00:01:32 Lighting and Evs
00:04:50 Interior / Exterior Lighting Innovations
00:06:38 Design Integration
00:08:21 Insourcing & Outsourcing & Reshoring
00:11:14 US Lighting Production – Regionalization Trends
00:13:00 Smart Lighting
00:18:11 Future of Features
00:19:50 Lighting and Safety
Vehicles continue to shift focus more on electronics and software and this shift impacts lamp manufacturers. In this week’s episode of Stephane Vedie, CEO of LUXIT Group joins Stephan Tarnutzer as they reimagine mobility in the world of vehicle lighting. They discuss innovations, design integration, smart lighting, safety features and more.
There is a trend towards smart lighting in cars, focusing on interior lighting and features. Some features allow customers to customize welcome features based on lighting, including high-resolution logo projections and small movies and videos.
The regulations for these features are evolving, with China becoming more advanced and allowing new functions to be legal on the road. Different users share vehicles, driving the trend of sharing mobility. Users want to customize their vehicles to feel like they are their own. Lighting plays a significant role in safety, function, and customization in the future world of software-defined vehicles.
LUXIT is a world-leading technology expert in vehicle small lamp design, with a mission to inspire and guide the evolution of lighting for styling, branding, performance, and safety. LUXIT is a company of world-leading technology experts in vehicle small lamp design and manufacture, headquartered in Farmington Hills, Michigan, serving OEMs and Tier 1 customers separately under two divisions.
Their mission is to inspire and guide the evolution of lighting for styling, branding, performance, and safety in automotive small lamp, auxiliary lighting and components for both exterior and interior applications.
LUXIT has a global footprint and full vertical integration allows us to serve our customers with speed, creativity, and flexibility, and our family of companies operates as a streamlined organization.
Stephane is the CEO of LUXIT Group, a global lighting supplier to the Automotive Industry.
He has 25 years’ experience in the automotive industry working for global corporations in Europe and North America. Prior to joining LUXIT Group, Mr. Vedie was the North American CEO at Magneti Marelli (now Marelli) and the Global CEO at Varroc Lighting Systems (now Plastic Omnium Lighting).
He joined New Water Capital in September 2021, a PE firm located in Boca Raton Florida, to lead their automotive platform. LUXIT Group was created with the acquisition of 5 different privately owned companies. Mr. Vedie holds dual Masters Degrees, one in Purchasing from University of Grenoble (France,) and the other in Business Administration from the Graduate School of Business in Amiens (France).
Welcome everyone to the addition of Reimagined Mobility Podcast series. I’m here with Stephane Verde from Luxit. Stephane, welcome to the show. You and I know each other for a while. You’re doing some unique things and I think many people may not realize how important lighting is in the mobility space,
Not only in the past, but certainly today and for sure also in the future. So maybe explain a little bit about your role, what company you’re working for, what you guys are doing. And then let’s let’s jump in and see how
You see the future of mobility and how you see with your technologies. Help reimagine how we see mobility today. Yeah, Thank you, Stephan. Thank you for the opportunity. Like you said, under the CEO of Luxit Group, Luxit Group is a new supplier that we put together with the acquisition of five different companies.
We are about $250 million in term of the new. We have five plants in the U.S., two in Taiwan, two in China. And we do lighting. We do lighting as a two, supporting all the head lamp on their lamp manufacturers all over the globe and mainly in North America.
And we do lighting as a tier one, doing all the small lamps so it can be fog lamps, stop lamp side, multiple side repeater license plate lamp, and more and more interior lighting as well. So that’s all we are. You you are an expert in powertrain. AVL is on expert in powertrain.
So you know better than me that in the past with ICI engine and powertrain, it was pretty easy to differentiate the vehicles from one brand to the other, from one model to the other based on powertrain itself. Now with EV tell me what you think.
But it seems to me as a user that there are less differences with EV vehicle. So the common manufactures, the OEM, the brands they need to find new ways to differentiate vehicles. And I think the lighting is really instrumental in this. With the EV in production, we see that lighting
Is also getting more realestate on the vehicle. One simple reason with EV you have less engine noise. Let’s put a less powertrain noise so it’s even more important for the car to be seen to avoid accident, to make sure that the people up on the vehicle notice the vehicle.
