Porsche wants us to see in HD at night: its headlights reach 600 meters and illuminate twice as much

As anyone who is a regular reader of Xataka can see, I regularly drive the newest cars on the market and spend a good part of my days jumping from new and newly launched vehicles to my 2006 Fiat Grande Punto. With each turn around my little compact, the noises and vibrations assail me but, above all, there is something I miss. Rather, I miss him a lot. Forks some good lights.

The evolution that has taken place in something more than a decade in the lighting equipment of cars has been spectacular. From xenon headlights we went to LEDs and lasers. And the change is brutal. A technical mastery has been reached in which Porsche wanted to take a new step by presenting its Porsche HD-Matrix LED.

Up to 600 meters away in HD

Technical evolution has reached a point that can be defined by a single number: 32,768 individually controllable pixels by lighthouse Until now, the most advanced headlights from Porsche had four modules for low beam and a central matrix with 84-pixel technology. To improve these optical groups, it has been necessary to use 25 patents.

With these new headlights, the Porsches will have two HD matrix modules and two dual-function modules: low beam and high beam. The matrix headlights They have the advantage that they can redirect their light depending on the obstacles in front of them, turning off part of their pixels or reducing the brightness to, for example, surround a vehicle in front of us. The light intensity reaches 1,400 lumens.

The big change in these Porsche HD-Matrix LEDs is not so much the matrix technology or its range (up to 600 meters). The qualitative leap occurs in the lighting quality. Porsche says that “an LED matrix with a surface area of ​​only 12.8 by 3.2 millimeters, with an integrated LED controller (ASIC), which generates a high-resolution luminous flux never before achieved,” will be integrated into the lower modules.

Thus, 16,384 light-emitting diodes are used per matrix, which are individually controlled and whose brightness can be adjusted to 1,024 different levels. Each lens also has “a specifically ground optical glass.” These will be in charge of adjusting the angle of the light, with “wide angle” and “telephoto” functions to focus, open the beam of light or focus it and achieve the aforementioned 600-meter range.

With these changes, Porsche guarantees that vehicles equipped with this type of headlamps will be able to benefit from better light quality and games in the projection of light that allow not only avoiding moving obstacles (such as other cars), but also projecting a light carpet over the lane when driving on the open road or projecting the width of the vehicle on the ground (including mirrors) in those work areas or road narrowing. the road.