Vehicular LED bulbs

[Deleted User]

Could someone please tell me why vehicular LED bulbs are nowhere near the efficiency of home LED bulbs ?

When you replace a 100wattt incandescent bulb with a 10watt LED in your home for an equivalent output abeit a different frequency of visible light

Yet - cars STILL use 60watt LED bulbs - Whilst a 60w LED bulb will give more light output than a 60w incandescent - it is nowhere near 10 times

Belenus

You might get more responses in the Motoring forum.

Car bulbs are nominally 12 volts while domestic bulbs are nominally 230 volts so the comparison is probably more complicated but I will leave it to others who know more than I do.

[Deleted User]

I've usually seen car LED bulbs around the 20 watt mark, mine are 18.6 watts - some up to about 30 watts.

Traditional halogen car headlight bulbs typically give about 700-1200 lumens at 55-60 watts.

LED headlight bulbs will usually be rated at about 4000 lumens.

So comparing like for like in terms of light output then you are getting 130-200 lumens per watt for a car bulb and about 12-20 lumens for halogen car headlights - so they are still 10 times more efficient - same as domestic LED bulbs.

Neil_Jones

I believe there is such a thing as "too bright" for car headlights, otherwise you end up dazzling everybody even before you put your headlights on as well.  There is AFAIK no specific limit in the legislation as how bright lights can be but you have to be able to see 100m with them in clear conditions without blinding somebody else in the process.  There is (or was) a standard for them under British Standards.