Interview: Prof.Dr Wördenweber, expert of Interior lighting

Driver Vision News will be bringing out a special on automotive interior lighting in June. Here an excerpt from an interview with Prof. Dr. Burkard Wördenweber,

one of the greatest specialists of automotive lighting who as early as 1993 was an advocate for change in interior lighting.

Wördenweber worked 13 years with Hella, at the head of Research and Development and 6 years with Visteon as director Global Engineering Light before building his own company Phasix, specialist in innovation [check out www.phasix.de for further information]. He published in 2007 “Automotive Light and Human Vision”.

Driving Vision News: When you were in charge of engineering at Hella in the early nineties, you advocated a mayor change to automotive interior lighting. Could you tell the readers of DriverVisionNews about the historic change?
Burkard Wördenweber: Interior lighting was a much neglected area of lighting until the mid-nineties. Take, for example, driving regulations in the US: it was forbidden to use the dome light unless the vehicle was stationary. The general public accepted the myth, that everything inside the vehicle had to be pretty well ‘pitch black’ during night time driving.

DVN: You are known to have introduced the concept of ‘ambient lighting’.
B.W.: Ambient lighting was a well established concept in architectural lighting. For the automobile it was revolutionary. It took a long time to convince the industry, that an overall low level of illumination was actually beneficial to drivers and passengers.

DVN: How does ambient lighting feature in the vehicle interior?
B.K.: The most prominent feature now being introduced is a product known either as ‘waterfall lighting’, sometimes also referred to as ‘light curtain’. An elongated light guide throws diffuse light onto an extended surface, which in most cases include switches and controls. Waterfall lighting is a very effective way to illuminate controls and provide orientation at the same time.