Back when I had PTMW!, it had on 90mm Hella HIDs Driving Lights (like the P1's) and theycast a fantastic light ahead when pressing on down the wiggly country roads where I lived at the time, far better than the headlights and on a par certainly with the 130w Scoobysport Cibies around at the time.

Got a set of driving lights now with 55w bulbs but wondering if there are LED bulbs that are as good as, if not better than them? Something like the P1 spots would be awesome but...

 

AFAIK, lighting technology hasn't moved on far enough to give an accurately focused beam for SEEING by with LED.

It's OK to be seen by, but that seems to be it.

What driving lights do you have, on what vehicle and which type of bulb do they use?

 

Range Rover Sport integrated driving light/fog light thingy. Halogen but not sure of bulb.

 

VW/Audi seem to disagree: http://www.audi.com/com/brand/en/vor...ant-light.html

That said those replacement LED automotive bulbs you see on eBay and the likes are unlikely to provide as good a light as a halogen or HID bulb for seeing by. Though for being seen they are probably better.

 

My Audi S8 headlights (not just DRL, the actual headlights) are LED but not the individually dipping matrix ones mentioned above which is a further evolution, not yet permitted in US because dipped/main isn't under driver control. The illumination is great, but not noticeably better than the Xenons on the same year A8 that I just traded in. The LEDs are certainly no worse, both are great. I wouldn't have specified them as a paid for option, but if they came on a certain model or the previous owner had specified them I wouldn't complain.

IIRC the LED headlights are 40W. Clearly the design and lenses make as much difference as being LED or not. You can have terrible xenons (invariably aftermarket) and great halogens.

 

As John has mebntioned, I've serviced a Leon with full LED headlamps but with LED dipped and LED main. Pretty impressive...I had it on the beam tester out of curiosity...The beam pattern is made up via multiple reflectors that form part of a LED array. To look at, you'd think it wouldn't work, but it does.

How bright though? Don't know...didn't drive it in the dark, but the intensity is on par with OEM HID.

So the technology is there, but I don't think as a retrofit bulb will work, as thus far all I've seen are multiple LEDs each with their own reflector that when combied make teh desired beam. A single LED bulb or a bulb with a cluster of LEDs wouldn't be able to achive this.

 

Get some of these fitted, that should sort it

http://rallylamps.com/st-8-motorsport-led-spotlamps/

 

Liking them!

 

No prices on any of them......

 

Prices..

http://www.nickygrist.com/lazer-lamps-166-c.asp

 

Ridiculous...as I expected.

 

RR Phantom has full LED headlights, as does the Audi R8 i believe

BMW, have just introduced Laser head lighting.

Yes the technology is out there, and moving on fast

I read an article in a car magazine many years ago regarding LED headlights.

If i recall, Europe was way ahead of us, it was our legislation that was

preventing the introduction of LED head lighting on vehicles


Mart

 

Seems odd that, as when I got a Full-LED headlamp on a new Leon on the beam tester the beam pattern was absolutely perfect just with a slight variation in intensity presumably due to light overlapping between each LED in the array. If anything it was too perfect as there was very little scatter....sometimes a little scatter is helpful to give a more gradual reduction in light intensity and consequent visibility beyond the cut-off. A big constast between light and dark can make things even more difficult for the eye to see in the darker-lit areas (one reason why I'm not a fan of modern high pressure SON streetlamps vs the old low pressure "yellow" SOX lamps).

This does affect projectors lights to some degrees, I remember our old Nissan P11 facelift Primera with factory HIDs was terrible. It had a odd beam cut-off which made seeing anything to the nearside very difficult as there was basically no "kick up" of the beam towards the curb.

 

The X5 has optional LED lamps. I didn't spec them on mine but I do have LED dynamic spots.