BMW Laser Headlight Tech Could Be Seen Within 2-3 Years

By Antony Ingram

Antony Ingram

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BMW laser headlights

BMWs already have a distinctive look in your rear-view mirror with their "angel-eye" headlamps and that view could soon start to look even more distinctive.

Inside Line (via Motor Authority) has revealed that BMW could be introducing its laser headlight technology within the next 2-3 years.

We've looked at BMW's laser lighting before on All Car Tech. The German carmaker sees many advantages of laser headlights over the best technology offered today, LED lighting. LEDs themselves already offer several advantages in terms of light output, energy use and finer control over incandescent or gas discharge lighting and lasers take that a step further.

Laser light is a different kind of light to that of regular light, as it's monochromatic - the light being produced only has one wavelength, rather than a color spectrum.

As a result the light can potentially be far more intense (as anyone familiar with laser pointers will attest) and the beam pattern can be controlled very precisely, instantly and safely.

BMW has already previewed its lighting technology on the 2014 BMW i8 plug-in hybrid supercar concept. Although the lights on the concept have a fairly standard look, BMW says that the tiny size of laser diodes light clusters could potentially be reduced in size from current units.

The 2-3 year date should mean the laser lighting coincides with production versions of the BMW i8 and the smaller BMW i3 electric car.