BMW Commits to Developing OLED Vehicle Lights by 2017

BMW has released details of plans for a much wider roll out of OLED lighting modules in its vehicles. This will culminate in 3 years' time with OLED interior, brake and indicator lights on the road.

Details of the announcement were given at a BMW Light Day press briefing held in early April 2014.

Three-year programme
The development of the OLED lights on the rear of its cars and motorcycles will take until at least mid-2017 according to the German manufacturer. This represents a reinforcement the company has previous made to the technology, including developing a dashboard mounted OLED display screen in 2012.

BMW has been sourcing the necessary OLED expertise from LG. Sample rear lights employing LG OLEDs were shown at theLight+Building 2014 event in Frankfurt, Germany. OLED lights for car interiors LG has made in cooperation with Volkswagen were also demonstrated at the event on 1-2 April.

Technical advantages
In making a commitment to OLED rear lights, BMW has been quick to highlight some of the advantages they can offer.

Firstly their low power draw is attractive especially as the luxury car maker looks to expand its range of electric-powered road vehicles. The low weight of OLED modules will also bring energy savings in a car industry where promoting fuel efficiency by cutting weight from designs is an ongoing priority - especially for European producers.

The easy conformability of OLEDs is also piquing the interest of car designers. A thin (0.8mm - 1.5mm) OLED lighting strip stretched across any of the aerodynamically optimised surfaces would produce a number of exciting new options. Some of these have already been demonstrated by Audi working with its lighting partner Philips.

The uniformity of light output from an OLED panel is also advantageous as it will reduce the need for reflectors which are necessary with other lighting techniques. Ultimately automotive OLED lights printed on transparent plastics could also be fitted to the windows of cars too.

Barriers to market
The three year interval in deploying OLEDs on vehicle is down to two factors. BMW can already work with flat OLED panels but need to do more development work with its technical partners to develop the fully conformable module that will unlock its full potential.

The second challenge is that OLEDs are currently not bright enough to pass requirements to be used in safety-critical vehicle lighting. As a consequence BMW are planning to gradually introduce OLEDs by combining them with LEDs and its forthcoming laser headlights. This will give a composite design solution with the various technologies compensating for each other's shortcomings.

OLEDs will be used on their own for free-form interior lighting in cars.

In April 2014, a Land Rover Discovery Vision concept car was unveiled in New York. This made extensive use of OLED technology for a touchscreen dashboard, windows which displayed information and even a 'transparent' bonnet effect.