Automotive lighting

The tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies Con­ti­nen­tal and Osram have suc­cess­ful­ly con­clud­ed their nego­ti­a­tions on the Osram Con­ti­nen­tal GmbH joint ven­ture. The joint ven­ture, in which each of the part­ners has a 50 per­cent stake, aims to com­bine Continental’s and Osram’s respec­tive exper­tise in light­ing, light con­trol and elec­tron­ics and is sched­uled to start in the sec­ond half of 2018, once all the nec­es­sary merg­er con­trol approvals have been grant­ed. CEO Dirk Linzmeier comes from Osram and CFO Har­ald Ren­ner from Continental.
“We want to active­ly dri­ve for­ward tech­no­log­i­cal change in the light­ing mar­ket with­in the auto­mo­tive indus­try and devel­op even more inno­v­a­tive and intel­li­gent light­ing solu­tions. The joint ven­ture will help us to estab­lish the con­di­tions for this since it com­bines our exper­tise in soft­ware and elec­tron­ics with Osram’s auto­mo­tive light­ing exper­tise. As such, we will be able to offer our cus­tomers an unri­valed port­fo­lio in the light­ing mar­ket,” said Andreas Wolf, head of Continental’s Body & Secu­ri­ty busi­ness unit.
“Dig­i­tal­iza­tion is cre­at­ing new poten­tial appli­ca­tions in auto­mo­tive light­ing and, in turn, tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ties that we want to lever­age with Con­ti­nen­tal. By join­ing forces, we will be in an even bet­ter posi­tion to dri­ve for­ward inno­va­tions by work­ing close­ly with the auto­mo­tive indus­try to inte­grate light­ing, sen­sor tech­nol­o­gy and elec­tron­ics seam­less­ly in a sin­gle appli­ca­tion. This will allow us to advance new intel­li­gent light func­tions such as the com­bi­na­tion of light­ing and sen­sor tech­nol­o­gy in a mod­ule or light-based com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the dri­ver, oth­er road users and the vehicle’s sur­round­ings,” explained Hans-Joachim Schwabe, CEO of Osram’s Spe­cial­ty Light­ing division.
The joint ven­ture will be based with­in the region of Munich, but will oper­ate glob­al­ly to ensure rapid devel­op­ment cycles with cus­tomers in their local areas. The prod­uct port­fo­lio will fea­ture semi­con­duc­tor-based light­ing mod­ules such as LED mod­ules for front and rear head­lights, laser mod­ules and light con­trol units.