Rear light unit for a vehicle and circuit therefor
AssigneeVolkswagen Aktiengesellschaft
InventorsMichael Werner, Michael Muller
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A rear light unit for a vehicle including a plurality of reflectors and bulbs assigned for forming a rear light, a brake light and a rear fog light. The invention aims to provide a rear light unit which is more compact for an identical number of signal lights. To this end the rear light is made up of a row of four reflectors and bulbs, at least two of which reflectors have bulbs with two power levels. One reflector together with a bulb switched to the higher power level forms the brake light while the other forms the rear fog light. The reflectors are arranged at a distance from each other which complies with the legally required minimum separation between the brake light and rear fog light.
Claims9
A rear light unit for a vehicle comprising at least four reflectors arranged in a row, a bulb for illuminating each of said reflectors, wherein the bulbs for illuminating at the least end reflectors in said row are arranged to provide two levels of illumination, including a first bulb for illuminating a first end reflector at a higher level of illumination to form a brake light and a second bulb for illuminating a second end reflector at a higher level of illumination to form a rear fog light, and wherein the first and second end reflectors are separated by a distance corresponding to a required minimum spacing.
A circuit for controlling operation of a set of four rear lights each having first and second illumination levels, comprising a brake light switch and a fog light switch, wherein said fog light switch has two positions, a first position wherein a power supply is connected to a first of said rear lights to provide higher illumination therefrom and wherein said brake light switch is connected to provide power from said power supply to a second of said rear lights to provide higher illumination therefrom when said brake light switch is activated and a second position wherein said power supply is disconnected from said first of said rear lights and wherein said brake light switch is connected to provide power from said power supply to all of said four rear lights to provide higher illumination therefrom when said brake light switch is activated.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.