Chinese customers also have unique requirements for the functionality of car lights, "Qin Kai, head of the Lighting Business Unit at Hella Nanjing R&D Center and senior director of project management for headlights and taillights in the Foresea Hella Asia Pacific Lighting Business Unit, said in a communication with Autohome." The demand for car lights in overseas markets mainly focuses on safety and comfort, while Chinese customers go further on this basis and pursue interactive functions between car lights, pedestrians, and other vehicles

Recently, Freya Hella presented its globally advanced lighting product line for the first time in China, previously only showcased at CES 2024. At the same time, it also unveiled multiple new lighting solutions tailored specifically for the Chinese market, including headlights, taillights, interior lighting, and body lighting.

■ Launch the concept of "sustainable headlights"

Freya Hella has successfully developed a groundbreaking headlight concept that cleverly integrates sustainability, functionality, and performance in a cost neutral manner.

Qin Kai further explained that "using less" is reflected in Haila's use of recyclable materials and significant reduction in the number and weight of parts inside the body by integrating decorative rings and structural components. Compared to similar headlight products on the market that typically weigh over 5kg, Haila's headlight weighs only 2kg and can achieve a 70% energy-saving effect.

'Longer use' is reflected in our flexibility in headlight design, finding feasible solutions to increase the replaceability and reusability of components.

'Better use' is reflected in the comprehensive optimization of functional energy consumption, using high-performance or high-efficiency LED particles to ensure maximum reduction of energy consumption emissions while implementing functional regulations.

Faced with the EU's goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 and China's proposed dual carbon goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2060, many international and domestic automakers have also set their own carbon neutrality targets. This sustainable headlight can make a significant contribution to helping customers achieve these goals

It is worth mentioning that all parts of this sustainable headlight can be disassembled. Due to the abandonment of the sealing method, the maintenance process has become more convenient. For example, if the interior part is damaged, it can be directly removed and replaced without complex operations.

Tailored for Chinese users

The demand for lighting systems in the Chinese automotive market presents unique characteristics. Chinese consumers not only pursue the basic functions of car lights such as safety and comfort, but also pay more attention to the interactivity of car lights, hoping that car lights can effectively communicate with pedestrians and other vehicles. For example, in terms of interior lighting, Chinese consumers tend to choose large-scale lighting and rich and colorful visual effects, in order to create the interior space as the "third space" of life and add fun to daily life. This unique demand has also driven the continuous innovation and development of automotive lighting technology.

For example, the RGB LED taillights created by Freya Hella are cleverly based on the three primary colors of red, green, and blue, creating up to 256 color variations and creating a dynamic and colorful lighting effect. Whether it's welcoming and farewell scenes, colorful animation effects after locking the car, charging process, or serving as an anti-theft alarm, it can be easily achieved.

This product is not only designed specifically for the Chinese market, but also has international market appeal, "said Chen Zheng, R&D head of the lighting division of Freya Hella Asia Pacific." In the international market, although RGB technology has been widely used in the interior field, Hella is at the forefront of the industry in innovatively applying it to taillights and achieving mass production. In the future, we will plan to further promote this technology in a series of products

On the other hand, rich information exchange needs to be built on the continuous improvement of light distribution resolution. Freya Hella provides comprehensive digital lighting solutions for all vehicle categories, from entry-level to luxury. Whether it's high-resolution SSL | HD technology with 24 pixels, 48 pixels, or up to tens of thousands of light pixels, Freya Hella can provide customized support for customers.

The digital headlight system SSL | HD from Freya Hella is the world's first high-resolution headlight based on matrix LED technology, which achieves new safety related lighting functions through intelligent control of up to 25000 LED pixels per chip. Currently, this innovative SSL | HD digital headlight system is applied to the all-new Porsche Cayenne.

Another Hella digital physical front panel (FPS) adopts a new foil manufacturing process and dynamic polyurethane surface treatment technology, giving it a self-healing effect. The digital physical front panel is a highly complex module designed specifically for the front of vehicles, which highlights the differentiation of electric vehicle brands through the use of lighting technology and diverse colors. At present, this digital physical front panel has been updated to the third generation, with clearer images and richer colors.

Adhere to the bottom line in the internal competition

Compared to technology research and development, defining scenarios is currently a challenge faced by Freya Hella. Chen Zheng explained, "The content can be infinitely customized, but the display format needs to be limited to a certain range. This can provide broad imagination space for the host factory, end users, and our suppliers, while also limiting the technical solutions to an acceptable range. Whether it is the projection on the front of the car or the display on the panel, we are striving to explore an efficient and cost-effective display method. This requires us to have in-depth discussions with the host factory and identify the application scenarios that end users consider valuable and easy to implement

In the past year, the price war in the Chinese automotive market has continued to escalate, and the increasingly shortened product iteration cycle has also brought challenges to suppliers. How to demonstrate the professionalism, cost competitiveness, and comprehensive control of quality of suppliers in such a context is a core issue that the industry must deeply consider and actively respond to.

In the past, the development standards in the automotive industry could have been as long as three years or even longer, but now they have been shortened to one and a half years or even shorter. This means that we must complete all dimensions of car light design with quality and quantity in a shorter period of time, including design maturity, validation maturity, and matching maturity. To this end, we actively explore and implement a new and flexible work mode that allows us to carry out multiple tasks simultaneously and, with the support of our mature experience and system, avoid risks and problems as much as possible. "Qin Kai said.

In addition, Freya Haila also carries out refined control over production, from the rhythm of personnel to the rational arrangement of production lines. Improving utilization means reducing costs, which is a crucial step. At the same time, we actively and openly learn from the experience of local car lighting companies, continuously optimize our workflow, focus our energy on valuable work, and simplify complex and non value generating processes

In Chen Zheng's view, even if the industry environment is severe, he is willing to see the positive impact of competition, which encourages suppliers to do better and be more lean. The core that Freya Haila adheres to is always our quality system and commitment to customers. In value chain integration and cooperation with supplier partners, we always adhere to this bottom line

We need to recognize that the current market competition is actually a knockout round. In this knockout round, the number of kings who can survive in the end is bound to be limited. We hope that Freya Haila can become a member of the automotive lighting industry. Therefore, with a correct mindset, we will use the power of this trend to carry out self reform and improvement, and develop together with the industry, "Qin Kai concluded.