The end of May is coming very soon. Since the DVN Shanghai Workshop, I have been totally focused on building the DVN Study on strategy for the future of automotive exterior lighting, to be published at the end of the month: “Impact of a Changing Car Industry on Exterior Lighting: Evolution or Revolution? – Identify Your Success Factors for the Next Decade”.
I had during two days a long meeting with all five of the other experts involved in producing the study. There was a great deal of work to do, on account of the high volume of information we received from automakers lighting suppliers, universities, and organisations about an enormous amount of nascent technology: high-brightness LEDs, lasers, LCD, DMD, MEMS, microAFS, LCOS, OLED, holograms—and so many styling differentiations—that it has been very complicated to select the main trends. Frankly, I didn’t imagine it to have been a task of this scale; the biggest during DVN’s first decade since the launch of the DVN book two years ago. But it will surely turn out to have been fruitful work which will help all the lighting community— car makers, set makers, tier 2 suppliers, researchers, regulators, practitioners, managers, and newcomers to the field.
I thank Leo Metzemaekers and Ralf Schäfer who have put forth a very professional analysis, Jean-Paul Charret and Jean-Paul Ravier who constantly challenged the analytical points to make sure they’re right, Daniel Stern who has done a fine job writing about regulations, enriching the report and editing it, Salomon Berner who reacted as a non-expert to make the report widely accessible, Eve Taberna who is laying out and designing the final report.
As captain of the DVN team, I am very proud of the job we are doing and this study will be a reference for all the automotive lighting community.
Sincerely yours
DVN President