End is Near for Halogen Headlights?

SubLGT

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From Autonews.com

[Hella Corporate Center USA President] Lietaert said the industry's conversion from halogen headlamps to LED-based systems is under way, but will rapidly grow at the end of this decade. The big reason will be vehicle power.

A typical halogen headlight uses 55 watts of power to produce 350 lumens of light, while an LED-headlight system draws about 17 watts to produce 600 lumens of light.

"When we get into 2020, I think you'll see that halogen light sources go away, mostly from the standpoint that no vehicle chief engineer will allow you to waste 55 watts on a headlamp," Lietaert said. "It's a fight for power in a vehicle. As you put more electrification in a vehicle, you want to reduce the load."

I look forward to the day when all vehicles on the road have OEM LED headlamps. That should, I hope, finally put an end to people "improving" their headlamps with aftermarket upgrades.
 
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Alaric Darconville

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I look forward to the day when all vehicles on the road have OEM LED headlamps. That should, I hope, finally put an end to people "improving" their headlamps with aftermarket upgrades.

It'll be a long time before they're completely eliminated in new cars. HID in new cars will go away much more quickly than halogen.

As far as aftermarket upgrades, I've improved my headlamps by using such upgrades as the Philips XTreme Power. There are legitimate ways to upgrade one's factory headlamps safely and effectively and legally.

But, yes, an OEM LED headlamp assembly is probably going to be much harder for someone to get into to try to replace the emitters and such, but you know eventually it'll happen.

I do like that LED lighting can use much less power than halogen and HID. It's not just the fuel cost associated with powering the devices, it's that wiring can be made thinner (and therefore lighter) because it doesn't have to carry as much current. Not that it saves that many ounces of weight per car, but scale it over a fleet and that's a huge reduction in raw material usage.
 
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fastgun

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I look forward to the day when all vehicles come from the factory with excellent lights, period.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety rated the Honda Accord's LED lights as marginal. We had marginal lights in the 60's.

LED in and of it self is not the silver bullet. The goal should be excellent lights without any other qualifier.
 

FRITZHID

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I test drove that accord and I would deff say they are under par, in output as well as the color rendering. I'm hoping nichia high CRI type LEDs will be used in the future. I found that the current LED headlights leave much to be desired in rendering causing difficulty discerning separation of objects and distances.
 

-Virgil-

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I look forward to the day when all vehicles come from the factory with excellent lights, period.
LED in and of it self is not the silver bullet. The goal should be excellent lights without any other qualifier.

That's exactly right. LED headlamps are not inherently superior.

Also, two other things to keep in mind:

1. When Xenon headlamps came out, the industry crowed about how halogen headlamps would be obsolete by the end of (that) decade, because Xenons put out so much more light for so much less electricity, and with electrical demands increasing, no way would vehicle engineers allow you to take 55 watts per headlamp. Exactly the same claim, but Xenon prevalence never got above the mid-20-percents in North America, somewhat but not hugely higher in Europe and Asia. The reasons were cost (to automakers) and price (to consumers). Maybe if the automakers hadn't been so greedy and cynical about it, things had been different. But they mostly only offered Xenons on the top models of expensive cars, and then only with expensive option packages larded up with gewgaws. Perhaps it will be different with LEDs, if some critical mass of standard-equipment LED headlamps is reached.

2. Worldwide, halogen headlamps will continue to be the most common kind on new cars because of their super-low cost. There are many markets around the world, and market segments in rich countries, where price is king.
 

KXA

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I drove a 2015 Toyota Corolla rental a while back and must say that I was not impressed with the stock LED headlights. From the front they appear very bright, but from the drivers seat, they appear dim. I also don't get the fascination with high Kelvin (4500K +) lighting. Wouldn't it be better to have LED headlights in the 3500-4000K range? I find, just like DS says on his sight, that overly blue lighting is very glaring.
 

-Virgil-

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I drove a 2015 Toyota Corolla rental a while back and must say that I was not impressed with the stock LED headlights. From the front they appear very bright, but from the drivers seat, they appear dim

Interesting. That isn't my experience with those lamps at all; objectively they are quite good performers, and my own subjective impression has consistently been that they produce a wide, even, bright beam pattern.

I also don't get the fascination with high Kelvin (4500K +) lighting.

It started out as a marketing-differentiation factor (everyone in traffic can see your neighbors bought the car with the fancy new headlights, which is supposed to make you jealous so you go out and do the same). Then the engineers began regurgitating the marketing baloney about "closer to natural daylight", some preliminary and ambiguous research findings were misleadingly amplified and trumpeted way out of any proportion to reality, and now we've got lighting engineers saying, with a straight face (and a lot of handwaving), that blue headlamps are better.

Wouldn't it be better to have LED headlights in the 3500-4000K range?

Probably so. There's a ton of good, solid, well-corroborated evidence that intensity is what determines how well a driver can effectively see, not light color, and for any given level of intensity, bluer light creates significantly more glare than yellower light. That is: the glare can be pinned at a certain level and the driver can be given more light to see with, or the seeing can be pinned at a certain level and other drivers can be glared less, by means of a spectrum that leans toward the yellow. Likewise the glare can be pinned at a certain level and the driver can be given less light to see with, or the seeing can be pinned at a certain level and other drivers can be glared more, by means of a spectrum that skews toward the blue. Unfortunately it's mostly that last option that's been chosen, because blah-blah-blah closer to natural daylight blah-blah-blah sharp blue-white appearance blah-blah-blah.
 

SubLGT

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...But, yes, an OEM LED headlamp assembly is probably going to be much harder for someone to get into to try to replace the emitters and such, but you know eventually it'll happen...

