You won’t believe what car headlights have to offer

Sure, sure: Car lights perform an critical and vital safety function, allowing drivers to see where they are going and everyone else to see when they are coming. But for decades, car designers have treated headlights and tail lights as an opportunity to be innovative, to build a distinctive brand that says, “Here it comes This car.” Think of the Y-shaped headlights on a Lamborghini, the almost menacing twin barrels on a Dodge Challenger, or the halo rings on BMWs.

But a novel era of automotive lighting design, ushered in by novel technologies, drive systems and even business models, has changed the frontal profile of vehicles. “There’s been an incredible, critical acceleration in the last few years,” says César Muntada, head of lighting design at Audi.

The result is lights that are brighter, thinner and in more sophisticated configurations than ever before. Lights that dance when the owner approaches the car, lights that flash when the car is charging. Lights that can be adjusted to personal taste and even mood. Lights that, if regulators allow it, will not blind other drivers. In the future, cars may even operate their lights to communicate with others on the road.

Nowadays, car manufacturers emphasize unique headlights, arguing that the front of the car is its most critical part, not only influencing the sale of the vehicle to customers, but also conveying the idea of ​​the vehicle – what it stands for.

“We call it the face,” says Tim Kozub, who leads Cadillac’s design team. “It’s about us as people. The front of the vehicle is the personality.” Cadillac’s internal market research shows that people respond first to the front of a vehicle, then the rear, and finally to the side view, he says. So car designers spend even more time—and money—finishing the face.

Delicate it up

In some ways, the history of automotive headlight enhancement is the history of advances in lighting technology. In the mid-20th century, headlights were miniature halogen bulbs housed in a gigantic eye. In the early 1990s, some automakers began using xenon or high-intensity discharge (HID) headlights, which were more powerful, effective, and hard-wearing than halogens. By the turn of the century, automakers were experimenting with different shapes and textures inside the headlights.

Finally, enter LEDs. Starting with the 2007 Lexus, automakers began using smaller, more powerful and even more hard-wearing lights inside the headlights. Headlights no longer had to be bulbs in a gigantic housing, says Raphael Zammit, chairman of the Transportation Design program in the College of Original Studies.

The creativity flowed from there. “We moved away from the physical aspect of the lights and toward a very thin, minimalist perspective,” Zammit says. “You look at the lines, the gestures of the lines. The LEDs took that to the next level.”

In the past few years alone, automakers including Mercedes-Benz, Audi and Hyundai have introduced digital headlights that operate LEDs and increasingly sophisticated vehicle computers to illuminate with even greater detail. Audi’s Matrix headlights, for example, can “greet” drivers with model-specific headlight animations, a kind of personalized greeting made possible by advances in lighting.