Today our exclusive coverage of the North American International Auto Show goes live, and it’s a grand show-and-tell of the Detroit motor show. The happy trends we noticed last year carry on accelerating. There are noticeably more LEDs serving all functions—front, side, and rear—on vehicles from brands based around the world. This year’s show displayed a big achievement: the first mass-market, high-volume car in the American market with LED low beams as standard fitment. There are also spiffy new LED front fog lamps, and of course a giant variety of LED rear lamps.
But even despite some very big milestones, covered and photographed in this report, the most striking thing about the 2014 NAIAS, from the lighting perspective, isn’t any specific light on any particular vehicle. It’s the hearty participation of virtually the entire industry, across virtually all vehicle segments. Audi gets everybody’s kudos (or at least the grudging respect) for having touched off the mobile lighting revolution; at first they played largely solo. Then the rest of the German car industry joined in, followed by the Japanese makers Now the whole of the industry has joined in, including America and Korea—all contributing their own philosophy and spirit to the rapid evolution of lighting technology and design—and the resultant orchestral symphony of innovative lighting is quite a wonder to behold.
The American market is one of the world’s only—and certainly the world’s largest—that doesn’t recognise the international UN (formerly ECE) vehicle lighting regulations. That means there are differences in the American-spec lighting system configurations of models sold round the world, and it also means American homegrown lighting systems have evolved from a different set of genes. It’s interesting to see how the international exchange of ideas is creating a truly international industry race for more and better lighting content and design.
Every model covered in the report can readily be viewed in its entirety, but you’ll have to go elsewhere to do that. Ours is the only comprehensive report to focus closely on the lights, to the near-total exclusion of other parts and views of the car. And while there’s plenty of descriptive text in this year’s version, there’s an unprecedented number of large, clear, colourful photos: almost 200 of them. This NAIAS report boasts our best-ever ratio of one photo to every 40 words. We hope you find it as enjoyable and informative to peruse and read as we did to create.
At your service,
Daniel Stern, DVN General Editor