Car HUD devices - good ideas still searching for a solution

I bought a Hudway in their Kickstarter campaign - and waited about forever for delivery. Many months of delays that occasional emails from the company assured me were for quality-control reasons. Well, they should have waited longer.

A HUD, or Head-Up Display, is a device or system that projects driving information either on the windshield or on a reflective, near-transparent panel placed at windshield height. Their purpose is to provide driving information at eye level that does not block the view of the road. Hudway's focuses on navigation information although basic driving data can be substituted. It looks like this (company photo):

It holds your smartphone flat and reflects the image off the screen onto the clear panel. Of course, the image must be reversed and backward to reflect so that it can be read normally.

To their credit, the company did include a HUD-ready navigation app that gets its data from Google maps (you can select others) and GPS-mapping smartphone apps are starting to offer a HUD mode, too. But the UI on the included app is very awkward. It defaults to portrait mode, for example, while landscape is required to fit the HUD itself. It is multi swipe to change it. Frequently (by that I mean a lot) I get strong GPS connection, enter the destination and press "create the route" only to have the app tell me that the route can't be created because there is no destination or origin point entered. Occasionally, the Hudway's native nav app gets lost and takes a looong time to find itself again. Quite a surprise considering it's reading Google Maps data.

Note GPS is on and 4G signal is strong

The HUD itself works well at night or overcast days but it pretty much unviewable in daylight driving, even less so if you wear polarized sunglasses. Furthermore, a HUD only makes sense in the first place if you can place it directly in your line of sight with the road. Otherwise, you have to divert your attention away from the road to look at the nav. device, and if so, it does not matter whether it's a HUD, a Garmin or your smart phone -- all the same distraction. Hudway includes two device stands. One holds the device a fraction of an inch off the dash and the other about an inch. In neither my wife's nor my car does the HUD rest in line of sight, although in my car it's not far off. But I still have to look away from the road to see it.

Even when the unit is not in direct sunlight, it's hard to read at a glance.
When sunlight comes through the windshield, forget it.

And the sticky pad that holds the device to the dash is only slightly sticky.

Finally, the much more sophisticated (and extremely costly) HUDs used in aircraft are designed so that the flight information displayed is pre-focused at infinity. Thus the pilot does not have to refocus his eyes to read the info. This not the case with the Hudway; you have to refocus to read it. (I do not require glasses so I don't know how it would work for drivers who do.) Again, it obviates the whole point.

Presently, my Hudway sits inside the center console of my car where it will likely stay. I would best characterize it as a good idea with faulty execution. I suppose HUDs will eventually be built in by car makers (Mercedes-Benz does now on select models) and hopefully mass production will drop unit costs dramatically for aviation-quality car systems. Add-on devices are not filling the bill presently. Right now the Hudway is a novelty gadget that is not really very useful. I do, though, wish it were otherwise.