A lighting unit for vehicles has a plurality of semiconductor light sources distributed in a grid. The grid of semiconductor light sources is divided into at least two grid segments, the grid segments being each activatable independently of each other and/or assigned to a different light functions, with an optical element in the beam path of a light beam emitted by the semiconductor light sources. The semiconductor light sources (3) are arranged on a common carrier substrate (5), with a chip cover (6) transparent to light in the direction of light propagation, in that the chip cover (6) is filled with a light-scattering and/or light-converting auxiliary material (8) and in that a shading device (9) is provided such that, in the boundary region between the activated grid segment (10) and the unactivated grid segment (11), a relatively steep transition of light intensity is adjustable to form a light/dark boundary.