It seems that the “friendly competition” between Audi and BMW has been settled—at least temporarily—with a lighting-technology victory for Audi. The boys from Ingolstadt have revealed the first production car with laser headlights, a special-edition R8 LMX for European markets. The new model debut ends a one-year-long back-and-forth between Audi and BMW over which would be first to market with the new lighting technology.
To recap, last year BMW announced it planned to offer laser headlights on the i8 plug-in hybrid. At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Audi R&D chief Dr. Ulrich Hackenberg one-upped the Bavarians with: “We will be the first car brand to put laser light into production.” One month later, BMW countered: that it would “be the first series production car with this innovative lighting technology.” Then just last month, at the launch of the BMW i8 in Los Angeles, BMW executives said that the i8 with laser lights would be available in November. A BMW press release recently offered: “Before the end of 2014.” It seems that wasn’t soon enough.
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The R8 LMX, due out “this summer” gets a pair of laser high beams—one laser module per headlight—that Audi claims throw light twice as far down the road as LED units. (Interestingly, the laser lights don’t totally own high-beam duty; the two modules “supplement” the LMX’s LED high beams at speeds above 37 mph.) Similar to the laser lights Audi showed at CES, the production versions produce a blue laser beam that a phosphor converts to white light with a color temperature of 5500 Kelvin.
Nearly as dazzling is the R8 LMX itself, a limited production R8 with a 5.2-liter V-10 engine tweaked to make 562 horsepower and 398 lb-ft of torque. Audi claims the R8 can race from zero to 62 mph in 3.4 seconds and reach a top speed of 199 mph. Exactly 99 units will be produced, and each one comes with unique features such as matte paint and carbon-fiber touches both inside and out. But the feature that most pleases Audi’s engineers (and most certainly displeases BMW engineers) is the laser high-beam system. The R8 LMX can be ordered in Europe now, and it’ll run a cool €210,000 ($288,000 U.S.!) in Germany. That’s a hefty €35,600 premium over the R8 V-10 Plus, but what price can you put on being first?
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