Continuous empowerment of automotive lighting applications innovation, InnoSilicon released multiple heavyweight new products. In recent years, the rapid development of smart electric vehicles has not only created many new “windfall” tracks, but also brought new opportunities for transformation to many traditional components, with car lights being one of them. Looking at the market, nowadays end users’ demands for car lights functionality are no longer limited to simple lighting and signal indication, but increasingly pursue diversity and intelligence, even deeply integrating with complex systems such as intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit, to achieve higher driving safety and entertainment cabin experience. Based on years of deep cultivation and accumulation in the field of automotive mixed-signal chips, InnoSilicon has been dedicated to researching and developing innovative car lighting control solutions in the past few years, covering complete one-stop solutions for headlights, interior ambient lights, and taillights, and successfully achieving large-scale “onboard” applications. According to previous statistics, as of the end of March this year, InnoSilicon’s automotive chip shipments have exceeded 200 million units. Recently, the 19th Automotive Lighting Industry Development Technology Forum and Shanghai International Automotive Lighting Exhibition were grandly held in 2024. During the event, InnoSilicon once again released and exhibited multiple innovative car lighting control solutions around full-scene interior and exterior lighting, providing “new solutions” for the continuous upgrade of vehicle lighting solutions.
Intelligent Car Lights, Quantity and Price Rise As a traditional component of the whole vehicle, the car light system benefits from the driving force of automotive electrification and intelligent transformation. It is rapidly entering a new era of intelligent car lights and opening a new cycle of growth. According to data from Gaishi Automotive Research Institute, in 2020, the size of the Chinese automotive lighting market was approximately 512.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 2.2%. By 2022, it had rapidly increased to 874.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 44.6%. From exterior lights to interior lights, both in application scenarios and individual vehicle value, the quantity and price are rising. Take headlights as an example. Thanks to the continuous upgrade of light source technology and the increasing demand from the terminal market for a safer and more comfortable driving experience, they are evolving from traditional headlights to intelligent headlights. In particular, matrix ADB headlights, due to the deep integration of perception information from onboard cameras, can intelligently adjust the light projection area, achieve more flexible adaptive steering, precise illumination, and even intelligently adjust the lighting mode according to different driving scenarios, greatly improving driving safety, especially nighttime driving safety and comfort. They are being widely adopted in more and more new vehicles. “In addition to ADB headlights, in the process of transitioning from fuel vehicles to new energy vehicles, grille lights as a new application of exterior lights are also rapidly popularizing in the terminal market.” Recently, a senior market director at InfiniMicro told Gaishi Automotive during an interview. Unlike fuel vehicles, due to the change in power form, new energy vehicles no longer need grille lights for engine cooling. Nowadays, more and more car companies are introducing illuminated grille lights in new vehicles for various applications such as lighting, decoration, personalized light language interaction, brand logos, and design concept displays. Furthermore, there are also taillights, as an important exterior component of the whole vehicle. With the upgrade of light sources from halogen to LED to OLED, in the new era of intelligent electric vehicles, they are also given more new functional demands. This includes not only rich functions but also faster animation refresh rates and cooler lighting effects.
In recent years, the value of lighting systems on bicycles has greatly increased. Compared to traditional halogen or xenon lights, the cost of intelligent headlights on bicycles has reached thousands of yuan, and the cost of OLED taillights, which are relatively high, has also reached nearly 3000 yuan (410$). Thanks to the rapid development of intelligent cabins, end users’ demand for a more intelligent and comfortable driving experience continues to increase. They focus more on creating a cozy atmosphere in the car and even integrate with other applications in the cabin to enhance the immersive and emotional connection experience. For example, in some new cars, ambient lights are linked to music, changing synchronously with the rhythm and mood of the music. Users can customize the cabin atmosphere based on their preferences or needs, achieving a diversified cabin experience. IndiMicro has developed the iND83220 based on the high-speed automotive lighting ELINS bus, integrated with a CAN transceiver to support dynamic RGB animations with low latency and high-speed refresh. Today, automotive lighting systems are not just for illumination but also emphasize design and brand characteristics, even becoming a new human-machine interaction interface with huge blue ocean value. According to data from the Gaishi Automotive Research Institute, the overall lighting market in China is expected to exceed 140 billion yuan by 2025. Continuous innovation empowers the upgrade of the entire lighting experience For the increasingly complex and diverse applications of vehicle lighting systems, the complexity of functions is increasing, leading to more complex light effect controls. “With the transformation of the new electronic and electrical architecture, the increase in the number of LEDs and the complexity of dynamic effects in vehicle lighting require higher transmission rates, rich instructions, and functional safety indicators,” said Zhuang Ji. The new generation of products released by IndiMicro this time focuses on these core indicators and enhances multidimensional capabilities.
