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Old 09-06-2011, 01:28 PM   #1
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Default BMW tests '1,000 times brighter' laser headlights




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BMW is experimenting with laser headlights. The automaker calls them "the next logical step" after LEDs and all the other advancements made in lights lately.Laser lights would have some huge advantages over current headlight technology and no, the biggest wouldn't be the ability to vaporize the guy coming at you when he won't turn down his high beams. In the real world, lasers produce virtually parallel light beams with an intensity that's about 1,000 greater than conventional LEDs, according to BMW. Lasers use less energy and save fuel.

The intensity of laser light poses no possible risks to humans, animals or wildlife when used in car lighting, BMW says reassuringly. The automaker says that's because the laser light is first converted for use in road traffic, a bright, white that "is very pleasant to the eye."

Maybe your eyes, but we're not sure about everyone else's. Did we mention laser headlights are 1,000 brighter than LEDs. Oh yeah. We did.
BMW is trying to stay out in front of lighting issues. That BMW 6 Series, shown above, has a feature called "Anti-dazzle High- Beam Assistant." It also has a feature with another odd name, "Dynamic Light Spot," aimed at making it easier to illuminate pedestrians before you're in danger of running them down.

Of course, if you had headlights that were 1,000 times brighter ...
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Old 09-06-2011, 01:44 PM   #2
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Apart from having no idea why using laser would be beneficial for regular lighting purposes, I have to question the idea that brighter headlight is always better.

If we could have headlights as bright as daylight, but with a necessary sharp cutoff to avoid blinding the oncoming traffic, would that be an improvement? As our eyes adjust to the brightness, we will get to see everything inside the zone of illumination, and NOTHING outside. I don't think I want that.

I suspect this is all just a marketing BS.
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Old 09-06-2011, 01:48 PM   #3
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I already get blinded by several vehicles on my morning commute. I don't need this making it worse.
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Old 09-06-2011, 01:50 PM   #4
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Well it is a "fuel saving" technology.
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Old 09-06-2011, 01:53 PM   #5
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What happens when I put lasers in my 93 civics halogen reflectors??????
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Old 09-06-2011, 01:53 PM   #6
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Projectors that are aimed wrong are already annoying at night time.


I assume the A8's LEDs are bright judging by MB's LED fog lights being quite bright.


I'll pass on being blinded by a ****ing laser.
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Old 09-06-2011, 01:53 PM   #7
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Originally Posted by todeswalzer View Post
What happens when I put lasers in my 93 civics halogen reflectors??????

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Old 09-06-2011, 02:27 PM   #8
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I think lasers would bring an entirely new meaning to being "blinded" by oncoming headlights wouldn't they? As-in: permanently?
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Old 09-06-2011, 03:45 PM   #9
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So much misconception here it is insane.

any light can blind. some do it faster than others, but a laser-based headlight would not necessarily blind, or even be any higher risk than halogen, HIR, HID, or LED.

Lumens are lumens.

A laser of equal electrical input may indeed provide 1000 times the light of an LED or LED array. That is only a flat comparison with no context.

LEDs are not the brightest light source, but for what light they do output, they are electrically efficient by not generating as much heat until they are pushed pretty hard, towards 10 or more watts per emitter. They start to behave more and more like other light sources, that generate significant amounts of heat per watt of electrical input.

Conversely, A Laser that puts out the same light output as an LED, or LED array. may use hundreds of times less wattage.

math works both ways, and making a laser-based headlight that puts out enough lumens to be effective, and not 1000 times more light than what is effective, is conversely more energy efficient, and possibly less heat intensive.

The issue with LEDs is putting out enough lumens, with far enough down-range throw, in an LED array that is small enough to fit in a headlight housing, and not over-heat themselves, and reduce their functional lifespan. high intensity LEDS, especially arrays of dozens of them, are expensive. Far more expensive than a HID ballast and arc bulb, let alone an auto-parts-store halogen bulb. But LEDs last far longer, if they don't thermally degrade by being pushed too hard.

Plus there is the whole issue of optics. LEDs have narrow emitter angles, which can be somewhat widened by optics, but each emitter has to have them, and a single emitter is not the brightest source of light, so there have to be many emitters clustered together. That isn't bad, but it isn't a single light source throwing light further down-range.

