12....count em, 12 5 Watters on the Chrysler Tomahawk!!!

Read bout this amazing bike and did a search on the net and read this tantalizing piece of information. Has anyone seen this bike in the flesh & can confirm this?

Check it out
Allpar

Does anyone know if anyother automotive manufacturers are planning to utilize 5 Watters in their ranges?

Also seems suspiciously like some of the buses here in Brisbane are starting to use led's for their rear, brake & rear turn lights. Haven't been able to get close enough to one to confirm if they are leds or those fandangled reflectors that look like leds. Anyone else seen anything like them at all?

Cheers

This is a "concept" machine, a one of a kind design o tantalize the serious motor-heads out there. Some of these become products, some do not.

A lot of trucks of all types use LED tail, turn and stop lights on the rear of the vehicle, as well as decorative and marker lights. No LED headlights, yet. Lots of those annoyingly bright HID headlights on the more expensive models, and some aftermarket installations.

/ed brown in the land upover

OMG, that is one of the worst things I have ever seen in my life! I say thing because it's the worst in so many categories that I didn't think it fair to limit the expression of my revulsion! Horrible. It actually makes a Harley look like a good bike.

Back to LEDs. I don't see LEDs replacing other forms of lighting for headlight use (the lights on the front of the vehicle charged with illuminating the path the vehicle travels) for some time. They don't have the efficiency nor the brightness. They're coming up on the former, but the latter will still take some time. As you point out, it would take a number of the 5 watters to get a reasonable brightness. At that point, HID becomes much cheaper and has a sufficiently long life. Also, the cost of high brightness LEDs and the fixtures in which to put them become signifigant to the equation, as well.

Now, for tail lights and turn lights, I can see them completely replacing incandescents in the near future. They are inately monochromatic--no filters necessary. This also allows them to generate light of a particular frequency very efficiently. An incandescent would have to generate white light and then filter (throw and waste) out all photons *not* of the desired color. LEDs would simply not generate them in the first place. Add to that their nearly instantanious response time (from power applied to light out) and you have a saftey improvement.

I think Cadalac (sp?) did some studies before they went with their LED brake lights to show that they gave the followin motorist some 100-200 extra ms to react to actions of the LED equipt vehicle.

Oh, about the busses. Watch the lights. If they come on instantly and extinguish quickly, they're LED. If they're just a bulb in a strange reflector, then they will take a perceptable amount of time to come on and go out. Watch them when they're next to some other vehicle that's also flashing their lights to see the difference.

I think the first time it really struck me was when a truck had a retrofitted high mount central brake light that was LED and conventional lower brake lights. One could see the LED light come on first and go out first as the brakes were engaged and disengaged.

Yep - 1 Oooglee Bike

On the lamp thing.

Busses here in southern ontario have been using LED lamp clusters for their signal lights for the last couple of years. They are even retrofitting them on the older buses when it comes time to replace the bulbs.

Something I noticed last fall was that the new buses being deliverd have something new.
Those flip disc panels used to display rout name and numbers have been replaced by high efficiency yellow LED arrays.

As for telling the diffence between bulbs and LEDs on tail lights. Heh - Those LED lamps at night are BRIGHT when the lense is clean.

We've got some local snow plows with amber LED warning lights. Look like arrays of about 30 or so in about a 2" by 4" cluster. Very cool looking, nice crisp flashing.

I read an article in the local Detroit papers about it. I hope to see it at the North American International Auto Show that opens this weekend in Detroit. If it is acually on display I will report back.

Both my 1994 and 2001 Suburbans have Stanley made (well, the 94 is Stanley for sure) high center stop lamps, but incandescent elsewhere.

I was at an industry preview event for the North American International Auto Show in Detroit on Wednesday and saw this concept vehicle. It was on of many interesting concepts there but not the star of the show by any means. It seemed out of place actually.

Originally posted by Willmore:
OMG, that is one of the worst things I have ever seen in my life! I say thing because it's the worst in so many categories that I didn't think it fair to limit the expression of my revulsion! Horrible. It actually makes a Harley look like a good bike...

Click to expand...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I like the bike. I think it looks awesome! Oh, and not even a go cart makes a Harley look good.

Lots of motorcycles have OEM LED tailights and brakelights now. Most of the 2003 Japanese sportbikes do, and some of the cruisers. I added my own version of custom LED light arrangements to the rear of my SV650 after almost being flattened on the 7 mile bridge to the keys one night.

Just a two cent posting:

Another quick way to determine if you are looking at LED type lamps in most applications is to compare their on/off cycling time to known incandescents.

You'll find that unless the LEDs have a slow on/off circuit installed >rare to never in my experience< that they will for practical purposes turn on or off virtually instantly.

Typically incandescents will have a small but discernable warm up / cool off time.

Now to get back on thread, that bike reminds me of what might happen if you take a 120 volt quartz lamp and run it from 120 V worth of D cells. Real bright for a few moments, but dies off rapidly. That bike is listed with a 3.25 gallon fuel tank ... on a 500+HP engine? Goes fast, but not too far I reckon.

Still, it is very interesting that folks will push the limit on stuff, even though it may not be practical in the real world, or just be used for one shot.

In this case, I'm thinking about such things >with the greatest of admiration and respect< as some of the "one off" modifications that have been listed in CPF threads, and in other areas, like the Voyager aircraft built by Burt Rutan and Jeanna Yeager to fly around the world nonstop and unrefueled.

It is only from those willing to push the "the edges of the currently known operating envelope" that we see the neat upgrades in technology and spinoffs such as from the space program.

We need to keep in mind that while these projects may not be practical in and of themselves, that they are nonetheless absolutely worthwhile ...>to the third power even!<

Keep it up gang!

Challen21: Thanks for sharing the neat link. It is an interesting piece of work for sure. Although I would not consider myself a biker, I do have an appreciation for things mechanical and electrical and like others among us, have done or created some relatively impractical things simply for the thrill of it.

Around here (Bay Area, CA) - the Fed-Ex trucks are running with LED clusters for the brake and tail lights, as well as turnsignal functioning - the instant on/off is a good giveaway when looking at the flashing, and up close you can see the individual LEDs in the cluster. I'm not sure if these are stock from the vehicle (delivery truck) mfgr or if they are being done by the FED-EX maintenance dept so they save $ on changing bulbs and avoid the fix-it tickets from all the burnt out bulbs they would have on the road from their fleet.

Clearly, in a large fleet like FED-ex, the savings of LEDs in labor and fix-it costs must add up. Personally, I find them brighter than normal vehicle incandescent lights, esp when the red filter is removed., which is how there;s running them.