Before Ideal ONE, no model in the entire history of automobiles had ever had star ring headlights. After Ideal ONE, although there are endless imitators of star ring headlights, Ideal ONE can still confidently say that sentence:
Always imitated, never surpassed.
01
Do something "impossible"
The lamp is a very special part of the car. It is both a functional part and an appearance part, and is part of the overall shape of the vehicle. Among all car lamps, the white luminous area in the front light group is the soul of the vehicle's front face.
This is because, especially during the day, the only clearly identifiable car lights are usually those white light sources, which serve either as daytime running lights or position lights (width lights). In turn, it has become the most prominent part of the brand identity in the headlight design.
Based on this, car lighting has had many classic designs in the past. For example, BMW’s “angel eyes” were derived from the pair of pupils of an angel in Western mythology. Luxury brands such as Audi and Volvo also have their own family designs for daytime running lights and position lights.
At the beginning of the Ideal ONE project, such a family-oriented design was also needed. While leading the trend, it also served as a symbol of the model and brand. However, Li Auto also hopes to go a little further than others.
“Why not make a ‘front-through’ light unit that has never been done before?”
That’s right, this ring headlight looks like the rings of Saturn surrounding the car body when viewed from the front. If you change the name to a more "engineering student" name, it can be called - front penetration light.
In fact, Li Auto was not the first car brand to want to design a "front penetration light", but Li Auto was the first to make it. There was a huge technological gap between the idea and its implementation.
02
One inch is long, one inch is difficult
The first problem in the research and development process is: the lateral width of the ideal ONE single grille light reaches 970 mm.
This not only places requirements on the design of lamps, but the larger the size, the higher the requirements on the shell injection molding process, which requires extremely high matching and extremely low tolerances. Throughout the entire design and mass production process, there are few injection molding machines in the world that meet the requirements for manufacturing ideal ONE star ring headlights.
Such a large size brings difficulties that this industry has never encountered before. Li Auto re-optimized the production line and incorporated various anti-deformation avoidance measures and correction processes in the design, ultimately achieving today's satisfactory results.
Maybe some friends will ask: After boasting so much, after Ideal ONE, didn’t other people also make “star ring lights”? Indeed, it is not difficult to imitate a "rough", but it is difficult to achieve the "flawless" effect of the ideal ONE Star Ring headlight.
Deep knowledge in design and technology can only be seen when you get up close and personal.
If you look closely at the star ring headlights of Ideal ONE, the distance between the middle grille light and the position lights on both sides is only about 20 mm, which makes the integration of the lights better and the visual effect is outstanding.
The gap between the ideal ONE grille light and the position light is only about 20mm
Even in the "copycats" that will be launched later, the separation distance of the three-stage star ring lights is generally more than 30 mm. This seemingly small gap of 1 cm will make the star ring headlights more integrated when they are lit. discount. And this is exactly the value of Ideal ONE’s process innovation.
In addition, since there are hundreds of LED lamp beads inside the star ring headlights, how to present a light strip with uniform brightness when they are lit at the same time is also a difficulty in the design of the star ring headlights.
Through many innovations in the underlying optical design, the star ring headlights of the 2021 Ideal ONE have achieved uniformity without any "graininess" at all. If you have only seen the star ring headlights of Ideal ONE, the impression may not be obvious, but when you compare Ideal ONE side by side with other models with "star ring lights", the difference in uniformity will be very clear.
03
The family-oriented design of ideal cars
Back in 2018, when Ideal ONE decided to adopt the star ring headlight design, it was a decision that required courage. At that time, no car company at home and abroad dared to try such a headlight shape with such high design and process difficulties. Ideal ONE overcame After all the difficulties, Star Ring headlights were finally presented to all consumers with high standards.
Looking to the future, Xinghuan headlights will also be used as a family design of Li Auto, and will be installed on the upcoming Li Auto L9 and even subsequent models, and will continue to be optimized and refined.
"Let this star ring enter tens of millions of families."
