As we reach the final weeks of 2016, in many ways it feels like the start of a new era. The Chicago Cubs are World Series champions, Back to the Future?style self-adjusting sneakers have become a reality, and production cars officially have lasers. For the first time in the U.S., Audi will be offering headlights that combine LEDs with laser high-beams in an extremely limited version of the 2017 R8 V10 Plus that’s creatively named the Exclusive Edition.
Technically, the 2017 Audi R8 V10 Plus Exclusive Edition is not the first production car in the United States to have this type of lighting technology. That honor belongs to a different six-figure car, the BMW i8, which first had lasers overseas at its debut in the 2014 model year and brought them to U.S. buyers in 2016. Nevertheless, this is a big deal and indicative of where the future of headlights may lie.
Contrary to what you might be thinking, the tech behind these supercar lights is a little different than Superman’s solar-powered heat vision. Each headlight unit has a module with four laser diodes. The energy from those diodes is packaged into one single blue light, which Audi incorporated into the slick housing design. That blue light then runs through a phosphor lens, which converts the blue to a bright white that extends much farther and gives greater visibility than a traditional headlight. The lasers are reserved for high-beams that only operate above 40 mph “when conditions permit,̶...