First Production Cadillac with LED Headlights

2008-Feb-07 | Osram is equipping a series-produced Cadillac car with all-LED headlights: the U.S. automaker is now using LEDs from Osram Opto Semiconductors for the headlights in its Escalade Platinum model. The Hella company, which manufactures the headlights, will install the LEDs. The new light sources will be used for all headlight functions — i.e. low-beams, high-beams, and daytime headlights, and will also serve as parking lights and side marker lamps. The Cadillac model will be on the market this year.

Light-emitting diodes have already been used as headlights for special edition vehicle models like the Audi R8, and the long-lasting, energy-saving light sources have been the norm in taillights for quite some time. Each headlight in the new series-production Cadillac will house seven Ostar Headlamp LEDs, five which generate low-beam light, with the remaining two supplying additional power for the high-beams. Daytime headlights, which are used to enhance safety, will be lit by dimming the LEDs. This combination of low-beam and daytime headlights can only be achieved with LEDs; other solutions require additional bulbs. Each headlight will also be equipped with a parking light consisting of white Advanced Power TopLEDs, as well as side marker lamps equipped with yellow Power TopLEDs. The small size of LEDs makes design possibilities nearly limitless.

The Ostar Headlamp LEDs, which were developed especially for the requirements of Hella KGaA Hueck&Co, are among the brightest LEDs used in motor vehicles today. With a color temperature of 5,500 kelvins, the tiny devices generate light whose color impression corresponds to that of daylight, and whose temperature is well above that of the bluish xenon lights (4,000 kelvins) used in modern automobiles. The Ostar LED is very robust and can operate at temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius and as high as 125 degrees close to the engine.

Osram recently received the German Future Prize for its development of ultra-high-performance LEDs like the Ostar Lighting model, a small LED spotlight that has a luminosity of over 1,000 lumens. That’s brighter than a 50-watt halogen lamp, which means the small light can fully illuminate a desk from a height of two meters, for example.