“We don’t want a driving Christmas tree” – Stellantis’ Philipp Röckl on lighting

Lighting goes far beyond a simple design feature. It stands for safety, communication as well as aesthetics. For Philipp Röckl at Stellantis, it’s the combination of these three elements that acts as the recipe for success.

Röckl is responsible for all headlamp and taillamp development across the Stellantis portfolio, keeping up with upcoming technology in order to define his innovation roadmap.

This innovation roadmap balances working within the constraints of evolving safety regulations and staying ahead of where the car industry is moving – including autonomous driving advancements. 

Car Design News caught up with Röckl to learn more. 

Car Design News: How do you balance technical performance requirements with the desire to create a recognisable lighting identity? 

Philipp Röckl: We’ve seen lighting signatures become the brand identifier for all of Stellantis’ brands. Opel/Vauxhall has always been the leader in the lighting business and innovative technologies, and we try to give this spirit to the other brands. For example, more brands are using the illuminated emblem and continuous light bands in the front and rear as key brand identifiers. The actual car body design becomes the background when lighting is the first thing you see as the vehicle approaches you in the street. Therefore, the light signature is one of the most iconic parts of the car. 

We really have a split between the aesthetic part of lighting, where we try to support the identity of our studios and design colleagues, and the safety element, as lighting is ultimately the more important safety feature for the driver at night. To find a compromise between these design philosophies is not easy. 

CDN: How do you work with these safety regulations while still delivering something that’s true to brand? 

PR: Regulations act as the playground, but we cannot exceed the borders. Sometimes we notice that we are in the grey zone, so we are actively taking part in workshops with the regulations team – of which there are several working groups focusing on standard regulations to make traffic safer. Saying this, we also have working groups who are thinking about what the next technology could be. We are investigating technology because a change in regulation takes a long time and we want to be in the process very early on in order to transport our idea into a new regulation and help create something that’s very beneficial to the customer – not just something theoretical.

CDN: Most exterior and interior car designers source inspiration from the watch or fashion industry – lighting is quite a different area. Where do you find inspiration? 

PR: We look at the consumer industry – smartphones, televisions etc, but we also try not to overload the car. We don’t want to have a driving Christmas tree, having too much light that just overloads everything. You see examples of this from some Chinese manufacturers; they are so focused on technology. We try to find a good compromise, with respect for our customers. Each brand has its core customer so we try to think what would make this customer find this car easy to use and not be distracted. 

CDN: We’ve seen the rise of interior lighting becoming more light-hearted – animations etc – do you think lighting is becoming more of a fun element within car design? 

PR: Partially yes, but in the overall scope – no. With regulations, there’s a focus on to not overload and distract the driver or other road users. Of course, there’s always a little bit of fun and animation because you want to be cool and have some exciting, emotional elements on the car. In the end, we really try to focus on what is beneficial to the customer, what increases safety and what can be combined with our current design.

It makes no sense to put five screens on the front of the car and then display animations – that would destroy the entire design of the car. Instead, we try to match the lighting features with the overall exterior design and whittle down to the necessary features which have the maximum value for the customers. 

CDN: You previously mentioned continuous light bands, which are a trend in the car industry at the moment. Do you think this trend is here to stay and what’s next?

PR: All these horizontal light bar came because of a new regulation – for the first time in history, we were allowed to use continuous light bands on the front of the vehicle. That was the reason many of us chose that signature for our next projects. We see differentiations between brands, as there are many ways to interpret this regulation – it just takes some time to understand the scope of what we can do. Also, engineers are a little conservative at the beginning but now we fully understand the technology, we can go further with design. 

I think the illuminated grilles are an interesting direction – as seen through BMW – and I also like when the lighting signature itself moves into the background and the headlight design becomes the most important thing. 

CDN: Autonomous vehicles appear to rely quite heavily on exterior lighting for communication – is this an exciting challenge for your department? 

PR: It’s one of the most exciting challenges for me, after the introduction of the matrix beam. Currently, there’s no limit – you can do everything – so the challenge is how to bring all these possibilities down to a very simple and understandable system. Our approach is to have an illuminated signature in the front and rear, as well as illuminated emblems in most cases. We are thinking how we can combine these elements in a simple way to communicate.

In our Opel Grandland we used a [prototype] illuminated visor with RGB LEDs [only illuminates in Level 3 automated driving mode]. We first had to think – when a pedestrian first sees the car from a distance, what colour do we use to make them aware of this oncoming vehicle?

When we are then closer to the pedestrian, we can go into graphical content, where we use a very small display – no bigger than the usual emblem. In fact, we can add value to the illuminated emblem by making it digital and showing some symbols. The magic behind this form of communication is in bringing it down to a simple level of symbols that everyone across the globe can understand. 

CDN: That’s an interesting point, what’s the research process like into globally recognised symbols?

PR: We use the general research on universally recognised symbols for traffic as an entry point and then, with our student partners at the University of Darmstadt, we then try to investigate what symbols we should use for specific markets – like Europe, America and China. We then try to combine this knowledge and work with the UX team to understand what a pedestrian feels when they see this symbol.

At the end of this process, we need to propose this to our regulation authorities, which is something that isn’t just coming from Stellantis – it’s coming from the big global players like the Volkswagen group – to find a common regulation approach. It’s teamwork on all levels. 

CDN: Perhaps quite a philosophical question, but what’s your personal dream for the future of automotive lighting? 

PR: We have already reached technologies we could never have imagined – small projectors in the headlights, beam patterns etc. I think that light signatures will remain, or even become, the key identifier for all brands.