It's all about light teasers this week, as - following on from Land Rover's peek at the revised Evoque's headlamp tech - Audi has revealed that the new R8, also scheduled for a Geneva reveal, will have laser technology for illumination.
It's the same tech we saw on the R8 LMX, a run-out special edition of the first-generation supercar, in which high-intensity laser diodes are fitted for main beam usage. Audi says that, compared to LED lights, the lasers attain nearly twice the lighting range.
Each headlight contains one laser module that operates four high-intensity laser diodes, with the blue-light lasers passed through a phosphor converter to transform the output into pure white light - although the laser mains do have a blue tinge to them, which Audi says is their identifying signature. As standard, the new R8 gets LED lamps, with 37 in each headlight unit.
Anything else?
Audi's very proud of its lighting innovation technology, so it has also announced a new 'Lighting Competence Centre' at Ingolstadt. This incorporates a 120-metre underground light tunnel into which cars can drive, so that Audi can develop more lighting solutions and camera-based lighting assistance systems - such as adaptive high beam.
"Audi is the leading brand for automotive lighting technology," said Prof. Dr. Ulrich Hackenberg, member of the board of management for Technical Development. "From the xenon plus headlight to the matrix-LED headlight to the laser light, we have been putting pioneering innovations into series production for the past 20 years."
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