As this week’s Driving Vision News goes to pre-release, Hector is continuing to recuperate in Michigan from his fall on the morning of the second day of the DVN US Workshop. It’s hoped that he will soon be given the okeh to return safely home to Paris. He—and the whole of the DVN team—are grateful for the good wishes steadily coming in. I’m happy to report that he and I had a good editorial meeting on the phone about this week’s news, so be assured he is eager to get back up and at it.
Today we release the latest DVN Report, presenting our findings at the Los Angeles auto show and the Consumer Electronics Show. It’s got hundreds of great big colour photos for a detailed, comprehensive look at the lights and vision technology we saw at these two great big, comprehensive shows. This marks DVN’s first time covering the Los Angeles show, and it surely won’t be our last—what an amazing expo, full of energy and variety and relevance!
It was especially interesting to see these two shows almost back-to-back. Their nominal focus is not identical, of course; LA is first and foremost an auto show, whilst CES is a technology show. But there’s a whole lot of overlap: the LA show had tremendous deliberate and incidental emphasis on technology, because today’s cars contain an unprecedented amount of it, and CES had a great deal of deliberate and incidental emphasis on personal transport. What are the main takeaways we retain?
• Although terms like “personal transport” are burgeoning, with intent to include modes and methods not presently common, clearly automotive vehicles recogniseable as such will carry on dominating for quite awhile.
• The question of whether tomorrow’s cars will need or have lights appears to have been answered with a resounding “Yes”.
• We have passed the tipping point; LEDs really have to be considered the standard technology for making light on cars.
• Machine-vision and human-vision systems are merging on a physical, practical level; there’s keen interest and a great deal of innovation going into integration of sensors and cameras and suchlike in front and rear lights.
• In today’s lights, design and style are being leveraged like never before for brand identity and cohesion and to advertise the whole vehicle’s level of technology.
• Even at the giant Los Angeles show, concept cars as we have known them in the past seem to be on the decline.
This week’s in-depth gives an overview of these issues and shows a few of the many pictures you’ll find in the report—download your copy today and read it at your leisure; nowhere but DVN can you get lighting-centred new-car reports like this.
Of course, we’re already busily at work preparing our next April 24-25 Shanghai workshop. For more details follow this link
At your service,
Daniel Stern
DVN Chief Editor