
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 28, 1990                   TAG: 9003280132
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

FULL-CAR LIGHTING ON WAY

With headlights, brake lights, warning lights and instrument panels, a typical car can have as many as 80 light bulbs, all gradually wearing out. General Electric Co. is developing a way to replace them all with one central lighting system.

With the Light Engine, which GE expects to introduce before the end of the decade, light is "piped" through a fiber-optic distribution system to whatever application the driver chooses.

There are no wires and no bulbs to burn out. The cost is expected to be comparable with that of conventional automotive lighting systems.

The lamp would employ the technology used in stadium lighting, in which current flows between two electrodes in a sealed tube filled with metal hallide gas.

GE expects individual headlights using the technology to be in automobiles before 1995. They have four times the efficiency of incandescent bulbs and allow the headlights to be less than 1 inch high, said a GE Lighting spokesman. - The New York Times

by CNB