ST, Audi Join Hands for Next-Gen Automotive Lighting Solns

This partnership will help in building Audi’s creativity and success in automotive lighting solutions and ST’s broad expertise in automotive semiconductors, and specifically controllers and drivers for automotive lighting applications.

One of the leading semiconductor providers STMicroelectronics (ST) has collaborated with automobile manufacturing giant Audi AG to conceive, design, industrialize, manufacture, and deliver the next generation of innovative automotive exterior OLED lighting.

The first demonstration of this effort was the displaying of next-generation digital OLED technology presented by Audi at the 2019 International Symposium on Automotive Lighting (ISAL). Both the parties are planning to release this new technology in Audi’s future car models.

This partnership will help in building Audi’s creativity and success in automotive lighting solutions and ST’s broad expertise in automotive semiconductors, and specifically controllers and drivers for automotive lighting applications.

Moreover, the next-generation lighting design will enable more customized and animated lighting patterns, by controlling and diagnosing hundreds of individual OLEDs.

In addition to the flexibility to give unique design styling to Audi cars, the animated patterns will provide additional value in safety to customers.

Commenting on the development, Audi AG, Executive Vice President Electrics/Electronics, CarIT, Dr. Klaus Büttner said “with Audi’s long history of innovation and success in the premium automotive market, it was important to work with a semiconductor company who could bring their expertise in converting our ideas into robust, reliable chips that would meet our customers’ demanding expectations.”

Recently in ISAL demonstration, ST had contributed a complete plug-and-play system to control and continuously adjust the brightness of the numerous individually energized OLED pixels via an innovative high-speed automotive communication layer, specifically adapted by ST for lighting architecture and embedded in the actuator IC.

“Having worked closely with Audi for many years, ST has had the opportunity to lend our expertise, customer focus, and manufacturing reliability to many products in their outstanding vehicles; we know the quality and creativity they demand and appreciate Audi’s continued confidence and the recognition of our contributions that this new cooperation represents,” said Marco Monti, President, Automotive and Discrete Group, STMicroelectronics.