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LED lights

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As one of the leaders in today’s automotive and motorcycle advancements, BMW is again pushing the envelope of technology and blurring the lines between science fiction and reality.

The German manufacturer prides itself on state of the art safety features on both cars and motorcycles, most notably the introduction of ABS for motorcycles in 1988 and their semi-active chassis which was released in 2012.

More notably are BMW’s recent updates  in motorcycle lighting technology which include BMW’s adaptive headlight technology for the 2010 BMW K1600GT and GTL models, which uses ride height and pitch sensors to automatically level the headlight.

Also, the 2012 BMW R1200GS which was the first motorcycle to feature an LED main headlight with integrated daytime running light.

For 2014, BMW has announced the introduction of Organic LEDs (OLED) which are claimed to be a vast improvement over the inorganic LED lighting that is currently being used.

After seeing the front fairing of the new 2012 Ducati Superbike 1199 last week, we idly speculated that the design included an LED (light-emitting diode) headlamp, as no bulbs or projector assemblies could be seen in the housing. Another tip-off were the slats in the headlight housing, which can readily be seen, and look very similar to the setup used by Audi on its R18 TDI Le Mans race car. Getting a few tips from our loyal readers, and following up with several of our sources, we can confirm that the new Ducati Superbike 1199 will use a completely LED-based headlight system — the first production motorcycle to use such an assembly.