We have to make adaptive lighting succeed—that’s all there is to it. We cannot afford to repeat our marketing mistakes at the launching of Xenon lights, for instance using different names for this technology. It was GDL, HID, Xenarc, Litronic, Xenon, and many others. As a result, it took a long time before car buyers could grasp what the benefits of Xenon light sources were for them.
Today, we are in a similar situation with Static Bending light, Dynamic bending light, AFS, Motorway lighting, AFL, Full AFS, Adaptive light, Intelligent light, Adaptive driving beam, ADB, High beam assistant, Adaptive cutoff, glare-free high beam, Pixel light, Marker light, and much more in the future when all these functions will be available with LEDs.
At the DVN workshops at Stuttgart in 2009 and at Paris this past May, many experts suggested to come back to simple and clear names for new lighting technologies in order to avoid confusing those who we’d like to buy these systems.
I am working on a report to be published at the end of August describing all the new lighting functions and recommending to use the same wording in all the lighting industry and to be able to communicate about them.
No wonder that drivers get confused and even lost when introduced to these new intelligent high tech lighting offers. Just think about a simple message like: “Xenon is a big improvement in comfort and safety versus Halogen” and what it takes to channel this message to car buyers.
I am convinced that clear, marketing-orientated names facilitate communication between lighting suppliers as well as communication with end-users.
To succeed, I need your help, the help of all lighting experts. If you have any suggestion about the names, about the classification of the different new technologies, please give me your feedback before or after you read my August 31st report on adaptive lighting.
I am convinced that walking together we can help promoting efficiently these new lighting technologies. Many of you are working very hard to develop them. It is already a technical success—it must be a commercial success. Let’s work together to make it happen.
Sincerely yours,