Somewhere I read that 'Automotive manufacturers are aware heat is a problem and they don't want to be liable for bulbs failing too fast from overheating, because the design of the bulb housing can trap the heat and cause the bulb to fail.' Does this mean that there are still major flaws in automotive exterior led headlight technology?
No, it means whoever wrote that article you're quoting -- if you're quoting -- didn't know what they were talking about (and can't write; that pile of words makes no sense as written). LED headlamps do not use bulbs or "bulb housings". LEDs are thermically unlike previous headlamp light sources. With all previous light sources, the light and heat travelled the same path. With LEDs, the light goes forward and the heat goes rearward. The heat must be adequately moved off the LED, because as an LED's temperature rises its output drops; this is called "thermal droop". Beyond that, eventually inadequate heat sinking and thermal management will cause the LED to heat up to a failure point. Thermal management has gotten a whole lot easier since the first LED headlamps hit the market 13 years ago in the Lexus LS600; at that time a whole lot of LEDs were required to get adequate light for a headlight beam, and their efficacy (lumens output per watt input) was lower than today. So those early LED headlamps had to have heat pipes, fans, and other bulky, complicated thermal management strategies that increased parts count and potential failure modes -- but even then, failure rates were quite low.
Today's LEDs have much higher efficacy. Today's optics are more advanced. Today we have a much wider range of effective heat sink materials. All of which means we need a lot fewer LEDs, dissipating a lot less power, to make a good headlight beam. So fans and such are largely no longer needed; today's LED headlamps use passive cooling that's completely adequate even in very high-stress situations (very hot day, vehicle standing still). We generally do not have problems with thermal failures in legitimate LED headlamps.
But that doesn't mean LED car lamps are somehow immune to the fact that they're designed, specified, and built by imperfect human beings. Keep in mind we generally do not have problems with failures in fuel injection systems, engine oiling systems, windshield wiper systems, door lock systems, and any other car system you might want to name...but it does happen. That's why there are service bulletins and recalls, which happen with every make of car, from the cheapest to the most expensive.
Magio mentions Honda Accord DRL burnouts. That's one example (of not very many) of an LED car light that's not as life-of-the-car as it could be. Honda and their lamp supplier chose to use two LEDs for the daytime running light on each side of the car. The LEDs they chose had to be driven at a high power level to get the required amount of light, and the heat sinking is marginally adequate. As a result, the daytime running lights can fail prematurely. It doesn't happen on all, or even most cars...but the Honda Accord is a very popular seller, so even a low failure percentage adds up to a lot of cars, especially when we're talking about the daytime running light, which is specifically designed to be visible out in front of the car. Add in the human tendency for
confirmation bias, and it's only natural someone might say "Oh, geez, yeah, I see that all the time, they're having major issues with those lights burning out prematurely", even if the actual math of the matter doesn't support that view. In the case of the Accord, the official fix is very expensive if it's done after the 3-year/36,000-mile warranty ends (replace the affected headlamp/s) but there's at least one reasonable aftermarket fix that costs about $50.
The existence of an isolated example like this does not mean LED car lights should be avoided. Overall, the reliability and durability of LED car lights are much better than HID and halogen/incandescent. The LEDs tend to last a lot longer and fail a lot less. From the perspective of your driving comfortably and avoiding a crash after dark, it would be foolhardy to opt for the lower safety performance and lower dependability of bulb-type lights, especially in the case of the Hyundai Kona; its halogen headlamps use H4 bulbs, which were state of the art in the early 1970s and are very inefficient on low beam (not able to put much light on the road). The Hyundai warranty is better/longer than Honda provides, too, so there's that.
Does this mean that there are still major flaws in automotive exterior led headlight technology?
That question is based on a faulty premise.
