The Advantages of Automotive LED Lights
by Anthony Williams on October 28, 2020
For decades, vehicle owners have been restricted in their choice of headlight bulb options. If you have ever replaced a burnt out bulb on your car, the OEM halogen bulb you used probably did not look very different from a smaller version of a home incandescent bulb. As LED technology has continued to develop, automotive LED lights are quickly on their way to becoming the new standard in lighting technology. Many companies are already producing LED replacement bulbs for several automotive applications and some automakers are even beginning to use OEM LEDs on their vehicles in place of traditional halogen bulbs.
Halogen bulbs have remained a popular choice for a few reasons. The most obvious reason for their continued popularity is simply a matter of production. The equipment used to produce these bulbs is well established and makes them very inexpensive to manufacture.
To put it simply, a halogen bulb uses a glowing filament just like an incandescent light bulb but it keeps that filament enclosed in a pocket of halogen gas to extend its working life. Combine the ease of manufacturing these bulbs with the fact that a single bulb can produce a fair amount of light output for as long as 1000 hours and you have a decent option for powering your car’s headlights. These bulbs have dominated the market for over 3 decades, but that trend is quickly changing.
LEDs are the latest and most efficient light emitting technology that we have discovered. While the exact nature of how an LED functions is a little more difficult to summarize conceptually compared to getting a piece of metal or some gas very hot, these light emitting diodes are made up of special semiconductor materials. When electricity flows across an LED, the electrons want to “squeeze” into open electron holes in the semiconductive material and, in doing so, they shed a small amount of energy in the form of light.
This process produces more visible light than conventional bulbs per the amount of energy consumed without wasting large amounts of energy in the form of non-visible radiation and heat. They also can last anywhere from 30 to 50 times as long as a halogen bulb.
LED tail lights first appeared on vehicles in the early 1990s and the first OEM LED headlights were introduced in 2009. As LEDs continue to become easier to produce, they stand to become the next big option in terms of automotive light bulbs. Just like the transition to halogen headlights, the transition to LEDs as the main source of automotive lighting will take decades as manufacturers make advances to meet the demand.
If you are looking for a source of powerful automotive LED lights, you need to check out Diode Dynamics. Their team of designers and engineers have made huge strides in the manufacturing of compact and incredibly efficient automotive LED light bulbs. They produce a wide range of LED off road lights, fog light bulbs, tail light bulbs and accents for many popular vehicles. You can use the convenient search feature at www.Diodedynamics.com to find the products that will be a perfect match for your car or truck.