BMW has beaten Audi in the race for laser technology, after becoming the first automaker in the world to sell cars with laser lights.
In a luxury ceremony in Munich, Germany, Thursday (05/06/2014), BMW handed over the keys to the first eight buyers of the BMW i8 sports car. The plug-in hybrid car is the first in the world to use laser technology in headlights.
Initially BMW said it would launch the i8 in August, because laser marking systems it wanted to fix a number of constraints on the use of laser technology in the car.
But last May, Audi came up with a surprise claim to be installing laser technology on the R8 LMX sports car. Audi plans to showcase the car at the Le Mans race, which will be held on June 14 in France and begin mass production in the same month.
So by handing over the keys to eight customers in the middle of last week, Audi can be said to have been “KO”.
The i8 laser light itself is claimed to be able to reach a distance of 600 meters. The lamps are also said to consume 30 percent less energy than regular LED lamps, take up less space, and weigh less.
BMW has also installed traffic sensor technology in its laser lights, so it won’t dazzle other drivers coming from the opposite direction.
Laser is a device that produces light through quantum mechanical and thermodynamic processes. As a light source, lasers have various properties, depending on the purpose for which the laser is made. Lasers emit light that is divergent and has a specific wavelength depending on the color of the light produced.
Colorful laser light is produced from a medium that has different wavelengths. Usually these colorful lasers are relatively harmless because they are at a relatively small wavelength. The working principle of the laser is closely related to the atomic concept.
