# BMW to use laser powered headlights!



## jason 77 (Sep 2, 2011)

Has anyone here heard of this, and what type and power rating laser might they be using?

http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1065710_bmw-develops-laser-headlight-technology


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## PapaLumen (Sep 2, 2011)

Interesting..


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## Steve K (Sep 2, 2011)

from the article " Note, laser lighting is already used in a variety of consumer products, namely CD and DVD players, however, in most cases it goes unnoticed by the user". 

???
Are they implying that we should be looking at the laser? Or just commenting that these devices use lasers? And what would that have to do with using lasers for lighting?

Is the suggestion that there will be Red, green, and blue lasers in the car, co-aligned, so as to produce a white-ish beam? Are there lasers of sufficient power to even do this?

Interesting idea, but I don't see this being built in production quantities anytime soon.

Steve K.

edit: a fun blog on this subject. Excellent modified photo.... 
http://blogs.insideline.com/straightline/2011/09/bmw-working-on-laser-headlights.html


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## xul (Sep 2, 2011)

And halogen is 18 lumens/w?


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## jason 77 (Sep 2, 2011)

Found another article about this that mentions the following,

QUOTE from article..

"The laser first hits a fluorescent phosphor material inside the housing, which changes the originally bluish beam into a pure, bright shaft of white light."

http://wot.motortrend.com/bright-id...ghts-for-i8-concept-future-models-114051.html

Seems kinda like the remote phosphor of some LED lights out there now....


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## csshih (Sep 2, 2011)

sounds like they're either using the infamous nichia 445 diode to hit some phosphor(or have commissioned a new diode). nothing special still, casio projectors have been doing this for a while.
as a skeptic, I'm wondering what they mean w/ wattage. Do they mean laser output wattage, or input wattage? I'm leaning towards the latter, as 1W of blue laser takes around 5W of power to create.
Also, "With a length of just ten microns (µm), laser diodes are one hundred times smaller even than the small, square-shaped cells used in conventional LED lighting, which have a side length of one millimetre."

Come on, the diodes themselves are indeed small but the package and heatsinking need to be huge! more advertising bs! 

Then again, I could be wrong. I'll eat my words then. 

Craig


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## MikeAusC (Sep 3, 2011)

" It's also a “coherent” light source, which means that its waves have a constant phase difference. As a result, laser lighting can produce a near-parallel beam with intensity a thousand times greater than that of conventional LEDs."

- only if you assume that hitting the phosphor has no effect on coherence or collimation !!!

We already have 30 watt LEDs - can 30 watt LASERs compete ???


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## Walterk (Sep 3, 2011)

Its all about distribution I guess.
Intensity/light density distributing over the phosphor and more freedom of optics.


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## fyrstormer (Sep 3, 2011)

It sounds to me like they want to use lasers because coherent light sources can be refocused much more precisely than normal light sources.

It won't work in real life, though. The laser will destroy the phosphor in short order and the beam will turn blue again.

Also, I would really like it if BMW would avoid pioneering headlights that are guaranteed to cause eye damage in oncoming motorists when stupid kids tweak them for "better performance."


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## idleprocess (Sep 11, 2011)

I posted this in the automotive forum a few days ago (after this thread, before I was aware of it) and got no response.

This sure seems like a solution in desperate search of an applicable problem. It's really difficult to see how a laser-stimulated phosphor system is going to do anything that a LED-stimulated one can't already do.

Lots of marketing buzzwords in the BMW press release; the _Popular Science_ article is far easier to read.

I find the claim of 170 lumens/watt questionable. The only way I can imagine this being true is if they are measuring the monochromatic light of the laser itself, in the lab, at low power, with infinite heatsinking, and probably using the first 100ms of operation for the measurement - in other words the usual LED manufacturer tricks. Or, as has been hinted at, they're using some smoke-and-mirrors trick of measuring lumens per _output_ (light) watt rather than the far more correct (and actually meaningful) lumens per _input_ (electrical) watt.

The claims of smaller packaging are also suspect. Just because the diode is smaller doesn't mean that the packaging, electronics, heatsinking, and optics are smaller.

I also wonder about the operating life of such a system. LED's work hard to achieve maximum performance from a mm² or so die and move a lot of power through that little area ... seems like lasers would be trying to get similar power through an exponentially smaller area.


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## idleprocess (Sep 11, 2011)

Steve K said:


> Is the suggestion that there will be Red, green, and blue lasers in the car, co-aligned, so as to produce a white-ish beam? Are there lasers of sufficient power to even do this?



Sure, but they would probably be larger than the totality of a HID system (including ballasts), wouldn't be solid-state (at least for the green), and die horrible deaths in short order in the harsh environment of an automobile engine compartment. Then there's the risk that your diffusion system goes wrong and coherent light gets spit out in a millimeter-wide beam and blinds people...


