Background
Grupo Antolin is one of the largest players in the car interior market internationally, and first global supplier of headliner substrates. Grupo Antolin started its business journey back in the 50’s as a mechanics garage in Burgos, Spain, and today has become a leading multinational company in the development, design and manufacture of interior components for the automobile industry with a long industrial tradition and mastery of a broad technology portfolio.
The company is a key reference in the automotive sector, offering products with high added value to outfit automobile interiors: Overheads & Trunk Trim, Doors & Hard Trim, Lighting and Cockpits & Consoles. GA is a profitable, competitive company established in 25 countries where more than 30,000 individuals provide their skills. Creativity, leadership and client satisfaction continue to be the core values of the Company today, which are the best recipe for success in the future.
Interior car lighting has gone through a dramatic evolution. Early on, cars only had a few lighting spots with limited functions (lighting in the trunk and the glove compartment). Years later, new lighting spots and functions have been added. In fact, today, lighting must be both functional and serve as ambient/mood lighting in the car interior. Lighting must inform the passengers, help them communicate, and make them feel positive emotions.
Along with these changes, lighting technologies have also evolved (LED technologies, and others).
The challenge
New forms of shared mobility, the electric vehicle, the autonomous car, and digitalization (see figure 1 in annex), come with new car interior lighting needs. The challenge is to anticipate these changes by designing new functions, control systems, and lighting technologies that can be integrated into Grupo Antolin products.
Lighting must enable living, working, or relaxing inside the vehicle. It must also be more personal and customizable, even adaptable depending on the external weather conditions, using different sensors and technologies.
Bear in mind that Grupo Antolin already uses LED technologies. However, their sensitivity to heat makes it necessary for you to mind the thermal design, the use of low UV LEDS, and perform stability tests. The company is also aware of OLED and laser lights, whose cost is still too high and are difficult to take to market.
What the client is looking for
Grupo Antolin is looking for new lighting systems that meet the above-mentioned needs while being innovative in the following regards:
- Functionality (e.g. a floor light automatically goes on when an object is accidentally dropped)
- Technology (e.g. a reduction in consumption, manufacturing costs, or other benefits).
- Design (e.g. redesign current lighting system in headliners, doors, dashboards, trunk to make it better, more attractive, more cost-efficient to manufacture...)
- Control system (e.g. new facial or sign sensors to turn on the lights, better glare control when driving)
The system must meet most of the characteristics mentioned below in the evaluation criteria.
Evaluation criteria
Solutions will be assessed according to the following criteria:
- Degree of innovation.
- Technical feasibility, all factors considered.
- Integrability, partially or completely, to Grupo Antolin component portfolio.
- Number of functions, flexibility to be placed inside the vehicle, or in the control strategy.
- Low energy consumption
- Low cost
- Estimated life of the lighting system according to its function (e.g. reading light) and the use of the vehicle (e.g. private car, shared vehicle, etc.).
This is a one-round tournament with the following deliverables:
PDF document including:
- Description and models/sketches of the proposed solution.
- Feasibility evidence of the defined solution complying with the requirements.
- Estimated solution costs.
- Estimated solution energy consumption.
Timeline
This is a one-round challenge with the following deadlines:
- 6 weeks + 4 weeks for evaluation
