The Preh center console concept combines a variety of innovative technologies into a harmoniously integrated system. A uniformly black panel—on which individual icons for controlling a range of functions only show up when the ignition has been switched on—is implemented in the console. A special feature of this surface is that it’s made of real glass, not plastic. 

The black panel surface reflects the latest stage of development at Preh, based on many years’ experience of production and our well founded development expertise in black panel technology.

Another innovation implemented in the operating system is a central control knob incorporating a touchpad: this accepts finger writing, so it’s easy, for example, to tell the navigator your destination. Such input options confer several benefits. They make it easy to handle character sets—especially the Chinese one—and, in an age of smartphones and tablet PCs, this kind of input needs no explanation. Cleverly integrated into the operating concept, this control system is also less distracting for the driver, who need not look at the touchpad at all.

To round the design off, familiar smartphone gestures can also be used—say to leaf through menus or zoom map displays. The touchpad technology concept is already implemented in series production for the Chinese market today, in the iDrive controller of the current BMW 7 series.

Product Development Director Jochen Ehrenberg explains, “Preh’s advance development must of course concentrate primarily on specific tasks, focused on series product applications for the near future. Preh, however, enjoys great benefit from the wide interdisciplinary variety of our teams, just as much as from subsequent project work. From the start of preliminary development, all of the development disciplines, including engineering expertise, are already integrated. Our latest series products show that, with this strategy, we are getting good results.”

As well as being suppliers to the auto industry, the Joyson group of companies in Ningbo, China also includes a real estate division and, with some 6,000 employees, made total sales of 6 billion CNY in 2012. Its automotive activities are bundled in the exchange-listed Joyson Electronics company, which consists of the automotive electronics (Preh) and automotive components (Joyson) business areas. Joyson was founded as a supplier to the automobile industry in 2004, whereas Preh has a company tradition that’s almost a century old, having been founded in 1919. A majority holding in Preh was acquired in 2011, and Preh has been a wholly-owned subsidiary of Joyson Electronics since late 2012. 

Preh is a globally oriented supplier to the automobile industry, with more than 3,200 employees in Germany, Portugal, Romania, Mexico, the USA and China. The company is based in Bad Neustadt an der Saale, Germany. Preh’s development and manufacturing skills are concentrated on air-conditioning and driver control systems, control units, sensors and assembly plants for well known automakers.