# How much light does a car produce?



## wuyeah (Nov 24, 2005)

Just one of my curiosity. How much Lumens does a regular car high beam produce? LED or Incandescent. 

Does car high beam produce more than Surefire M6??


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## Roy82 (Nov 24, 2005)

As a pretty crude estimate, I'd say each headlight bulb (55W) would be say 1200 lumens. 

On high beam (60W or a separate 100W globe) it may be higher than 2500 lumens with the 100W. That'd depend on the car what bulb(s) are in there. 

Think the brightest the M6 gets, according to Surefire is 500 lumens. So I think the car wins.

Someone else will probably have some better numbers than me, hopefully I'm not too far off and embarrass myself on my first post!


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## Lynx_Arc (Nov 24, 2005)

You can take as a rough estimate the wattage of the bulbs and compare. Car headlights range from 50watt low beam to 100watts high beam. The focus on headlights it less than nominal for a flashlight as a lot of light is scattered purposely on low beam and a tighter flood on high beam that most flashlight makers find useful on high output lights such as the thor versions. Comparing them to flashlights is not entirely easy or useful.


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## illuminator196972 (Nov 24, 2005)

Roy I would say 500 to 1000 lumens on high beams.


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## 270winchester (Nov 24, 2005)

H4 automotive bulbs routinely go up to 130watt don't they? I have seen a lot of cars with bulbs that rival that of the thor spotlights, but two of them. Well, that's before car companies widely started using HID modules....


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## bfg9000 (Nov 26, 2005)

Does indeed depend on the bulb and reflector. An H7 is rated for 1500 lumens from 55w, while most other 55w bulbs deliver ~1200. Installing the same bulb in a low beam reflector will result in additional losses out the front from the cutoff shields. 

For comparison, a standard H2S HID low beam lamp is rated for 3200 lumens/35w.


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## Blackbeagle (Nov 27, 2005)

For what it's worth, the older literature for the MCharger and other lights similar to it used to refer to the typical (for the time) sealed beam headlights as having about 20,000 CP.


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## nemul (Nov 27, 2005)

i seen 160w H4's on ebay... i could turn my 10cp into a 20cp.. lmao


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