Minute, robust and extremely effective: LEDs – light emitting diodes – are the shooting stars of automotive lighting.

High-intensity LEDs

• offer high colour brilliance and, as white LEDs, a light colour similar to daylight
• consume considerably less energy
• have an exceptionally long life: they operate reliably for nearly the whole of a vehicle's life and rarely fail
• generate hardly any heat and no UV radiation that could damage transparent plastic parts
• are very robust in terms of shock-resistance
• are tiny and thus open up new possibilities for attractive design solutions.
  
  

Already an established lighting solution at the rear of a vehicle, LEDs have now also conquered signal functions at the front. Here, they are used in direction indicator, side and position lights as well as in special lamps for daytime running light. In future, they will make for greater safety on the roads as individually addressable LEDs chips in conjunction with predictive vehicle sensors and intelligent control systems – and will also play out their advantages in headlights.

The first vehicles fitted with LED headlights are already on the roads. But in a direct comparison, light-emitting diodes are still outperformed by xenon lamps: a xenon tube (at present) is more efficient than LEDs and provides better roadway illumination.

LEDs are electronic semiconductor elements

LEDs are electronic semiconductor crystals. When a current flows through them, they emit light. Depending on the type of semiconductor elements used, that light is red, green, yellow, orange or blue.

In the early days, LEDs were available only as a source of coloured light. In the late 1990s, however, developers extended the colour spectrum by using a yellow phosphor material to convert blue LED light to white. This massively expanded the range of applications for LEDs – and according to lighting experts, there is no sign yet of an end to the diminutive light source's rapid development...