By Hector Fratty, DVN President
I visited Audi’s in Ingolstadt two weeks ago, meeting Wolfgang Huhn and Michael Hamm. After a fruitful discussion, a visit to the light tunnel for a presentation of the DMD light and other future technology being developed, and a nice dinner at a Japanese restaurant, I got a chance to make a night drive with the A7 and the A8. In both cars, there are no real newly innovative functions or hardware, but I was impressed by the lighting performance, the light styling, and especially with the new level of lighting animation—a new great trend!
Demo-car with DMD
Having already experienced DMD lights from ZKW, Mercedes, and Valeo, now I had the chance to discover the DMD light from Audi. My target is not to compare the four lights, though there are great differences between them due mostly to different generations and different primary light sources. Rather, these four DMD presentations combined with the LCD light Hella showed me demonstrate the huge possibilities offered new technologies for the future and the great responsibility the vehicle lighting world faces to define the technical regulations. To progress on it, we have to launch as soon as possible research projects about the possible colours, functional parameters, light painting/printing on the road, and all the rest of the new things we’ll be able to do with the new lights.
Audi A8
The first impression upon seeing the A8 is the wonderful headlamps and rear lamps: an attractive mix of styling and technology.
The second impression is that the headlamps are very thin. And that’s true; the headlamp is thin, but it’s made to look even thinner by the fact we see only the upper part of the headlamp; the lower part with its blacked-out appearance is not seen.
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