White LEDs to replace interior light bulbs in new Toyota minivan

As seen in just-auto.com:

The days of conventional filament bulbs for vehicle interior lights may be numbered according to a report from Japan which says Toyota will use LEDs inside a new minivan – a world first.

Toyota will buy white LEDs, developed from technology used to make blue LEDs, from Nichia for the minivan's interior lights.

The report said that Nichia has many patents for white LEDs and has been increasing sales to makers of cellular phones. The company already supplies white LEDs to Denso for automotive guage illumination.

Applications for white LED are expected to expand to house lights as well as vehicle lights, the report said.

Toyoda Gosei, Nichia's main rival LED producer, is also trying to commercialize white LEDs while lamp maker Stanley has shown prototype LED headlights combining 100 LED elements.

They`re taking over the world!

On my way back from a job in Wolverhampton we followed a bus that had LED stop and turn lights, using 6 clusters of maybe 34 10mm LEDs each. First I`ve seen the whole set in LED- although there are buses in London that have LEDs in just the red stop/tail lights and LED highlevel brake lights are commonplace on all sorts of vehicles. In the UK, the turn signals are seperate orange lamps by the way.
White Backup light and the red rear fog lamp looked like regular lamps though.


And I`ll probably get strangled for saying this, but I have seen a proto-foto of a headlamp assembly using 5 watt Luxeon Star LEDs for the sidelights, main beam and turn signals. Apparently main beam is as bright as the projection-beam HID versions. Just using a regular bulb in the foglamp part though.

I`ll see if I can get clearence to post the pic. But please don`t be mad at me if I can`t. It is just an early proto and probably not even Japan will see this for a long time.