Editorial

2012's North American International Auto Show was different to 2011's in a very substantial way. Last year's was revolutionary, while this year's was mostly evolutionary. It is exciting to see the American market begin to catch some of the passion for lighting that has long been lopsidedly European and Asian. The 2012 Detroit motor show featured a lot of American cars with lighting much better and fancier than it minimally has to be. We can all look forward to new innovations and contributions to the global state of the art from North American practitioners.

The report focuses on good and interesting lights on cars. Not so much on the whole cars; there are hundreds of sources for photos from any angle and full specifications for all the cars displayed at NAIAS. What you can get only in this DVN report is close-up photos of the lights, specially processed to show maximum detail of interest to Driving Vision News community members. The bulk of the content of this report is pictorial rather than textual. Most of the photos show production cars now or soon on sale, but many of them show concept cars. The lighting systems on these, too, are evolving visibly; we take keen note that the placeholders, the dummy-lights, have a much more salient "watch-this-space" aspect to them. They're no longer simple plastic plates, now they show us what the designers have in mind: more light guides, more artistic optics, more drawing with light, and lots more LEDs!

All of this is miraculous, though none of it is a miracle. Rather, it's the result of incalculable man- and woman-hours of research and development, learning from the way it was done before, and doing it better the next time, and the next time, and all the times after that. We have a clearer-than-ever picture not just of what tomorrow's cars will look like, but what the lights on those cars will look like. And this report brings that picture—those pictures—to you.

Sincerely yours

DVN General Editor

In depth...

We asked few questions to Dr Hamkens, Docter Optics's CEO.

Driving Vision News: Jan, could you introduce yourself, your education and how you became the CEO of Docter Optics?
Jan Hamkens : I am 50 years old, mechanical engineer in material science and production technology from the University of Hannover. Having completed my PhD, I joined Stahlwerke Peine Salzgitter AG in the early 90's before entering into a general management position within the Preussag Group in the field of security and fire detection and suppression technology. When Preussag started to move their focus elsewhere it was the right time for me to move forward as well.  I had the opportunity to take over the responsibility for the Docter Optics group with the initial task for a change management process and consistent step forward in technology.I started as CEO in early 2001, became shareholder in 2002 and I am proud to work in the challenging world of optical technology together with my management team and staff for almost 11 years.

DVN: Docter Optics is a very well known company in the automotive industry. What is the history of the company ?
J.H.: The company was founded by Bernhard Docter in the 1980´s in the Wetzlar area and grew after merger with former East German VEB Carl Zeiss Jena and Schott operations in the 1990´s.