000 nits of brightness. This is crucial for you to see under the outdoor lighting of a road. For comparison, the latest iPhone 16 Pro Max has a peak outdoor brightness of 2,000 nits. The P7s AR-HUD also covers 85% of the NTSC color gamut developed by the National Television Standards Committee. Thats much lower than the screen of a computer, but more than enough to give you full-color graphics. According to Huawei and XPeng, the system has advanced optics, and algorithms precisely calibrate each beam before it hits the windshield. They also calculate the distortion needed for your eyes to believe that things are not displayed on the windshield, but instead that the 3D objects are floating in real physical space 33 feet (10 meters) ahead of the car. Its an optical illusion so convincing that the brain interprets digital content as real, the companies claim. [Image: XPeng] The 3D imageswhich are primarily used to display car, road, and GPS informationare generated by XPengs three self-developed Turing AI chips, with a combined 2,250 TOPS (trillion operations per second) of computing power to process data from radar sensors and cameras placed all around the car. These chips understand the positions and trajectories of the vehicles and objects around you, predicting car movements 0.3 seconds ahead to give you a precious perception buffer in case of potential collision. If the car can predict in advance, its computers or driver can take action with enough lead time to avoid or minimize an accident. As the car moves, the system also uses XPengs 3D technology to map every surface and movement, reducing virtual-real mismatch by more than 80%, with distortion held to less than 1%. This means that when the car is indicating which exit to take by overlaying a big path over the road, the path will appear as it is painted on the road. The system, the company says, paints navigation light carpets onto the road surface, creates colorful lane guidance overlays that match actual road markings, and displays floating traffic light countdowns in attention-grabbing colors over reality itself. This is all crucial to make Road Rage Reliever work. Playing it is very simple: The steering wheel has a customizable button that serves as your firing mechanism. The system identifies your target vehicle through its camera array, and every time you press the trigger it fires full-color, animated emojis that appear to detonatein a cartoonish way akin to a family-friendly Nintendo Wii gameagainst the real car ahead while remaining invisible to others. The display adjusts in real time with a latency of just 100 milliseconds, following your target as it changes lanes, speeds up, or slows down. Advanced image stabilization prevents motion sickness and eye strain, while slope compensation algorithms ensure your emoji bombs dont go flying off into space when you crest a hill. Clever! [Image: XPeng] Safe steam valve? The big question is safety. Studies show that heads-up display systems can significantly improve drivers’ attention to risky areas during night driving situations. The key difference lies in where drivers look: While traditional displays that sit in the center of the dashboard force drivers to glance away from the road, HUD placement keeps eyes in the driver’s forward field of view. Some research revealed that drivers were more likely to glance at HUDs during normal driving (11% eyes-off-road time versus 5.8% for traditional displays), which the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says can make them “potentially distracting. . . . Because the HUD is in the drivers field of view, drivers ma fixate on it and fail to perceive events in the environment. However, that study referred to traditional car HUDslike those in high-end cars by BMW and Mercedeswhich are basically small dashboards in your field of view. The XPeng windshield overlays real augmented reality elements onto the road, making them part of the landscape. A carefully designed augmented reality environment will not cause interference; instead it could potentially increase attention and improve response time. It could also reduce the difficulty of processing information in dangerous scenarios, thus reducing cognitive load. While overlaying useful driving information right on the road might have positive impacts on driving, pulling a trigger to fire a torrent of emojis at the car in front of you is potentially quite distracting. You could argue that firing silly augmented reality emojis could be as safe as hitting the hornthe action is the same in XPeng’s carand definitely safer than aggressively chasing someone down a street or a highway. XPeng hasn’t published any information about safety testing for the AR-HUD or Road Rage Reliever. To me, the AR-HUD looks like a promising improvement in the driving experience. And Road Rage Reliever is a clever and cute attempt to gamify anger management at 70 mph. Whether firing emoji bombs at inconsiderate drivers will actually reduce real-world road rage remains to be seen, but XPeng has certainly come up with the most creative approach yet to one of driving’s most dangerous emotions.
