Just seen this new Audi R8 LMX edition has laser lights. At £160,000+ it's not going to be a regular visitor to night time driving. But this stuff trickles down eventually.

 

As it's just 4 short years since Ausi brought LED's to production cars, what are your thoughts on this new; possibly mad, phase in road lighting?

 

As an oncoming driver how can these be anything but the last light you'll see?

 

Also from the release, possibly the best engineers name ever?

"Audi has long dominated the most important 24-hour race. In addition to the outstanding TDI drive technology, a maximum light yield gives our pilots a major advantage, and with night racing in particular is a key factor to our success," says Prof. Dr. Ulrich Hackenberg. "The transfer of the laser headlight to the Audi R8 LMX underscores our leading position in lighting technology. The safety benefit this provides to the customer truly represents Vorsprung durch Technik," says AUDI AG's Board Member for Development.

How these new laser lights work:
With the new laser high beams, one laser module per headlight generates a cone of light with twice the range of the all LED headlight. Each module comprises four high-power laser diodes. With a diameter of just 300 micrometers, these generate a blue laser beam with a wavelength of 450 nanometers. A phosphor converter transforms this into roadworthy white light with a colour temperature of 5500 Kelvin, ideal conditions for the human eye that enable the driver to recognise contrast more easily and help prevent fatigue.

The laser spot, which is active at speeds of 37mph and above, supplements the LED high beam in the R8 LMX and greatly enhances visibility and safety. An intelligent camera-based sensor system detects other road users and actively adjusts the light pattern to avoid dazzle

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A bad day to be a rabbit, unless it's a really good camera.

One of my "Lottery Win" bucket list cars.

I'm still chuckling the list price is £160,025. Who sets the price, I bet the mats are the extra 25

 

Interestingly, not for this car, but selling... pricing at a round number increases chances of being found. So a car at 9999 will not appear on a 10-15k search. But a 10k car would and it would appear on a 5-10k search... anyway, back to some coding.

Yeah they have pulled the lights from the LeMan R18 cars - decent transfer of technology from the race track but agreed I suspect they will be super bright.

Also worth noting that because the R8 LMX is a limited run of 99 cars it can't claim first laser lights on a production series car. That accolade will go to the BMW i8 which comes out in August i think. That uses 3 laser diodes whereas the Audi had 4

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Looks like a good idea, being a laser it'll light up exactly where you want to you can have a good range without dazzling other drivers.  I like it, shame you have to buy an R8 to get them though, although Land Rover are also looking this tech...

How much is the laser light option though?

Standard

LEDs during daylight with lasers kicking in at speeds above 60km/h

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An intelligent camera-based sensor system detects other road users and actively adjusts the light pattern to avoid dazzle.

 

I'm certain that Lucas was demonstrating a system like this (albeit not using lasers) back in about 1971!

 

Actually, Audi DRL's are quite capable of blinding you without fancy headlights.  It's a bling thing specially for the people who buy Audis.

FWIW, if you read, a laser diode lights up phosphors, which provide the useable light.

 

It's just way of getting a bucket load of energy into the phosphors to excite them enough to produce that sort of light.