Feature > Manufacturer Profiles
Hella Lights
Night Moves: How Hella Lights the Way Through the Darkest Off-Road Adventures
by Steve Temple
Steep mountain passes, gnarly boulders, deep mud, or even a lack of daylight — there are no limits for an off-roader. Advances in lighting technology, from companies such as Hella, have extended drive time, allowing enthusiasts to explore without the fear of falling off the face of the world because they didn’t see the cliff in time.
Auxiliary lighting fills two functions for off-road rigs: first, it gives a driver a preview of coming attractions, especially in areas where ambient light from strip malls and street lights are miles away. These attractions include rocks in the middle of the trail — which can rip the best of tires to shreds — dips, ruts, and water crossings that can swallow a fully equipped HumVee.
Second, and just as important, an off-road rig outfitted with racks of auxiliary lights looks really bitchin’.
You might not have taken the time to ponder what the perfect light would do, as you creep along a horse trail that clings precariously to the side of a mountain in the dead of night. Instead, you might’ve sent your inert passenger out in front to scout what’s around each blind turn.
A better solution is a headlight system that offers an advanced warning of what’s around the bend. Hella’s DynaView can do this, as remarkable as that may sound (more about it later).
This photo shows the beam pattern of the DynaView system. Note how the right side of the road is brightly lit, even though the vehicle is pointed directly ahead.
Let’s take a look at Hella’s 105-year history.
The growth of Hella parallels the growth of automotive lighting. The original company goes back 13 years after the first motor carriages built by Daimler and Benz tooled down the streets of Germany. The company was officially registered in Lippstadt, Germany, in 1899 under the name of Westphalian Metal Industry Company (WMI). Its first products were lanterns for carriages, bicycles, and autos.
The name “Hella” was used and applied as the brand name for the product line within the first 10 years of WMI’s manufacturing of candle and paraffin lamps. By 1908, the technology had advanced to acetylene gas headlamps using a system of parabolic reflectors and reflecting lenses that produced 50 times more luminosity and doubled the range of the original lanterns.
The next challenge to the fledgling automotive lighting industry was dimming all that luminosity. By the mid-1910s, enough cars were on German highways that blinding on-coming drivers was becoming a problem. Instead of just flipping a dimmer switch, early lamps were rigged with a cable that allowed drivers to tilt the lamp in deference to other night drivers.
At the end of World War I, the technology and company experienced a boom. Hella became the lighting contractor for Volkswagen in 1935 and Ford the following year. One innovation back then was the addition of high-impact plastics into the lens design. Another surge in activity followed World War II — again based on improving technology, new materials, and the expansion of the German auto industry.
In the early 1960s, Hella began its international expansion with facilities, first in Australia, then later in 1983 to the United States with a distribution center in New Jersey. When Volkswagen opened a manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania, Hella followed with a factory in Flora, Illinois. In 1991, the east coast distribution center was relocated to Atlanta, Georgia. Hella has continued to grow with facilities in Mexico and South America, a design/sales engineering office in Michigan, and two U.S. manufacturing facilities.
Rallye 2100 Xenon
Off-roaders were impacted the most by technology developed in the last 45 years, starting with Hella’s introduction of the first halogen headlamp in 1962, followed 30 years later by the introduction of the Xenon headlamp.
Prior to these advances, conventional light bulbs used a tungsten filament that gives off light when heated by an electrical current. The tungsten evaporates with use, resulting in a thinning filament that eventually breaks. Halogen gas extended bulb life by drawing the evaporating tungsten back to the filament — in effect, regenerating itself every time it’s turned on.
The use of Xenon takes the technology to the next level. The gas, under high pressure in the light globe, reacts more efficiently with the high-grade tungsten alloy on the filament, producing significantly more light output without drawing excessively off the vehicle’s electrical system.
