I was invited last week to a party with a few dozen friends. During a discussion about my mysterious job in automotive lighting, I asked them about their feeling and problems when driving at night. Their first reactions were about glare, insufficient visibility, and often the confusion between low and high beam. When I told them that it is now possible to drive always on high beam without switching back to low for other drivers, they didn’t believe me. And I had to explain to them how ADB works and that it already in some production car models.
The upshot of this long and interesting discussion with my friends: the wonderful innovations in lighting technologies are largely unknown outside our vehicle lighting world. We have the tools to communicate, we’re just not yet deploying them effectively. OK, we all know ADB is great and we’re happy about it…now we have to convince the buying public. For example, I have seen in Ingolf Schneider’s office a very simple, nice and convincing picture perfectly explaining what ADB is with its great possibilities to increase visibility in all conditions. Many videos also exist, but they’re not widely seen. Why aren’t we using them? Whether you’re an engineer, a designer, a technician, or you hold another role, the grand-scheme object of most of our jobs is to sell our technologies, right? Nothing happens unless something gets sold!
So, I propose :
- To have displays and demonstrators in dealer showrooms with pictures and videos describing the benefits of ADB in ways that will ring and resonate for car buyers;
- To make advertisements explaining the benefit of ADB, like Audi and Mercedes did in the past for then-new HID headlamps;
- To spur cooperative action on these efforts among all automakers offering ADB.
It can be difficult to convince communication and marketing departments to share our commitment and motivation for ADB, but we must try, and speaking their language—again, nothing happens unless something gets sold—is probably a good way to try.
So let’s do it!
Also, don’t miss the DVN NAIAS report newly released with 134 high-quality annotated photos of the lights on the concept and production cars at the Detroit motor show.
DVN President