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Hi-Tech Headlights and Taillights

Coming in function, going in style

By Rain Noe - February 27, 2015

in Cars

File this first one under wildly impractical but mind-blowingly cool. Audi's "OLED Swarm" concept wraps a super-thin layer of OLEDs—we're talking sub-millimeter—across a curved glass surface, essentially turning the back of the car into a curved flatscreen:

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Sure I'd swerve off the road watching this from behind, and have an incomprehensible story for the paramedics, but darn if that isn't cool-looking.

Audi competitor BMW is also messing around with OLEDs in the tail lights, albeit with a more sober application. Exploiting the sheer thinness of OLED panels, the designers have encased an angled array of them in a housing, wresting a look of motion out of a static arrangement:

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Of course, it can be argued that neither of these concepts has done anything to improve functionality or the driver's experience. For that we need to move around to the front of the car, to take a look at BMW's Intelligent Headlight Technology:

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That last one, by the way, isn't a concept: BMW rolled it out on their 7-series in 2012.

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Tor Sørensen

9 years ago

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I am curious how the BMW system behaves when we have traffic distributed across multiple lanes? And will it be different for 4 and 6 lanes? It seems like the vertical bars are searching for head and taillights. If 2+ cars are detected, I can't really tell if their approach will be to use the two cars near the edges of the view area of the camera. Do we know about this?

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m powers

9 years ago

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No mention of the Audi laser headlights? audi.com/com/brand/en/vorsprung_durch-technik/content/2014/04/laser-high-beam.html

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