Dear DVN members, newsletter readers, and all friends interested in lighting: hi! I’m back, and happy about that.
At the beginning of 2021 I retired after a 34-year career, 28 of which had me directly involved in vehicle lighting development. Now, after a year forming a beautiful life with completely different focus, I’m happy to be back in lighting to a deliberately-chosen extent. Lighting has been the centre and focus for half of my life, with incredible technological developments along the way.
But even more impressive during this time have been the people—coworkers, customers, and suppliers I got to know and work with. This worldwide lighting community was and is something special—maybe unique. Above all, the team and colleagues from Automotive Lighting, who supported and accompanied me for decades, are still in my thoughts and memories every day.
Therefore, I am now pleased to be able to contribute inside DVN as part of the lighting community, to keep this network alive and to show and support trends and technological developments in lighting. Right now there is a lot of uncertainty to where the journey is going. The pandemic, the rapid change to electromobility and evolution toward autonomous driving is setting new priorities and trends in vehicle lighting. High-definition light functions; fully illuminated grilles and panels; lidar; cameras; OLEDs, and displaysare among the new lighting features; when and where will they come?
These findings and trends are the important basis for all experts and managers to take the right decisions and set the right course for the future. Being involved here, evaluating the various possibilities, scrutinising the influences and showing the resulting consequences and developments for the coming lighting products is a welcome link to my long lighting history. And this will really only be possible in a lively exchange with you, who work in this environment every day. DVN is now the opportunity to keep lighting as a part of my life and hopefully we will soon be able to meet personally at one of the next DVN events, which I’ve always enjoyed as a special highlight. Until then, I will support DVN with my expertise and am eager to work intensively with Hector, Wolfgang, and the team.
