Willi Brandenburg studied at the Paderborn University before joining Hella in 1980.
He worked 17 years at Hella, first in software development,then in design application. In 1998, he built his own company specialising in automotive lighting software.
Driving Vision News: Do you have financial partners in your company?
Willi Brandenburg: I am 100% owner or the company which works with 12 people.
DVN: Who are your main customers?
W.B.: As customer we have several OEM like VW Group and worldwide Tier1 Suppliers like Visteon and ZKW. Nevertheless the big part of our business comes from smaller set makers and engineering offices from all over the world.
DVN: Are you big outside of Germany?
W.B.: Yes, in Asia: Taiwan and China represent a big part of our sales. For example, we have 12 customers in Taiwan alone. We established sales agencies in Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and US in order to react quickly to customer needs.
DVN: How do you explain this success?
W.B.: We have two parts in our offer: the building of reflector and lens surface and the simulation.In the building of the surface, we are alone on the market. Our competitors like ASAP or Optis have software for simulation but not for building surfaces like complex shape or free form.
DVN: What about your night drive simulator?
W.B.: LucidShape builds the surfaces and does the simulation.LucidDrive is the virtual night drive simulator. We obtain vision very close the reality. The benefit is to improve the light step after step but also to convince the carmaker and to obtain agreement before launching the tools.