A laser has almost inverse issues as a halogen or HID bulb. arcs and filaments radiate photons in a 360 degree spherical pattern. Lasers emit a coherent beam by definition, in one direction.

A bulb has to have reflectors and lenses to corral and direct the light in one general direction with prescribed vertical and horizontal pattern angles.

A Laser would actually need to be spread by a lens, to defray a tight beam into that same pattern, but would be more efficient at it, as almost none of the light would be wasted in directions not directed through the de-focusing lens.

With cutoff shields and lens optics, the pattern would be just as efficient or even more so, than the best HID projector headlights, and waste less light output, and waste less electrical energy as heat output, as well.

And lens adjustment could also provide beam adjustment more precisely, as well, making a laser-source headlight possibly even more versatile than a steerable halogen/hid projector, or an adaptive LED array which would have to house more emitters to be able to differentially select active emitters, and have enough of them active at any given time to have the appropriate amount of lumen output.
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Old 09-06-2011, 03:57 PM   #10
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^^^But the question is 'why' not how.
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Originally Posted by todeswalzer View Post
What happens when I put lasers in my 93 civics halogen reflectors??????
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Originally Posted by ChiWRX View Post
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Old 09-06-2011, 03:57 PM   #11
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All I want is a shark-nosed car....with fricken laser beams attached to their heads!
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Old 09-06-2011, 03:58 PM   #12
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All I want is a shark-nosed car....with fricken laser beams attached to their heads!
Came in here to post this.
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Old 09-06-2011, 04:03 PM   #13
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Originally Posted by MrSaabaru View Post
^^^But the question is 'why' not how.
Why is because a laser source would provide just as many lumens as you could need in a smaller, more versatile, lower-heat, lower energy-demand package, with more focus versatility, that is not as hard to package as an LED array with enough emitters to be equally bright, with each individual LED emitter having to be optically focused, and the whole array cooled.

Take a look at the hardware that goes into an R8 5.2 LED headlight. There is all kinds of air cooling management, because they are driving a relative few headlight-beam LED emitters pretty hard, and they generate a significant amount of heat. If not managed, they will degrade under that heat load.

With laser, there may be only one or two emitters per headlight, not dozens to even over 100 LED emitters for equivalent performance.

And a solid-state electrical laser emitter would theoretically be as vibration resistant, and lifetime-of-the-car durable as LEDs, and less heat and easier to focus than a HID source.

It may be expensive, but economies of scale will reduce that, and not having to replace it regularly will also mitigate some of that.

Last edited by HipToBeSquare; 09-06-2011 at 04:08 PM.
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Old 09-06-2011, 04:43 PM   #14
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Can't wait until they start selling plug & play laser headlight kits for everyone to put in their halogen headlight housings! It's gonna be great!

That being said, I don't understand why people are asking "why"? Why not!?! It's the next step in the evolution of lighting technology. Why did we need HID's when we had halogens? Why did we need LED screens when we had LCD screens? Why send exploration sattelites to Mars when we've already put a man on the moon? It's human nature to expand on what we have and make things better!!

Because we want to make things better, more energy effecient, more reliable, etc. Who knows, soon you might have a laser TV in your living room...

We can't settle for "good enough"!
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Old 09-06-2011, 04:52 PM   #15
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HipToBeSquare View Post
any light can blind. some do it faster than others, but a laser-based headlight would not necessarily blind, or even be any higher risk than halogen, HIR, HID, or LED.
When working properly, yes. But while it's fundamentally impossible to focus regular light source in a way that it will stay as a narrow beam over a long distance, (Liouville's theorem) high intensity laser is a serious hazard when left undiffused. Granted, it's not easy to imagine a scenario where the laser source would be exposed and still running, but it is at least an added safety concern.

EDIT: Also, I disagree with the idea that laser is the "logical" next step in automobile lighting technology. An ideal lighting for humans would be diffused white light, with full spectrum of visible light (although really you just need RGB) and little directionality. Laser is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what we would consider a natural light. I get that the auto headlamps cannot be fully natural due to the need to avoid blinding the oncoming traffic, but I fail to see how the least natural light source we have is the LOGICAL next step in this field, apart from the fact that the word laser sounds really cool in your PR material.