So we see a lot of opportunities, a lot of new areas where we are adding lighting. In terms of differentiation, you’ve seen, I’m sure, some lead badges, lead logos, lead thread plates. We are putting lights in in new areas. When great a real source of differentiation to create the look.
A brand identity is the grille in the past with ICE you need the grille to cool the engine compartment. Now you don’t need this function anymore. So you can introduce lights, you can do a lot of different styling and, and pretty cool design. So that’s, that’s what we do. And on lighting.
And that’s really a great motivation for me, for my team. It’s also always about safety. We are in the business of, of saving life and I don’t think everyone is is realizing this. They are about 1.3, 1.4 million of fatalities on the road every year, which is far too much, not too many.
I think we are all trying to focus on the vision of a zero fatalities. I hope we’re going to reach this one day with technology, with autonomous driving, with all the trends that we are able of the technology we’re able to implement in the new vehicles.
But 72% of the fatalities occur during night. So I think there is a direct correlation between the quality of road lighting, the kind of features we can offer to the drivers, to the users and the safety on the road. And so that’s something that keeps us busy,
Keeps us focused, and we try to support our customers on this. In terms of our vision. there are a lot of trends when we look, for example, at autonomous driving. I don’t think we are really close to level five,
But we are in the middle of level two or three and getting closer to level four. When you start adding some portion of your morning driving or your commute to to work where you don’t need to pay full attention
To to the road where you don’t need to be fully focused on the steering wheel and what’s coming up at you, then you can start reading your morning paper, you can start answering your emails, drinking your coffee, being a little distracted. And this is when your vehicle is becoming your second living room.
And this is where you start speaking about going beyond lighting, mood lighting. This is where we can introduce a lot of cool features and this is what we are doing. And more and more we are presenting to the interior lighting, bringing technology is bringing some some cool photos
To to the passengers and the drivers of the vehicles. Very interesting. talk to me a little bit. I felt like for the last maybe up until about five years ago, a lot of lighting, focus and effort was given to interior lighting, right. So that the customer can
Whatever different color lightings and in night driving or accent accessorizing to some degree the interior or the in-cabin experience. And then I felt like things maybe have shifted a little bit over the last five years. We’re going to adaptive lighting now. Sensors started getting integrated, such as LIDAR sensors and other
Type of sensors into the headlights and the tail lights. Where do you see the future of innovation happening in lighting? Is it interior? Is it exteriors is dependent on, as you just mentioned, there we go in autonomous and we need more sensor. Places are places to put sensors.
How do you guys see where it really in the middle of this? Is this industry and this trend maybe? No, I think we go both ways. Lots of innovation and content expansion and the interior lighting for the reason I just mention, the vehicle becoming your your second
Living room and your new functions being introduced. And I think we are in the middle of this and I think we’re going to continue to see some increase trend towards this increasing content. In terms of exterior lighting, we have seen a trend of digitalization, of light, pixelation of light.
We see more and more reducing the size of the lighting elements. And honestly, these are really offering always endless opportunities in terms of styling, in terms of technologies and in terms of efficiencies. Also for the efficiency of the designs increasing.
So so we have innovations on the interior, we have innovation on the exterior. And I think one of the main trend is to see lighting gaining some new early stage on the vehicles. I think I think an interesting thing I read about maybe four or five years ago,
I don’t know, but quite a while back, several years back was and I haven’t seen it in the field. So I want to ask you if it actually exists yet. Is most technology that they were talking about, would the light actually become smart enough to see that there’s another person
Walking on the side of the road and it automatically would adjust where the light goes? So I wouldn’t be blinded if I ride a bicycle or if I walk on the sidewalk or whatever he might be. Is is that technology there and is it widely deployed
Or is it more in some very specific applications. Though? Absolutely. The technology is there. We we use it in the Matrix alone, for example. It’s not the light, it’s the light is part of a system of the system
That as a the camera in most of the cases, but the light is also helping the LIDAR the light and the there is definitely a trend, like you mention, of integrating this new new elements of the vehicles, like you had our light camera into lighting because the lighting pieces are beautiful pieces
And usually we hide this ugly, LIDAR this ugly, lie down behind the bezel, behind the coating elements inside head lamp, inside the rear lamp to to keep the harmony of the design, to keep the harmony and the appealing aspect of of the vehicle.
