This paper presents novel ignition method for automotive 35W metal halide discharge lamp electronic ballast. At this study, the novel method of ignition is developed to reduce costs and size of the ballast. By use of the novel method, the voltage needed in ignition is decreased, which result in use of the lower voltage rating power devices compared with conventional method and product compactness was achieved by deleting a circuit generating negative voltage needed in ignition at an conventional circuit. In terms of luminosity, color rendering, light efficiency(lm/W) and lifespan, the metal halide lamp is superior to, but unlike halogen lamp, it have more complicated transient characteristics to reach its steady state than the conventional halogen lamp. Therefore, in this paper, the electronic ballast was designed such that the metal halide lamp could be optimized for the automotive, by applying a method of microcontroller-based digital control. The results of the proposed system is verified through various experiment results.