Continuing just-auto’s interview with leading lighting manufacturers, Matthew Beecham talked with Ramzi Hermiz, senior vice president, Federal-Mogul Vehicle Safety and Protection about the company’s interior automotive lighting solutions.
What trends are you seeing in OEMs’ strategies with regard to interior lighting systems?
Go deeper with GlobalData
Demand from automakers and consumers for premium lighting features that enable greater personalisation and more differentiation for vehicles has grown significantly in recent years. Federal-Mogul is expanding its portfolio of lighting technologies to support OEM improvements in the integration and packaging of vehicle interiors. Our portfolio enables us to offer more energy efficient lighting and facilitate distinctive styling possibilities.
The most noticeable trend is that OE customers are using interior lighting to differentiate their brand identity. They see interior lighting technologies as a means to create the kind of experience that helps make consumers passionate about the vehicle and loyal to the brand.
Interior lighting and other technologies that can improve the driver’s interface with the vehicle or the personalisation of the interior is a potential competitive advantage and a means of strengthening brand loyalty. Research shows that ambient lighting has several significant positive influences relative to a consumer’s perception of space, safety and quality.
What are the benefits and opportunities of LED technology in automotive applications?
Solid-state lighting, or LEDs, typically require 85% less energy than incandescent bulbs and therefore consume less power. LEDs are essential to ambient lighting because they offer much more flexibility in design than incandescent bulbs. There also is a small but measureable improvement in vehicle fuel efficiency and emissions. LEDs also last more than ten times longer than incandescent bulbs and generate much less heat, allowing for smaller, thinner packaging and improved installation and styling options.
The opportunities are significant. Federal-Mogul is working with several OEMs to integrate new interior lighting technologies in future model year vehicles. As we continue to develop new lighting technologies that solve customer challenges, our range of LED products are very important in our portfolio and support Federal-Mogul’s strategy for sustainable global profitable growth.
Do LEDs solve all the problems of conventional incandescent lighting?
LEDs emit cones of light that generate variations in intensity, in contrast to incandescent bulbs that emit light spherically. Working with this different characteristic requires innovative designs and engineering solutions. One solution that the engineers in our optics laboratory have developed is a specially designed lens that includes many unique geometric features. The features enable our ‘NovaLens’ to reflect and refract the light from LEDs positioned at opposite sides within the lamp to produce uniform, consistent illumination from the entire lens.
NovaLens delivers a much better appearance than other lamps that produce hot-spots from the LEDs within the lamp. And, because the unique properties of NovaLens require fewer LEDs, it is also a highly-efficient solution.
Another feature of LED lighting technology is that it can display one or a variety of colours. To make the packaging easier, we have developed a ‘light pipe’ that uses fewer light sources to create larger areas of illumination while maintaining a homogeneous appearance. Consequently, our ambient LED lighting can be integrated throughout the vehicle or in just a few select areas, such as the instrument panel, centre stack, console, door panels, speakers or cup holders.
The light pipe contains specially-spaced optical features to evenly distribute LED lighting across the entire length of the pipe. It is made from transparent plastics and can range in diameter from around 3mm to more than 10mm. Federal-Mogul has advanced development tools that enable us to design light pipes that direct light only where it is needed, providing the customer with a very tailored lighting application and a consistent appearance throughout the vehicle.
LED automotive lighting is becoming popular for a variety of applications. Yet what are the practical, constructive and regulatory challenges to consider when turning an LED idea into a product?
Legal requirements have more of an impact on exterior lighting systems than interior lighting. Developing products that deliver on package size, thermal management, energy efficiency and aesthetics remain the key practical issues for interior applications.
Federal-Mogul is offering OE customers several innovations for slimmer, cooler, more efficient and more stylish interior lighting systems. The challenge is to develop an attractive, integrated interior lighting solution for a specific vehicle. Every situation has different requirements, so we work closely with the OEM stylists. Our advanced optics development and simulation experts work with vehicle interior designers to create specialised lighting solutions that differentiate vehicles from others in the segment while appropriately reflecting the brand character.
Historically, the size of lamp modules has been a limiting factor for OEMs, with interior lamp profiles typically of 30mm or more. Our new ultrathin lamp technology is about 60 percent thinner than a conventional interior lamp. In one overhead application, we have been able to create a new, thinner lamp that is just 12mm, which creates an additional 18mm of headroom. That kind of additional space can be better for interior aesthetics, exterior rooflines and can be important for occupant safety as well.
For some time, the North American automotive lighting market has lagged behind that of Europe and Asia. To what extent are the Americans catching-up in terms of, say, styling and the application of LEDs?
We don’t see any evidence of this lag. We’re having ongoing conversations about our latest technologies with vehicle manufacturers in North America, Europe and Asia. Consumer tastes may vary in different markets but global manufacturers are aware of the styling possibilities with modern lighting systems and want to take advantage of them. This can be seen in many current models from the global OEMs, and many of those models are utilizing patented Federal-Mogul lighting technologies.
What other technologies are emerging for use in ambient lighting solutions?
Federal-Mogul has developed metallised lighting which gives the lamp’s lens a metallic look when turned off. When it is turned on, the metallised surfaces allow light to shine through, providing ambient lighting. Our metallised lighting reduces exposed light pipes or traditional lamp lenses and offers a new, energy-efficient way to accent a vehicle’s interior that previously was not possible.
This technology allows stylists to better integrate light sources into their designs and gives them more control over how the interior looks at night and in daylight. We have developed a range of metal finishes, including aluminium, copper, nickel, chrome and titanium that can be applied.
Our metallised lighting is receiving a lot of interest. Soon, consumers will have the opportunity to see more metallic finishes in vehicles and more uniform illumination to complement them.
Federal-Mogul has also developed lighting with touch-free activation: a simple wave of your hand can switch on the lamp. It’s an innovative combination of LED and capacitive sensing technology that works even if the driver is wearing gloves. The detection field can be developed up to 80mm, which means the driver can more easily operate the lamp while concentrating on the road. With no moving parts to wear out, touch-free technology offers unprecedented durability. It’s also possible to add more functions to the switch. As many as 16 functions are possible to allow passengers to adjust such factors as brightness and colour.
