Car Lighting Series Report丨HELLA Talks: The Latest Technology Trends and Market Situations of Car Lighting

Compared with other body parts, headlights are more "plastic", and both the design and function change quickly, and the demand for customization is high. Especially with the rapid development of smart electric vehicles , there are new developments and trends in this field almost every year. These trends can be seen in the latest technologies of some leading headlight companies.

At the recently held 2024 ALE Automotive Lighting Show, Freya Hella, a world-renowned automotive lighting technology provider, presented its world's most advanced lighting product series in China for the first time, covering headlights, taillights, interior lighting and body lighting. Freya Hella has always been one of the technology trends in the automotive lighting industry. Let's take a look at what new technology trends it presented this time.

◆ Sustainable front lighting - energy saving and consumption reduction, detachable

Image credit: Freya Hella

It is reported that the sustainable headlights are made of recyclable materials and weigh only 2 kg, compared to similar products on the market that usually weigh more than 5 kg, which can achieve a 70% energy saving effect. In addition, the sustainable headlights use new technologies in molds and injection moldings, and use honeycomb structures for lightweight design, which further saves 20%-30% of weight.

It is also worth mentioning that in addition to reducing weight and consumption, all parts of the sustainable headlights can be disassembled, alleviating the current consumer pain point that if a part is damaged, the entire headlight must be replaced, and simultaneously reducing maintenance costs.

◆ FlatLight | µMX – Smaller, More Efficient

Image credit: Freya Hella

It is understood that the micro-optical pattern used in FlatLight | µMX technology is smaller than a grain of salt, and the module thickness is only 5 mm. Only one lighting element is needed to achieve different lighting functions. In addition, compared with traditional concept taillights with LED light sources, the product's energy consumption is reduced by up to 80%. It is expected that in 2024, FlatLight | µMX will be applied to rear combination lights and enter mass production; and by 2025 it will be configured in the front area of ​​the car and integrate daytime running lights, turn signals and position lights in a single lighting system.

◆ RGB LED taillights - RGB technology is used in taillights to create full-color light effects and animations

Image credit: Freya Hella

RGB technology has been widely used in the interior decoration field and has been gradually applied to taillights in recent years. The RGB LED taillights created by Hella are cleverly based on the three primary colors of red, green and blue to create up to 256 color changes, thus creating a dynamic and colorful lighting effect. Whether it is welcoming guests or colorful animation effects after locking the car, it can be easily achieved.

In addition, this innovative taillight not only integrates regulatory functions such as position lights, turn signals, brake lights, reversing lights and rear fog lights, but also greatly enhances the artistic sense and design aesthetics of the entire vehicle through unique 3D optical elements.

◆ Digital physical front panel——intelligent interactive upgrade

Image credit: Freya Hella

The digital solid panel is a highly complex module designed specifically for the front of the vehicle. It uses lighting technology and a variety of colors to become a design element that highlights the differentiation of electric vehicle brands.

Hella's large digital solid front panel can provide multiple personalized dynamic digital lighting, such as illuminating the front of the car, highlighting the brand's typical design elements, or creating welcoming and farewell animation effects. It is understood that the relevant products have received a large order from a high-end German manufacturer. The customer project includes a total of 8 different models of electric vehicles, with a total order amount of more than 1 billion euros, and mass production is planned to start in mid-2025. During this ALE, Hella also brought an upgraded version of the digital solid front panel product, which has smaller granularity, higher pixels, and stronger stability.

◆ Digital front lighting system SSL丨HD ——High resolution

Image credit: Freya Hella

HELLA SSL | HD is the world's first high-resolution headlamp based on matrix LED technology to be launched on the market. It realizes new safety-related lighting functions through intelligent control of up to 25,000 LED pixels per chip. It is 75% smaller than the previous generation module, which creates new possibilities for the integration of headlamps in vehicle architecture. In addition, SSL | HD can provide additional digital logo projection, such as illuminating the width of the vehicle or the driving path in the construction area. This technology will be available in spring 2023.

In summary, the lighting solutions exhibited by Freya Hella this time not only integrate cutting-edge technologies, but also more accurately capture the pulse of the future development of the automotive industry.

So, what new strategic considerations does Hella Freya integrate behind these innovative technologies? In addition, facing new challenges such as price wars in the Chinese auto industry, shortened R&D cycles, and increasingly diversified and personalized demands from automakers and consumers, how will the company, as one of the industry leaders, view and respond? In response to this, Gasgoo interviewed Qin Kai, head of the lighting division of Hella Nanjing R&D Center and senior director of headlamp and taillight project management of Hella Freya Asia Pacific Lighting Division, and Chen Zheng, head of R&D of Hella Freya Asia Pacific Lighting Division. The specific interview transcript is summarized as follows:

Gasgoo: Sustainability and low energy consumption have become one of the important trends in the current automotive lighting field, and Hella has also launched related products. What is the design concept behind such products?

Qin Kai: As a responsible enterprise, Freya Hella regards sustainable development as one of its core strategies and is committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2045. In the product field, we follow the three principles of "using less, using longer, and using better", which is fully reflected in our latest sustainable headlights. In addition to significantly reducing weight, they can also be disassembled to reduce maintenance costs. We firmly believe that this product has broad market prospects.

Gasgoo: In recent years, intelligent interaction has been a hot topic in the automotive lighting industry. However, in terms of application, there are not many related products installed in vehicles. What is the reason?

Chen Zheng: This is understandable, because intelligent interactive technology must take into account display effects, costs, and a complete set of electronic solutions, which is indeed a big challenge. In the past, due to technical limitations, we often needed to place a large number of LEDs to achieve this, but there was a minimum distance requirement between LED patches. How to maintain the gap between LED particles while presenting a delicate picture, and how to effectively manage a large number of LEDs to achieve cost-effectiveness, these are the technical challenges we faced in the past.

Now this technical difficulty is gradually being overcome, such as our digital physical front panel, which has high brightness, high contrast, clear boundaries, and extremely flexible display content, and can be fully customized. It is also worth mentioning that our product uses a new foil film manufacturing process and dynamic polyurethane surface treatment technology, which gives it a self-healing effect. This solves the problem in the market that once an LED is damaged, it will seriously affect the entire effect.

Gasgoo: In terms of the application of interactive lighting functions, what is the current cooperation model between OEMs and suppliers?

Chen Zheng: In our communication with OEMs, we found that customers often prefer customized or semi-customized solutions. Pure customer customization requires OEMs to provide some technical solutions, because handwritten or mobile phone edited content may not be perfectly projected. Therefore, combining some solutions, such as beautification processing after content recognition, has become a valuable cooperation model.

The cooperation model we understand is that the content can be customized infinitely, but the display form needs to be limited to a certain range. This can not only provide a broad imagination space for OEMs, end users and suppliers, but also limit the technical solutions to an acceptable range. Whether it is the projection in front of the car or the display on the panel, we are working hard to explore an efficient and cost-effective display method. This requires us to have in-depth discussions with OEMs to identify application scenarios that end users think are valuable and easy to implement. In fact, defining these application scenarios is our biggest challenge at present.

Gasgoo: It is understood that your company’s newly launched RGB LED taillights are tailor-made for the Chinese market. Could you introduce the design background of this product and its future development?

Chen Zheng: This product is not only designed for the Chinese market, but also has international appeal. In the international market, although RGB technology has been widely used in the interior decoration field, Freya Hella is at the forefront of the industry in truly innovatively applying it to taillights and achieving mass production. In the future, we will also plan to further promote this technology in a series of products to lead the industry trend.