The next Ford Focus which will debut next year is going to be loaded with very useful features designed to make the life easier for the driver and passengers. One of these features that Ford is introducing to us is the new ambient lighting functionality that can illuminate, assist or warn a drive. It has search light to locate misplaced items and door ajar warning, plus seven interior accent colors for instrument panel, cupholders and footwells.
“When LED illumination combines with ambient lighting technology inside a car, it enables clever features that make life easier for the driver,” said Christopher Eardley, Ford interior lighting engineer. “Ambient lighting can change interior accent color, but it can also add functionality that keeps a driver smiling.”“Interior ambient lighting has transcended ‘looking cool’ and is poised to deliver additional customer value in the all-new Focus,” said Eardley.
Focus Ambient lighting functions:
Search light
Ever misplaced a small item in the footwells or in the storage pocket of a car door, at night? It has happened to Eardley and his teammates working in Ford’s interior environment group. This momentary inconvenience was the inspiration for the ambient lighting “search light” functionality. Flip a switch on the instrument panel of the all-new 2012 Ford Focus and all of the ambient lighting points – doors, footwells and cupholders – are bathed in bright white light to help a driver find misplaced items inside the car.
Door ajar
If the driver of a 2012 Ford Focus swings the door of the parked car open into a travel lane, approaching motorists, pedestrians and cyclists would be warned of an open door by the red illumination of the door’s ambient lighting.
In addition to serving as a warning signal to other traffic of an open Focus door, it notifies vehicle occupants of a door being improperly latched, or ajar.
Welcome and departure lighting
Collaboration between Ford interior light engineering and driving environment teams has resulted in the welcome and farewell lighting illumination now featuring a two-stage sequence, from instrument panel to dome lighting, enhancing the customer entrance and exit experience.
Play protection
Engaging “play protection” through the ambient lighting switch ensures that children inside the vehicle will be unable to operate the dome light. This also helps to ensure that the interior lighting won’t be inadvertently left on.
An enthusiastic lighting and illumination professional, Eardley has spent nine years working in the automotive interior lighting industry, the last two with Ford. He is based at Ford’s Merkenich Technical Centre near Cologne, Germany.
