Ralf Schäfer from Philips: “Ultimate goal is to replace halogen in medium size cars by Xenon“

With a PhD in Physics, Ral Schäfer joined Philips in 1977 in the Lighting Research Group. He held different positions in research, development and marketing.He is working for Philips Automotive Lighting since 1988. In this period he was involved among others with the development and market introduction of Xenon systems from the early 90's in the roles of Development and Product Marketing Manager. Since 2005 he is responsible for the headlighting bulb business of Philips Automotive Lighting as Vice President & General Manager.

DVN: Xenon is still a growing technology. Some experts consider there is still room for progress on performances. What is your opinion?
Ralf Schäffer: We definitely see options to improve Xenon Lighting. In my view we have not yet reached the limits of light technical performance of the light source. Parameters as efficiency - related to lower energy consumption -, light colour for sharper visual impression and luminance pattern can still be enhanced.
Target is to reach more safe and comfortable light on the road for the enduser.
Other elements for performance improvement are related to system aspects.
Is the current architecture of Xenon systems really future proof or can we get additional, not yet exploited benefits out of features like automatic high beam control etc.? From the bulb side we are studying options to support such functionality.

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