Hella lights the road ahead with innovative lighting solutions

From compacts to luxury SUVs, interest in innovative lighting solutions for vehicle interiors has been growing across all segments. This is the impetus behind light expert Hella recently providing equipment for innovative interior lighting concepts for the Opel Adam, Volkswagen Golf and Seat Leon along with the Range Rover and Range Rover Sport.

In order to meet the increasing demands for interior customisation, the designers at Hella can already utilise a wealth of design options: From elongated light transmitters integrated around the centre console or into door designs to diffuse lights for illuminating footwells or map pockets.

The luxury Range Rover SUV has been available since August 2012 and allows drivers to create their own ambiance. In the top-of-the-line equipment model, the driver can choose between ten different colours ranging from Spark Blue to Ice White to Racing Red.

Light transmitters bathe the vehicle interior in the desired colour at the press of a button. These light lines are integrated into the map pockets in the doors as well as the center console. In terms of physical equipment,

Hella implements this function using a total of eight RGB modules. Each module consists of three different colored LEDs (red, green, blue), whose light is injected into the light transmitters. A LIN controller creates the desired color by mixing the three LED colors while also controlling the brightness.

Hella takes care of the colour selection for the LEDs, i.e. sorting the colours by intensity and brightness, during the production process. After being measured, this data is used as the basis for a correction matrix for each individual chip, ensuring that the entire vehicle interior is lit with a uniform hue.

The vehicle’s ambient light package is supplemented by seven smaller lights, each of which is equipped with three white LEDs. These enable implementation of two functions thanks to the ability to dim LEDs or switch them on and off. This is the technology behind transforming the welcome light into an ambient glow that lights up the footwell area in the back of the car when starting the vehicle.