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BMW Working On Laser Headlamps
MrSeb writes "LED headlamps are only just trickling onto the market — mostly on high-end cars — but now it seems a certain German automaker has plans for laser headlamps. 'Laser light is the next logical step in car light development ... for series production within a few years in the BMW i8 plug-in hybrid,' says BMW. Lasers have the potential to be simultaneously more powerful, more efficient, and smaller than other headlamp types. Before you get too excited, though: the output of laser headlights will be modulated for safety."
Its not like the HID lamps fucking blind you enough as it is, we need LASERS! so we can be blinded up to 2 miles away
Even my local news reported this before ./
And as they stated, the LEDs are bright enough.. WTF we need lasers?
OK. Fine, but will the sharks be able to operate the headlight switch?
Laser light has significant disadvantages compared to the other kind. (what's the word for non-laser?) It may be less efficient to just spread several shades of light everywhere but it's kind of necessary to see everything.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Beamers always looked nice, now with the optional tiny sharks inside the headlamps they'll be simply irresistible.
What would PETA say?
You can't handle the truth.
Warning: Do not look into BMW with remaining eye.
Next time a moose runs out in the road in front of us we'll just have to switch to high beams and it will be a cloud of moose vapor.
Though cleaning the car afterwards might be gross.
Put them on the Hyundai Tiburon.
Now when it comes time to replace a head light, it will become a major spending decision!
The only car where the Pink Floyd music library is included as a feature; complete with laser light show.
Only if BMW names one of their vehicles "Shark."
On that note, a BMW 550i GT "Shark" would be pretty frickin' cool. Make mine Gray with P-40 "Flying Tiger" graphics...
I can see the fnords!
I love lasers, but are lasers really more efficient in this particular application? The laser was stated to be 70% more efficient than the LED. However the laser light is not used directly. How much of that efficiency is lost as the light is converted in something "suitable for road traffic" and also something "pleasant"? Perhaps the real advantages lie in the design (more compact) and in the marketing.
I guess Jimmy's going back to driving BMW now...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
why the hell are lasers for headlights the next logical step? i think everyone agrees that headlights all do their job adequately given the limitation of not being allowed to completely blind oncoming traffic. the next LOGICAL step (assuming we are trying move in the direction of eliminating visibility issues/unknown elements from nighttime driving) should be to have some kind of sonar/radar device that can detect and relay a warning to the driver...maybe by having a terminator-esque translucent LED screen overlay on the windshield that would highlight things out of range of the regular headlights (eg: deer getting ready to pop out of the forest). if BMW customers are willing to pay for frickin' laser beams then surely they'd pay for this.
Now when it comes time to replace a head light, it will become a major spending decision!
Lasers are not necessarily expensive. Look at, figuratively since we are discussing lasers :-), CD/DVD players, laser pointers, etc.
About the only advantage I see in this is the possible efficiency (which doesn't really make sense unless the car is electric). I mean, bright is bright. Screw "modulated for safety". If the point is it's brighter, then it's brighter at both ends. This just means that when they come over a hill, they can blind you from a mile away. We don't even need high beams anymore.
Could they maybe tie this into a range finder or adaptive landscape mapping or something? I'd hate to see what their laser headlight would do to a puddle of water, or god forbid a fog or rainstorm. It would look like an IO tower from TRON was slicing apart pieces of the sky.
Every Watt of power drawn by the car's accessories is very important. Look for many more efficient accessories to come on the market.
"blinded by science"
If they can tie the lights into a dection system for deer, that would be sweet; drop Bambi like a bad habit to prevent major-league crumplage.
This shows up on the next James Bond or MIssion Impossible flic.
Laser Headlights, with booster to turn them into weapons grade headlights.
"modulated for safety"
That sounds like it should be on a box of "star trek" brand condoms...
I'm just curious how they are making white lights? "...laser lighting is monochromatic, which means that the light waves all have the same length." followed by "...resulting light is very bright and white"
The bigger news is that they've found a single wavelength of light that is white!
When referring to a vehicle manufactured by BMW, the following rules should be used:
2 wheels: "Beamer"
4 wheels: "Bimmer"
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
Read this sentence from the last paragraph of the article; "Importantly, therefore, before the light from the tiny laser diodes is emitted onto the road, the originally bluish laser light beam is first of all converted by means of a fluorescent phosphor material inside the headlight into a pure white light which is very bright and pleasant to the eye." Therefore no lase light escapes the headlight. This is in effect laser stimulated florescence. The one number they miss in the article is what is the conversion ration between the light incoming to the phosphor and the light given off by the phosphor. It could be 100% but I don't know. After this conversion the light is probably no longer coherent and will disperse like a headlight should.
