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Vehicles with low power consumption, less CO2 emission and reduced fuel consumption rate are more and more in the focus and are required by customers. Lighting is able to contribute in introducing Low Power HID (High Intensity Discharge) and LED (Light Emitting Diode) light sources. The paper will present a new LED Headlamp system with Low Beam, High Beam, and Daytime Running Light (DRL). The DRL will be mandatory for all new vehicles according to ECE (Economic Commission for Europe) regulation in 2011. The multifunctional design of such a headlamp system makes it possible to achieve an optimum balance between the requested light performance at night and the challenge to reduce power consumption, to reduce CO2 and to achieve economic fuel consumption rates. The paper describes the new designed headlamp system, reports on the light performance results and indicates the opportunities for the future automotive market.

Due to the general requirements in the automotive industry to reduce the power consumption, fuel consumption rate and CO2 emission a new HID (High Intensity Discharge) bulb with only 25W is under development for front lighting systems. A first headlamp integrated in a hybrid vehicle is now launched as a first application in the market. The current regulation in ECE allows to get rid of the mandatory headlamp cleaning system and the automatic leveling requirement once the 25W HID bulb is applied. The reason for this is the objective luminous flux of the 25W HID bulb, which emits less than 2000 lm, a boundary defined in the regulation, where a headlamp cleaning and an automatic leveling is requested. That simplifies especially the integration in smaller vehicles and electric and hybrid vehicles. The paper describes the special design of the headlamp, the projector unit, the light performance, packaging advantages and future outlook of further applications in the near future.