Since the birth of the car, lighting is an important topic of car driving safety. From the earliest incandescent lamp, halogen lamp to xenon lamp, and then to the LED lamp that is now becoming the new favorite of the market, the development of the lamp industry has been more than 100 years.
LED lights intelligent or will lead industrial change
Today, the lights are not only need to meet the lighting needs, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology planning, by the end of 2015, automotive lighting needs to complete the carbon dioxide emission reduction target. In addition, new waves such as safety and intelligence have also flocked to the market, which provide a new wind vane for the development of the lamp market.
Three pillars of the market pattern
Looking at the market, the current lamp market has basically formed a tripartite pattern based on halogen lamps, xenon lamps (HID) and LED lamps.
Since 1960, halogen lights have been used for more than half a century, and it can be applied to cars for a long time to survive, its biggest advantage is that it has formed a market economy of scale, which makes its manufacturing costs are relatively cheap, which is still able to exist in the market a major reason. The disadvantages of halogen lamps are self-evident: low light output efficiency and short irradiation distance.
Xenon headlamps (English abbreviation HID, that is, high-intensity gas discharge lamps) began to be applied to automobiles in the early 1990s, its advantage is that the brightness of the light emitted is twice that of halogen lamps, the efficiency of converting electrical energy into light energy increased by 80% compared with halogen lamps, while the energy consumption is only 2/3 of halogen lamps, and the service life can reach 10 times. In addition, since the light color emitted by xenon headlamps is nearly the same as the light color of sunlight, xenon headlamps can create better visual conditions. Therefore, xenon lamps still occupy a dominant position in the automotive lighting market.
In recent years, there has been a new darling in the headlight market - LED light source technology. LED(English name Light Emitting Diode), that is, light-emitting diode, it is a semiconductor electronic component that can emit light, and LED lights are widely used in the automotive field in recent years because of its high brightness, rich color types, low power consumption, small size, long life and other characteristics. As a representative of a new generation of energy saving and environmental protection, LED has begun to replace xenon lamps.
According to the data show that the efficiency of LED light output relative to xenon lamp and halogen lamp has an absolute advantage, a 1000 watt halogen lamp light efficiency and 200 watt LED lamp is roughly the same, the service life of up to 30,000 hours, is 10 times that of xenon lamp. Recently, such as OSram, Hella, Philips and other headlight suppliers are also increasing the research and development of LED technology, it can be said that LED is becoming a new blue ocean in the headlight market.
The popularity of LED headlights is facing many constraints
Before 2010, the average growth rate of the domestic LED automotive lighting market was 13%, and in recent years, the growth rate of the LED lamp market was more than 40%. It is predicted that this year, the LED lighting market will take off significantly, and the scale of China's LED industry will reach 500 billion. As a result, the promotion of LED car lamps has become a big cake that the industry is publicly optimistic about, and its future prospects are promising.
There is no doubt that LED is favored because of its environmental protection, energy saving, rich color and many other advantages. Indeed, LED lights have been widely used as automobile auxiliary lights, and LED has replaced other forms of light sources in many places such as turn signals and fog lights. However, LED lights did not appear explosive growth, the fundamental, the cost is undoubtedly a major reason: the car manufacturers consider LED lights compared to the traditional lights up to two to three times the cost price, and the lamp suppliers consider is the early high technology research and development investment, which is especially for some independent brand car companies and traditional lamp suppliers.
In addition to the cost, according to relevant industry sources, the complexity of the LED system is also a major challenge that prevents this technology from entering the mature stage: reliable system, effective heat management, compact optical design and extremely complex drive, these technical barriers need to be further broken through.
Therefore, as far as the domestic market is concerned, it will take a long transition period for leds to completely replace traditional lamps. At present, the configuration of LED headlights on the market is mainly concentrated in a few high-end models (represented by Audi). Among them, high brake lights and side turn signals use more LED light sources, and headlamp lighting has not yet formed a mature industrial model due to problems such as lighting distance and brightness.
Although the cost of LED light sources, technology and regulations and other issues have not been broken, however, I believe that with the future of LED costs continue to decline and technology to improve, LED in the automotive field will be more widely and comprehensively applied.
Intelligent headlight technology or will lead the industrial change
From the field of automotive lighting, the development of automotive industry technology is changing with each passing day, and the direction of its development is becoming more and more intelligent and green. Laser headlights, intelligent LED headlights, matrix LED headlight source technology...... More and more new technologies are emerging, and a new transformation of the lamp industry is about to begin.
It is understood that the smart headlight technology on the market today is mainly LED by German models, such as the new generation of Mercedes-Benz S-class intelligent LED headlights have active steering lighting, turn assistance lighting, rural roads, highways and fog mode, the unique blackout function can erase the light camouflage of vehicles traveling in the same direction or in the same direction. Each headlamp assembly contains up to 56 leds, which can be turned on, off, or adjusted brightness; The illumination of the BMW i8 laser headlamp lighting system can already reach 170 lumens per watt, its length is only 10 microns, and the irradiation distance is twice that of traditional leds.
Compared with LED technology, the biggest improvement of laser technology is its integration, it is only one percent of the volume of LED, but it has 1000 times its brightness. Therefore, laser headlights have been considered to be the "reasonable next step" after LED headlights, and its future development has also been optimistic about the industry; As known as the "lamp factory" said Audi, its power in car headlight technology is naturally obvious, Audi in its revised A8/S8 on the use of matrix LED head light source technology, it is understood that this technology is composed of 25 LED, each LED monomer can be automatically opened or closed action. It is worth mentioning that the A8/S8 matrix LED headlamp also combines the satellite navigation system, before the driver begins to turn the steering wheel, the vehicle into the corner, the matrix LED headlamp will pre-adjust the light source exposure Angle, bringing a safer and easier driving experience for the driver.
It can be found that from the current stage of the development of headlight technology, LED and laser technology is gradually boarding the stage of the popularity of lamps, the application of the two also makes the lamps not only become more energy saving, higher brightness, longer irradiation distance, but also more avant-garde in shape. In the next stage, the combination of light sets and electronic systems will be the trend of The Times, and it can be predicted that a technical war of intelligent headlights is coming!