Last week we reported on the growth in lighting expertise among carmakers. A fine example is the VW lighting team I met last month in Wolfsburg. They were proud to present me their latest achievements and not only in new models like the Touareg and Jetta, but also their research and development work in front lighting technologies like LCD, and rear lighting flexibility—like allowing personalisation controlled by the driver’s smartphone, switching individual segments in the tail lamp for different light signatures.
I was impressed by Ricardo Plöger, the boss of the lighting team for two years now, who is committed to research into the potential for safety and emotion provided by the lighting system of his company’s cars.
Maybe the comment of Dr. Gunnar Koether, former lighting engineering boss who is now at the safety department, best summarises the VW job : “I am sure Ricardo showed great lighting features to you and I can confirm that also in future you will see a lot of good items in our serial cars. The team is still very active and for sure I am still very interested in their ideas—lighting is a very interesting topic and it is impressive what you are doing for lighting worldwide.”
Sincerely yours,
DVN President