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FrozenGate by Avery

BMW to develop Laser Headlights

Strange, I cant see my picture, but the link is still in the edit version of the post. Did someone block it?
 





joeyss said:
Hmmmm.... I wonder will these use those 4 watt 445nms?
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The story is rather vague.. the idea is that laser diodes are more efficient than leds, and they plan on using a phosphor to get white(ish) light - just like the crapio projectors make green out of blue.

Oddly, the source article also mentions how lasers are monochromatic and coherent, and can produce low divergence. Obviously these properties are lost immediately when you use a phosphor, so its unclear what they will chuck out eventually.

I'm affraid it will not be anything to get all worked up about though - probably a big multimode laser that is able to pump a phosphor, with beamspecs worse than your averge multiwatt IR diode bar.
 
But it could be a long lasting laser engraver at 445 and it would make a cool spotlight/torch.
 
My 1450 lumen flashlight can char white paper and ignite it. when I focus it to a dot 20-40 times the size of a laser dot and that's a crappy incohrent 75w halogen. 4+ watts of 445 can be focused much smaller since it's coherent and still retains its laser charteristics. It should be pretty cool anyway since we could make a better blue flashlight instead of using those blue phatlights.....heck we can make a light in a any color with it by making it fluorescence.
 
Maybe I got a little over excited when I first spotted the articles. The i8 is going to be a very low volume car, so I seriously doubt that they will be developing new diodes/emitters just for those few cars.
They say it their press text, that they will use multiple emitters in one headlight to get all the light functions which we nowadays see in Full-LED head lights. Since the laser emitters are so small they have more freedom in designing the headlight and they can incorporate even more emitters for more light functions.
I guess it will be a quite straightforward step from LED to Laser Diodes. All the electronics plus cooling is already available in modern LED headlights. The only thing that is a little foggy is the conversion of blue to white. But it works in LEDs, so why shouldn't there be a way to make it work for lasers as well?
 
all fun and games until you embed a 1W 445 in your datsun's headlight for extra power :P
 
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chefla said:
The only thing that is a little foggy is the conversion of blue to white. But it works in LEDs, so why shouldn't there be a way to make it work for lasers as well?
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There is not reason it doesnt work with lasers - you can put the same phosphor thats in a white led in front of a blue or bluray laser and it will produce white light just fine.

The downside of that is that the light output now comes from the phosphor, and has lost all its laser qualities - it would be exactly the same as a led, only more energy efficient.

Not that i get the whole energy efficiency deal though... there is a few 100 kW engine in those cars, and they want to save a 100 watts on lights?
 
Well, 100 Watts of electricity for your lights translates to a few grams of CO2/km. And the automotive industry has to meet pretty harsh CO2 limits in the future, so every single gram counts.
And yes, "white" laser light apparently has been done before, read here.
 
Ah well, emission standards... the industry deals with those in a different way than reducing the power of the headlamps.

In holland we have had a significant tax advantage for cars under a certain g/km co2 emission norm. Manufacturers played into this very rapidly - not by changing anything on the car, but by modifying the engine management software.

Chiptuning cars used to be a risky operation, but nowadays this seems to have changed. I've seen cars with the exact same engine in them, one limited to 125 hp and the other to 150, just to make the first one get the tax cut. Since the blocks are identical i couldn't see any harm in running the 150 hp firmware in the 125 model.
 
Believe it or not, cutting down the electrical power requirement of your car is one important step towards better efficiency. Let me give you an example: LED daytime running lights on your car instead of your low-beams save you ~0.2 L/100 km which translates into ~4 g/km CO2. That is huge!
Most people want all the electronic gadgets they can afford in their car. And most will not choose a smaller engine to power a well-equipped car. So it is the auto industry's duty to increase efficiency by all means possible. And if our beloved lasers help them in achieving their goal... hooray! :beer:
 
Also guys I found a way to make a cool any color flashlight out of a 405nm laser. I took some dental wax and stuck it over spot where the laser comes out of and I then found a flashlight reflector the with a bulb slot diameter close to that of the laser host and by luck it fit. I then colored the wax with a yellow highlighter and well it does work like a weird flashlight. The only problem is the wax isn't too transparent so I lose like 50% of the light. I need a little fiber optic thing that lets me get the best amount of light reflected.


Edit: This is why I think these 445s could make for interesting flashlight builds...
 
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What you have to watch out for is back reflection. If you catch a bad reflection it could go COD. Its happened before with dust caps a few times. One guy toasted his 8X bouncing it off his beer.
 
What you have to watch out for is back reflection. If you catch a bad reflection it could go COD.
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Which acronym are you referring to? i read it as call of duty :P
 
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