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Chris M.

Chris M.

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Jan 17, 2001
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South Wales, UK
....and not anything we`ve seen before. Massive clusters of Luxeon Stars are not the future.

As featured in this month`s Lighting Equipment News, this is the future:

luxeonheadlight.jpg

Photo courtesy of James D. Hooker.

First shown at Frankfurt last month, this headlight assembly comnprises of only Luxeon Star LEDs, well- aside form the high beam lamp. The main beam comes from seven of the soon to be avaliable 5 watt Luxoen Star LEDs, the turnsignal and low beam comprise a single LS each.

No other information is known by me at present, all I can do is speculate that a similar tail light assembly is probably in existance somewhere.
When will we see cars using this new technology? I wouldn`t say it will be soon. By about 2010, LumiLEDs will hopefully have cracked the colour issues and produce consistent pure white lamps with a high CRI and smooth even beam distribution. Maybe then, or afterwards when the efficiency can be worked on, will they make their mark on the automotive industry, at least at the front of the car. Round back where it`s all red (and orange in the UK), things may move a little quicker as, inherantly, the red ones are so much more efficient than the common 21 watt tungsten bulbs of today.
Currently a good Metal Halide D2S type lamp surpasses the efficiency of these LEDs, and of course then there is the heatsinking requirements- some 35 watts of heat has to be efficiently dealt with, in order to maintain the light output and long term life of the LEDs.


But whatever happens, the future`s bright, the future`s solid state!


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Yowzer! Now that 7x5WLS headlamp would make for one heckuva mod! Don't suppose a 6D Mag would provide sufficient juice....
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Nice bit of spotting there, Chris!
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I can't wait to outfit my car with one of those as a retrofit either. If driven to spec, that would be about 840 lumens worth of light per side! Still no match for a X990 or the mythical Beast yet - but a lotta light nonetheless for driving.

(PS - congrats on your winning entry on the homepage contest! Wunderbar!
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<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Chris M.:

No other information is known by me at present, all I can do is speculate that a similar tail light assembly is probably in existance somewhere.
...
Round back where it`s all red (and orange in the UK), things may move a little quicker as, inherantly, the red ones are so much more efficient than the common 21 watt tungsten bulbs of today.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I was hunting around a while back and came up with this site:
http://www.ledcorp.com/catalog.html

They've got red 1156 and 1157 bulb replacements using a single red LS. I tried to do (ok, to guess) the math on how many lumens a normal bulb puts out (200lm?) and how much of that light is lost through the red plastic taillight itself (70%?) and came up with 60 lumens. Given that a red LS is 44 lumens, these might be bright enough to replace a normal taillight. Too bad they're $34.95 each
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Andre
 
I think that the motorbike industry will and could benefit greatly from Luxeon technology headlights. I have already suggested it to the Tianjin Motorcycle Technical Center in China where much of the research is now done on motorcycle technology.
Trail bikes in particular will benefit from s solidstate light source... off roading can really create problems for glass filament based lights. The LED's if fitted throughout to a bike will benefit in three ways... reliable signal and headlamp operation, lower petrol consumption due to less loading on the alternator, which in turn will also make the bike more powerful!
The motorcycle industry is always ready to embrace new technology, often well ahead of the car industry!
 
Now THAT's what I'm talking about! Soon the bulbs in our cars will not need to be replaceable. "Good for the life of the car" is what I'm looking for. Especially for such simple things as dash indicators and illumination. Ever had to pull the whole dash to replace a $0.09 bulb?

LED headlights? How slick would that be?
 
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Identical!

But trust me, they are LEDs in that photo up there. I guess that particular cluster was chosen because of the multiple lenses in the main beam. It`s probably just a day`s fiddling by some of LumiLEDs`ses tech guys to retrofit one using Luxeons, for that Frankfurt trade show. Probably needs more work to become a road-legal lamp, and as I said, I doubt we`ll see them for quite some time.

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if those are really LSs, The 5W must have a very long throw to match the regular head lamp. So now we have a nice alternative to incadescent lamp. Can't wait to try one.

ake
 
I think they`re probably using the lenses from the original headlight cluster in addition to the regular collimators, to focus the light into a bright headlight-worthy beam. The LEDs themselves are certainly bright enough to compete with incandescent bulbs, but the "throw" is all down to the external optics.

A side-emmitting 5 watt Star, coupled with a SureFire Turbohead type reflector could produce a really tight long throwing beam
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Someone will stick one in a Maglite before long, then we`ll see how well they do!

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Ying, unfortunatley Webshots don`t allow outside image-hotlinking any more, could you post the link to the Webshots album instead? That would work....

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Aren't some of the new Mercedes vehicles are equipped with LED brake and signal lights? I know the busses and other vehicles are all starting to use LEDs too. Even the hydro company wanted to change all the traffic lights to LED to save cost.
 
The latest Volvo buses seem to be using LED tail light clusters now, although they look like matrices of 5mm LED technology.
Because of the comparitive price of a bus, and its typical long working life, it makes sense! Well done Volvo! We may see Volvo cars go slid state on the rear end soon.
 
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