The car is not a simple mode of transportation anymore. In addition to security and autonomous driving features, car manufacturers are considering more and more functionalities to propose vehicles as custom and fashion item.

During the last few years, electronic, optoelectronic, software and various digital technologies along with societal changes are increasingly pressuring the automotive players in transforming offerings and business models faster than ever before. Under this context, automotive OEM firms remain focused on core competencies and also develop new ones. Lighting technologies are part of them.
The lighting market for automotive applications should reach a 23.7% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) 2015-2121 reaching a US$27.7 billion market in 2021, announces Yole Développement (Yole) in its latest LED report entitled “Automotive Lighting: Technology, Industry and Market trends”. The increasing role of design and the introduction of new functionalities including ambient light, rear light, turn signal, parking & day ruing lights, fog light, low/high beam light and more are the reasons of this success. But what are the companies behind this impressive growth? What will be the impact on the supply chain? LED, OLED – which technologies are today able to answer to the market needs? The market research and strategy consulting offers today its vision of this industry.

With this new technology & market analysis, the “More than Moore” company, Yole investigates the attractive world of lighting solutions for automotive applications. The automotive lighting report from Yole analyzes the status of the market and its applications. It reviews the structure of the automotive lighting industry and details the market and technology trends. Under this new analysis, Yole’s experts present the main lighting technologies developed for automotive applications and propose valuable roadmaps until 2021. They cover the whole supply chain from devices to systems and give market insights between 2013 and 2021.

With the recent integration of LED technology, lighting has evolved from a basic, functional feature to a distinctive feature with high-value potential in automotive. Indeed, LED technology has given manufacturers the opportunity for strong differentiation via lighting design and additional functionalities. This is particularly true for exterior lighting, but it is also spreading to interior lighting. These changes are heavily impacting the supply chain, with new suppliers and a new value chain emerging.

In 2015, the automotive lighting market totaled nearly US$22.4 billion, up 5.4% from 2014. “This growth was driven by increased lighting system content per vehicle and a more favorable product mix driven by strong adoption of LED-based front lighting systems,” says Pars Mukish, Business Manager, LED, OLED and sapphire activities at Yole. Indeed, headlamp and DRL systems represented 43% and 28% of total 2015 revenue, respectively. Other lighting systems including rear combination light/center high-mounted signal light, interior light, and side turn-signal light comprised the remaining 29% of 2015 revenue. According to Yole’s analysts, the automotive lighting market will continue growing, reaching a market size of almost US$27.7 billion by 2021 – +23.7% compared to 2015, and driven by different growth areas:
• Short-term: increased LED technology penetration rate into different automotive lighting applications/systems, and increased lighting content per vehicle.
• Middle/long-term: potential integration of new lighting technologies like OLED and laser, development of AFLS and other security functions, and incredible developments employing lighting as a new design feature.

“From a geographic point of view, Asia is the largest market for automotive lighting systems, reflecting the trends in term of vehicle production location but with higher share of revenue from Europe due to more favorable product mix in this area,” explains Pierric Boulay, Technology & Market Analyst at Yole. However European and Japanese companies dominate and supply together 81% of the market:
• Koito, Stanley and Ichikoh capture 40% of the revenue
• From an European side, Yole’s analysts announce 13-14% market share for each key European players: Magneti Marelli, Hella and Valeo.

Yole’s report presents all automotive lighting applications and the associated market revenue for the period 2013 – 2021, with details concerning drivers and challenges, integration status of different lighting technologies and systems, recent trends, and market size per application