The new BMW i8 is a rolling showcase for the extraordinary work of the engineers in BMW research and development laboratories. One of the most dramatic advances they have made recently is development of laser headlights for installation in a production car. The revolutionary BMW i8 is the first car and only car in the world with this technological breakthrough, which harness the incredible intensity of laser beams to produce brighter, sharper light for better visibility when driving at night.
While laser lighting is immensely complex to manufacture for use in a super-car like the BMW i8, the theory is simple.
The system generates intensely bright white light when a laser beam mounted in the headlamp unit is bounced off a piece of phosphorus. The reflected light is then refocused to become the car’s low and high beams. On the low beam setting it emits a flat, broad fan of light, while the high beam brightly illuminates the road up to twice as far in the distance as conventional headlights – that’s as much as 600 metres ahead of the BMW i8. And because the light emitted by the headlights is reflected and filtered inside the headlight’s reflector array it’s safe to look at, unlike pure laser light.
While the BMW i8 is the only car in the world to have laser lights now, we can look forward to the near future when laser lights will be available on other models in the BMW range.
You can see a fascinating explanation of the BMW i8 laser lighting system by a BMW engineer here.
