Led head lights?

I sure this has been asked but I did not see it here.

I know the headlight low beam is LED what is the other high beam?

How bright is the LED head light does it look like the cars that have pure white light and blind me every night? Or is that a HID that blinds me and this car is not as bright? thanks

I would suspect that the highbeams are standard halogen. Highbeams are used fairly infrequently, so the cost of HID would be difficult to justify, even with the energy savings. So most HID systems are geared towards the standard 35W low-beam application, thus making a higher-powered application even more expensive. Of course, I haven't seen a LEAF in person to see what's actually in there :roll:

The cars that blind you may well be HID, particularly aftermarket HID systems that have improper optics.

http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/bulbs/Hid/disadvantages/disadvantages.html
http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/bulbs/Hid/conversions/conversions.html

How the LEAF headlights will behave remains to be seen. A lot depends on the color rendition index of the light they produce, and whether the light is projected from a large collector, or left as a "point source". I'd love to see some pictures or video of the Leaf's headlamps in operation.

Here ya go;

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/valeo-ichikoh-alliance-equips-the-nissan-leaf-electric-vehicle-with-led-low-beam-headlamps-104071603.html

Enjoy

TRONZ said:

Here ya go;

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/valeo-ichikoh-alliance-equips-the-nissan-leaf-electric-vehicle-with-led-low-beam-headlamps-104071603.html

Enjoy

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Thanks Tronz, a very interesting press release. I will be very interested to see how they look at night.....I'll be waiting to see what the early buyers think!

I know it should be good with a flux on the road of more than 500 lumens, the wide beam offers a good range and high homogeneity. Thanks to its color temperature of 5500K, it has been ranked at the level of HID lamps during night test comparisons with different mass production headlamps

thanks I was wondering what the wattage was going to be on the LEDs. Great article.

Apparently about 25 watts for each low-beam headlight, so 50 watts plus a few other LED "running" and rear lights (when on LOW beams).

Gonewild said:

I know it should be good with a flux on the road of more than 500 lumens, the wide beam offers a good range and high homogeneity. Thanks to its color temperature of 5500K, it has been ranked at the level of HID lamps during night test comparisons with different mass production headlamps

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Interesting, in that halogen low-beam bulbs are usually rated somewhere in the range of 1300 lumens. Then again, it's hard to compare since lumen numbers are often generated with widely divergent methods. "Flux on the road" might be different than "bulb lumens", and I'm sure a lot of the lumens produced by a halogen bulb are in the infra-red, which aren't useful for seeing. The other oddity is that my bicycle headlamp is LED, and claims 700 lumens, yet is only using about 13 watts. Once again, maybe a moot comparison as I imagine for automotive applications some efficiency may be traded in exchange for long life, etc...

If you read the links I posted above you'll see that "color temperature" has little to do with headlamp efficacy.

In any case, the proof is in the seeing and I'll still be interested to see how they turn out. They have to meet DOT specs, so will be adequate in any case.

500 lumen is really not that much. My bike has a 1000 lumen (which only uses 10W), and it's barely enough to ride at 25mph ... granted it has a lot of fill, and less throw, but still.

500 is low, probably inaccurate, but at the same time the article doesn't mention anything about high beams.

gudy said:

500 lumen is really not that much. My bike has a 1000 lumen (which only uses 10W), and it's barely enough to ride at 25mph ... granted it has a lot of fill, and less throw, but still.

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One thing you learn quickly when looking at manufacturer's claims on LED lighting is just because they have numbers doesn't mean that the numbers are comparable. How did they test it? Did they embelish? Is "1000 lumen" the max rating of the LED's used? All the light from the LED? Light output on the surface of the road?

Unfortunately, there is a lot of BS in manufacturer claims. Many of us want to look at numbers and want to think we are comparing apples to apples, but it is just not the case. Without standardized measurments, manufacturer numeric claims are virtually meaningless. Take a look at some of the DOE's SSL CALiPER reports where they compare manufacturer's claims to actual measured performance (actual lumen performance can often be as little as 1/3 of what some of these companies are claiming).
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/ssl/reports.html

I would assume that the Nissan LED lighting will exceed federal lighting regulations for headlight output on the road. How much it exceeds those regulations remains to be seen.

500 lumens on the road is all you need, its a complete number. All the lumen specs you see are different, some are a spherical field around a bulb, others are in a narrow beam and so on. I'm sure it meets DOT specs without blinding incoming drivers. Using the Watts number is not a good way to compare it to another LED, different LED techs have different efficiencies.

What I would like to know is how much it costs to replace these headlights..

lne937s said:

Is "1000 lumen" the max rating of the LED's used? All the light from the LED? Light output on the surface of the road?Unfortunately, there is a lot of BS in manufacturer claims.

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Exactly. Very few OEMs even have the ability to measure LED output, as I discovered during 25+ years of selling LEDs for Japanese and American companies.

The principal designer of the Leaf headlamp, Valeo, is the conglomeration of several companies. One of them is/was Cibie, a French manufacturer of very high quality halogen headlamps "back in the day" when US autos used horrible sealed-beam tungsten. In fact, their European-code 7" and 5 3/4" headlamp modules fitting older automobiles still, to this day, outperform many new "integrated" designs.

Useless trivia #2: The new Audi A8 has LED headlamps with two different and qualified beam patterns: one for continental Europe and one for left-drive Great Britain. The changeover from one pattern to another is controlled by the car's GPS!

Nearly-useless trivia #3: I've not seen one with its headlights on, but the new Leaf will probably have conventional halogen hi-beams. Our DOT requires hi-beams to be instantly available, and the easy way to accomplish this is with separate modules. Volvo (I think) uses a motorized mirror on its HID lamps to accomplish this. There are some two-element HID bulbs out there, too. I think the A8 referenced above uses LEDs alone.

Herm, I don't what the replacement cost of the Leaf module will be, but it will be very expensive. Fortunately, a well-designed LED assembly should outlast the rest of the car. Just don't hit anything!

The high beams are conventional halogen. You can seem the bulbs clearly by looking into the headlight assemblies (not true of the LEDs though, they're a little buried). I illuminated the high and low beams at the San Jose drive event to have a look.