How Audi Is Setting The Pace For Lighting Design

While fanciful interior lighting delights buyers on the showroom floor and captures your attention in a second or two, it takes a long time – years, even – for Stas and his team to make the designers’ wishes technically feasible. He explained that changing the headlight signatures is actually an idea several years old, but it takes time to innovate, create a patent, and further develop the idea.

In the case of the Q8, a desire was expressed to move the older daytime running lights higher up below the hood, increasing the perception of width.

“First, when you start with an idea, it means the colleagues from the project came to us and say, ‘Okay, we need something new, we need to improve, we need to have a new design,’ and then we were talking about this, what could fit inside [the headlight],” says Stas. “What’s our idea of the new Q8? So, this was the beginning. Then, of course, the colleagues from the design [department] start to work.”

With the basic design parameters established, Stas and his team decide which of the various Audi lighting modules to use, including the HD Matrix and laser technologies, and how to combine it with the “sharp, progressive” look of the facelifted Q8.