Conti Driving Towards a Brighter Future with LEDs

Continental foresees an end to the days when cars with only one working headlight trawl our roads and motorways at night: The company is looking towards a brighter future in which light emitting diodes (LED) will be utilised in headlight systems that last the entire life of a car. And since LEDs also use less energy than conventional headlight bulbs, both the operating and maintenance costs of such a system will be lower.

“Whereas halogen bulbs have a life expectancy of about 1,000 hours and xenon-filled bulbs around 2,000 hours, LEDs are good for 10,000 hours,” confirmed light expert Dr. Tran Quoc Khanh, professor at the Institute for Electromechanical Designs at the Technische Universität in Darmstadt, Germany.

The use of LEDs in main headlights requires complex control electronics that oversee all light functions. Continental claims a pioneering role in this new light regulation and has developed a corresponding control centre that will go into production in 2011. This light control device can regulate all light functions centrally. Initially, individual LED groups can be independently controlled in eight light looms, making it more or less possible to provide a level of illumination appropriate for a given road situation without any additional mechanism much more effectively than anything previously feasible with even the most sophisticated mechanical systems: special lights for driving on motorways or country roads, a smooth transition from low beams to high beams, perfectly illuminated curves, or enhanced vision at intersections. The illumination variations could adapt to the respective situation in just a fraction of a second.

The large dimming range and rapid switchability makes LEDs predestined for use in what are called matrix headlights, adds Professor Khanh. Here, the control units can regulate the light cone in an even more individual manner: Left- or right-turn instructions from the navigation system take the form of headlight-projected signals on the asphalt. Or the system could trigger spotlight detection of pedestrians on the shoulder of the road ahead. Admittedly, this expanded technology is still a few years away, but Continental says it has already laid the groundwork for such features. And the automotive supplier states there is now practically no doubt that LEDs will be triumphant when it comes to front headlights: Analysts anticipate that its automotive market use will increase more than 150 per cent over the next three years.