{"id":6848,"date":"2016-07-11T09:30:21","date_gmt":"2016-07-10T23:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.privatefleet.com.au\/?p=6848"},"modified":"2020-06-20T00:52:52","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T14:52:52","slug":"led-lights-small-is-beautiful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/home\/led-lights-small-is-beautiful\/","title":{"rendered":"LED Lights: Small Is Beautiful"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"plasmaglow_lightning_eyes_led_headlight_strips\"<\/p>\n

In just about every new car that comes out, you\u2019ll find LED lighting somewhere around it, whether it\u2019s in the form of daytime running lights, the tail lights or the interior lighting.\u00a0 Car manufacturers seem very proud of featuring LED lighting in the designs.\u00a0 You might be wondering what all the fuss is about.\u00a0 Is this just the latest fashion or is there some real advantage to having LED lighting in your car?<\/p>\n

If you have ever started the day with a flat battery caused by leaving the headlights on or a door slightly open or even the passenger reading light on (i.e. all of us at some point), you will have discovered the disadvantages of the old style incandescent bulbs the hard way.\u00a0 Ditto if you have ever had a bulb blow on you at a bad moment.\u00a0 LED lights don\u2019t blow anywhere near as often as incandescents and they also use a lot less power.\u00a0 And that\u2019s the advantages.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s go back to basics.\u00a0 What is an LED light, how does it work and why don\u2019t they blow or use as much power as the invention credited to Thomas Edison? (Historical note: Edison didn\u2019t so much invent the lightbulb as improve it and buy out the patent from the other guys working on electric lighting. \u00a0The first guy to light a building entirely by electric lights was the UK Joseph Swan. History lecture over.).<\/p>\n

LEDs (light-emitting diodes) have been around for quite some time, having been discovered back in the early 1900s when scientists were starting to mess around with this new-fangled electricity stuff.\u00a0 LEDs are semiconductors made from materials like gallium, selenium and good old silicon.\u00a0 Skipping complex explanations about how all types of diode only allow electricity to flow in one direction, what\u2019s special about an LED is that with only a tiny bit of electricity flowing through it (2\u20133 W), they start glowing.<\/p>\n

For the best part of 100 years, LEDs weren\u2019t particularly useful as they weren\u2019t very bright. They lit up in dull red and you could see them glowing if it was dark but you couldn\u2019t use them to find your way from A to B.\u00a0 Other diodes were much more fun in the early part of the 20th<\/sup> century, such as the ones used in crystal (cat-whisker) radios.\u00a0 In the 1960s, people started tinkering with computers and electronics, and found that LEDs were a good way of showing that a circuit was going.\u00a0 They were pretty expensive at first but soon became mass produced and became more widespread.\u00a0 You know those red numbers on timers and other whizz-bang gadgets in movies and TV shows from the 1970s and 1980s?\u00a0 Ditto green lights?\u00a0 Those are LEDs at work.<\/p>\n

The fun really started when someone found a way to get colours other than red and green.\u00a0 If the human eye picks up more or less equal amounts of the three primary colours of light (red, green and blue), this is perceived as white.\u00a0 This means that if you shove a red, a blue and a green LED close together, it will look like a white LE\"Audi-led-light\"D.\u00a0 Make your semiconductors out of other materials and you get other colours, including actual white.\u00a0 \u00a0More tinkering around with refraction by various physicists around the world led to the production of a nice bright white LED bulb and the possibilities really opened up \u2013 about 100 years after the initial discovery of LEDs.<\/p>\n

There are three reasons why LED lighting is popular for heaps of applications, not just in the automotive world.\u00a0 Firstly, they use next to no electricity, so if you are in the habit of leaving lights in your car on, this won\u2019t drain the battery overnight.\u00a0 It also won\u2019t put demands on your car for extra energy, which increases fuel efficiency (and is even better news for hybrid and electric vehicles).\u00a0 Second, they last for ages.\u00a0 Thirdly, they don\u2019t waste energy in the form of heat.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a fourth advantage, which is more to do with aesthetics: LED lights tend to be smaller, which means that they can be worked into prettier designs (Audi<\/a> has some nice ones).\u00a0 The fact that LEDs come in different colours also means that you can play around a bit with interior ambient lighting, which is also a lot of fun.<\/p>\n

Work is still underway.\u00a0 While LED lights have become bright enough to be used around\"r8-grey-rear-lights\" the home, as daytime running lights and as tail lights (HSV<\/a> do this well), they haven\u2019t got bright enough yet to be used as headlights\u2026 at least not yet.<\/p>\n

LED, Xenon and Halogen Headlights<\/h3>\n

OK, so how do LEDs stack up against the other big two forms of lighting in vehicles, namely halogen and xenon?<\/p>\n

Halogen<\/h4>\n

Pros:<\/h5>\n