Philips & Lumileds working on car headlights

11-03-04 09:15 AM EST
Edited Press Release

AMSTERDAM -(Dow Jones)- Dutch electronics and technology conglomerate Royal Philips Electronics NV (PHG) and Lumileds Lighting of the U.S., Wednesday announced they have formed an alliance to develop and market new modular LED lighting solutions for the automotive industry.

The new lighting solutions will incorporate Luxeon technology from Lumileds, and design, development and integration expertise from Philips Automotive Lighting.

The two companies expect the first Luxeon-based products to reach the market in 2005 and to be available worldwide.

Company Web site: http;//www.philips.com

source: here

With HID lights already vastly exceeding the output and runtime of a 'standard' halogen, not to mention color temperature, I fail to see a market for LED headlights. Many, many engineering problems to work out.

Just how many Luxeons, which are going to difficult to focus, would it take to equal the output of a sandard halogen headlight, much less a HID headlight?

My opinion is that the price will come down on the HID lights long before a viable and affordable LED automotive headlight can be put into production.

I've already seen amber and red Luxeons on trucks and service vehicles, but automotive headlights by next year? Not bloody likely, IMHO.

About as thin a 'promise', or premis, as a prsidential candidate promising to balance the budget; either Heinz, or shrub ;-)

I beg to differ, a small emmitting surface is not required to focus light. It's all in the reflector design. A standard filament can be up to an inch long, but we have spotlights made to use them.

In a car headlight, it's not the focusing that's important, it's shaping the beam so that it illuminates well without blinding oncoming drivers. My car's headlights throw light all over the place, including a spot overhead and to the right about 10 feet ahead of the car. That spot is only noticable when driving under trees at night.

Car designers like the idea of small lights, smaller even than HID, that they can blend into the body style. Proper optics (reflectors or lenses) can then spread the light where it's needed. If they keep the beam tight and low, it may require significanly less light output.

Don't forget, a large part of automobile design is NOT based on cost effectiveness as much as it is on glitz. A turbo is much more expensive than simple adding cubic inches to the displacement, for instance. 12 speaker audio systems are frequently overkill.

I'd like to see a nice, low, sexy car with luxeons hidden within the grillwork or disguised within the chrome trim. But then again, I'm a gadget lover.

Daniel

Hmm need more exercise jumping to conclusions. Head light was my first conclusion. No where does this say head light. Just modular LED lighting. That could be signal lights, red or yellow, and dome lights.

I think the news here is instead of seeing tail lights with 50 red LEDs, you may see a tail light with one Lux V. Although they may want soemthing with longer run time, so maybe one Lux III.

i wouldn't enjoy the luxeon lottery in my headlights!

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i wouldn't enjoy the luxeon lottery in my headlights!

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think it would be as bad as you might think. Light blends, so if you had two that were slightly blue and two that were slightly yellow you'd have a nice white lights.

Hmmmm. Maybe this is what will happen to all the dregs that we don't relly want in our flashlights!

Daniel

I imagine that the first white luxeons in automobiles (aside from the daylight running lights that one of the other manufacturers is working on) is going to be interior lighting.

Many designers are looking to diffused/concealed lighting in cars instead of the singular dome light. With the right interior design, this makes for better light than a dome light and a slicker look.

I've been searching for a 1156/1157 based Luxeon Tail-lamp.

If anyone knows of their existence, please let me know.

Thx.

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gadget_lover said:...a small emmitting surface is not required to focus light. It's all in the reflector design...

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Sorry if this is getting OT, but I don't see why this would be required either. It's only if one insists on a parabolic type of approach (where there is a focal point) that a small emitting surface is then necessary. I see no reason why you couldn't design a reflector (and maybe optic) that takes into account a non point-like emitting surface. The space into which the emitting surface emits could be divided into regions. A reflector could be built around it so that each portion of the reflector reflects its corresponding region due forward. Unless I'm overlooking something, I see no reason why this wouldn't work.

I only bring this up because it seems to be a rather large issue surrounding LEDs - especially the 5 watters. And it seems as if nobody has actually tried to design reflectors around finite sized LED dies yet.

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BlindedByTheLite said:
i wouldn't enjoy the luxeon lottery in my headlights!

[/ QUOTE ]

I can see it now. Flashaholics pointing their cars at white walls to compare headlight colors.

I can see it later..... flashaholics buying LED headlights to mod their flashlights with... from a junkyard in 2009.

Two points, lumileds is talking about a 100% boost in efficiency over the next year, so abut 6 3 watters will do it.

