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Oncoming headlights

This little number is the Sintesi, a concept car from the Pininfarina design house that made waves at this year’s Geneva Motor Show. The brochure talks of “transparent mobility”, and a chassis design based on “liquid packaging” that’s said to free up space normally occupied by the engine. What’s happened to the engine is perhaps a question for later.

LED experts may be more interested in the view from head on. Instead of two separate headlights, Pininfarina has chosen a continuous narrow strip of 16 Osram Ostar power LEDs, each of which consists of five chips connected in series. All the other lighting tasks in the vehicle are also handled by Osram LEDs, including indicators, side lights and interior illumination.

The rear design is equally striking, a “pure application of the coda tronca, in which the volume of the car is cut off with one gesture.” The result looks like it might divide opinion, but also allows another strip of Osram LEDs to be used as tail lights.

Despite the uncertain adoption of solid-state lighting by automotive manufacturers to date, notably Honda’s move back to incandescent lamps in the Accord, Osram are confident that their many years of LED development opens up all sorts of options for automotive lighting. How long until the fruits of their optimism are parked on your driveway remains to be seen.

Posted by Tim Hayes on April 17, 2008 9:00 AM | Permalink