The big lighting event of odd-year Septembers—ISAL—is now two weeks behind us. What do we retain?
About the Lectures
Innovations are coming very fast in automotive lighting in just about every domain: light sources, optical techniques, functions, styling, energy reduction. A great deal of research is ongoing to overcome technical challenges and address new or newly-different issues in seeing performance, glare, regulations, and so forth.
In front lighting , four main messages stay in mind
1. HID headlamps are no longer present in the lectures, and we noticed at IAA that HIDs are more or less gone from concept cars. HID headlamp technology arrived in the market less than 20 years ago and will not reach the lifespan of halogen, which extends over more than 50 years now. It won’t be long before we retrospectively regard HID as a transitional stepping stone from halogen to LED.
2. LED is the technology of the future.
Many lectures showed the huge and anticipated progress of this technology, the infinite possibilities in styling, and the arrival of more affordable and ecological LED light sources with attractive energy consumption for the medium segment, all of these factors leading to a probable market penetration much higher than expected a few year ago.
3. Great future of ADB (Adaptive Driving Beam or Glare Free High Beam). 
Several lectures were emphasising the great potential in the future and mainly 2 studies proving the great improvement of visibility distance without increasing discomfort glare or disability glare. The question mark is how to make the ADB, static with matrix Beam or dynamic with actuators.
4. Laser headlamp technology, a flight of science-fiction fantasy two short years ago, is becoming a reality even if the cost is still very high and all the validations are not finished.