A few days after my visit to the 2010 Mondial motor Show and attending the 2010 VISION Congress, I see a strong link between the two events. They demonstrate—each in its own way—that automotive lighting is going through a great evolution period and ready to integrate a lot of cutting-edge innovations.
Mondial was focused on energy saving and green cars when addressing to the rational side of our brains but displayed incredible sexy stylish beauties when trying to play on the drivers emotions. Thanks to the unlimited styling possibilities of LEDs and the differentiating looks of Xenon, cars presented at this Mondial prove that there is room for new lighting technologies provided they help to reach the hearts of the customers beside improved performance and safety.
Production cars with Full LED headlamps with adaptive lighting were exhibited by Audi, BMW, and Mercedes. Japanese production and Concept cars showed a range of styling feature LED lighting technologies can offer even when limited to low beam.
The 2010 VISION Congress also proved through more than 30 fantastic lectures that new lighting technologies bring increased safety and comfort through better lights and improved detection of obstacles and pedestrians. The night driving tests of 20 cars demonstrated that these technologies are now available for production.
Indeed, spending some time in Paris last week was very profitable and convinced the automotive lighting community that the big challenge for new lighting technologies will not be to deliver improved performances and safety. It will rather lie in being able to demonstrate to buyers in effective and simple ways what the benefits of these innovations are, and thus make them open their wallets.
DVN General editor