LG’s new OLED technology literally stretches the boundaries of display tech and promises to turn almost any surface into a screen—or should that be the other way round?

Bendable, even foldable screens are already very much a thing. But what about stretchable? Yep, that’s the next step in malleable OLED panel tech. LG has announced a new stretchable OLED panel designed for cars that promises to turn surfaces that used to be pepper with controls into displays.

According to LG, the new stretchable OLED panel can extend by up to 50% while maintaining a pixel density of 100 DPI. LG doesn’t say what the panel’s native pixel density is, but we assume it’s higher than 100 DPI and reduces to that figure when stretched.

“A conventional vehicle’s center fascia area requires a separate automotive display and physical buttons. With the application of a Stretchable display, however, the screen can freely expand, allowing the display and buttons to merge seamlessly into a single screen,” LG says.

“When the screen is touched, the previously flat display flexibly expands and protrudes touch buttons, making it easy to operate even while driving.”

Presumably, graphical elements could be rendered to compensate for the “stretch”. It’s an interesting compromise between touchscreens and physical controls.

The auto industry is currently in something of a transition phase when it comes to the balance between the two control types. Car models including the entire Tesla range, VW’s ID sub brand and Volvo’s latest EVs such as the EX30 have come in for criticism for what some see as the excessive use of touchscreens to replace physical controls for features such as climate control and audio functions.

The argument is that touchscreens can’t be used by feel alone, unlike physical controls, which means drivers have to take their eyes off the road. LG’s new stretchable OLED tech could solve that problem by allowing the drive to choose which controls are used most frequently and then mapping those to a virtual button that extends from the display and can be felt without direct viewing.

If that’s cars, this new display tech will surely be used in other applications. Bendable OLED displays like the Corsair Xeneon Flex are already a thing for the PC, even if we’ve yet to be terribly convinced by the idea thus far.

At first glance, if seems a bit niche on the context of PC gaming. Maybe you could have a secondary panel with the extendable tech that could be used to mimic the control panel for a vehicle, for instance.

Imagine a control panel on a door or, I dunno, a space ship flight deck, in a game scene. Maybe a rendition of that could suddenly appear in some form on the flexible display. No doubt someone will come up with a more compelling application for stretchable screen tech than that, but the possibilities seem pretty open ended. Watch this space, but we suspect stretchable displays with arrive on the PC in some form, eventually.