A group of us from the DVN team—Wolfgang Huhn, Michael Hamm, and I—went to ISAL in Darmstadt along with 750 other attendees last week to see the presentations and exhibitions of the latest innovations and trends from the German perspective. I mentioned Germany on purpose, because around 2/3 of the attendees were from Germany. The second-biggest delegation was from Korea, and less than 10 from China, Japan, or North America.
These figures show five things about the world of vehicle lighting:
- Germany remains at the heart of lighting innovation.
- Korea has grown a lot, pushed by Hyundai-Kia and the Korean supplier ecosystem—SL, Hyundai Mobis, Seoul Semiconductor, Samsung…
- As usual, the U.S. is off doing its own thing, focused on trying to see if any good can be wrung from NHTSA’s ADB rule. The major UAW strike could also explain the low level of attendance.
- Japan is still strong, but sent fewer attendees than Korea. Less things to learn or less things to demonstrate?
- China: ISAL was just the week after ALE, with its 30,000 attendees and just before mid-autumn festival. But that is not the only explanation for the low Chinese attendance at ISAL. China has now its own market, with a lot of innovation attractive to Europeans, while there’s less for China to come see in Europe for lighting technology. This is clearly an effect of China being the world’s biggest and fastest-growing auto market.
Next week we’ll bring you, in our monthly report, a thorough summary of ISAL. In this week’s DVNewsletter, we present two insights:
- ams OSRAM interview about the best innovative concept of the week for me, their amazing Aliyos which is sure to make fast friends with designers
- Interview of Katrin Schier from Forvia, whose lecture was selected as the best of ISAL this year.
On the road to ISAL, I also took time to visit the Lotus Tech Innovation Center in Raunheim and made an interview with their exterior lighting technical lead, Frank Langkabel. You’ll find that interview in this week’s news, too.
We’re glad you’re with us!
