DVN publishes all year round, so to Europeans who have been on holiday for August, hearty welcome back! Two important events concerning vehicle lighting are coming next month in Paris: the Mondial (Paris motor show) from 4–19 October (press days on 2-3 October), and the VISION congress on 14–15 October. At Mondial, there will be many new cars launched and concepts shown. We look forward to the latest round of continually elevating focus on lighting innovation, and it will be interesting to see what’s to be seen in the principles, implementations, and design of lighting on the cars being shown. We expect to see a lot more LEDs, as well as more ADB systems and perhaps some new lasers and OLEDs.
At VISION, we’re eagerly anticipating keynote speeches from Renault’s Design Director Laurens van den Ackers and from PSA Peugeot-Citroën R&D Director Gilles Le Borgne. And those are just two of a formidable roster of speakers getting set to make 34 presentations in all. There will be 25 demonstration vehicles in the nighttime drive-along programme again to be held at the Satory circuit, and six exhibitions to be put on simultaneously with the night drives. Once again this year it promises to be an extremely enriching, fascinating event.
But those aren’t the only two events on radar. Between now and this coming January, we’re also looking at the GRE sessions in Geneva next month, the giant AAPX/SEMA auto parts show—North America’s version of Automechanika—in Las Vegas this November, and the Consumer Electronics Show in January (also in Las Vegas) where vehicle lighting, driver assistance, and infotainment systems are rapidly gaining prominence. January’s a packed month; there’s the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, nearby and during which (on 12–13 January) will be the DVN NAFTA Workshop. The rubric for the workshop is “Future Lighting Technologies, Techniques & Regulatory Affairs in NAFTA”.
Events like these, especially the VISION Congress and the DVN Workshop, are increasingly key to keeping up with the blazing-fast pace of innovation in vehicle lighting and driver vision systems. It is important to stay conversant with the state of innovation in the technologies we work with, but it is also at least as important to know the people involved—to meet them, to talk with them in person, to learn firsthand of their achievements, and their philosophical approaches to the increasingly complex challenges we face in the world of driver vision.
Sincerely yours
DVN Editor in Chief