The second point is expense is relative. HID lighting systems are expensive, even relative to LED's. So an LED based system is likely to be less expensive then HID by a comfortable margin, even if they need a constant current source, yet consume less power than the current Halogen lamps

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mattheww50 said:
Two points, lumileds is talking about a 100% boost in efficiency over the next year, so abut 6 3 watters will do it.


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This would mean W bin LIIIs and T bin 1 watters should be the rule in a year. Certainly good news if true, especially for cyclists. Also, given the advancements in LED I'd say HID will be out within a couple of years due to their more complex driving requirements.

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Lux Luthor said:
[ QUOTE ]
gadget_lover said:...a small emmitting surface is not required to focus light. It's all in the reflector design...

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry if this is getting OT, but I don't see why this would be required either. It's only if one insists on a parabolic type of approach (where there is a focal point) that a small emitting surface is then necessary. I see no reason why you couldn't design a reflector (and maybe optic) that takes into account a non point-like emitting surface. The space into which the emitting surface emits could be divided into regions. A reflector could be built around it so that each portion of the reflector reflects its corresponding region due forward. Unless I'm overlooking something, I see no reason why this wouldn't work.

I only bring this up because it seems to be a rather large issue surrounding LEDs - especially the 5 watters. And it seems as if nobody has actually tried to design reflectors around finite sized LED dies yet.

[/ QUOTE ]

Unfortunately this is not possible due to physics and optics. There is a law, that it is impossible to reduce so called phase space of the emitted light without loosing light intensisty.
This phase space is roughly the emitting area multipied with the angular distribution (in the 2 perpendicular directions)(e.g. 1mm^2X180°^2 for a Lux3). You can only reduce the angular distribution by increasing the area = >therefore bigger reflectors result in a more focused beam and bigger emitters result in a less focused beam (you start with a bigger phase space).

I don't thing we are talking about collimating light, but rather spreading it in a specific pattern.


But getting back to the post about focusing light for car headlights, the filament in my car's headlight is pretty long, much bigger than a couple of Lux V's side by side. A combination of lens and reflector are currently used in headlights. I'd assume that a similar system would be used for luxeon based headlamps.

Daniel

Peter,

Now you've done it, and sparked my curiosity. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Do you know of any references for that law (such as it's name, or a textbook reference)? I'm interested in looking into it further.

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Billson said:
[ QUOTE ]
BlindedByTheLite said:
i wouldn't enjoy the luxeon lottery in my headlights!

[/ QUOTE ]

I can see it now. Flashaholics pointing their cars at white walls to compare headlight colors.

[/ QUOTE ]

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Lynx_Arc said:
I can see it later..... flashaholics buying LED headlights to mod their flashlights with... from a junkyard in 2009.

[/ QUOTE ]

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crackup.gif

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Lux Luthor said:
Peter,

Now you've done it, and sparked my curiosity. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Do you know of any references for that law (such as it's name, or a textbook reference)? I'm interested in looking into it further.

[/ QUOTE ]

Lux luthor,

It is the conservation law for phase space volume, or specialized to opics the conservation law for etendue.
Conservation laws belong to the most powerfull laws of physics, since they allow very general statements and performance limits, without knowing the exact implementation.

Other well known conservation laws are for energy, impulse, charge...

I will scan my old physics textbooks to see if I find a good reference.

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mattheww50 said:
Two points, lumileds is talking about a 100% boost in efficiency over the next year, so abut 6 3 watters will do it.

Let's see - 6 x 3 watts = nominal 18 watts. From previous speculation, the 1,000 lumen Luxeon (?) proto's presented by LL at a conference were guesstimated at 25 - 30 watts. Maybe we are getting close.

Philips and Lumileds to use LEDs in car headlights
Wed Nov 3, 2004 09:04 AM ET
AMSTERDAM, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Dutch group Philips Electronics (PHG.AS: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Wednesday it will start to sell car headlights made with light emitting diodes (LEDs) next year, using technology from its Lumileds joint venture with Agilent (A.N: Quote, Profile, Research) . Until now the world's biggest lamps and lighting maker has only been able to offer the auto industry red tail lights made with LEDs but advances in technology have now made it possible to develop LEDs that are bright enough for the front of the car.

Philips' (PHG.N: Quote, Profile, Research) main rivals Siemens (SIEGn.DE: Quote, Profile, Research) and General Electric (GE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) are also working to make so-called solid state headlights which last longer and require less energy than traditional car headlights.

"Solid-state lighting will represent a significant portion of the future automotive market," Philips said in a statement.