Category:
E-Commerce
Nostalgia is everywhere in marketing today. Legacy fonts, throwback packaging, retro tech revivals, all deployed with the hope that sentimentality alone can stir emotion and move product. But heres the problem: nostalgia is novelty, and novelty, by definition, doesnt last. Its seductive. It gets clicks. Its emotionally charged, delivering a quick dopamine hit. And lets be real, its easy. But slapping an old label on a can isnt strategy. When brands engage nostalgia at a surface level, they often do more harm than good. Take Coca-Cola’s recent Diet Cherry Coke revival. It was cool for a week, but, for me, it lacked any meaningful connection to what the brand has stood for across decades. It missed the opportunity to ask: What did this product mean to people then? What does it mean now? And how could that story be told with modern nuance? Without that narrative bridge, the move felt shallow. Worse, it overlooked the real power of brand heritage: a blend of familiarity and relevance that creates long-term equity, not fleeting impressions. Reimagining legacy This is where modern heritage comes in. It isnt about retro aesthetics or recycling old logos. Its a strategic act of excavation, going deep into a brands history to uncover what made it resonate in the first place. Sometimes that means literal digging: storage units, eBay listings, forgotten ad reels. The goal isnt to replicate the past, its to retool it for now. And thats hard to do well. Plenty of brands stumble when they go too far back or misinterpret their legacy. Like when Kelloggs Canada revived retro packaging and mascots for a limited edition run of Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes, and other classics. As a 90s kid, I felt the instant pang of nostalgia. But was there any meaningful connection between the throwback design and the bigger picture world Kelloggs is building today? Nope. Did it invite consumers on a journey to where its heading next? Not really. Thats the trap: when nostalgia leans on a version of the brand that no longer resonates, it creates confusion, not clarity. The most effective brand work strikes a balance: it leans into familiar cues but evolves them with purpose. It doesnt just bring back old stuffit makes history useful again. When we rebranded Sizzler, we didnt reinvent the wheel. We uncovered what was already there: a family-first spirit; a charming mid-century mascot; buried design cues that still felt unmistakably Sizzler. The goal wasnt to re-create the past, but to make it feel current. And thats the key distinction: nostalgia copies. Modern heritage builds. This approach also brings clarity. It makes creative decisions easier, because theres a right answer. When you anchor a brand in its authentic legacy, you stop chasing trends. You build with intention, using assets no other brand can replicate because no one else lived that story. Guinness hasnt changed its harp in over 250 years; it has just evolved it. Thats what timelessness looks like. The modern heritage playbook So, in a trend-driven world, how can brands strike the right balance between timeless legacy with modern relevance that cuts through? One critical aspect of modern heritage is its ability to tell rich, multidimensional, and ever-evolving stories. Where nostalgia leans on artifactslogos, packaging, ad slogansmodern heritage pulls from narrative. It asks deeper questions. Who were we? Who are we now? What stories still matter? Here are three principles we use when revitalizing a brand through this lens: 1. Lead with the story, not just the aesthetic Design is an output, not a starting point. Start with the brands origin story. Who has it always been? What has it always stood for? What stories and symbols have mattered most over time? Sometimes those stories are buried. Thats why you go beyond Pinterest boards: into archives, libraries, historical societies, even conversations with long-time employees. Once the right story is uncovered, design becomes a powerful tool to tell it: visually, verbally, and emotionally. 2. Dont get stuck in one era. Curate the best of every chapter Some brands try to plant a flag in a single decade, usually the one marketers think will trend. But being an 80s brand or a Y2K brandoften aimed at Gen Z and millennials with a wink and a pixelated smiley facelimits longevity. Modern heritage takes a more layered approach. It draws from across time, curating the best, most iconic moments to create a flexible identity that doesnt feel trapped. That allows brands to celebrate the most iconic, lovable parts of their legacy without getting stuck there. 3. Own what only you can own This is the most important, and most overlooked, point. Your heritage isnt just a design system; its your story and your competitive edge. When used well, your past becomes a brand asset no one else can duplicate. Thats how you stand out: by being undeniably, authentically you. The power of modern heritage More than a methodology, though, modern heritage is a mindseta search for timelessness. One thats increasingly valuable as brands need to cut through digital clutter, avoid design whiplash, and maintain relevance without losing soul. For legacy brands hoping to stay relevant, and new brands aiming to build something lasting, the future wont be found in trendy gradients or meme fonts. Its in the archives. In the origin stories. In the truths they already own.
Category:
E-Commerce
Imagine walking down the street and stumbling upon a soccer match, except the competitors are robots, not humans. Would you be surprised to learn that this isnt a Steven Spielberg futuristic movie set but a real-life athletic competition? The first-ever World Humanoid Robot Sports Games kicked off in Beijing on August 15, hosted by the citys municipal government in hopes of promoting Chinas technological advancements and fostering further dialogue internationally. Lets take a look at the details of this event and muse about what it might mean for our future: Is there any precedent for this event? While this is the first-ever full-scale event of its kind, it is coming on the heels of the 10th World Robot Conference in Beijing, held August 8-12, according to the Asia Times. Thats not the only precursor event held in the Chinese capital. In April, 21 humanoid robots participated in the first-ever half-marathon. Only six completed the race, which seems rather relatable. The Tien Kung Ultra robot, created by China’s National and Local Co-built Embodied AI Robotics Innovation Center, finished the course in 2 hours and 40 minutes. In Hangzhou in May, the China Media Group World Robot Competition-Mecha Fighting Series took place. Four Unitree G1s lived out the rockem-sockem robot dream. Back in Beijing in June, a practice soccer match was held with robots facing off three-on-three. It was the first time AI was utilized instead of human intervention. The robots were even equipped with the ability to recover from falls, but that technology has room for improvement, as some of the robots had to be taken off the field on stretchers. Where is the event taking place? The competition is being held in two very special Olympic areas in Beijing. The first is the National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest. The second is the National Speed Skating Oval, aka the Ice Ribbon. More than 500 humanoid robots across 280 teams from 16 countries are throwing down in 26 events. What does this mean for the future? Technology is moving fast, and its hard not to have visions of ominous science fiction movies in your head when thinking about the ramifications of artificial intelligence. This event will allow the robots out of the lab and into a big stress test to look for errors in programming and design. Heres hoping we can create a world where robots support human innovation instead of, well, taking over and murdering us. A happy ending of coexistence and cooperation might not sell at the box office, but it would be a much better reality to live in. You can check out a preview of the event in the embedded video below.
Category:
E-Commerce
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