FORVIA HELLA’s FlatLight daytime running light reduces total installation depth to just
5 mm, illustrating why thinness is becoming a core automotive-lighting metric.
Source date: 7 October 2025 Primary organisation: FORVIA HELLA
From rear lamp to front signature
FORVIA HELLA introduced FlatLight into rear-lamp series production in 2024. In October 2025 it announced the
first market launch of the technology as a daytime running light, extending the concept to the vehicle front.
The numbers matter
The supplier quotes a total depth of 5 mm, together with an 80% weight reduction and around 40% better energy
efficiency than conventional systems on the market. Those figures matter because lighting competes for some of
the most valuable real estate in a vehicle: the shallow zones immediately behind visible surfaces.
Packaging is design freedom
A thinner lighting technology does more than save space. It changes what designers can draw. Conventional
optical stacks force minimum radii, housing depths, fixing points and thermal provisions. Reduce those
constraints and illumination can follow narrower lines, sit closer to the exterior skin or occupy areas that were
previously impractical.
The next step
FlatLight is one answer to a wider engineering question. Printed light, micro-optics, OLED and other
surface-lighting approaches are pursuing the same goal from different directions: make the light source less like a
box and more like a layer.
The Lux View
Brightness will always matter, but thickness is becoming just as strategic. The closer automotive lighting gets to
behaving like a film or surface treatment, the more radically designers can rethink where light belongs in the
vehicle.
Publishing information
Source and research links
FORVIA HELLA – FlatLight market launch