Hector Fratty

After a devastating 2009, in which hundreds of auto engineers lost their jobs at automakers and suppliers, 2010 is showing some signs of hope.

The Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor predicts the auto industry will add 100,000 jobs annually in 2011, 2012 and 2013, including many thousands in engineering. “The job prospects for auto engineers have improved dramatically over a year ago,” said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research. “Green technologies will spark a higher demand for engineering talent

Lighting technical papers were in general rather sparse, even more so than last year which itself was a very bad year. Nevertheless, we noticed the high presence of US engineers, many of them standing in packed conference rooms and showing their involvement through their numerous questions. We also noticed that the understanding that lighting and safety are linked is finally surfacing in North America.

I think, after the dramatic crisis, the US lighting industry is back. The new lighting technologies and mainly LEDs are boosting the badly affected US lighting industry and we can expect much nice progress and innovation from North America. Consumption reduction is one of the priorities of the automotive industry, and LED technologies can help to achieve targets.
I must say, during my week-long stay in the US, I drove more than 1,000 miles by night, driving from Detroit to Indianapolis and then to Cleveland. After this trip, I better understand why bending lights have no chance to succeed in the US but I also can’t understand why HID and highway beams have no success, and why NHTSA do not react to decrease glare.

About lighting lectures
Several presentations raised my interest in spite of the lack of real new information.
I loved the lecture of Rainer Neumann and its smiling prototype, I loved the lecture of J.S. Straetmans from Philips about 25W Xenon, I liked the two lectures of John Bullough who is promoting very hard the need for improvement in US lighting, and Larry Rice’s lecture from Osram, one of the best experts in car lighting in the US.
I was surprised by the lack of papers from UMTRI and from the US lighting industry in general. You will discover all the details of these lectures next week in our detailed DVN report on the SAE Congress.

Expo: a big disappointment
Yes, a very big disappointment about the exhibition area. It was very small area and there were no lighting or driver assistance booths. I was very sad to see so weak an exhibition area in comparison with what I had been seeing 10 years ago with most American, European, and Japanese lighting suppliers showing off their innovations and providing information and promotional prizes. This lack was