I'll repeat what I said earlier. Given that we have this concern about not blinding other cars, having a brighter beam likely requires an even sharper cutoff, a combination that makes it more difficult to see anything outside the zone of illumination. I'm not sure if this is really a good thing, and consequently I'm not convinced that brighter is always better.

If this is just about energy efficiency, then fine. Given the cost of laser, I find it hard to believe that this could be cost effective, but who knows.

Last edited by Len; 09-06-2011 at 05:03 PM.
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Old 09-06-2011, 05:00 PM   #16
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How do lasers save fuel?
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Old 09-06-2011, 05:07 PM   #17
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Originally Posted by bubbly Bullseye View Post
How do lasers save fuel?
To the extent that your mileage differs depending on whether you have your headlights on or off.
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Old 09-06-2011, 05:21 PM   #18
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Is there a youtube video demonstrating this laser headlight? I wont comment until I see a demo.
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Old 09-06-2011, 05:53 PM   #19
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Len View Post
When working properly, yes. But while it's fundamentally impossible to focus regular light source in a way that it will stay as a narrow beam over a long distance, (Liouville's theorem) high intensity laser is a serious hazard when left undiffused. Granted, it's not easy to imagine a scenario where the laser source would be exposed and still running, but it is at least an added safety concern.

EDIT: Also, I disagree with the idea that laser is the "logical" next step in automobile lighting technology. An ideal lighting for humans would be diffused white light, with full spectrum of visible light (although really you just need RGB) and little directionality. Laser is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what we would consider a natural light. I get that the auto headlamps cannot be fully natural due to the need to avoid blinding the oncoming traffic, but I fail to see how the least natural light source we have is the LOGICAL next step in this field, apart from the fact that the word laser sounds really cool in your PR material.

I'll repeat what I said earlier. Given that we have this concern about not blinding other cars, having a brighter beam likely requires an even sharper cutoff, a combination that makes it more difficult to see anything outside the zone of illumination. I'm not sure if this is really a good thing, and consequently I'm not convinced that brighter is always better.

If this is just about energy efficiency, then fine. Given the cost of laser, I find it hard to believe that this could be cost effective, but who knows.
Sorry, I should have clarified. My point was not that Lasers specifically are the next step. I simply meant that we are always improving things or trying something different that may work out to be better in the long run, etc. There is always an evolution going on. In this case, being as I haven't heard of any other crazy new lighting technology (except for "LEP" - Light Emitting Plasma), the laser is the next step, logical or not.
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Old 09-06-2011, 06:12 PM   #20
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MSMStannyl View Post
Sorry, I should have clarified. My point was not that Lasers specifically are the next step. I simply meant that we are always improving things or trying something different that may work out to be better in the long run, etc. There is always an evolution going on. In this case, being as I haven't heard of any other crazy new lighting technology (except for "LEP" - Light Emitting Plasma), the laser is the next step, logical or not.
Oh no, I wasn't criticizing your post. If you look at the original article, it says

Quote:
The automaker calls them "the next logical step" after LEDs "
That's what I was talking about.
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Old 09-06-2011, 06:38 PM   #21
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Len View Post
When working properly, yes. But while it's fundamentally impossible to focus regular light source in a way that it will stay as a narrow beam over a long distance, (Liouville's theorem) high intensity laser is a serious hazard when left undiffused. Granted, it's not easy to imagine a scenario where the laser source would be exposed and still running, but it is at least an added safety concern.
I highly doubt a laser emitter would be so dis-associated with it's diffusion lens, that it would be left as a raw laser emitter without the diffusion lens after some sort of damage condition. A failure like that would probably disable the emitter, as well, or trigger a failure mode that shuts it down.

A HID high/low beam projector with the low-beam cutoff-shield down, and the projector lens absent, would probably blind people as well.

We don't know that a laser emitter would be outputting more lumens than that. But at equal light output, the laser is probably far more efficient, cooler, and with less electrical draw.

We don't know that BMW is trying to make the lights' net output onto the road to be significantly higher, just that they are using a more efficient laser emitter source for it, rather than LEDs.

I love LEDs. I think everything else on the car should be LED lit, except the headlights that seem to push the requirements beyond what LEDs can easily do, in a confined, enclosed headlight unit sort of space with a given net output and pattern focus.

