ABSTRACT
Motor vehicle lights must allow the driver to both see and be seen in the dark. While the sidelights, tail lights, brake lights, and so on are relatively straightforward, the headlights present the most challenging problems. Various lighting technologies have been used by the automotive industry. Conventional lighting circuits do not have electronic control of the light source. Various solutions for automotive lighting have been reviewed in this chapter from both technological and historical perspectives. While gas discharge lights are very common, modern solutions based on LED and laser diodes are very economical and allow more control features. Among them, gas discharge lights and LED are considered therein. Laser lighting is very similar to LED devices and their control. The laser diode is a solid-state device, which emits light through photons. To prevent the LED lighting from color shift, the LED lamp can be dimmed by low-frequency pulse-width modulation control and usage of a single current level through an LED.
