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BMW spearheading OLED lighting tech

German brand BMW is in the midst of creating a revolutionary new lighting system for its bikes cars using Organic LED (OLED) technology.

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We won’t go into too much detail explaining what exactly is OLED, but here’s a Wiki page to sate your curiosity anyways. Keeping things short, OLED technology boasts several advantages over regular or ‘unorganic’ LED lighting such as its use of lightweight and flexible plastic substrates, a wider viewing angle plus improved brightness, superior power efficiency and thickness, as well as its quicker response time.

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Called BMW Organic Light, the firm believes that its new technology will allow a lamp to have an almost constant luminous intensity across its entire radiant angle. Such a result is only possible with OLED as regular LED lights currently used in most vehicles today seems less bright to the human eye when seen more from the side.

Despite the tech’s cutting edge appeal and its almost certain application in the next few years, BMW did however downplay the technology’s ability to significantly improve over current technologies. BMW states: “while OLEDs create a “highly three-dimensional lighting effect that viewers find very attractive,” they lack the luminous density of traditional LEDs, requiring a combination of the two in order to be effective.”

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But don’t forget, this is the brand that gave the world the first ABS-equipped motorcycle in 1988, the first road bike with adaptive headlight technology in 2010, the first production semi-active chassis in 2012, and the first production bike primed with an LED main headlight with integrated daytime running lights in 2012 as well. If anyone should make the first road bike using OLED lighting tech, we cannot think of another brand more fitting.

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Source: BMW Motorrad via Asphaltandrubber

Co-founder of Bikes Republic and a motoring journalist by night. He is a self described enthusiasts with a passion for speed but instead rides a Harley and a J300. A man of contradictions, he is just as passionate about time off in the quiets as he is about trail braking into turn one at Sepang Circuit on two or four wheels.

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