Hello there. Welcome to the forum.
I noticed that the 9012 bulbs seem to provide very good lumen output using the same amount of wattage. Yet, I notice many car companies still use 9006 bulbs and H11 bulbs for low beams?
Well, HB4 (9006) has pretty much fallen by the wayside. It used to be the mainstream go-to bulb for low beam in the NAFTA market, but that role is now occupied by H11. Compared to HB4, H11 offers more flux (1250 lumens versus 1000), much tighter filament precision, much tighter bulb placement precision within the lamp because its index plane is on the inside of the lamp instead of the outside, there's a better seal, there's a metal-free zone around the filament for less uncontrollable stray light from the bulb (therefore less glare from the headlamp), there's availability of H11s with longer life ratings than are available in HB4, etc. But HB4 is just outmoded, not illegal or anything, and HB4 bulbs are a bit cheaper than H11 bulbs, so that's one reason why an automaker might choose to use HB4 even today. We see a lot of this on the high beam side: H9 has all those same advantages over HB3 (9005), but HB3 is cheaper, and the stray light/focus precision issues are less critical on a high beam, and nobody uses their high beams anyway, so it's very common to see Japanese and American-brand vehicles (for example) with 4-headlamp systems with H11 low beam and HB3 high beam.
Today's HIR2 (9012) bulbs have some of the advantages of H11 -- the better filament precision, the metal-free zone around the filament -- and they do offer the greatest amount of flux (highest lumens) available from a "55 watt" nominal rating, but they have the old HB3/HB4-style base, which means lower precision of bulb position, the older-type seal arrangement, etc. And until recently no long-life version was available, which counted against it for the NAFTA region. It is also a relatively expensive bulb. And over the HIR bulbs' multi-chapter history first with GE, then Toshiba, now Philips/Vosla, a variety of OEMs in the NAFTA market got their fingers burned in one way or another specifying HIR bulbs. Toshiba supplied HIR2 bulbs for the Maxima's BiHalogen lights starting in 2004, then Nissan felt they had been screwed so badly either by the bulbs or their maker that they found the lamp complied with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 108 even with a lower-output HB4 (9006QL, a long-life OEM version from Sylvania) and moved to that bulb instead. The Toshiba HIR2s were more popular in the Japanese market, perhaps because they were a local product. This latest chapter, with the Philips-style bulbs and availability of a long-life version, has gained more favor with OEMs here.
Am I right or am I right?
No, actually. An HIR2 bulb doesn't necessarily guarantee good and/or customer-pleasing headlamp performance. GM had to commission HIR2+30 bulbs from Vosla to address customer complaints of weak lights on 2014-'15 GMC and Chevy pickup trucks, the HIR2 low beams or BiHalogens on various Chrysler/Dodge/FIAT models got "meh" reviews, etc. This is not unique to the HIR2; there is no kind of bulb that guarantees a good lamp, and it is possible to make relatively good or bad lamps with most of the available bulb types. The type and even the brand of bulb chosen by an OEM for any given vehicle is a much more complicated decision than most people realize. It's not just a question of lumens and dollars, though both of those factor in. There is no single "best type of bulb".
