More light for less

The lifespan of a product is important, especially in this day and age when people are trying to save money any way they can. Continuously replacing lights can become costly for vehicle owners. As lighting design progresses, manufacturers are producing longer lasting lights to help alleviate those added costs for customers.

At first, high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps were the bright new technology, replacing halogens because an HID could provide 2,000 hours of light versus the 200 hours of a halogen bulb. And now, light-emitting diodes (LEDs)—which have a typical lifespan of 20,000 to 40,000 hours—are replacing HIDs.

LEDs also offer better efficiency because of low energy consumption. According to Brad VanRiper, Senior VP of Research and Development and Chief Technology Officer at Truck-Lite Co. LLC, Falconer, NY, an LED has a lower current draw than other lighting technologies yet offers the same amount of light—if not more—as well as a longer lifespan.

VanRiper says that when white LED technology was developed and organizations like the U.S. Dept. of Energy saw its electricity-saving capabilities, more research money became available for product development. Most of that research money went towards increasing the number of lumens per watt. “If you were to look at a graph of white LED output lumens, it has been up and to the right almost at an exponential rate,” says VanRiper.

Deanne Moore, CEO of Baja Designs Inc., San Marcos, CA, says in lighting design, “the holy grail is achieving massive lumens per watt.” The more lumens per watt a light has, the better its efficiency. Moore notes that lights can take up a lot of power, especially in an electric vehicle which has only so much power available for accessories. A halogen can use 100 watts per light while an LED will only use about 35 to 43 watts, says Moore.

A shift towards LEDs

Longer lifetime and higher efficiency are just two of the key advantages which have helped push LEDs to be the most used lighting technology. Dragan Popovic, Director of Research and Development at J.W. Speaker Corp., Germantown, WI, says “in the next five to seven years, I believe every single device will be LEDs.”

The difference in lifespans is one of the biggest features that sets an LED light apart from an HID, halogen or other light source. When compared to an HID, it’s a difference of 3,000 versus 40,000 hours, says Popovic. VanRiper says when compared to incandescent lighting, and designed properly, an LED can offer 10 times the lifespan. He continues that while LEDs will have a 10% reduction in output over time, they aren’t susceptible to failure like incandescent lighting.

With the LEDs’ longer lifespan, users won’t have to worry about changing bulbs over and over again, helping save on costs. J.W. Speaker’s Ryan Mayrand, Product Marketing, notes that changing lights on a piece of heavy-duty off-road equipment can be more frequent because things such as vibrations and rocks can cause an untimely demise to a lamp. “[With LED,] there are no breakable bulbs, fragile filaments or sensitive electrodes.”

Along with a long-lasting product, designers want to create a light that will actually enable their customers to see. With HID technology, a ballast strikes an arc at a high voltage, sometimes as high as 2,000 volts according to VanRiper, which produces a very bright light. However, the color temperature produced is in the 3,500 to 4,000 Kelvin (5,840 to 6,740 F) range, whereas LEDs operate in the 5,500 to 6,000 Kelvin (9,440 to 10,340 F) range for a more daylight-like appearance. Moore says this color temperature range is the one in which a person sees best. In comparison to LEDs, the HIDs emit a light that is much more yellow in appearance.

Durability is another advantage LEDs have over other lighting technologies. HIDs, for example, have bulky housings and bulbs which are very sensitive to vibrations and impact. Because the tip of an HID bulb is especially sensitive, it can only be positioned one way. “As soon as you start to tip it more than 10 degrees it causes catastrophic failure because mercury or salt gets between the electrode and the glass,” says Popovic.