Delivering a brighter, greener future Kioto Czech

DELIVERING A BRIGHTER, GREENER FUTURE

Kioto Czech is one of Europe’s leading manufacturers of automotive lighting products. The group’s many innovations have led to a number of ‘firsts’ in addition to providing greater energy savings and protection of the environment, as Philip Yorke reports.

Koito Czech is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Japanese Koito Manufacturing Co. and acts as a second strategic European base to its existing UK facility. The Czech company was founded in 2001 and started its production in the town of Žatec in September 2002. At present, it is one of the main employers in the Ústí region. Today the Koito Group occupies a fifth of the world automotive lighting market and is a leader in its field. Koito Manufacturing Ltd. with its headquarters in Japan has production plants and branch offices in Asia, in America and Europe.

The Koito Group produces lighting equipment for a broad spectrum of automotive applications including advanced lighting systems for cars, ships, aircraft and for rail transport including electrical components and bulbs.

Koito is a truly innovative company that has achieved many ‘firsts’ in the area of automotive lighting. These include the first commercial application of LED technology in automotive headlamps, the integration of low beam and high beam LED components inside one reflector, the implementation of plastic lenses in cars and many others. Koito’s innovations have led to major energy savings and to greater environmental protection across the board.

Glaring safety advantages

The Koito Czech company recently released the World’s First BladeScan™ ADB (Adaptive Driving Beam) system, which makes a significant contribution to the reduction of traffic accidents through its high-resolution lighting distribution control systems.

In order to prevent the risk of traffic accidents at night, Koito has been developing headlamp systems called “ADB™” which automatically control the high-beam lighting range in response to any driving conditions. The breakthrough ADB technology ensures wide visibility for drivers while avoiding the problem of glare to oncoming vehicles. “We are promoting the wide use of ADB by commercialising our current mainstay ADB system, an “Array 3 ADB,” that controls light distribution by turning on/off each LED individually” said a company spokesperson. The newly released “BladeScan ADB” emits LED light to two fast-revolving blade mirror reflectors and lights-up forward vision by using the residual image effect. By turning on/off its twelve LEDs in line with the rotation of its blade mirrors, BladeScan ADB ensures high-resolution light distribution equivalent to the use of 300 LEDs and minimises the shading area. This unique system has the ability to light the vicinity of oncoming vehicles and vehicles ahead or any area between them and helps drivers to detect crossing pedestrians at an early stage, thus potentially contributing to a major reduction in road traffic accidents. The new “BladeScan ADB” system has already been adopted by Toyota Motor Corporation’s new “Lexus RX4” model. Koito aims to further expand the use of ADB in conjunction with an “Array ADB” and is committed to further pursuing its cuttingedge LED technologies and to develop “customer-first” products in order to enhance the safety and comfort of the world’s busy motorised society.

New interactive ‘LiDAR’ technologies

It was recently announced that Koito and Blickfeld GmbH of Germany have agreed to explore advanced technologies for the development of LiDAR 3D solid state technology that can be fully Integrated into headlamps interactively with ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System).

Today Koito strives to respond to future changes in mobility, such as connectivity, autonomous driving, sharing, and electric vehicles. The company is dedicated to the development of cutting-edge technologies that stay ahead of its customer’s and market needs, thus enabling the commercialisation of products at the earliest opportunity. Moreover, Koito will continue to bring attractive products to market in a timely manner. As one of these strategies, the Koito group has re-enforced its information and research structure globally and started to develop the latest LiDAR technologies designed for headlamp integration in collaboration with Blickfeld of Germany. The collaboration of KOITO’s lighting technologies and LiDAR technologies provides high-end automotive components with built-in LiDAR for car manufacturers and are designed to function interactively with ADAS and its autonomous driving technology. As LiDAR’s core technology, Blickfeld’s 3D solid-state LiDAR adopts a silicon MEMS mirror. Thanks to its compactness, the LiDAR technology can be integrated directly into an existing vehicle’s lighting equipment system, thus enabling real-time 3D mapping and object detection, as well as classification, and tracking without in any way altering the exterior design of the vehicle.

Koito told Industry Europe that it is committed to further pursuing these cutting-edge technologies and to developing “customer-first” products in order to enhance the safety and comfort for motorists.

Optimising energy efficiency

It is well known that Koito pioneered the reduction of LED Lo-beam Power Consumption and has since developed headlamps that use energy-efficient, long-lasting LEDs as the light source. The company was the first to mass-produce the world’s first LED headlamp in 2007. Since then, the power consumption of LED headlamps has been decreasing each year; currently it is about 50 per cent of that of discharge lamps (low beam). In this way the company has been enhancing fuel economy and reducing CO2 emissions ever since. n

For further details of Koito Czechs’ innovative lighting systems and services visit: www.koito-czech.cz