BMW iX xDrive50 headlights test

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[@mrmuds8624]

11:30 The people that live there are gonna be like "That frickin Bjorn!!! blinding us with his high beam test very other day!!!"

[@dragospahontu]

Rip

[@andrisbacanu2501]

The hotspot you mentioned in the video that turned and got brighter was the laser module activating. These headlights don't swivel with the steering wheel and only the laser module does. And yes, these are different to the I4 lights and are the newest iteration of BMW's laser lights :)

[@eirik500]

My experience also is that these lights are really good. Peculiar thing with laser boost activation only from 60 km/h. The other complaint I have is the lack of high beams above 90 km/h when there is street lighting. The ID.4 does that.

[@BizzMRK]

yeah the matrix lights on the ID.4 are awesome.

[@dragospahontu]

@@BizzMRK yes

[@Stawski_3d]

I was speeding, because it was very dark, Officer.

[@Racedoc]

I wish our cars here in the US having the adaptive light function enabled.

[@mrmusic1880]

Best vehicle lighting system!

[@ObserverDingue]

One day that farmer is going to think (in Norwegian) "maybe I should get an electric car..." " That's the f#cker who flashes our bedroom!! That's him!" 🤣

[@sylvainsauvage8301]

Man. the guy in front of you was tailing very hard!! What a maniac! ;) Impressive side lights BTW

[@georget10i]

Couple of hours after you eat a big, spicy burrito: 0:50

[@looleric22]

Laser or Led headlight?

[@MightyCalves]

Why don't it dim down towards reflective signs? VW Passat does this on the facelift with their IQ light. (I assume the ID family does the same)

[@bjornnyland]

EQS also does it with the pixel lights.

[@MightyCalves]

@@bjornnyland Hey Bjørn! Have you had a chance to try the EQS out again? The beam/hotspot looked so strange in your headlight test video. Also, when are you gonna test BYD Tang?

[@gianlucamucciarelli8848]

Hay Bjørn. The headlights 1) iX 2) Polestar 😉

[@kiwi335d]

I remember reading an article a few years ago about Porsche developing Laser headlights for its Lemans prototype racing cars. The Porsche version of the laser lights apparently ran powerful lasers through a special type of prism lens that would convert the laser light into a usable beam (visible by humans) that was significantly brighter than what can be generated by conventional LED lights. I remember racing driver Mark Webber commented that he was astonished by the difference when the laser lights would kick on. I am assuming that these BMW laser headlights work on the same principle….

[@ruaraidhmcdonald-walker9524]

These lights are ace. Can you do a Tesla comparo side by side? The big problem here is Tesla is a US manufacturer and US FMVSS regs are very backwards with respect to lighting. They always have been. So Tesla lights are poor as they don’t develop for other countries. Hopefully Giga Berlin will start to correct this and we will get lights that reflect the “tech leader” image they project.

[@killim9824]

Are BMW laser lights worth extra money, comparing to their standard LEDs? Like for example in i4, or iX3?

[@eddie8742]

As the demo shows, they are worth it if you see yourself driving in areas without public luminary where you can drive over 60-70 Kms/H. In city driving you won't notice it, neither will you if your speed is low, as Bjørn show in the video.

[@killim9824]

I have experience with BMW LEDs, and i often drive at nightime. For me difference after changing from Xenon to LED was only the ability of darkening some sector to avoid blinding opposite cars. I've heard that laser lights are also LEDs, but with laser sensors, and they suppose to be more precise. So i up my question, are they worth the money? I think i'll have to borrow demo car for a weekend to compare both types of lights...

[@Teknisk]

= No. Its all about the adaptive low-beams (see the Moose video !) I would go for a car with thermal/night vision. (high-speced G60, G61, X5 , and even some Audi A6, SQ7 etc )

[@andreh.dupuis8475]

in North American market the Laserlights are lower grade than in european markets due to DOT regulations. Couple grand option, costs close to 10k USD to replace after an accident. So my iX xDrive 50 has all options but laserlights, LED are quite good IMO

[@emjbee101]

In the i4 in the UK it’s either LED, or laserlights. There’s currently no adaptive LED option, so definitely worth it. I hear rumours that BMW are dropping laserlights soon though as the adaptive LEDs are so good.

[@blummiiii]

Hi björn modern cars have different lights for different roads for example, highway light they activate at 110 km / h and it also uses gps data so that the car can decide what lights are needed.

[@voltarens]

And day and light Shell bee, no darknes no more🤣

[@hrrrrr2084]

BMW has been a headlamp leader for many years

[@benoit6026]

This must have been before the swedish moose incident ? No miracle with low beam. I remember à few years ago mercedes had something like infrared vision on the screen. Was it a prototype or an option ? Could be a real good solution sometimes.

