After months of work and planning, it’s a little difficult to believe the Tokyo Workshop is now in the past. I warmly thank all 235 attendees and exhibitors; what a great pleasure and honour to welcome representatives from car makers, set makers, tier-2 suppliers, universities, and technical and regulatory entities.
What do I retain from the event? Mainly:
• With the arrival of autonomous cars, the future of automotive lighting is more and more complex and interesting to consider. How will today’s functionalities merge with (and/or give way to) tomorrow’s new ones?
• ADB, though though not yet accepted by NHTSA, is the technology everyone is working on. There’s a big mix of techniques (matrix, pixel, DLP, MEMS, etc).
• There’s a glut of newcomers starting to be present in the automotive lighting field as the presentations of NXP and Mektec showed. And existing known participants as Bosch, Infineon, Texas Instruments, are branching out in interesting ways.
• We all need to advocate and strive toward regulations that are as simple, safety-orientated, performance-based, and technology-neutral as possible. See next, an interesting paper of GTB president Geoff Draper, summarising the challenges.
The Japanese companies’ lectures were notably interesting. They were presented in Japanese and the presenters were much more open than in European and American congresses. Perhaps we must figure out better ways of overcoming language barriers.
Watch for a DVN Report about the Workshop, with pictures and links to release-approved lectures.
And all of this ties in well with the Report we published last week, looking at the industry’s future. If you haven’t yet done so, do give it a read; it illustrates where we need to go from here given recent developments, and contains substantive new information to help managers make optimal decisions.
Sincerely yours
DVN Editor in Chief