This beautiful old car does not exist. It was created in-house in a few minutes using AI. The editor of this column needed a relevant illustration to catch your attention. So he kindly asked a colleague for the instant delivery of an illustration reflecting 1) automotive, 2) lighting, 3) attractive images, and 4) artificial intelligence.
Like AI, car lighting has evolved over many years, from real needs and bright ideas to tech development with mind-boggling results. A more physical interpretation of this article’s headline leads to an entirely different story.
Once upon a time … the horse & carriage taxi cabs of London, Paris and NewYork featured a simple fuelled lamp up front. Combustible acetylene gas or oil. Increasing speed of the vehicles forced the evolution of brighter ideas and solutions.
The first Ford Model T used carbide lamps for headlights, and oil lamps for tail lamps. But the first electric headlamps had actually been introduced before the turning of the century by the Electric Vehicle Company of Hartford, Connecticut.
A CENTURY OF BRIGHT IDEAS
Tail lights and brake lights appeared in 1915, and low-beam or dipped-beam headlights were available from 1919. Twenty years later, sealed-beam was the one standard in the US, and Halogen lamps first appeared in Europe in 1960. High-intensity discharge lamps (HID or Xenon lights) had been in progress for a while and were first introduced for headlights by BMW in 1991, followed by the new LED technology in the early 2000s.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, marks the end of this one-minute history lesson.
Current headlight developments largely focus on special functions and issues like “driving lights”, front fog lights, and front positioning lights. In parallel, other automotive and lighting engineers continuously bring new and better solutions, from side turn lights to neon tubes.
Should you wish to dig deeper into this topic, a recent magazine article suggests the following major trends in automotive lighting
- Laser light technology
- Bendable headlights with LED
- uAFS
- Organic Light-Emitting Diodes
- Adaptable OLEDs
DIGITAL MATRIX HEADLIGHTS
Porsche and Audi already work with digital matrix headlights. These lights work by shining an LED bulb onto a digital micro mirror chip housing 1.2 million programmable reflecting/deflecting mirrors. The resulting light is then projected onto the road.
This impressive new technology simply squeezes better, brighter light out of less energy. The ultimate benefits may also, as one reviewer soberly concluded, depend on factors beyond the carmakers’ control, such as clear and precise road markings.
Even the latest high tech requires some good old road maintenance.
