An Audi with lasers for headlights

Audi has unveiled a car with lasers for headlights. The Sport quattro laserlight concept boasts twice the lighting range and three times the luminosity of existing LED high beam lights.

The car’s dual headlights feature two rings of light - the outer one generates the low beam light using LEDs, while the inner element produces laser light for high-beam functionality. The laser diodes are only a few microns in diameter, but manage to illuminate the road ahead for a distance of nearly 500 metres.

Headlights are getting brighter

There has been a proliferation of lighting on our roads. In particular, the addition of daytime running lights - low-powered light that are on permanently - to cars has been criticized by those who argue it makes it harder for cyclists and pedestrians to be seen.

It’s not just cars that now bristle with high-powered lighting. New technology is fuelling a bicycle lights arms race; the most powerful LED, Xenon strobe and high-intensity discharge (HID) bicycle lights are rated at around 2000 lumens – by comparison, the typical halogen car headlamp produces around 1000 to 1500 lumens. In common with the laser lights being proposed by Audi, it many instances these lights prove too bright for other road users.

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