Everybody understands and agrees LED sources will overtake the other light sources in the future, taking into account all the benefits that these light sources will bring on the market. The real question remains when and at what speed LEDs’ market penetration will grow for rear lamps and even more so for headlamps. To find the answer to this critical question it is important to understand the key drivers, I mean what are the roadblocks and what are the benefits. I will not remind everybody of the interest of LED in terms of style, power consumption, life time, packaging, colour difference, and technology image. I would rather work toward an understanding that if we can clearly decrease the drawbacks, the pace of adoption of LEDs will increase drastically.
Whilst I was in charge of the R&D at Valeo, I thought this switch would occur a lot quicker than what happened for HID, and consequently considering that the entrance window for the 25w HID source was too short. Let’s consider these roadblocks and understand how they can and will disappear.
The first roadblock is the cost.
And when we talk about cost, we should consider the total system cost; I mean not only the LED chips, but the drivers, the added components like automatic leveling, heat sinks, etc.
1) LED chip cost will decrease for different reasons:
– Volume will come not only from the automotive business, but also from the other connected industries: general lighting, TV sets, Electronic devices.
– Competition: we already see a dozen of potential suppliers when in traditional light sources we had only 3 or 4
– Performance and technology evolution, with either less LED needed to get the same performance or lower cost LEDs.