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## fyrstormer (Sep 12, 2011)

idleprocess said:


> Sure, but they would probably be larger than the totality of a HID system (including ballasts), wouldn't be solid-state (at least for the green), and die horrible deaths in short order in the harsh environment of an automobile engine compartment. *Then there's the risk that your diffusion system goes wrong and coherent light gets spit out in a millimeter-wide beam and blinds people...*


This is the biggest risk in my mind. Poorly focused and misaligned headlights are rampant in the USA because the cops don't care enough to pull people over for it. Just imagine how many retinas could be burned by one car with damaged laser-powered headlights in a single evening. Now imagine dozens of them on each major street. This is quite possibly the worst "innovation" in the history of automotive lighting. Yes, even worse than HID retrofit kits.


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## bshanahan14rulz (Sep 12, 2011)

I don't like them either. Who wants to harvest blue lasers out of really expensive headlights? jeesh! Or is there another use for these headlights besides a laser diode source?

I'm guessing that the Germans were working on a high-power pulsed YAG laser, but when it didn't pan out, they decided to just make headlights instead ;-)


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## idleprocess (Sep 12, 2011)

fyrstormer said:


> This is the biggest risk in my mind. Poorly focused and misaligned headlights are rampant in the USA because the cops don't care enough to pull people over for it. Just imagine how many retinas could be burned by one car with damaged laser-powered headlights in a single evening. Now imagine dozens of them on each major street. This is quite possibly the worst "innovation" in the history of automotive lighting. Yes, even worse than HID retrofit kits.



I was postulating about some composite laser system with separate red, green, blue lasers and minimal optics to diffuse the light before spitting it out the front. I seriously doubt that BMW's system would be so potentially dangerous.


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## Cypher_Aod (Sep 12, 2011)

fyrstormer said:


> This is the biggest risk in my mind. Poorly focused and misaligned headlights are rampant in the USA because the cops don't care enough to pull people over for it. Just imagine how many retinas could be burned by one car with damaged laser-powered headlights in a single evening. Now imagine dozens of them on each major street. This is quite possibly the worst "innovation" in the history of automotive lighting. Yes, even worse than HID retrofit kits.


 
You guys obviously don't know much about German engineering and attention to detail.
let's just say that the Germans are fastidious and we'll leave it at that.

I have no doubt that this device will be completely safe by the time it is released, as long as there is no user modification. it might even be a sealed unit.


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## idleprocess (Sep 12, 2011)

Cypher_Aod said:


> You guys obviously don't know much about German engineering and attention to detail.
> let's just say that the Germans are fastidious and we'll leave it at that.


Given the rapidly-declining reliability of the luxury German makes - BMW and Mercedes both - I'd say that they've lost the recipe, or the marketing types have wrested control of the company from the engineers and are consciously trading goodwill for a few years of good margins.



> I have no doubt that this device will be completely safe by the time it is released, as long as there is no user modification. it might even be a sealed unit.


Oh, I suspect it to be no more or less hazardous than any other technology on the market. I also expect it to be an order of magnitude more idiot-proof than HID projectors, with their large-scale and (relatively) easily adjustable components. And mind-bogglingly expensive.


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## fyrstormer (Sep 13, 2011)

Cypher_Aod said:


> You guys obviously don't know much about German engineering and attention to detail.
> let's just say that the Germans are fastidious and we'll leave it at that.
> 
> I have no doubt that this device will be completely safe by the time it is released, as long as there is no user modification. it might even be a sealed unit.


I know plenty about the Germans' engineering expertise and attention to detail. I also know about their refusal to build things that will fail gracefully when used in conditions that aren't in their specification documents. (such as the suspension on my old VW Passat, which worked marginally better than double-wishbone suspension but was far less resistant to pothole damage.) That sort of design philosophy makes sense for huge projects like the billion-dollar robot that's currently building a new subway line near where I live, but it's not suitable for mass-produced commodities that millions of people will use and abuse on a daily basis. Everyone I know who owns or has owned a German car has cursed it on a regular basis, and most have traded back to Japanese cars that trade a little cutting-edge performance for a lot more reliability.

However, this is not an argument about who makes better cars, it's about whether laser-powered headlight technology will work better enough to justify the increased operational risk. As an owner of two properly-functioning retinas, I say it will never be justifiable to use lasers to provide general-purpose illumination. All it takes is one kid who thinks he can make his headlights work better, or wants to impress his friends, and there will be laser beams shooting out the front of his car. And nobody will stop them from doing it, not in the USA anyway.

You might say "well, that's what laws are for, and if the USA doesn't want to pass laws to require mandatory headlight safety checks, that's their problem." That is certainly a valid point. However, until someone can explain to me how laser-powered headlights will actually be a significant improvement over halogen, HID, or LED headlights, I won't see any reason why anyone's eyes should be put at even the tiniest risk just so a new technology can exist when it doesn't solve a problem anyone actually has. As one person said, this seems like a solution in search of a problem.


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## Bullzeyebill (Sep 13, 2011)

Cypher_Aod, please edit out the derogatory term used by you for Germans in post 15.

Bill


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## Johann (Sep 13, 2011)

I'm German and I don't find "Kraut" particularly offensive. Many wives use it with affection to described their German husbands. It's sort of like calling Canadians "bacons". Times have changed since WWII.


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## Bullzeyebill (Sep 13, 2011)

Glad to hear that word is not offensive to a German. When I was younger it was considered very deragatory and used such. 

Members, go to the Automotive sub forum for continued discussion re this topic. There is a thread already started. Closing this one.

Bill


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