The BMW i8 will be the first production car to be sold with advanced laser headlights when it goes on sale later this year.
I8 offering a more constant beam of light. BMW lighting manager Thomas Hausmann says the new laser headlamps operate at up to 344 lux in high beam mode, as opposed to the 180 lux offered by the latest LED headlamps. By comparison, older Xenon headlamps turn out 120 lux, while conventional halogen headlamps boast a maximum 100 lux in high beam mode.
BMW says that lasers have an illuminating power 1,000 times more powerful than light-emitting diodes -- or LEDs -- which up until just recently provided the greatest wow factor of all the bulb technologies out there. Thus, BMW says, the laser lights can be much smaller than conventional lighting systems, they can use less energy to operate and well, they look pretty darn cool, too. Hausmann says the monochromatic properties of the new laser headlamps allow them to illuminate the road for a distance of up to 600 metres, or up to double the distance of LED units. As well as offering increased lighting intensity, the new laser headlamps are also claimed to be 30 per cent more energy efficient than the latest generation of LED headlamps, offering approximately 170 lumens (a photometric unit of light output) per watt.