What are you guys at Luxit seeing as it relates to in-sourcing and outsourcing, a lot of a lot of talk right now over the last year maybe specific can we do the IRA when it comes to batteries? Right. You got to do the batteries in the U.S.
So that you can qualify for certain government incentives and whatnot. How do you guys see it when it comes to headlights? Is is it a similar discussion? Are you do want it to be strategically more prepared to compete in the U.S. market that you said earlier you’re heavily focus on? Are?
What do you see when it comes to insourcing and outsourcing, which again, is not a trend or a reimagining mobility topic from a vehicle, but from the complete ecosystem that some of our listeners and viewers are interested to know about more as well. Yeah, and look, we don’t do head lamp.
We don’t do rearl amp, but we support as a tier two the head lamp on the rear lamp makers. And we see that more and more the head lamp and rear lamp makers they use outsourcing to to focus on the critical elements of their product. So they rely heavily on companies
Like us on they are not so many that have the set of skills that we are able to have that are very specific to the lighting industry and more and more, instead of supplying to a company just a plastic part or aluminum die casting insync
We we do a full service we would do a full module. So there is clearly a trend towards outsourcing it more of the content of the head lamp and the rear lamp. Then 15 years ago, head lamp was 25 parts in the bill of material. Today you have headlamps with 300 350 components.
So this increased complexity is forcing the head lamp and the rear lamp makers to outsource some of the subassemblies to companies like us in our Tier one business. In the small business, the fog lamp that we produce, for example, we are very unique in this.
We are the only player able to fully vertically integrate every element of this lamps. We produce the plastic, parts we do the metalization, we do the coating, the outcoating, the antifog coating, we do the electronics. We have a … lines right now and looking to expand our electronic capacity on the
We have a fully automatic assembly process, and that’s the reason why we are able to reshore the production of small lighting in the United States. We have five plants in the U.S. and our customers are really demanding to be localized close to their plants. I think in the last few years with COVID,
With the supply chain issues that our industry has faced, everyone has realized the benefits of having your suppliers close to you, assembly plants. So that’s what we offer to to our OEMs, to the customers will also the proximity. At the same time, we still need to to be cost competitive.
So the vertical integration that we are offering is giving us this competitive advantage in terms of cost of allowing us to to localize in the U.S.. Very interesting. And if you, Stephane, if you look five years forward, do you see that trends continuing as you mentioned, that
The Tier one lamp providers come to you for technologies that they may not have or for capabilities that they don’t want to do as well as for ensuring, so to speak. So production in the U.S., do you see that continuing? You see something changes again once the human mind,
Once we forget about that there was COVID and supply chain issues, we get about it and we go back to what we did before, which is push everything outside the U.S.. What do you see right now? Yeah, as it is to trend.
So first, I think the lighting companies that are making head lamp and the rear lamp, they will invest more and more in electronics and less and less on plastic and plastic injection on your first treatment investments.
So I think there are opportunities for us to continue to to grow as a as a partner and as an assembly of a smaller and more useful them. As far as the car manufacturers, I think the trend is here to stay and they want a regional panel of suppliers.
I don’t think any more. The U.S. car manufacturers want to import too much products from Southeast Asia, from China. I think they are adopting some regional strategy. So for the cars they produce in the U.S., they want U.S. suppliers for the cars they produce in China.
They want Chinese suppliers for the cars they produce in Europe. They want European suppliers. They want to avoid the cross flow between the regions. But I think at the same time there, they would like to have only one development partner.
So if you are a global company like we are, you are able to support the car manufacturer with the right development capacity in the region that they needed and then you are able to produce locally in each of the market. You are you are answering their needs.
