The increasing interest of the automobile customers in Automotive Interior Lighting generates intensive activities to improve the interior lighting in all vehicle segments. Lighting engineers, designers, scientists, experts for electronics, optics, simulation, visualization and construction work with the suppliers on new lighting concepts, designs, functions, integrations, animations with special design amplifying, physiological and psychological effects. New small, robust and car life time light sources enlarge the potential of interior lighting enormously and facilitate a lot of new lighting features and an interesting business. European suppliers still dominate the global market, but Asian suppliers are joining for a greater market share.
Vehicle exterior lighting gets a great deal of coverage, in accord with its unprecedented rapid pace of technical and technological innovation. The lights inside the vehicle are less discussed, but are likewise undergoing rapid and fascinating revolution and evolution. The pace and variety of advancement in the state of the interior lighting arts is even greater than that of exterior lighting, because the stringent technical and legal regulations that govern the design, performance, and construction of exterior lights do not apply to interior lighting.
Traditional light sources—incandescent bulbs and, for commercial vehicles, fluorescent tubes—are being supplanted by LEDs, OLEDs, electroluminescent foils, and other high-tech light sources. Optical technique and implementation are changing to accommodate and maximise the performance of the new light sources, even as available space for lighting devices shrinks. In turn, the new light sources and optics are unlocking new design prospects unimaginable just a few years ago. In an increasing swath of the whole vehicle segment, the days are past of the simple, single on/off dome light. New knowledge of physiological and psychological needs and preferences in ambient and task lighting combines with the new light technology and technique in the hands of designers and engineers to produce ambient environments full of non-glaring, variable-colour light that can be tailored to tasks, preferences, temperatures, outside light levels, and numerous other parameters.
The new and old techniques, technologies, and possibilities are presented in detail, with numerous examples depicted and described. Profiles are provided of some major players in the interior lighting market, and trends for the future are discussed.