LEDs quickly became the luxury-car headlight of choice after Audi adopted them in 2007. Now BMW is one-upping the competition with headlamps that use lasers 1 000 times as intense and twice as efficient as LEDs. To be safe for human eyes, the blue beams are converted into white light by yellow phosphor. BMW equipped its 2011 i8 concept car with the laser lights and will probably use them in selected models over the next few years. Watch a BMW laser headlamp demonstration...

– Andrew Del-Colle