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More recently, laser-based headlamps have emerged. The technology for producing high-power, white laser illumination (400-700 nm wavelength) using a combination of blue laser diodes (440-450 nm wavelength) coupled to a luminescent phosphor was developed at Soraa Laser Diodes (SLD, acquired by Kyocera in 2020, to form Kyocera SLD or KSLD). Its founders include Dr. Shuji Nakamura who won the Nobel prize in 2014. Professor Haas and John Peek (ex-CTO of Phillips Automotive Lighting) are on their advisory board. Their flagship automotive product is the LaserLight™ engine which provides high-intensity lighting to illuminate the roadway at a 650 m range (1 km is possible, but is currently constrained by regulations). These light sources have been in production since 2019 for the BMW’s Series 5 model, and more recently for the iX3 and iX4 electric SUVs.

Headlight and display technologies promise brighter views of the road and of driver controls but also raise challenges in automotive safety.

In 2011, Harald Haas revealed a technology that would see light-based wireless data pouring from our lightbulbs, yet more than a decade later few have seen it in action. Haas gave a talk at the TEDGlobal conference that introduced LiFi communication, whose recording now has 2.7 million views. In it, Haas noted that the optical spectrum is more than three orders of magnitude wider than the entire radio spectrum used for existing wireless communications. ‘People in the meantime have always asked, “Okay, if there’s so much resource, why don’t we see these very high data rates?”,’ Haas, who is now at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, told Electro Optics. ‘That is primarily down to the availability of devices.’