BMW Working on Laser Headlights

BMW's "angel eyes" are going to evolve even further in the following years. Nowadays, the state of the art technology in terms of headlights includes LEDs, but the German automaker is already looking forward to the next step, which will be done by using lasers.

As always, there are two main aims of this new technology: to improve safety, as well as efficiency.

BMW tells us that laser lighting will not only improve the assets we have today, but also allow revolutionary functions to be introduced. Are we going to witness a new acceptance for intelligent headlights? If we are to trust the Germans, the answer is "Yes".

You see this type of light is fundamentally different by natural one, as well as from artificial light we've seen so far. The main difference is that it is monochromatic, which means that the light, which brings all the light waves to same length and offers them a constant phase difference.

Thus, laser headlights offer an almost parallel beam with an intensity 1,000 times greater than that of LED technology. In terms of efficiency, the new headlights could cut energy consumption by as much as 50 percent.

In addition to that, the designers could also benefit from this, as the laser lighting diodes are one hundred times smaller compared to the cells of the LED headlights.

The laser headlight technology has already been previewed on the BMW i8 Concept, with the development expected to be used on the 2014 i8 production model.