Hella approached the challenge of more efficient light sources and more aerodynamic vehicle styling in the mid-1980s with the introduction of DE projection headlamps for high- and low-beam light functions. Similar to a slide projector, the light beam in a DE lamp is generated by a system that includes a halogen bulb, an ellipsoid reflector, shield and lens. The result is light focused entirely onto the surface of the road.
Note the difference in size between the Rallye 4000 and the Rallye 4000 Compact, with a 6.69-inch diameter (24 percent smaller than the Rallye 4000 Series). The smaller version allows for easy mounting on light bars and front grilles and incorporates the high-boost, Free Form reflector for precise illumination.
The impact is even greater with the use of FF, or Free Form, technology. This computer-designed system relegates the clear lens to the function of being merely a weather shield. The high-output beam is instead a product of the reflectors. Free Form lights use as many as 50,000 reflector points to direct light precisely to specific parts of the road ahead, resulting in an even spread and almost no stray light. Lights using FF reflectors produce up to three times more illumination than ordinary lights, Hella claims.
But what about the light that peeks around corners? Called the DynaView, with IntelliBeam technology, it features two lamps in a high-tech housing with dual reflectors. The upper reflector chamber functions as a conventional high-beam light. The lower reflector chamber is optimized for the inside illumination of the curve, using FF technology.
When the system’s yaw-rate sensor (think motion sensor, but more sophisticated) notes a change in direction, it signals the corresponding lower chamber’s cornering light to come on. The driver now has a clear view of what’s around a corner in enough time to react to obstacles and dangers. Once the vehicle is back on a straight path, a dimmer decreases the brightness of the lamp beam, eliminating any abrupt holes in the driver’s vision.
With an understanding of the demands and perils of off-road night driving, the DynaView system has been specifically designed for heavy-duty, continuous use — something any off-roader will appreciate.
Driving into a dark corner of a trail is far less risky with DynaView. Note the extra illumination provided to the side of this oncoming vehicle equipped with DynaView.
While Hella manufactures a range of lights for almost every automotive application, the two stars of the company’s product line for off-road rigs are the Rallye 4000 and Rallye 3000 series. Both are now available as compact lights for easy mounting on light bars and front grilles.
The Rallye 4000 Compact, with a 6.69-inch diameter (24 percent smaller than the Rallye 4000 Series), incorporates the high-boost FF reflector for precise illumination. The driving light’s die-cast housing is available in matte black or chrome. The 4000 Compact is also available with CELIS (Central Lighting Systems) technology that produces a halo effect by piping the light through an acrylic light guide ring.
The Rallye 3000 Compact, with a 6.89-inch diameter (22 percent smaller than the Rallye 3000), also includes the FF reflector in a reinforced plastic housing. This series comes in fog, driving, and CELIS models.
A yaw sensor constantly monitors the yaw (side-to-side) motion of the vehicle and automatically switches on the appropriate cornering headlamp at the beginning of a turn, so the road is illuminated around the bend as well. |
Rallye 4000 Xenon |
In addition to manufacturing lighting systems for recreational off-roaders, Hella also participates in off-road races, such as the Baja series and the Land Rover’s Drive Around the World Expedition, an educational program that increases awareness of Parkinson’s disease. The fleet of Land Rovers is equipped with a set of Hella’s FF1000 Xenon lamps and four FF200s.
The FF 1000s are available as driving lamps or pencil beams and incorporate the FF reflector made of magnesium, the same material used in Formula 1 race cars and aerospace applications. Which is to say that these lights are designed for extreme conditions. The FF200s, available as driving or fog lamps, also feature Hella’s Fast-Fit mounting system with color-coded wiring harness. The system mounts lamps with a single nut and bolt or, for tight spots and limited-access areas, two molly bolts.
Cruising at night has lots of appeal, but it’s not much fun ripping into a deer or bending a rig into a pretzel because you didn’t see the tree or boulder in time. Think of auxiliary lighting as the best and safest way to off-road time past sunset. Now get ready to practice your night moves.
To illuminate around corners, the DynaView system, with IntelliBeam technology, features two lamps in a high-tech housing with dual reflectors.