LED technology is becoming more established in exterior automotive lighting applications. For over a decade now LED’s have been considered to be standard light sources in CHMSL applications. During the last few years, rear combination lamps utilizing LED technology for stop, tail and turn functions have become increasingly available in the market.
The recent development and availability of High Power white LED’s makes it possible, to design back up lamps, using white High Power LED’s as a light source.
High Power LED technology just became available in late 2002, and was not proven in any automotive application. Photometric, thermal and electronic design was based on preliminary data sheets of this LED, and during the design phase, required a lot of flexibility and testing.
OEM’s are continuously reducing the available packaging space for lamps. These packaging constraints lead to the development of such technologies as COB and Point LED which can be used to reduce the overall thickness of an optical system.
This technical paper will describe the following:
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The challenges during the development of the First in Market RCL using red, amber and white LED’s for Stop/Tail/Turn and back up functions as well as the development of a thin CHMSL, utilizing the Point LED technology.
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A description of both the optical and electronic systems, and thermo management.
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Finally, it will describe the implementation into production and will conclude with possible improvements for the future mainly based in advances in the LED technology.