Opening up new horizons

New age/new visibility/brilliant return — 

See what Smart headlights are all about!

View the path to the future with BMW’s new Laserlight technology and open up new horizons. Rooted in innovation and efficiency and designed with the driver’s safety in mind, this technology enables you to see farther down the road, prevents blinding oncoming traffic and has hands-free functionality among its many benefits. Truly remarkable and resulting in a light 10 times brighter and more intense than traditional LED headlamps, Laserlight headlights represent the future of BMW. See how the most powerful car headlight in the world uses just two-thirds the energy. It’s what smart headlights is all about! 

Here’s more…

How they work

Instead of projecting light directly onto the road, Laser-created light, or laser-powered headlight, is fired through a series of mirrors that are located within the headlamp assembly, which then reflects and focuses the light into a lens. That lens is filled with yellow phosphorus, which is a substance that reacts to intense light. Once the laser light is reflected into the lens, it interconnects with the yellow phosphorous, thus creating a bright, highly intense white light.

It is this light that is diffused to reduce its intensity and then reflected out of the front headlamp. Here is where one of the first of many benefits is made clear — this light is 10 times brighter than LED-created light.

This system is also highly efficient compared to traditional systems. In fact, it is 30 percent more efficient, and because the lights can create a bright light in smaller housing, Laser Light enables designers to reduce the size of the housing to optimize design for the vehicle’s aerodynamics.

Their benefits

Besides being brighter, a benefit in and of itself, the Laserlight headlamps greatly improve sight for the driver. They cast a light nearly half a mile down the road, with traditional systems only capable of half of that. Because of this, they are a must have for rural drivers! The system also boasts the ability to spotlight animals and people up to 300 feet away. These obstacles are illuminated by the Laserlight’s infrared camera.

This system is also GPS-enabled, meaning that Laserlight is built with GPS functionality, thus enabling the system to predict upcoming turns in the road. Drivers can better see curves thanks to this technology.

Hands-free functionality is another key benefit. With Laserlight, there is no need to turn off the lights when oncoming traffic is approaching. Instead, this technology uses a camera Selective Beam system that expertly detects oncoming vehicles or those that are overtaking the BMW. At that point, the beam is automatically dimmed to prevent blinding these vehicles.

Laserlight technology also has Heads-Up Display Capabilities. Through the system’s “high power diodes,” it can actually turn the road surface into a head-up display with the lights literally projecting information like MPH onto the road in the driver’s field of view.

Are they safe?

The answer is yes! Your eyes are safe! That being said, the blue lasers inside the BMW Laserlight lenses are powerful enough to actually burn objects. But this concentrated light is not visible as it is covered by the housing. It is also not coherent laser light at all. The danger is completely avoided due to the fact that the focused laser light is diffused through a phosphorous lens thus making it safe to look at. BMW has even gone as far as recognizing that front-end accidents where focused laser beams could emit out of a broken headlight housing can cause damage to onlookers. To that end, when an accident occurs, the headlights automatically shut down to prevent this threat.

What models have them?

The high end model BMWs come equipped as this technology becomes more perfected, but as the years go on, entry level models will include it. In specific, this technology is available in the United States for the BMW i8 Coupe and Roadster, and is an option this year on the M850i xDrive Coupe and the X5.

BMW Laserlight headlights feature thin blue strips along the inside of the headlight housing, with some models, like the X5, featuring blue strips across the lens.

In short, as government regulations become solidified, the technology will be found more and more on various models.

More advantages

For those driving in the day, the color of the light projected is near as warm as daylight and therefore natural on the eye. The new technology also is less exhausting on the driver due to its ability to reduce fatigue and strain with near daylight brightness. These lights are also smaller and more efficient. Due to their small size, they can generate a lot of light in a very small space, another design advantage. Their small design does not tamper functionality or sacrifice light output. Instead, the combination of design and functionality means that laser light has huge potential for automotive lighting in the future.

The Laserlights are representative of true progress and exemplify BMW’s commitment to continue offering the best headlights available under existing rules and regulation. The future is bright and brilliant, and this headlight system comes with benefits galore and is the next logical step in automative headlight development. They are more efficient, more powerful and smaller in size than other types of headlamps. Their benefits are compelling; their use is safe, and they produce a substantially more focused light beam in order to eliminate any potential blinding effects to oncoming drivers. They are reliable, new age and brilliant, and they are the advanced technology drivers come to expect from BMW. New age/new visibility/brilliant return — these Smart headlights will open up new and laser-sharp horizons. They are a must-have for rural drivers based on their ability to illuminate obstacles. See what they are all about!