Gadgetory

first a sad little history lesson the United States has always been dead last in new headlight technology not because we're stupid but because our regulations have been u.s. vehicle regulations forever didn't allow designers to use new light sources new ways of shaping the light didn't even allow them to use covered fared in headlights long after Asian and European manufacturers were allowed to do so we've always been in the dark ages here what we had were these sealed beam headlights basically glorified flashlight bulbs if you ask me the either had a pair of sevens or four fives and that was it things have changed okay first off HID or high-intensity discharge this is kind of a general term for lights that use as a source of illumination an arc instead of a burning filament the way sealed beam headlight stick frankly those old seal beams aren't a whole lot different than burning a candle now more specifically HIDs are usually xenon headlights that means they have a xenon gas field capsule which the gas is being excited by a couple of nodes electrical nodes passing very high voltage across a gap you'll see a sticker off and under the hood showing you a high voltage warning bi-xenon simply means that xenon arc technology is used for both low and high beams LED is the newest headlight tech in production though only on a few cars still LEDs offer strong though not the highest light output but combine that with the lowest power consumption and the greatest flexibility in design you can style them into almost any surface on a car but LED light output is quite sensitive to swings in temperature that's a problem on the road so this helps make them complicated to engineer a part of white LED headlights remain pricey either 1600 bucks extra on an Audi eight for example laser headlights are coming if you believe BMW I'm pleased to report this will not be like mounting a couple of huge laser cat toys on front of your car instead the lasers actually point back at a set of tiny mirrors in the housing that then reflect that laser light out on the road the benefits here are incredible precision and flexibility of brightness and beam shape and reportedly even lower power consumption than LED NES like the lasers at a 70s rock concert these can project shapes in the air like a warning triangle near your car when it's disabled the first big change in beam shaping happened in the 80s with lenses old sealed beams used faceted lenses on the front to shape the beam new technologies began to rely on a faceted reflector behind the bulb you can spot the difference right away by a clear lens on the front that basically just keeps dirt and water out headlight leveling became common soon after and it can be done either automatically or via a simple manual system with a spin wheel either way it's meant to compensate for vehicle loading that tends to cast the headlights up into the sky adaptive or steerable front headlights maintain direction of the lights where your steering wheel is pointed this goes back to early tatras and even the Tucker though with limited success until modern technology got rid of the motors and linkages they used to use and dropped in more reliable modern actuators about ten years another beam shaping tech you can easily spot is a projector lamps very prominent on a lot of acura cars for example this place is a convex eyeball looking lens in front of the light source to throw the light aided by a mechanical shield between the lens and the bulb that moves up and down to change the cutoff between high and low beam and Audi's about to roll out matrix beam headlights that would use addressable LED arrays to send high beam light all over the road all the time except making carve-outs on the beam when it detects oncoming traffic so no more separate low and high beam at all Europeans will get this $3,000 option first Americans may have to wait a while because of a decades-old law that says headlights in this country must have high and low beam modes and generally there's a big discussion of the car business now about defaulting all cars to high beam and using low beam as the conditional mode instead of vice versa the way it is today okay bottom line now like some of the avenues of car tech these days headlight technology is becoming more and more the domain of the car maker and less something you're going to graft on later using aftermarket parts one notable exception though are high intensity discharge xenon kits there are a ton of those out there you might try retrofitting to your car be careful on the install they generate some wicked voltage but in terms of things like steerable headlights LED headlights Laser headlights obviously you're not going to install those on your existing car you're gonna get them on a car when you buy it you