[@stormdancer1910]

BMW offers this on some of the higher end models

[@robertocalvo934]

Maybe a dumb question but why didn't the "autopilot" saw it? Wasn't on?

[@Teknisk]

1.BMW IX cant get the "night vision" option. That would have detected the moose. (available in even 5-series last gen. and also been around in S-class since 2007. Audi also has it in high-end) 2. Also weird that the sensors didnt detect it thou, even a Volvo has some sort of systems nowadays for this.

[@ruaraidhmcdonald-walker9524]

Night vision camera is an option on most high end German cars. Just not on “tech leader” Tesla…. 😂

[@nickbien]

Audi also has this to warn of animals or people at night, and they flash the matrix lights at them. I think it's just a german thing. I'm not sure if a bmw system would flash light on the animal/pedestrian in the road, because I don't think the matrix system on bmws are as precise as on some audi and mercedes cars. If Bjorn had this system in the IX he probably wouldn't have hit the moose: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aqPYgXuvhpuJmNU

[@apicharjiratanan4285]

might be a little dangerous if they blank out the road signs as seen from VDO

[@foobar6846]

Your eyes have a dynamic range your camera could only dream of. No problem!

[@eddie8742]

It's true they illuminate the road signs, but I find that actually quite useful, and they're never so bright that the reflection will blind you. I think Bjørn is a bit too sensitive when it comes to that kind of thing.

[@vsboy2577]

My car uses candle light

[@MrMiamiswaggz305]

What language are you speaking? It’s funny when you do the full turn and you compliment the turn radius 😂

[@josephcullen2512]

Very blue… Until the camera corrects white balance

[@yrasphong]

It's freaking awesome how it moves so it doesn't blind people!... absolutely marvelous..the American government won't allow us to have these lights in AMERIKKKA

[@Maxwell1989]

It's available on the USA now they made it law to have adoptive lighting laser lights and full LEDs adaptive will be available this year

[@1GTASANANDREASCJ]

It does blind people. Especially in some tricky corners where the camera isn't able to see the car.

[@tridruankham2657]

❤❤❤

[@alfredneumaier8974]

👍

[@andreh.dupuis8475]

I heard laser lights can cost up to 15k CAD in the event of a front crash.. impressive but ridiculously expensive 😊

[@demproblems]

They don't cost that much. It's up to 2k EUR which is around 2,7-3k CAD I believe.And minus the discount that you get from the dealership, you end up paying somewhere around 2,3-2,5k for them.

[@AOTanoos22]

BMW has much less LED dots/segments per Headlight than Mercedes' and Audis Matrix/Multibeam headlights, let alone the EQS' digital light. So the adaptive capability of the BMW is far more limited than that of Mercedes or Audi. As soon as there are more than a handful of cars the adaptive system in the BMW will either turn off the high beams on one side or turn them off completely. The laser light is not adaptive in terms of masking out cars, it only gets turned off and on at oncoming traffic, so imo the full potential of BMW's headlights is only reached on country roads/dark side roads and compared to Mercedes & Audi it does *not* do a good job on the highway.

[@nickbien]

Audi also has the matrix led with the 1.8 million pixels (or something close, idk some ridiculously high number) on the e-tron and the refreshed a8. And they were actually first, but I would argue mercedes implemented it better. In terms of matrix functionality, I completely agree with you, that BMW's isn't as good. In the i4, I think they only use separate high beams that move left and right, and turn on and off to block cars. I noticed a lot when Bjorn was driving, especially in curves, the i4 would try to turn the light, but it wasn't fast enough so the car would basically be keeping the light shining right where another car was, so not great. Immediately I could tell the IX had some matrix in the main high beam, and it also has a laser portion that looks like it moves left and right. But the IX matrix looks like it came out of a 2016 A4, the pixel count looks very low. And imo BMW IX mostly only does good on country roads like you said, but not when there is oncoming cars or you are trailing a car. (Because to be honest the matrix system looks kinda shitty compared to the eqs or e tron gt Bjorn tested) Also to add on the bmw headlights don't dim for the roadsigns which is dumb. If you're going to move the full main beam off to the side of the road, (to move the light around a car in front or something) and shine it towards a road sign, you better dim it

[@AOTanoos22]

