Technology companies Osram and Continental have announced their intention to establish a joint venture that aims to combine innovative lighting technology with electronics and software to develop, manufacture and market intelligent lighting solutions for the automotive industry.

The global joint venture will operate under the name Osram Continental GmbH and have its registered office in Munich. Osram and Continental will each have a 50 percent stake and the venture will start in 2018.

Osram will be transferring its automotive Solid State Lighting (SSL) module business over to the joint venture. Continental will be incorporating its light control business from the Body & Security business unit. This will lead Osram Continental to combine semiconductor-based lighting modules, advanced electronics, optics and software expertise with access to sensor technology and innovative light sources. Osram Continental will therefore be able to offer a broad range of end-to-end, innovative lighting solutions, designed especially for headlight and tail light applications. The intention is to work together to design perfectly coordinated and innovative products and solutions, and bring them to market more quickly.

Thanks to increasingly intelligent light functions in vehicles as well as new light-based design and application options, semiconductor-based technology, software and electronics are gaining progressively in importance in the automotive sector. Each year, growth in the market for semiconductor-based front lighting solutions is somewhere in the double-digit range. Market studies indicate that by as early as 2025 more than half of new cars worldwide could be fitted with semiconductor-based lighting.

Andreas Wolf, head of Continental´s Body & Security business unit said, “Intelligent lighting solutions allow vehicle manufacturers a greater degree of flexibility when it comes to design, and help them to optimise development costs. The global presence of the Osram Continental joint venture is allowing us to cooperate closely with our customers in order to develop solutions exactly tailored to their needs. In the case of Continental and Osram, we have two technology companies combining their complementary expertise in the context of a joint venture to offer customers a unique range of solutions.”

Hans-Joachim Schwabe, CEO of Osram’s Specialty Lighting business unit added, “Digitalization is bringing about new potential applications in automotive lighting and hence tremendous opportunities that we want to take advantage of with Continental. Thanks to our combined offering of lighting and electronics solutions, we will be able to offer automotive sector customers cutting-edge products from a single source.”