Two weeks ago, the official launch of ams OSRAM’s micropixel Eviyos 2.0 product started. I had the chance to visit the ams OSRAM fab in Regensburg and to look in on the front-end production and testing. In this DVNewsletter’s in-depth article you can see more details on technology and history for that.
Micropixels, originally intended to make ADB systems better, are now found to have a multitude of applications. Beside glare-free ADB, they can be used to highlight specific areas on the road, they can give lanekeeping help, and can provide driver communication with safety and warning symbols or text. That is the key issue for the future: software and electronics are both needed to access the digital world of communication. And automakers need engineers and suppliers to deliver new safety functions, new surprising ideas, and new business cases.
We see more and more divided markets in terms of legal allowance of lighting innovations. In ECE it will need more and convincing research and efforts to speed up and bring more digital chances on our roads. China is in the lead, which creates pressure in Europe. And the U.S.? Well, “just” 11 years after ECE there is now a super-complicated ADB possible, with technical solutions helped by microLEDs. About digitalisation…we will see.
Now look to the LED story: LEDs were used in dashboards in the 1980s in red, green, and orange for signalling. In the exterior lighting world, the first LED rearlamps came in 1997 on the Maserati Ghibli, world-first white DRL on Audi’s A8 W10 in 2004, world-first low beam on a Lexus in 2007. And 15 years ago, in 2008, LEDs conquered all lighting functions in the first full-LED car, the Audi R8. Its low beam had 14 LEDs and its high beam had eight, all 1 mm2 items.
Today we talk about 25,600 LEDs with a pitch of 40 microns in 320 columns and 80 rows, each LED smaller than the diameter of a human hair. That is real innovation speed. And the story of microLEDs has just started, but we already know the next chapter is coming. The LED development cycle is not at its end. Next target: 100,000-LED arrays that may serve the desire for larger fields of view and better resolution. A complete family of microLED systems with a varying number of LED seems possible, giving a big push to functions plus innovations we don’t see today. Communication and digitalisation—these are growing fields in our lighting business, enabling much more than on-off and high-low beam.
If you are interested in more details on ADB and microLEDs, watch for the DVN ADB study, which will be available soon.
Sincerely yours,