@@nickbien yea totally agree, Audi came out with *digital* matrix light (over 1 Million pixel thing) only in the e-tron SUV Sportback and the new facelifted Audi A8 so far. All other models like the Audi e-tron GT and regular e-tron SUV have regular Matrix LED‘s which still has far more LED zones than the BMW iX. If im not mistaken top end Audi Matrix LED’s and top end Mercedes Multibeam LEDs both have 84 light zones per headlight just like the Porsche Taycan has, while BMW only has 12 zones per headlight. Actually Mercedes was first to come out with a limited number of digital lights on the S-class Maybach in 2018. Audi was first to introduce digital light in mass production in 2019 with the E-tron SUV Sportback. However i still put Mercedes on top because they actually develop their own headlights in house and have full control over them, Mercedes’ digital light, like the one in the EQS, gets OTA updates and improves over time with more features, also all Mercedes models (starting from C-class) get the same amount of light segments no matter which model. EQS, EQE, S-class, C-class all got the same tech. With Audi on the other hand only the top end models get that many light segments, for example an Audi A4 facelift still has less LED‘s per headlight than the Audi A6, with only 14 LED‘s per headlight which is barely any better than the BMW iX. In fact Audi and BMW both have the same headlight supplier, which is HELLA, so unless Audi has an exclusive confidential agreement with Hella i don‘t know why BMW didn‘t use higher resolution headlights like Audi.

[@nickbien]

@@AOTanoos22 I suspected that mercedes develops their own headlights, (i didn't know for sure before), but I think they might be using similar technology as audi with their digital matrix headlights, because the pixel count is the same. I'm pretty sure mercedes also develops their own system for aeb and Distrionic and the lane keeping stuff, because I don't think I have seen the exact dual camera setup of the upgraded systems on all their cars on a car from another automaker. Yes other automakers also have dual cameras but even the spacing and the sizing of the camera cutouts, I don't think I've seen them on any cars besides mercedes. I remember that recently I saw Tesla start using Hella as a supplier for their headlights, with the model 3 and y getting the new headlights with the possibility to have matrix, but again their pixel count is significantly lower than the digital systems. They probably don't want to raise it because Elon is so focused on decreasing costs. I don't really know why BMW doesn't do a higher pixel count. I suspect it is because they prioritize having the headlights turn when the car is going around a curve. I've noticed in IIHS headlight tests, most of the upgraded bmw headlight systems are adaptive for curves. Maybe bmw thought it was a better idea to have the super bright part of the light shine to the sides of the road instead of just using a matrix system, that would likely have dimmer light output near the sides of the road. But now the IX only has the turning headlights on the lasers, which might indicate that they might be trying to change how they do Matrix high beams. I'm not sure how headlight suppliers work, but I think bmw could just go to Hella and say that they want a higher pixel count on their matrix systems, and Hella should be able to supply it to them without BMW needing to develop anything new. imo I think it all comes down to bmw wanting to reduce cost and making the Pixel count lower which probably makes the headlights cheaper. Also about the s class, I do remember that they had a system with a significantly higher pixel count compared to other systems at the time, but like you said I don't think it was high enough to be considered a digital light with the amount of pixels that system had. Headlights are so confusing, and I always have so many questions, like why doesn't audi do turning headlights, or why didn't mercedes copy audi and make a light carpet with the digital light like the e-tron with the Digital light does.

[@AOTanoos22]

@@nickbien I didn't know Hella supplied Tesla as well, that's actually interesting. Its likely that BMW just wanted to reduce costs but i personally suspect that BMW used a low pixel count for the iX because they might share the headlight modules with the 5 series. The 5 series has the same amount of Pixels, basically the same headlights underneath the different design since the facelift last year. Maybe BMW just took what they already have off the shelves instead of something new ? Mercedes actually had real digital head lights and called them as such with over 1 million pixels back in 2016 but they entered production in 2018 only for a handful of loyal Maybach customers as a pilot/test run. It wasn't available in the regular S-class back then. Here is a video from 2016: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y2mvaJyBlrxla9E This is a video of the actual production (last gen) S-class Maybach with digital light from 2018: kzbin.info/www/bejne/r5-tgpaCedtre5o But yes Audi was the first to mass produce it in 2019. I always found Headlights very interesting, its getting more and more complicated though xD. I heard that every feature like Audi's light carped needs a permission by the authorities as these lights are very bright and are not allowed to distract other drivers, so i assume more and more features will pic up slowly because of regulations. I'm sure once these headlights get more mainstream they will copy from each other more and more features faster, which is a win for us consumers. Im lucky that we get this amazing tech here in Europe, people in the US get non of the adaptive stuff, although they already have the hardware.

[@maxl7827]

@@AOTanoos22 Yes correct, Bmw has not focused on the pixels, instead Bmw has focused on the light intensity. Laser lights output is AMAZING. I rather have output than some random functions