Business & Money | Monday 23 February, 2015 12:43 am |

Audi is revealing the headlights of its new R8 as the first of a number of technology highlights of the top sports car. The R8 uses LED headlights which can be supplemented by a laser highbeam lighting module as an option.

The new R8 will set new standards among highperformance sports cars – including in its lighting technology. As an option, the latest car development by Audi can be equipped with a laser spot as the highbeam headlight. The special appeal of laser lighting is that it uses highintensity laser diodes, which generate a lot of light energy from a very small component. Compared to LED highbeam headlights, laser highbeams attain nearly twice the lighting range.

Each headlight contains one laser module that operates with four highintensity laser diodes. This module bundles the four intense bluelight laser beams. Then a phosphor converter transforms the blue light into pure white light. An identifying characteristic of the laser headlights is their blue light signature. Standard equipment in the new R8 includes an LED headlight system. All lighting functions are produced with 37 LEDs per headlight.

The laser spot for the highbeam light made its debut in the summer of 2014 in the Audi R8 LMX, a limited edition model of the previous R8 model series. Shortly before that, it was used in the Audi R18 etron quattro race car at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The laser spot is the latest production technology in a long line of lighting innovations. Audi introduced LED technology to the market for the first time in 2004 – in the daytime running lights of the Audi A8 L W12. Lighting technologies such as LED daytime running lights, Matrix LED headlights and laser spot highbeam lights are prime examples of technology that visualize the core values of the Audi brand: progressiveness, sportiness and sophistication.