The innovators: first car with all-led lights

First car with all-led lights

While they’re no longer the uncommon preserve of luxury sedans and supercars, LED lights are perhaps one of motoring’s greatest innovations and you’ll now find them on cars as modestly posted as the Renault Kwid. Compared with the leaps and bounds we’ve seen in every aspect of the modern motor car, the automobile headlamp hadn’t undergone such radical change since the move from acetylene lamps to the first incandescent-bulb headlamp in 1898. Manufacturers did a bit of tweaking over the years; including a move away from filaments to electric-arc lighting with the still-in-use HID (highintensity discharge) metalhalide xenon bulb. But it was the adoption of light-emitting diode (LED) technology that really moved the game forward. LEDS produce light by passing an electric current through a semiconducting material that, in turn, emits light via a process called electroluminescence. Unlike incandescent and HID bulbs, LEDS do not use radiant energy (heat) to generate light from a metallic filament and are therefore energy-efficient.

Given their efficiency and aesthetic impact, it seemed only fitting that in 2009, Audi’s most striking car in decades – the R8 5,2 FSI V10 supercar – should receive them.

No doubt, there are those willing to argue Lexus pipped Audi to the LED headlamp post in 2008 when it fitted energysaving diodes to the low-beams of the LS 600h, but it was the R8 that became the first publicly available car with a full suite of LED lights: head- and taillamps, indicators and daytime-running lights. LEDS are four times more energy-efficient than halogen lights; are capable of more homogenous light distribution (a boon when combined with their suitability for electronically controlled adaptive lighting technologies such as the anti-dazzle matrix LED system); and have an all but indefinite service life.

Laser light technology is now being tipped as the automotive headlamp medium of the future. Consuming just half the energy of LEDS, these systems use an array of mirrors to direct a laser onto a phosphor panel – a material that becomes luminescent when exposed to a radiant energy source, such as a laser – to create a bright light.

Laser headlamps have made appearances on such rarified offerings as the BMW i8 (the first production car offered with them) and Rolls-royce Phantom VIII but the technology was first developed by ... you guessed it ... Audi, for its 24 Hours of Le Mans racecars.