By Paul-Henri Matha
Between ISAL and our DVN event this month, I took time to talk and listen with Martin Vollmer, Forvia Hella’s Vice President of Lighting Innovation, about exterior displays – and especially the CMX technology presented this year on Forvia’s Saphir show car, and at ISAL.
Paul-Henri Matha: Hi Martin. Forvia Hella is communicating a lot about exterior lighting displays. How many shows have you done with demo vehicles, and could you explain to us the evolutions you’ve driven from first concept to the latest Saphir?
Martin Vollmer: Thank you for the question, Paul Henri. The journey of exterior lighting display developments at Forvia Hella began with a demonstrator for the K-Fair in 2016. Back then, we saw already the trend from animated signal lighting to segmented signal lighting and even the potential for pixelated signal lighting.
For some years, the major limit for their applications were given by the car architectures. Since 2021 this limit was fading away and cars became increasingly capable of driving larger numbers of individual LEDs. This was the point in time were Forvia Hella started to foster and diversify our technology portfolio for exterior lighting displays to serve different customer needs.
Over time, we classified these into two main categories: pixelated and segmented displays. Pixelated displays allow for the presentation of symbols, text, and images with high flexibility, while segmented displays are designed for more basic symbols or customizable illuminated areas, ideal for signature lighting and communication functions.
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