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LED Headlights Can Be Brighter but Often Lack Clear Advantages

Submitted by freemexy3 on Tue, 08/25/2020 - 04:52

LED Headlights Can Be Brighter but Often Lack Clear Advantages

Automakers have embraced light emitting diodes (LEDs) in headlights, and their use is becoming more widespread. At Consumer Reports, 55 percent of the 2018 models we tested had LED headlights. Of the 2019 models we've tested, 86 percent had LEDs.To get more news about led headlights, you can visit iengniek official website.

LEDs are small and can be used in a string of lights, giving car designers more leeway in how the headlights look. But in CR's testing, we discovered that these new lights don’t offer any more illumination than traditional halogen and/or high intensity discharge (HID) headlights.

The problem for many consumers is that they’re paying more for the LEDs but not getting much bang—if any—for that extra buck, says Jennifer Stockburger, director of operations at the Consumer Reports Auto Test Center.

“Yes, they’re stylish, but drivers need lights that will make them safer, and not just make a fashion statement,” Stockburger says. “Car shoppers need to think about headlights as a safety feature in the same way they think about brakes or even seatbelts.” All headlights illuminate the road ahead in one of two ways, Stockburger says. The first, traditional way is to use a reflector to bounce the light from the bulb forward. The other way is to use what is known as a projector, where the headlights use a lens that focuses and directs the light outward.

There are several ways for headlights to create illumination. Halogen bulbs heat a filament to the point where it emits light. They’re the most common on U.S. roads, and they typically give off a yellowish tint.

HID headlights are less common, and they work by igniting a gas—most often Xenon—with electricity inside a bulb. They emit a white or bluish-white hue.LEDs are a far more advanced technology. There are two semiconductors (on a small chip) with either a surplus or a small number of electrons. When the two semiconductors have an electrical charge applied to them, atoms move toward each other and combine, and the resulting energy that's created is released as light.

LED headlights first appeared in the U.S. on the Lexus LS 600h sedan back in 2007, and they were originally found only on high-end cars. But LEDs began appearing in more mainstream models about eight years ago, and some of them impressed us in our testing.

The 2015 Cadillac Escalade’s LEDs, for example, were the best-performing headlights we had tested up to that point. Phil Leinert, a communications manager at General Motors, notes that the Escalade was the first SUV sold in the U.S. with all-LED headlights.