A couple of weeks ago BMW unveiled a new Series 7 concept car as part of their BMW Vision Future Luxury design approach. The car includes all sorts of new user and display interfaces such as a projected HUD and a control tablet for rear seat passengers.
Earlier last month BMW said that the future lighting technology for their automobiles will be OLED (BMW expects to start selling cars with OLED lighting within 3 years) - and indeed the new concept 7 series uses OLED taillights. The OLED suppliers is Astron Fiamm (owners of the Blackbody consumer OLED brand).
Here's how BMW themselves describe the OLED design: "The horizontal lines of the side profile glide gently away at the rear in a final expansive flourish. As at the front, the body styling in this area is deliberately understated, allowing the innovative, narrow and slender lights to make a powerful statement. For the first time on a BMW the rear lighting is provided by organic LEDs, paving the way for a completely new treatment of the typical BMW L-shaped lights".
BMW further says that "due to their very thin dimensions, and since they do not require reflectors in order to produce the desired broad light dispersion, they (the OLED panels) open up completely new ways of using light in and around the vehicle".
BMW seems to be hedging their bets, as the company is collaborating with at least three OLED makers. Besides Astron Fiamm, BMW also presented a rearlight that uses Philips panels a few weeks ago, and we also know that LG Chem is collaborating with the German auto maker.
Comments
Mikael - yes, and other companies as well (such as BlackBody and Hella). But in this post I was referring to LG-Chem and Philips as they specifially had collaborations with BMW.
Not only Philips and Basf or LG Chem develops
Oled for use in cars but also Osram have announced use of Oleds
especially as rearlight within 4-years time.