And I think this is the trend for the years to come for sure. Interesting. Interesting. And you alluded a little bit to it. My next question I wanted to ask you, you said you see less and less lamp manufacturers, let’s say tier ones, right, to to focus on the plastic,
To start to focus more on the electronics, which is great for you because the auto part is what you do and that that’s increase business. Right. For what others don’t want to do is perfect fit, but generally speaking, when it comes to lamps,
Is it fair to say with that common you made that even lamps now are getting more and more focused on the electronics and on the software, similar to what we see with the vehicle as a as a whole. Right. We’re talking about the software defined vehicle, the software on wheels and whatever.
All determined knowledge is we hearing nowadays. Is it then something that everybody always assumed is a is a piece of plastic with with a lamp sticking out that we called a front or a tail light? Is that heavily moving into much more software focused
And software that may not controlled but defined to some degree? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, every every lamp, but it’s almost valid for every part of the car. Every every lamp is a smart lamp. It’s smart lighting for us in the small lighting business,
The interior lighting is is getting more and more software content. You know, you want to to be able to command the intensity of lighting with with a gesture only. For example, you want to the vehicle to look nice with the driver today to adapt to the setting to to this specific person.
For example, we have more and more welcome features in the vehicle. So the vehicle organized with cell phone is in the pocket of the person coming. And then so if it’s if it’s you Stephan then there would be the Swiss flag, if it’s me, there would be the French flag.
If it’s Jeremiah it would be the American flag. You know, he gives a welcome features. For example, we we have products already that we are selling to our customers. Well, you can customize your welcome features based on lighting. We have a small logo projections. It’s pretty high resolution.
You can also project some small movies, small videos on the you can project the logo of your favorite sports team. You can project the picture of your kids, you can project whatever you want. And for sure, there are regulations.
The regulations are pretty easy to deal with when the car is in parking position. Obviously, when the car is in movement, it’s it’s more complicated. But the regulations will evolve and we see areas in the world like China, for example, that are becoming very, advancible.
And you can do a lot of things in China that you can’t do in Europe and that you can do in the U.S. Today the U.S. is a little behind in terms of allowing this new features, this new functions to be legal on the road.
So so let’s stick for a moment with the with the French flag. I think it was a great example. And I’m definitely going to look for my next car to be able to put that flag down and and see what I can do there. The French flag.
So that kind of feature, which I think is let’s just call it cool, right? I’m not sure that’s the right word, but maybe the American way to say it’s a cool feature and it’s it’s a differentiation. And in it it brings the car closer to something that I feel is my own right.
A Customize it. Where do you see the trend where OEMs want to have that? Is it is it at the high end vehicle? Is it at the it the middle? Is it at the lower end or are they pushing it out across the board? What is what’s the trend that you’re seeing
Where some of these features again, that’s just an example. What other ones are these advanced features that you just mentioned, Where what are the OEMs pushing them are least the German OEM or the European OEMs, what are the legal environment allows it, but not the U.S. ones? Is that Asian ones?
Is it the high end vehicle, the low end? Where do you see it? If you stick with our example, that’s a very simple things to to do. You know, it’s a static projection and obviously in polo, but you don’t need a super high resolution. It’s not like you project a video.
It’s not very expensive in this type of projection system that you can do exterior on Indio, by the way, I think every car manufacturer right now is looking at it. You know, it’s it’s very cheap to do that. But the why you know, I think clearly there is a trend towards shell mobility.
I mean, the trend was even much stronger before COVID. COVID, I think that slow this down a little bit, but still out there, you know, and when one vehicle is is being shared by different user still as a user, you want to feel it’s your own vehicle when you use it,
You know, So you want to have ways to customize this vehicle, to have ways to feel that’s my car, that’s my vehicle. And this little this little functions are part of the customization. You can add your own settings for interior lighting, you can add your own welcome features.
You can either, you know, the same way that the seat is also recognizing you, you know, the seats it will. We have the setup that you have, the player they called it before. So they are I think I think that’s the trend that’s driving this and share mobility
So that you can have different uses of the same vehicle, of the same car. Very interesting. Do you see in that trend exactly what we just talked about? Do you see the OEMs looking at this as something you got to have to compete?
Again, you know, Tesla has a lot of bells and whistles of what you can configure and lights and things that you can do, on the screen and other type of features. As you mentioned, other OEMs are now starting to bring that as well or already have.
