Analysis on the future development and application of LED car lights

After the development stages of technical verification and concept car demonstration in recent years, LED headlights have finally ushered in the prospect of being applied to mass-produced cars. There are three landmark events: Toyota's Lexus LS600h is the world's first car to use LED headlights, but it only uses LEDs on the low beam, and the long-range light source is still a halogen lamp. The Audi R8 features full LED headlights, and the LEDs used in automotive lighting are provided by Lumileds and Osram. The Cadillac Escalade Platinum Edition multi-purpose sports car is the first multi-purpose sports car to use LED headlights.

Unfavorable factors that hinder the rapid development of LED light sources in the automotive market

Do these milestones mean that LED headlamps will immediately become the innovative technology that dominates the automotive lighting field? According to experts, perhaps not. Because even if the cost of LEDs can continue to decline at the rate predicted by Moore's Law, it will take many years for them to be as low as HID (high-intensity discharge) xenon lamps; and it will take an even longer time for the cost of LEDs to drop to be comparable to that of halogen lamps.

According to Hella's president Fischer, the scale of automotive LEDs currently accounts for only a few percent of the light source market, so Hella is very interested in supplying large-volume models (such as GM/Chevrolet's Malibu). However, if LEDs want to reach the level of large-volume supply like the Malibu model, they still need to overcome a series of technical and cost problems, and it will take at least ten years.

Visteon pointed out that the pace of LED entering the market is indeed slower than originally expected. We predicted in 2004 that LED headlights would soon burst into the market and eliminate HID. Obviously, the current situation is not the case, although we have always expected LED technology to evolve faster than reality. It seems that high cost is not the only factor hindering the market entry of LEDs. There are still challenging problems in terms of technical performance that need to be overcome. For example, as far as a single light source is concerned, the light intensity of LED is still insufficient. If a single point is not bright enough, it will be difficult to achieve the following wishful thinking: reducing the number of LED light sources that make up the combined lamp will help reduce the space occupied by automotive lamps and facilitate flexible layout, and can simplify the wiring and installation of the lighting system and reduce production costs.