It looks like they already failed ECE approval
As of now, there are no ECE-approved (or DOT-certified) LED replacements for halogen headlight bulbs.
but curious if the new design is getting there within the realm of safe replacement?
I've been playing with some Ultinon Pro9000s over the last few months. The results are an interesting mix:
1. They create strikingly good beam patterns in some lamps -- easily some of the best I've ever seen from LED replacement bulbs, and in some cases good enough to be called "really good" without any caveats, terms and conditions attached.
2. In other lamps, they produce beam patterns that might (maybe) be legally and/or technically acceptable, but are visibly degraded as compared to the spec halogen bulb.
3. In some lamps they produce light distributions that look like "Don't even bother putting this on the gonio, it's a waste of time and lab resources; it's going to fail hard"
4. In some lamps they don't physically fit, because of incompatibility with the lamp's bulb-retention setup. Or sometimes that part's OK, but the fan on the back of the bulb protrudes too far to allow installation of the bulb cover, and if you leave that off you're inviting water/dirt/insect contamination of the lamp. I haven't seen any fit problem with the portion of the bulb inside the lamp, though I suppose that's possible on some lamps...maybe those Cibie Bobi conversion lamps of the early 1980s with the bulb sealed off from the interior of the reflector/lens by a glass bubble -- but I'm just guessing; I haven't seen one of those lamps in person in many years, and...well, maybe there's someone on planet Earth who has a set of BOBIs, and will buy a set of the Philips Ultinon Pro9000 bulbs, and try them out. But I'm not holding my breath!
So no...we're not "there yet", and I would say the excellent results in
some headlamps with these bulbs are a harbinger that we're headed into some choppy air. Because before, it was a uniform "Just say no". Now it's morphing more toward "Wellllllll, it depends" and a bunch of technical detail that John Q. Public isn't going to read or listen or pay attention to. It'll be like
this.
@-Virgil- Did you happen to get around to testing the Philips "sealed beam" LEDs? (You had mentioned them on your to-do list a couple months ago)
They're still on the same list. Who knows, by the time I get around to it maybe they will have revamped that product line a time or two.