But do you see this as a trend that is looking at differentiating your product or is it something everybody’s doing it? So I have to do it as well just to kind of keep up. Where do you see that ultimately going? I mean, it’s run as their own, as their own brand identity.
My own test, I think less is more. You know, I don’t want my car to look like a Christmas tree the entire year, maybe for one week in the year, one month in the year. So every brand is defining who they are in terms of style.
And that’s, I think one of the pull of lighting is you are part of defining the brand identity, the family feeling, the signature or so of the vehicle when you look at the vehicle from the back. So that’s why we we’re working with this to you.
That’s why we’re working with the marketing department. That’s why we are the crossroad of different stakeholders inside the car manufacturers. Let’s go back to what you said I think a little bit earlier that that lighting is really in your company is in the middle of it, trying to protect lives. Right.
So it’s a way of not only giving to driver a better view forward or backwards or sideways maybe as well, but also to let other road users or potential pedestrians know that there’s a vehicle coming. Right. What is it?
What is it that you see going forward that lighting needs to do even more or maybe the OEMs need to do even more with lighting that maybe today we’re not doing specifically as it relates to safety and example might be total example, totally out of the blue, more lights. We need more lights.
A vehicle is not lit enough enough right now or needs to be more targeted lighting or lighting needs to be tied together with noise as soon as we detect another a road user another pedestrian specifically we go into. EVs are much more quiet then ICE Stephane. Where do you see it?
There again, as we reimagine mobility, where do you see lighting? Maybe not used enough specifically as it relates to safety. Lighting as as to functions is to see, to be seen. These are the two functions of what we do. So I think especially with the EV penetration, the to be seen
Functions needs to continue to be enhanced and we need to make sure that if you cannot hear the vehicle coming, at least you see it. I think that’s very important. The to see function. Someone could think here if one day the car is fully autonomous,
If we reach a level five, we don’t need lights. You know, nobody needs to see I, I disagree. I think it’s I think for the cameras, for example, to work correctly, you need a minimum of lighting. You need a good a good light on the element to be able to detect
The objects that are coming at you or that are on the vehicle. I think we need to work more on the connections between the lighting system of the vehicle and the other sense of system. If you want more and more will evolve from lighting companies to sensing companies.
I think this is the sense of of history here in terms of safety. The more light, the better for the driver. But still, you need to be careful for the oncoming traffic, not to not to blame the oncoming traffic, not to create danger for the others.
So the best technology that is available on the market is the matrix technology where you are able to isolate the the the area of the vision of the oncoming traffic. So you can always be on hi-beam you want. You can always have the maximum of light projected on the wall
And still avoid glaring the oncoming drivers, the oncoming traffic. This has been available for several years now, but unfortunately took a long time to become legal in the U.S. and still it’s not fully applicable the way we’d like it to be applicable.
So I’m a firm believer that the matrix technology can save life, and I think that’s definitely something we need to do a better job as an industry in terms of accelerating the implementation of of these technologies. Interesting. And then maybe the last question, Stephane, outside of lighting,
What what excites you the most about the future of mobility? Is it is it EVTOLS? Is it is it autonomous vehicles? Is it that you don’t have to go to the grocery store but a robot brings you exactly what you order directly to your doorsteps?
What is it that excites you again outside of lighting for a moment, please. I know I like to drive my car so I’m not that excited about autonomous driving. I mean, sometimes it can be practical when you have something else to do. I need to get somewhere,
But I hope we’re still going to be able to drive our vehicles. You know, I think they always will sort of keep. ICE you know, green. I think there are ways that ICE can be even greener than EVs. And I like that we don’t forget about this, you know,
And I’m not in a powertrain business. So I leave this to experts like, like you Stephan. but I still would like to to keep some ICEs on the roads. And I think driving my vehicle, if if I if I want to, you know, so maybe that’s not the
The vision of everyone that’s that the vision of the future. But at least that’s my personal opinion. That’s good. That’s all that matters here. Thank you so much, Stephane for your time and for insight into an area that probably very few people outside of the immediate
Industry of of lamps and lighting are familiar with. But again, very important, as we’ve just learned over the last 25 minutes. Thank you so much. It Thanks for listening to Reimagine Mobility Podcast. If you like this episode, please subscribe and tell a friend.