Specifically, for exterior vehicle lighting, InnoMicro mainly released several new products at this exhibition, including the solution for ADB intelligent headlight controller LDM and the new 24-channel high-side linear constant current source LED driver chip iND83010 for automotive exterior decorative lighting. The biggest highlight of the ADB combination headlight control solution is the innovative Boost+Buck two-stage architecture, based on InnoMicro’s self-developed Boost iND87682, Buck iND87520, and iND8308X matrix control chips, achieving fast response speed, stackable peripheral design, and platform-based design advantages, flexibly meeting the diverse functional requirements of the current market for ADB headlights. In the past, traditional headlights mainly used a Boost-Buck single-stage architecture, which, although cost-effective, had drawbacks such as slow response speed and lack of platformization. With the rise of ADB headlight applications, requirements for response speed and animation effects are constantly increasing, making innovation in driving architecture imperative. Especially with the intensifying competition in the current smart electric vehicle market, OEMs have higher requirements for the diversity of headlight functions and research and development iteration speed. Using the traditional single-stage architecture means redesigning and developing for each new vehicle model or customer, consuming a lot of time and testing resources. Addressing this industry pain point, InnoMicro’s new headlight combination solution supports a two-stage architecture of constant voltage boost + constant current buck, flexibly achieving richer and more complex headlight functions to meet the rapid development needs of different levels of vehicle models for entire vehicle manufacturers. At the lamp board end, pixel control is achieved through matrix management chips. InnoMicro is also the first domestic chip company to independently develop the above three chips completely.
iND83010, the latest product from InfiniChips for exterior lighting, integrates high-performance CAN transceiver, ELINS high-speed communication bus, and 24-channel high-side constant current drive. It also has a voltage tolerance of up to 40V and a maximum single-channel current of 100mA, covering various applications in exterior lighting such as through tail lights, grille interactive lights, daytime running lights, turn signals, and more. iND83010 is one of the few high-side LED driver chips on the market and the first domestically to pass ASIL-B functional safety product certification. In addition to exterior lighting, targeting the increasingly rich ambient lighting applications inside vehicles, InfiniChips also introduces the new generation ambient lighting product iND83216, the first domestically produced SOC ambient lighting chip based on a 12-inch wafer. Prior to this, InfiniChips’ second-generation ambient lighting chip has been widely used by major OEMs, achieving the top market share domestically. The newly launched third-generation ambient lighting driver product, building on the second generation, adopts a more advanced SOC process to further enhance chip performance. In addition to a high-performance MCU, it integrates high-voltage LDO, 2-channel LIN transceiver, 3-channel LED constant current drive, and more, bringing faster processing efficiency to the system with SOC.
Besides vehicle lighting, with the continuous innovation of human-machine interaction in the car, especially the trend of multi-screen development, the demand for intelligent touch MCU is also increasing. In response to this, Ingenic Semiconductors is actively expanding its layout and has brought the new generation automotive touch product iND87501 to this exhibition to further enhance its product matrix. Zhuang Ji believes that the rapid development of smart electric vehicles not only poses higher demands on the entire vehicle manufacturers but also on upstream suppliers. This includes not only better product performance but also faster and more diverse demand response. Therefore, Ingenic Semiconductors will continue to promote the iteration and upgrade of existing products, while further expanding the product matrix to form a more complete platform service capability. Specifically in terms of vehicle lighting, Ingenic Semiconductors will focus on more channel control, faster communication bus, innovate in headlight applications, and continuously empower the overall vehicle lighting experience upgrade in all scenarios.