Online Source for Automotive Lighting News?

SubLGT

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Is DrivingVisionNews.com the only game in town for daily or weekly news updates on the automotive lighting industry? Their subscription is very, very expensive!:eek: Are there other sources online, preferably free, or nearly free? I just want to follow (as a hobby) what is going on in the world of automotive lighting technology.
 

mcnair55

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There are dozens of automotive trade mags around,subscription is free on most and many offer free tickets for all the decent trade shows.
 

Alaric Darconville

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DrivingVisionNews is probably the *best* game in town, if you can pony up the funds to read it.

Some of the more general trade magazines are probably a bit cheaper, or even free, but bear in mind that DrivingVisionNews has Daniel Stern as the global editor. If you want the truthiest truths and the factsiest facts, that's the place to go.

Most of the trade shows will be full of the usual LightFORCE, PIAA, KC Lighting types of companies. Most of the trade magazines' goals and the trade shows they are aligned with are to Sell Products.
 

Franco

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Oh, good question, SubLGT! I'll definitely have to keep my eye on this thread.

I do a couple of things, though they require a little work. I occasionally go to UMTRI's online library and see if they've got any interesting articles available. It's more technical reading than anything else, but that can be a good thing.

SAE International (sae.org) can have some cool things for free on their website, you just need to meander and look through a little. There are also some textbooks on there I've got my eye on for when I have the money (not all automotive lighting related). If that kind of reading is your thing, Virgil recommended Automotive Lighting and Human Vision to me a while back, it is probably going to end up as a late Christmas present to myself with some money I received.

Then you've got automotive publications that you can search through for the occasional lighting news, especially if you're going to be there anyway. I like Automotive News and Automotive Engineer.

Lastly, you might check automotive enthusiast publications such as C&D, Motortrend, Autoweek, and Automobilwoche. Just watch for when they just regurgitate what a company's marketing team told them.
 

SubLGT

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SubLGT

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Driving Vision News is now making their informative weekly newsletter available for free, via email.

Go to http://www.drivingvisionnews.com to subscribe. Only an email address and first name is required.

In the emails there will be a link to download a PDF of the newsletter.
 

Magio

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I know getting inside information is not cheap but it seems like if they lowered their prices some they might would get a lot more subscriptions to make up for it. $5000 a year for a subscription on headlight news is probably out of reach for 99% of the population in America. And of that 1% that can afford it only 1% of those are interested enough in lights to actually subscribe.
 

64.5vette

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@Magio I think your numbers are still very generous. I would say less than 1 in 100,000 or 1 in 1,000,000 actually cares about lights enough to subscribe to DVN, and even a smaller part would pay $5000 for that privilege.
 

SubLGT

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$5000 a year for a subscription on headlight news is probably out of reach for 99% of the population in America...

The weekly "headlight news" is a free subscription. A paid subscription gets you much more than a weekly news report.
 

Magio

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The weekly "headlight news" is a free subscription. A paid subscription gets you much more than a weekly news report.
I subscribed to their email list a while back and the information in the email was the same as what could be found on their website without having a subscription. For that reason I got off their email list and just visit the website here and then. Maybe something has changed now though....

Furthmore the cost to sign up now is 5900pounds or about $7200.
 

SubLGT

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Driving Vision News is now making their informative weekly newsletter available for free, via email.

Go to http://www.drivingvisionnews.com to subscribe. Only an email address and first name is required.

In the emails there will be a link to download a PDF of the newsletter.

DVN is apparently no longer including a download link in the weekly emails. :(

The emails contain only "headlines".
 

SubLGT

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I recently discovered the Osram Carlight Blog

https://www.carlightblog.com

The articles are short and non-technical

Here is an interesting one on pixel lighting:

https://www.carlightblog.com/2016/11/11/perfect-pixel-light-3072-leds/

You can already buy glare-free high beam. The same goes for matrix lights. So what's new about these headlights which have now been introduced by a consortium made up of Daimler, Osram, headlight manufacturer Hella, semiconductor specialist Infineon and the Fraunhofer Institute? Well, this is pixel light, which can be considered as matrix light with a much higher number of LEDs. While Vauxhall's Astra illuminates the road with 16 LEDs per headlight and Mercedes' current E-Class with 84, the test headlights which are close to production use a massive 3,072.
 
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