I wear yellow tinted glasses day and night, and I can't remember driving without them. The glare is gone in the day, and my night vision is greatly improved, especially with jerks following and coming towards me with either brights on, or those ultra-bright lights. It also helps driving fatigue immensely.
I've often fantasized about carrying a 2 million candle power hand held rechargeable spotlight to flash people behind me with their brights on. But rather than go to prison for manslaughter when the go flying off at 70mph into a ravine, I just wear my tinted glasses.
I8-D
One of the reasons they are trying to do this is to make the lights smaller.
That is one of the big problems with HID bulbs. The smaller the point source of the light the more blinding it is. They should be trying to make the emitting surface larger so they can make it less blinding to someone in the beam path.
Example: If you doubled the light output of a modern HID automotive lighting system but made the emitting surface 10 times as large the driver would be able to see much better and people in the beam pattern wouldn't be blinded anywhere near as much as they are currently.
The other bit is blue light stinks as an illumination source. Your eyes don't work well with that portion of the spectrum and it reduces your depth perception.
First off, regular LED lamps are way more efficient than a laser. It's already got a great dispersion pattern, and it's focusable with a simple lens to keep it tight. I have a 12w LED lamp that replaced my 100w MH porch light. I can still see just as well.
There is almost zero point in decohering a laser, and in fact odds are you're going to have that decohering surface wear out over time (as well as the laser as it gets way hot.) Sounds expensive to replace, too! Oh, this is BMW, you say? That would figure.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
it's the neatest bit of engineering in your every day life.
it's calculated to change from the mirror's silvered reflection (dead on) to the natural reflection angle of plate glass...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
He once said, "Don't you wish instead of those cute little headlights you had twin .50 caliber machine guns?"
Now the headlights themselves become the weapon.
Robin Williams you say? With his record for lifting jokes, I'm sure someone else said it first. I read an article that said comedians would walk offstage if they heard he had entered the venue (same with Mencia).
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I confess to having long lusted after a way to paint the backs of my cars with the stuff, but I understand it's actually a plastic film. Wonder if I can get it applied the same way ads and such are?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I've often fantasized about carrying a 2 million candle power hand held rechargeable spotlight to flash people behind me with their brights on.
Stifle that thought. I've seen it in practice.
Quite some years back I was driving home with the kids from the mountains on a Sunday night in the usual heavy two-lane traffic. With a few dozen cars ahead of me there was a major asshole in a jacked-up pickup behind me who kept flashing his high beams, presumably to get me to move over so he could do the same to the next 40 or so cars in line.
We finally got down into four-lane territory (still mountainous) and as we were coming to a turn he whips around us and then lit off a pair of headlamps under his rear bumper. I damn near went into the guardrail as he smoked off.
A while later, down in the valley, I saw him again (I got a good look at him as he was passing.) He was pulled off the road with a patrol cruiser behind him, another diagonally in front of him, and a third blocking him from the highway side. He and his passengers were face down on the dirt (Arizona desert: that sharp stuff isn't just stones) with officers well back with drawn weapons while other checked them over.
My best guess: he tried that trick on the wrong person.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
or blow out the CCD in the speed camera
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
The whole bloody thing isn't worth considering if they're only offering it on the 8-series. I'm a software engineer, not a CEO. Modulated indeed, I'll just build my own and save myself a mortgage.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
When lights are upgraded, retro-fitted, jammed into housings with tape and glue; have the damn lights aimed proper by a competent mechanic or a person with experience.
I have had to "adjust" quite a few lights for weekend light install festers. I cannot even fathom the amount of driver owners who upgrade their lights with or without headlamp housings that do not re-position their lamps.
There are many nights that I wish for a bazooka to fix these cross eyed headlamps or the ones that try to help the moon lunar surface with more light or both!!!
plasma headlights came up before laser ones. Somebody seriously pushed for researches of the cooler techs first in their technological tree.
AFAIK, it is illegal to mount lasers (whatever that is) on your vehicle (whatever that is) in the U.S. (whatever that is!)
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
Having some experience with trying to view things with laser red light and LPS yellow light I am inclined to think that monochromatic light sources make perceiving scenes correctly relatively difficult, and visually tiring also. I'd like to see the traffic safety implications of this studied.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
I want Phaser headlights.
These opinions are mine, mine I say! Piss off and get your own.