Yes, there will probably be at least one person will want to crack open the LED headlamp on his brand new 2023 Ford F150 and replace the OEM LEDS with blue eBay LEDs. :sigh:
 

-Virgil-

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I think the difficulty involved in replacing LEDs will probably prevent that from being much of an issue. I think it's more likely that we'll start to see "more bluer!" aftermarket headlight-shaped toys from the usual suspects in the usual parts of the world. Hey, not even six weeks after the Corolla launched with its standard-equipment LED low beams, the manufacturer received a faulty lamp assembly back via Toyota warranty channels. It wasn't their lamp, it was a cheap, pathetic knockoff by either TYC or Depo, I forget which (like it matters).
 

Alaric Darconville

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Hey, not even six weeks after the Corolla launched with its standard-equipment LED low beams, the manufacturer received a faulty lamp assembly back via Toyota warranty channels. It wasn't their lamp, it was a cheap, pathetic knockoff by either TYC or Depo, I forget which (like it matters).

It made it past the dealer stage? If so, yikes!

Maybe one day we'll see a "retro" movement, and cars will be made with lamps with warmer lamps to hearken back to the good ol' days. We can dream, right?
 

Tre_Asay

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It made it past the dealer stage? If so, yikes!

Maybe one day we'll see a "retro" movement, and cars will be made with lamps with warmer lamps to hearken back to the good ol' days. We can dream, right?

We already see "easywhite" LED bulbs, in fact I just recently replaced a few warm white CFL bulbs that matched incandescant color better than the CFL.

I would hope that these high CRI LED options would be used in many more applications.

In theory the cool white LED is closer to daylight but in practice they cheap out and have that massive blue spike that gives everything a blue cast. While it is not unusable it makes it harder to see because colors that should be sepparate appear closer together.
 

Lynx_Arc

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I think LED lights will eventually phase out halogens but not within 10 years on all cars especially budget vehicles.

Looking back to the days of sealed beam headlights it was easy to buy a replacement then they went to halogen bulbs and it wasn't as easy but manageable. If automakers would standardize a format for auto LED lighting such that they could make them interchangeable over the years when newer emitters came out then we could see halogens vanish as they again would be akin to the sealed beam type situation but you could make them smaller to fit behind a "window" and perhaps even adjustable like the sealed beam units were.
For now we see every LED headlight based vehicle having to engineer from the ground up their entire system and pass all that cost on to the buyer and most likely their LED lighting isn't the same for their whole line of cars nor any other maker the same as theirs. They need to do a like computer makers and develop an LED light Module standard for cars or several module standards that can be easily incorporated into vehicles. That way we don't have a dozen different LED designs per year and when LED emitters and Vf and output change another dozen different designs to match those emitters and in another few years yet the same thing till you have hundreds of LED lighting systems in cars and get in an accident and find it costs $1000 to replace a headlight when your car reaches 10 years old because nobody expected there to be a demand for replacement headlights and car makers aren't interested in saving the average guy on parts they are glad to make them expensive and profit from that expense.
 

SubLGT

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...For now we see every LED headlight based vehicle having to engineer from the ground up their entire system and pass all that cost on to the buyer and most likely their LED lighting isn't the same for their whole line of cars nor any other maker the same as theirs...

The latest LED headlamp from Mercedes, in the new E-class, has some impressive functionality in it, and will no doubt be very expensive to replace.

https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/me...ight-the-led-headlamps-of-the-future-e-class/
 

-Virgil-

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In theory the cool white LED is closer to daylight

No, it is not. This piece of marketing babble refers only to CCT, which is a silly and unrealistic comparison. SPD and CRI are much more meaningful, and the SPD and CRI of most so-called "closer to daylight" cool white LEDs is not even close to being slightly similar to those properties of daylight.
 

Lynx_Arc

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The latest LED headlamp from Mercedes, in the new E-class, has some impressive functionality in it, and will no doubt be very expensive to replace.

https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/me...ight-the-led-headlamps-of-the-future-e-class/
Yes... and like the first LED light bulbs sold that made claims to last 25 years that didn't last a year even and took a lot of time and effort to get warranty replaced (plus shipping costs etc) you won't be able to go to Autozone or wherever to buy a new OEM LED module or driver or however they piece it together.
 

-Virgil-

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Yes... and like the first LED light bulbs sold that made claims to last 25 years that didn't last a year even and took a lot of time and effort to get warranty replaced (plus shipping costs etc) you won't be able to go to Autozone or wherever to buy a new OEM LED module or driver or however they piece it together.

Let's keep the comparisons relevant. Apples-apples, not apples-spark plugs.
 

Magio

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From purely an efficiency stand point aren't higher CCT LEDs generally always more efficient (Lumens/watt) than their lower CCT counterparts?
 

-Virgil-

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From purely an efficiency stand point aren't higher CCT LEDs generally always more efficient (Lumens/watt) than their lower CCT counterparts?

Often, not always, but not by enough to be a real reason for picking them. Same goes for LEDs in street lights. (Also, it's not efficiency but efficacy -- lumens per watt.)
 

SubLGT

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More predictions from Hella (excerpted from DVN newsletter)

Steffen Pietzonka, Hella USA's VP of Marketing, notes current U.S. regulations permit only one dynamic option, bending…..

...LED costs have come down faster than he had predicted several years ago, and the industry is adopting the technology at a rapid rate... Hella expect the global market for LED headlamps to grow to 20% of new cars in 2020, up from 4% in 2016, while the shares held by halogen and HID will fall from 89% to 77% and 7% to 3%, respectively.

By market, the supplier predicts LED headlamps' share of installations will grow to 45% in Europe, up from 12% in the same 4-year timeframe; 23% in North America, from 4%; ...

HID down to 3% in 2020? Looks like HID will disappear long before halogen does.
 
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