If today’s lighting designers get their way, engineers will one day expand their sight deeper down black roads. But doctors, lawyers, and other high rollers may see farther first. For the rest of us, the price of sophisticated auto lighting for now may be too big a cost to bear. According to Ford’s Mario Campos, a project manager at the company’s Dearborn, Mich., safety office, HID, or high energy discharge, lighting debuted in the automotive world with its 1991 installation into high-end BMWs. Mercedes, Lincoln, and Lexus followed. Recently, automotive lighting supplier Hella of Lippstadt, Germany, said it would furnish bi-xenon headlighting for the Volkswagen Passat W8. It is a system similar to that found aboard Porsche 911 Turbos.Read more in the forum.
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers has an old (2001), but good article on its website entitled Let light be there, written by Paul Sharke, an associate editor. The article gives general answers to some of my formerly lingering questions about automotive lighting technologies. Some of the answers I knew, like how HID bulbs work, but others I did not know, such as what makes a projection lamp so special. Unfortunately for me, a Benz owner that wants to upgrade his lighting system, Paul points out the damage to my wallet that must be done first:
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