Just 10 days on from the DVN Munich event, we are pleased to publish our detailed report; download it here. In it, we bring you the challenges faced by the vehicle lighting world, as wrangled at the event in presentations and at expo booths. The list is long, and it includes the likes of:
- Transformation wrought by the shift to EVs and SDVs, pushed along by newcomers from California and China as well as migration from the tech industry—Rivian, Xiaomi, Huawei—and high-power computing—Qualcomm, Nvidia—and AI. What was not even dreamable before is becoming reality, much faster than we could have expected. No training period, no gradual learning curve; we’ve been thrown into the deep end of the swimming pool, and we’ll have to learn to swim to survive.
- New technologies—MEMS, displays, computational optics, lasers—and new possibilities—projection and intelligent lighting—and new constraints like cybersecurity and software update management needed for V2X communications and L2++ and L3 features. Because cars are now interfacing with external clouds, legal frameworks are needed. Cars are being developed and certified in whole new ways. The CS and SUMS panel discussion was highly informative about these concerns and will be covered in a dedicated report next month.
- Increased pressure to drive down CO2 in all phases of vehicle and component development, manufacture, use, and end-of-life handling. From ideas we see concrete things. The supply chain is starting to be organized with a lot of initiatives covered in the long sustainability session at the event. As pointed out by Valeo, 80 per cent of a vehicle’s CO2 footprint is defined during the design phase—three years’ design work and seven years’ production for a classical vehicle. That is to say, what we design now is valid for 10 years. If we want to change something in 2035, it is now in 2025 that we have to think about it!
Lots of food for lots of thought. Download the report and give it a read; there’s much to discover.
Sincerely yours,
