In light of the upcoming DVN Tokyo Workshop, April is Japan Month at DVN. We’ll be presenting Japanese companies involved in vehicle lighting, and their products. We actually got an early start last month with our interview of Ichikoh CEO Ali Ordoobadi. Still to come: interviews with Stanley’s R&D head Koji Shimoda, Koito’s R&D head Yuji Yokoya, and Honda’s head of lighting technology development Ryo Chijimatsu.
At the same time, we will be presenting and describing Japanese companies’ lighting systems and devices in development and in production, as well as their research processes and philosophies.
This week we’re looking at Ichikoh. In this issue of DVN you’ll find a show-and-tell of their innovations in rear lights with especial focus on two interesting taillights for the new Toyota Prius and Subaru Forester. In Japan, Ichikoh have a market share of 15% in headlamps and 28% in rear lamps. They have recently launched a wave of front and rear lighting products for vehicles including the Toyota Alphard, Auris, Velfire, Sienta, Noah, and Voxy; the Subaru Levorg, and several others. They consider that cars will always need lighting to see and to be seen, and headlamps and rearlamps for styling differentiation. The increasingly integral driver vision systems will be also a good opportunity for lighting, in Ichikoh’s view.
Of course, none of this will substitute for attendance at the DVN Workshop in Tokyo, so by all means sign up if you haven’t yet done so.
Also this week, we report on some really eye-opening regulation-and-test developments in North America, one of which warrants feedback to the Canadian government from DVN community members. As always, we’re glad you’re here with us, and we’re glad to be here for you.
Sincerely yours
DVN Editor in Chief