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> Is this just a luxury feature or are matrix lights actually common in European cars? My previous car in the sub €60k (2017) and my current in the sub €40k (2
by numlock86 6y ago
> Is this just a luxury feature or are matrix lights actually common in European cars?
My previous car in the sub €60k (2017) and my current in the sub €40k (2019) price category have automatic matrix headlights as well. Besides the usual detection of cars it will also turn off specific areas when signs are reflecting too strong or even completely turn off the upper headlights when you are on a road with continuous lighting, drive through a tunnel, drive through a city or town (GNSS and/or sign detection assisted I guess), it's really foggy and so on. While I had to manually activate automatic upper headlights on the previous car, my current car basically turns it on at start, no matter what time of the day, even when turned off previously. When it's bright it will basically turn off the headlights all together by itself and just kick in as needed. Really convenient.
Driving a lot at night I'd roughly guess from experience that about one out of twenty cars have automatic matrix headlights, maybe less. Anyway, I'd say it's common, but far from the norm.
Edit: As I drove to work today, one of the things that's not so convenient is that you have to keep your car clean or at least the smudge off the cameras. :^)
- belorn 6y agoI recently also tested such "feature" in a car from 2016, and I was quite unimpressed. As you say it has a lot of miss-identifications such as signs, and it doesn't work at all in mist, but for me it also failed several times to even recognize cars and blinded a few. For now it seems more like an technical interesting concept than a feature. I do not like false negatives in an technology that could cause result in car accidents. The speed limit sign detection is more useful as the false positives and false negatives is noticeable but mostly harmless.