# HID vs LED headlights power consumption



## retrEVnoc (Mar 23, 2019)

Yes, the battery savings are minimal, and yes, the LEDs may or may not work well with certain headlight designs. 

But from a power perspective, does anyone have any comparisons of power usage between LED and HID headlights? 

The LED lights use a cooling fan I believe so there may be little/no savings. I’m curious if anyone has facts?!?!?


----------



## x.l.r.8 (Oct 20, 2018)

We went through this on the Roadster site. The power consumption is nothing, apart from the startup wattage. 55w HID drop to 30 once arced, the LED has lower startup wattage. The proof is in the actual light, if you have projector HID lenses you may find the LED light output disappointing and the same goes the other way. A lot of us went to LED bulbs, most of us went back to HID mains and LED full beams. The total wattage being the same but the response time for HID making them inappropriate for full beams. I’m going to plug DDM here as they historically have great bulbs but customer service is so-so, great products though.


----------



## Emyr (Oct 27, 2016)

LEDs do produce heat and if the LED driver is designed to work in cars which try to detect blown bulbs, there will be extra resistors included to replicate the voltage drop of normal bulbs and hence produce more heat.

Basic LEDs produce a single frequency of radiation so white LEDs rely on phosphors to absorb some of that frequency and output another (unless it's actually an RGB LED). This means all the light coming from an LED is by design.

HIDs' output is a result of tuning the arc and the surrounding gas, so they do output a significant amount of infrared light.

An LED light cluster needs different design to HID because LEDs' heat is typically output via a heatsink at the back, whereas HIDs dump heat out front which is great if you live somewhere that gets snow and sleet frequently.



If you were designing everything from scratch, LED would be the answer, but most of the time it's easiest to stick to whatever the car was delivered with.


----------



## remy_martian (Feb 4, 2019)

LED VS HID Lights ( Which one is better )


LED and HID (high-intensity discharge) lamps are some of the lighting solutions that are available today. Which one to choose,HID or LED ? Knowing the difference between HID and LED can help you make an educated decision on what’s best for your application and budget.




www.aisledlight.com


----------



## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

eishirukofuko said:


> So, from what I read here, LED lights are more efficient? Is that right?


Yes, but the hack approach of stuffing an LED module of some sort into a lamp designed for an incandescent or HID bulb/capsule likely results in a head lamp which doesn't work very well and might not be nearly as efficient as an LED should be.

If your vehicle uses the old standardized sizes of lamps which were used for sealed beams in North America, you can buy a properly designed LED lamp (the whole thing, not just a bulb to put in a lamp) which will fit and work well. If your vehicle is available with factory LED head lamps (in another year of the same body, or another trim level, or as an option), you can (expensively) switch to those and they will work well and will be more efficient.


----------



## Tremelune (Dec 8, 2009)

Use what the housing was designed for or replace the housing.

The upsides are barely measurable and the down sides are real (worse visibility).


----------

