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TheDetroitBureau.com’s Headlight News offers a look at the past week’s top automotive news stories, as well as what’s coming up in the week ahead. Check out the week’s top story and our latest review…along with a dive into the past with this week in automotive history.

home > news > Technology > Magna Unveils “Breakthrough Lighting” Technology

In what could truly be called a breakthrough, automotive supplier Magna unveiled its new “Breakthrough Lighting” Thursday, which could truly change the way lighting is used as a styling element in vehicles. While recent years have seen automakers employ holographic taillights, matrix taillights, edge-lit light blades and other solutions, this new lighting technology could be a game changer for automotive design.

Ready for production in 2023, the company revealed the new technology on a prototype rear liftgate it dubbed “Litgate,” which shines conventional LED lighting through a polycarbonate lens. But the technology can also work on any vehicle body panel as long as they’re made from similar thermoplastic material. The new lighting solution allows the lighting to stay hidden until illuminated, including brake lights, turn signals and backup lights. As you might expect, a wide array of color and pattern options will be available.

“Magna’s Breakthrough Lighting enables increased design freedom and features more options for brand differentiation that can elevate our customers’ experiences,” said Grahame Burrow, global president of Magna Exteriors, in a statement. “As the industry builds significant momentum around electrified and autonomous vehicles, we expect more desire for developments like this that are seamlessly integrated into exterior surfaces.”

Aside from the ability to hide lighting within body panels, the new technology could be used as a new feature in car design, with lighting serving as a decorative element, rather than strictly serving as a functional one. This could allow designers to use the lighting as molded-in styling features and create intricate textured lit surfaces. 

The lighting could also be communicative, displaying messages to pedestrians or, in the future, be used for vehicle-to-vehicle communication. The illuminated lighting could also possibly be used for more prosaic tasks, like advertising or branding. Magna does it by drilling microscopic holes — 1.5 microns in diameter — that are then clear-coated, so you can’t feel them. Put together by the thousands, they appear to be a single element. 

The move comes after the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, approved the use of advanced headlights known as “adaptive driving beams” earlier this year in response to a 2013 Toyota petition to allow the lights. Volkswagen and BMW have also filed petitions with NHTSA to use the lights. The move comes more than a decade after their use was permitted in Europe, Canada, Japan and other countries.

Adaptive lighting, also known as Matrix headlights, split the traditional headlight beam into many smaller, pixel-level LEDs that can be individually controlled by an electronic control unit and traffic detection system to reduce glare to oncoming drivers. Unlike traditional headlights, LEDs are semiconductors, so they can be controlled by varying the current flowing through them.

Until the NHTSA decision, the lights couldn’t meet U.S. rules, as a 1967 law dictates headlights use separate elements for high-beam and low-beam. Adaptive headlights use the same lighting elements for both beams. Until the rule change, they couldn’t be used. 

The new law was proposed in 2018, but only changed recently. NHTSA is required by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, passed in November, to produce a final law by the end of 2023 allowing advanced headlight use.

The advances in lighting could improve pedestrian safety, as nearly 1 in 6 traffic deaths, or 6,236 in 2020, are pedestrian deaths, with 72% of pedestrian fatalities occurring at night.

Lighting has come a long way since the first acetylene and oil lamps were used on automobiles. The first electric lights were offered as an option on the 1898 Columbia Electric, with the first modern system, one integrated into the electric system, appearing on the 1912 Cadillac alongside the electric starter.

The first high/low beam bulb appeared in 1924, but a foot-mounted dimmer switch to control it didn’t arrive until three years later. The sealed beam headlight was the next advance, arriving in 1939. In the 1960s, halogen sealed beam headlights debuted in Europe, but wouldn’t be permitted for use in the United States until the late 1970s. Finally, in 2004, the first LED lights are introduced.

And, with each lighting “advance” came an exponential increase in price. Incandescent lights could be replaced for pocket change; LED modules now cost what a used car costs. For what benefit, a few lumens more? Do the OEMs even give a thought to maintaining a vehicle?

LED costs have plunged, much as they have for home applications. They have numerous advantage when it comes to light output, but also for flexibility of design. One of the biggest pluses, however, is reliability. I recall having to change incandescent headlamps on a somewhat regular basis, and having taillights fail more often than they should. It has become rare for LEDs to go down as is apparent to anyone on the highway.

Just searched for replacement LED headlights and they came in at $50-$60 a pair. More than the old headlights, but not a budget-buster. And they last 50,000 hours!

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