Stock LED headlights don't produce enough lumens

[alpg88]

People tend to forget turn on headlights at nights. Cops haven't enforced any laws

yes, i have driven like that myself few times, without knowing, when i give my car to a valet parking they shut lights off, even if knob is on auto, and when i get my car back i do not look at light switch right away,, in the city that is full of light poles, glass store fronts that are lit up, you will not see any difference with lights off or on. only notice it when pull up behind a car and see no light reflecting of it. than i look at switch, and of course it's off., lol

 

[EJR]

Don't get me started about non-compliance. In my area I see these "bro" trucks with LED light bars in the grill or bumper shining towards oncoming traffic as if they were illuminating a football field. Heck, I even once saw at night a Mini Cooper with a light bar in the lower grill. Ridiculous.

 

[phantom23]

https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/test/lichtsysteme-im-test-ist-teures-licht-besser/

Go and check the gallery. A side by side comparison between 15 different cars with different headlights (halogen, HID, LED). All stock and aimed correctly. Unfortunately some pictures show low beam, some high beam. Nonetheless it's a nice comparison. Some premium cars like BMW X1 can come with LED headlamps with no washers which means no more than 2000 lumens on low beam. Same applies to multiple if not most non-premium brands.
Koito makes reflectors for multiple Japanese car manufacturers, their BiLed projector (which can be purchased and retrofitted in many reflectors) makes just 2250 lumens. In total for both high and low beam. You can find one in some Toyota products.
GM's matrix system (available in some cars outside US) makes 2000lm on low beam.
Exotic (outside of Europe) Peugeot 508 has new adaptive LED light system which are one of the most powerful on the market - 2600lm for low beam, 4000lm total.

We're getting close to the wall with intensity and more importantly - glare limits. The latter ones are so strict in Europe that some manufacturers aim their headlamps lower to pass the homologation tests. As an effect you can see that car manufacturers switched their focus to intelligent light systems (matrix, image projection etc.).

 

[-Virgil-]

LED headlamps with no washers which means no more than 2000 lumens on low beam

It means no more than 2000 lumens from the light source. It does not mean no more than 2000 lumens in the beam. The non-imaging optics used in LED headlamps are generally a whole lot more efficient than the imaging optics used with previous light sources, too, so a greater proportion of the source lumens wind up on the road. A good headlamp with an HB4 halogen bulb producing 1000 lumens might put 450 lumens on the road. A good headlamp of the same frontal dimensions, with LED light sources producing 1000 lumens, can put more than 750 lumens on the road.

We're getting close to the wall with intensity

Not yet, we aren't really.

Koito makes reflectors for multiple Japanese car manufacturers, their BiLed projector (which can be purchased and retrofitted in many reflectors) makes just 2250 lumens (...) glare limits. The latter ones are so strict in Europe that some manufacturers aim their headlamps lower to pass the homologation tests.

This is not how it works. The glare limits in the beam specification are met by engineering the optical system, not by aiming the headlamps. The aim specification is separate. In Europe the photometric spec has a strict limit on low beam glare and the aim setting for the homologation test is specified in the regulation. It is not at the manufacturer's (or anyone else's) option.

Phantom23, you are (still) conflating bits and parts of things you clearly do not understand, and you're (still) throwing around lumen numbers you've seen -- as on that picture you saw of the Peugeot headlamp -- without comprehending them. Will you please make an effort to understand the subject better so the advice you give and the commentary you make will be at least somewhat based in reality? There are good resources for doing so, many available at no cost, and I know you've been pointed at some of them at least. You are of course welcome to an opinion, just like anyone else, but questions like these don't call for opinions, they call for facts, and when someone asks a legitimate question out of ignorance or misinformation, it really does the opposite of helping (anyone or anything) when more/different ignorance or misinformation is given in response. Thank you.

 

[Ls400]

Or sprayed them with black paint of some kind or another.

I've seen plenty of cars with tinted/smoked taillights, but the ones that really surprised me weren't tinted or smoked in any way. They just had super dim brake lights and the change in intensity was pretty much nil, leading me to assume that they had probably dropped in some parts store LEDs.

It seems as if New York is the mecca of "safety improvements." I've never seen flashing CHMSLs until I was in NY for a few months, for one. And the number of people who somehow managed to fit light bars into the grilles of their sedans was ridiculous.

Check again at 2am in the afternoon. ;-)

Funnily enough, I wrote about something similar on another board and used the same redundant phrasing, and I got corrected by someone there too!

It's definitely not the case that most LED headlamps outperform the best HID headlamps. Some of them do, and some of them very definitely don't.

I've always been curious: do Volvo's LEDs stack up with the best? They've always marketed themselves as being the Lord and Savior of automotive safety, and sure enough, they were about 25 years ahead of the curve when it came to a certain crash mode. I also note a post about how the 240 had huge headlamps to wrangle acceptable performance out of a 9004.

 

[-Virgil-]

I've always been curious: do Volvo's LEDs stack up with the best?

Not really, no. Go leaf through IIHS tests and see.

They've always marketed themselves as being the Lord and Savior of automotive safety

They had a big lead in safety...25 years ago.

I also note a post about how the 240 had huge headlamps to wrangle acceptable performance out of a 9004.

...25 years ago.

Now, they offer all the same safety technology as their competitors do, but their attitude about lighting is more fashion-forward. For example, search this page for the phrase, Volvo tells us that this was entirely a style choice, then put that in context of this. And it's not just in America; Volvo used to provide side marker lights and reflectors on their cars even in the rest of the world where they're not required, but they've stopped that, too.

 

[Alaric Darconville]

I've always been curious: do Volvo's LEDs stack up with the best? They've always marketed themselves as being the Lord and Savior of automotive safety, and sure enough, they were about 25 years ahead of the curve when it came to a certain crash mode.

But the safest Volvo of 1994 really doesn't stack up to, say, a late-model Subaru Legacy in terms of collision avoidance, passenger protection (both in vehicle structure/crumple zones and in say, airbag count), headlighting and other required lighting. I don't think even Ian Anderson loves living in the past like Volvo fans (and to some extent, Volvo themselves) do.

 

[alpg88]

I've always been curious: do Volvo's LEDs stack up with the best? .

in my subjective opinion, based on actual driving caddy escalade and volvo xc90, both with led headlights caddy wins hands down.