2023 Shanghai Auto Lamp Exhibition: HELLA displays comprehensive and innovative lighting solutions for the needs of the Chinese market

Shanghai, 21 September 2023. HELLA, the automotive supplier operating under the umbrella brand FORVIA, attends the 18th Shanghai Auto Lamp Industry Development Technical Forum and the 9th Shanghai International Auto Lamp Exhibition (ALE) at Shanghai Automobile Exhibition Center from September 21st to 22nd, 2023. HELLA displays innovative lighting solutions customized for the Chinese market, covering headlamps, rear lamps, interior lighting, and car body lighting. In addition, technical experts from HELLA also shared advanced achievements and insights of HELLA with respect to cutting-edge lighting technology at the forum.

HELLA's innovative strength in automotive lighting technology has always formed a part of the company’s history, relying on which HELLA has built up a strong market position in the context of sophisticated lighting technologies. “HELLA is firmly committed to the Chinese automotive market and continues to strengthen its local-for-local approach to accelerate the successful business development in the country”, says Didier Keskas, HELLA Executive Vice President APAC of the Business Group Lighting and Member of the Lighting Executive Board. “We want to provide the Chinese market with cutting-edge, innovative solutions that are more affordable and attractive, to help our customers realize their brand vision and to provide superior mobility experience for our end-users.”

System competencies in digital lighting for full range of car levels

HELLA is dedicated to digitization of lighting. An ever higher resolution of the light distribution offers customers more choices and significantly improves safety and information functions. HELLA’s comprehensive digital lighting solutions support all vehicle categories: from entry level to medium category to luxury segment, covering 24-pixel, 100-pixel and high-precision SSL|HD technology of thousands of light pixels.

HELLA’s digital headlamp system SSL|HD is the world’s first- to-market high-resolution headlamp based on matrix LED technology with the implementation of new, safety-relevant lighting functions by means of intelligent control of up to 25,000 LEDs per chip. The system also reduces the size compared to the previous module generation by up to 75%, which creates new possibilities for integrating headlamps into vehicle architectures, and its patterns and functionalities are generated by software, which allows for over the air updates and new feature implementation over the product’s lifetime. With SSL | HD, HELLA can offer additional digital symbol projection opportunities such as vehicle width within a construction zone or driving path illumination. This technology has made its market debut in summer 2023.

Predictive safety, sustainability, and brand experiences

Rear lamp is not only an important safety function, but also offers a wide range of possibilities for creating individual signal lighting features. With the continuous development of automotive electrification and automation, rear lamp has become not only an important design element to high-light the brand identity of a car, but also a tool for communication with other road users. HELLA’s various rear lamp technologies, from LED light source, EdgeLight to FlatLight µMX concept-based lighting technology, not only provide unique and sophisticated lighting solutions for various levels of vehicles, but also give the rear lamp superior looking and more functionality, such as dynamic welcome and leaving home scenarios.

HELLA’s latest Digital FlatLight utilizes 80% less energy consumption of a taillight function, enabling customized styling opportunities with a Smart Glass cover with switchable segments that brings digitalization into rear lighting. Only 8 millimeters thick, Digital FlatLight gives automakers increased design flexibility to create unique, signature styling designs for their vehicles and offer opportunities for changing light pattern or dynamic animations including upgradability via soft-ware updates.

Aesthetic & emotional customer experiences

Vehicle interior lighting is becoming an increasingly important factor in enhancing the user experience. The combination of customization and new technologies opens up a new range of possibilities. As a supplier of complete systems, HELLA is able to develop tailor-made interior lighting scenarios to meet individual requirements.

HELLA’s new generation dynamic lighting solutions utilize HELLA’s latest SlimLight technology. Compared with RGB LED modules in the current market, HELLA high-power module has achieved about 10 times of luminous flux improvement with only a small increase in overall size. These modules facilitate interior ambient lighting of better illumination, large area and low cost. Combined with SlimLight technology, it can fully meet the customer's requirements for daytime atmosphere lighting. Combined with the data provided by customers and self-developed simulation software, HELLA can complete the real-time simulation and animation demonstration of dynamic lighting, so that customers can realize “What you see is what you get” in the early stage of the project. While realizing the traditional static lighting, it can realize various functions such as distance reminder, direction indicator, gradient surface light source and so on through flashing, flow and color mixing of multiple light sources.

Key design driver of the vehicle exterior

Car body lighting solutions can support to enhance safety, comfort and entertainment of mobility, providing unique and attractive exterior styling, and save energy. In the field of car body lighting, HELLA offers dynamic, individualized optical solutions, such as carpet-like welcome lights, grille lighting and phygital front shields, which help to respond to megatrends today: energy efficiency, safety and vehicle branding.

HELLA’s Front Phygital Shields (FPS) contain a new foil-manufacturing process and a dynamic polyurethane surface which gives the FPS a self-healing effect. Front Phygital Shields are large-area, complex modules for the front of the vehicle are used as a style-defining, brand-differentiating design element of electric vehicles by means of lighting and multicoloring. With additional functionalities such as integrated sensor technology, radar permeability and heating, they also play a central role in automated driving.

During the first day of the exhibition, HELLA will hold a night test drive event of its demo car which is equipped with HELLA's cutting-edge lighting at the Shanghai Automobile Convention and Exhibition Center, to give customers, medias, and industry experts a real experience of HELLA's cutting-edge lighting technologies such as digital headlamp system SSL|HD and Digital FlatLight. The test drive will simulate the driving environment, giving the audience the opportunity to experience the safety and comfort brought by HELLA's advanced lighting technology. At the event site, the HELLA R&D experts will provide visitors with all around technical support.