LG-owned ZKW to supply smart digital lighting for luxury SUV Range Rover

It 15:04 April 21, 2022

SEOUL, April 21 (Yonhap) -- Austrian automotive light maker ZKW Group, a subsidiary of South Koran tech giant LG Electronics Inc., said Thursday that it will supply smart digital lighting for the all-new Range Rover.

The lighting system comes with significantly smaller, glare-free LED headlights, which "increase comfort, enhance road safety and mark the way towards autonomous driving," its CEO Oliver Schubert said in a statement.

LG Electronics and its parent LG Corp. acquired the automotive lighting and headlight systems provider in 2018 for more than 1.1 billion euros (US$1.24 billion), the company's largest acquisition to date, as part of efforts to expand its business in the growing global automotive digital component market.

ZKW, which has global carmakers like BMW, Daimler and VW as its customers, employs around 10,000 workers worldwide and reported 1.07 billion euros in sales in 2021.

LG Electronics, one of the key home appliance makers at home and abroad, has been working to bolster its automotive business in recent years for future growth.

On Wednesday, LG Magna e-Powertrain, a joint venture LG set up with Canadian auto parts maker Magna International Inc., announced that it is building a new plant in Mexico to supply electric car parts for General Motors, starting 2023.

LG's new CEO Cho Joo-wan visited ZKW in December as his first destination for a business trip overseas shortly after he became CEO, signaling the company's emphasis on the advanced car parts business.

For the October-December period, LG's vehicle component solutions unit logged an on-year operating loss, weighed down by pandemic-caused business uncertainties and the global chip shortage. The unit reported 1.68 trillion won in sales, down 12.3 percent from a year ago.