HIDs are great... but they still require high voltage startup, and don't react particularly well to rapid start and stop, like high beam demands often require.

Halogens have been a workhorse, but we are seeing that both HID and solid-state have significant improvements over thermally inefficient halogen bulbs.

We don't know how "high-intensity" these laser emitters would need to be to match the net output of today's better headlight technologies. To match the total output of the light unit, one laser emitter would probably match dozens or hundreds of LED emitters, and exceed a single HID source. Higher efficiency per emitter doesn't necessarily equate to tremendously higher net output.

Quote:
EDIT: Also, I disagree with the idea that laser is the "logical" next step in automobile lighting technology. An ideal lighting for humans would be diffused white light, with full spectrum of visible light (although really you just need RGB) and little directionality. Laser is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what we would consider a natural light. I get that the auto headlamps cannot be fully natural due to the need to avoid blinding the oncoming traffic, but I fail to see how the least natural light source we have is the LOGICAL next step in this field, apart from the fact that the word laser sounds really cool in your PR material.
The article mentions outputting white light. No artificial light source is natural, it is just a matter of how well they can approximate natural light.

LEDs are not full-spectrum, either, and in order to create white light combine blue-frequency emitters with yellow phosphors to mix the two into varying color temperatures of white. They don't even add red frequency, usually.

Quote:
I'll repeat what I said earlier. Given that we have this concern about not blinding other cars, having a brighter beam likely requires an even sharper cutoff, a combination that makes it more difficult to see anything outside the zone of illumination. I'm not sure if this is really a good thing, and consequently I'm not convinced that brighter is always better.

If this is just about energy efficiency, then fine. Given the cost of laser, I find it hard to believe that this could be cost effective, but who knows.
Again, output per emitter, and net output of the light fixture are two different things.

Per emitter, one laser emitter is significantly different than one LED emitter.

One laser emitter need not be putting out many times more lumens than an array of hundreds of LEDs to do the same job.

And one laser emitter takes up far less space, and creates less heat than 100+ 10Watt Cree or other high-output LED emitters in close proximity to each other in a housing.
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Old 09-06-2011, 06:39 PM   #22
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Wait I thought solid state lasers were LEDs? What is the elictrical efficency of an LED vs and Laser diode? I thought a laser diode was roughly equivelant to an LED but with coherence and intensity, versus difuse and scatered for LED?
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Old 09-06-2011, 07:10 PM   #23
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HipToBeSquare View Post

The article mentions outputting white light. No artificial light source is natural, it is just a matter of how well they can approximate natural light.

LEDs are not full-spectrum, either, and in order to create white light combine blue-frequency emitters with yellow phosphors to mix the two into varying color temperatures of white. They don't even add red frequency, usually.



Again, output per emitter, and net output of the light fixture are two different things.

Per emitter, one laser emitter is significantly different than one LED emitter.

One laser emitter need not be putting out many times more lumens than an array of hundreds of LEDs to do the same job.

And one laser emitter takes up far less space, and creates less heat than 100+ 10Watt Cree or other high-output LED emitters in close proximity to each other in a housing.
Sure, they don't HAVE to make this any brighter than the current HID, but when someone says laser, two things pop into my head. Monochromatic, and collimated. The former is clearly NOT a benefit when it comes to automobile lighting, and the latter suggests to me that they might try to increase brightness by taking advantage of the potentially much sharper cutoff. This is purely my guess of course, and that's why at the end I said if this is all about efficiency, then I didn't really have any problem with it.

At the end, of course I don't know much about this subject at the engineering level, so I'm sure they might have something amazing up their sleeves. But frankly, when I see a PR release like this with very little technical details and a lot of cool sounding words, I tend to be skeptical, at least the extent to which it is a viable technology.

I did not know that they mix only blue and yellow LED to make whitish light. Thanks for the info.
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Old 09-06-2011, 09:21 PM   #24
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To the extent that your mileage differs depending on whether you have your headlights on or off.
I back-of-napkined this a few years ago and it's really a negligible effect for vehicles getting typical mpgs.
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Old 09-06-2011, 10:22 PM   #25
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Will these new headlights cause my radar detector to go off nonstop?
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