Hector Fratty

Not so many new concept and production cars were presented at this year’s NAIAS. The Detroit motor show seems to have lost a great deal of its former relevance as the forward-looking, technologically-orientated presentations move to venues like the Los Angeles auto show and CES in Las Vegas. Still, there was interesting and noteworthy lighting to be seen at NAIAS; clearly lighting is going from strength to strength as a main pillar of vehicle design and technology. Here are some of the lights we found particularly attractive:

Honda Civic gets a striking new LED front lighting package on certain models—probably prompted by the standard-equipment LED low beams introduced on direct competitor Toyota Corolla two years ago.
Unlike the Corolla’s conventional-looking headlamp, the Civic setup is dashing and high-tech, echoing the multi-element styling seen in Honda’s high-end Acura setups with nine complex shovel optics under emitters. There’s a white LED DRL wraparound element, and an amber LED turn signal eyelid.

Sentra, likewise competing directly with Toyota’s Corolla, gets directly competitive LED low beams in a front combination lamp finely crafted by Hella. The low beam projector has an interesting horizontal oblong lens with uplight provision also providing an eye-catching depth effect. High beam and turn signal are with filaments, as are underslung fog lamps, but there appears to be a white LED DRL—and maybe even a headlamp cleaning system

Daniel Stern, Driving Vision News

As previously reported in DVN, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has requested public comments—due soon on February 16!—on a proposal to upgrade the US NCAP (New Car Assessment Program) protocol. Under the plan, NCAP points would be awarded to vehicles with better-than-minimally-legal low beam headlamps, among other crash-avoidance features. The proposed NCAP low beam test method looks at the performance of a vehicle’s low beam headlamp system in situ. That is: both lamps, installed on the vehicle, aimed per manufacturer specifications, and equipped with a seasoned (i.e., used) bulb. This differs substantially from the method used to test legal compliance of headlamps, wherein a goniophotometer in a lab measures the performance of a single headlamp, aimed to a regulatory specification and equipped with a dimensionally exact accurate-rated (similar to the UN “Etalon”) bulb. Because a potentially imperfect bulb is employed, the headlamps’ mounting height and vehicle voltage supply factor in, and manufacturer’s aim specification is used, the proposed NCAP method might reasonably be called more representative than an idealised lab test of the lighting performance a driver will experience in the car on the road—at least theoretically.

But does the proposed NCAP method really generate a more-or-less realistic snapshot of actual headlamp performance? Or does it merely exchange the blind spots of a lab test for a different set of blind spots? And if it’s the latter, do the NCAP proposal’s blind spots exclude safety-related factors worth including?