Last week, Just-auto has made an interview to Rainer Neumann, director of global lighting business development at Visteon. DVN summarizes the answers below:
About LED trend : Exterior lighting is extensively used as a way of differentiating vehicles and brands. DRL is a good example. More and more new configurations and shapes determine the styling of the DRLs which typically uses with LEDs.
Also, the overall trend in using LEDs as light sources for both rear lamps and headlamps is clearly visible. However, for LED headlamps it will take a few more years to achieve reasonable take rates in all vehicle segments.
LED light sources offer tremendous opportunities to design unique and attractive lamps. It can create a signature light, which identifies the vehicle brand and type. In the future, it will also lead to improved light performance for headlamps.
About LED challenges : The main challenge of LEDs is the cost of the application. Whereas the need for LED technology for rear lamps and the third stop light applications generally has been accepted, LED headlamps are still only seen on a few vehicles of the premium segment today. Visteon’s target is to develop LED modules in high volumes and with best in class performance for competitive costs.
About LED color gain : Headlamps show a different color vs Xenon or Halogen bulbs. LED from its white light, creates the impression to have a bluish light rather than the yellowish halogen bulbs.
The recognition of the road obstacles illuminated by LEDs at night does not create any colour fringes or complaints with respect to visible colors. On the contrary, the driver appreciates the clear and white light impression that he can see.
About NA market : The North American market has always been very different from Europe or Japan. In North America, styling of the lamp has always been important and in the past we have seen some very exciting and specific styling solutions which we have not seen in Europe. Today, the availability of LEDs is supporting this approach even more.
About regulations : We are still a long way away from reducing and harmonising regulations in the lighting business. More than one third of the current ECE regulations are dealing with lighting applications. We did see some progress in the harmonization between SAE and ECE regulations about ten years ago but this was unfortunately halted.
Today GTB working group runs some initiatives that serve to summarize certain regulations with similar content with the objective of reducing the number of ECE lighting regulations, but this will take a few more years. In parallel, we need to make sure we include new technologies such as glare free high beam and other driver assistance systems into the regulation process.
