In this ever-moving world, where an average adult in developed nations like the US spends more than 10 hours a week inside their four-wheeled luxury, cars are no longer just a way of transit and are in fact slowly becoming the third space for many. Since for most households, a personal vehicle isn’t something they buy or change every year; a fairly high degree of selectivity is there among the buyers.
The buying sentiment of automobile consumers which used to be mostly utilitarian just 2-3 decades back has now become much more complex and incorporates elevated expectations in terms of both features as well as aesthetics.
While the goal of every buyer still remains to pick the best combination of features and aesthetics within an affordable range, several researches show that the buying decision is more influenced by aesthetics than it is by features. Thus, OEMs today, being aware of this influence better than anyone else, are loading their models with sleek designs, luxurious interiors, premium wheels, and whatnot.
Among the checklist of factors that make a vehicle attractive is ‘lighting’, which has a significant contribution to both the interior as well as the exterior aesthetics of any vehicle.
From acetylene lamps(around ~1908) to semi-sealed beam incandescent bulbs(1920s) to sealed beam headlamps(1940s), to halogen lamps(1960s), followed by the use of High-Intensity Discharge(HID) lamps(early 1990s), to the dominance of LEDs, automotive lighting has seen its share of innovations and it continues to evolve even today.
Though minor applications like brake lights or trunk lights, of LEDs in automobiles are difficult to trace back to a single model, the first significant application of LEDs in the automotive world was in the Daytime Running Light assembly of the Audi A8, in 2004. Soon, in another milestone event, Audi announced the R8 with full LED headlights in 2007, and, LEDs have been rapidly penetrating the automotive lighting industry ever since.
Succeeding both Halogen and High-Intensity Discharge(HID) lamps, LEDs are at least 50% more efficient and can have a lifespan of 45,000+ hours, which is ~40 times longer than that of Halogen lamps and typically 8-15 times longer than HIDs.
Even though LEDs clearly surpass Halogens and HIDs in terms of energy efficiency and lifespan, when it comes to cost, they turn out to be the costliest(the price can be as high as $500+ for a single LED headlight) among the available alternatives. Even so, LEDs are preferred over HIDs and Halogens because practically, the need to replace an LED might never arise in the first place, owing to its long lifespan and immunity against physical damages.
Apart from being energy-efficient and long-lasting, LEDs also exhibit superior flexibility in both applications as well as installation. For instance, in both exterior and interior applications, LEDs can be used in the form of ‘strips’ because of their compact nature, whereas achieving the same using Halogen lamps and HIDs would be nearly impossible.
Currently, there isn’t any segment of automotive lighting where LEDs haven’t marked their presence and, for some segments, this presence is expected to turn into complete dominance within the next decade.
According to estimates by Stratview Research, if we roughly classify the lighting applications in an automobile as follows:
Then, >60% of the automotive lighting market can be accredited to Headlamps alone. Now, just half a decade ago, the share of LEDs in the automotive headlamps market used to be ~15%. But, as of 2023, LED headlights made up for >40% of the global automotive headlights market. The key enabler behind such rapid penetration being the ease with which LEDs can be programmed for adaptive headlights. While halogens can achieve some level of adaptability, LEDs can change their direction and intensity more quickly than halogens and also provide more options in terms of achievable color temperatures.
Adaptive lighting is however not just limited to headlamps but also well-desired by consumers in interiors. According to a consumer survey conducted by DTS with ~900 US car owners as the participants, more than 35% of the owners wanted their vehicles to automatically change the lighting and temperature when they entered their car. This level of personalized experience with lighting is best possible through LEDs and with the increasing demand for such features from the consumer end, LEDs are expected to completely replace Halogens from automotive interiors by 2030-35.
Being the one-stop solution for energy efficiency, longevity, and controllability, with all the desired lighting characteristics, LEDs have much potential to shine in the automotive lighting market in the coming years. With the industry’s transition towards energy-efficient and highly customizable lightings already in progress, the automotive LEDs market was valued at $5.2 bn in 2022 and is expected to exhibit an annual growth rate higher than that of the automotive industry itself, owing to its increasing penetration in existing lighting segments, to reach a demand equalling ~$6.9 bn in 2027.
What’s interesting about the automotive LED market, is the fact that though China and the US remain the biggest manufacturers of automobiles globally, none of the top 3 players in the automotive LED lighting space are based in either China or the US.
The top 3 players in the automotive LED market, according to Stratview Research, are:
1. Osram Opto Semiconductors GmbH
2. Nichia Corporation
3. Lumileds Holding B.V.
Based in Regensburg, Germany, Osram Opto is the leader in the market with the top 3 players alone combinedly capturing more than 50% of the entire automotive LED market.
Though none of the top players are based out of the epicenter of demand for automotive supplies(i.e. China), all of them have expanded their manufacturing capabilities to China, to address the needs of the world’s biggest manufacturer of automobiles. The table below shows the no. of automotive lighting manufacturing capacities in China, for some of the leading players.
|
Company Name |
Headquarters |
Plants in China with Auto Lighting Manufacturing Capacity |
|
Osram Opto Semiconductors GmbH |
Regensburg, Germany |
1 |
|
Nichia |
Tokushima, Japan |
2 |
|
Lumileds |
Amsterdam, Netherlands |
2 |
Table 1: No. of auto lighting manufacturing capacities in China for leading auto LED suppliers
The development of LED technology in automotive lighting will be driven by both the need to achieve more energy-efficient lighting as well as developing ‘intelligent’ lighting systems.
From an innovation point of view, the current focus of many players in the industry is to achieve higher numbers of pixels/chip by forming LED matrices. So far, companies like Osram opto have been able to develop systems with ~25k pixels in a single monolithic micro-LED chip array and some experts are predicting a count of ~100k pixels to be achieved by 2028. But, looking at the current pace of development, achieving that count as early as 2025 doesn’t sound too difficult, though not 100% certain.
One thing that’s certain however is the fact that continuous advancement in LED technology within the automotive lighting industry will undoubtedly lead to even more energy-efficient, versatile, and visually appealing lighting solutions for vehicles in the coming times and the future of LEDs in the automotive industry might as well outshine itself.
Authored by Stratview Research, originally published on Compound Semiconductor.
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