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Facts About
Headlights
In the beginning, cars
and trucks used incandescent or “sealed beam” headlights.
Similar in design and function to your typical screw-in light
bulb, they used a tungsten steel wire – or filament - sealed in
a glass lens. When electricity passed through the filament it
became so hot that it produced a steady and reliable source of
light. As with home lighting, sealed beams had limitations. The
brightness was limited and the light produced was not clean,
natural-looking but a dingy tainted or yellow color. They also
weren’t very efficient. The energy used to light the bulb
actually produced 95% heat and only 5% light.
Next came the Halogen
headlight. Around 1978, a brighter longer-lasting headlight hit
the market. Although still an incandescent bulb, it was filled
with an inert gas known as halogen which allowed it to burn
brighter and last longer. This is still the most common style
headlight in the industry. Early halogen headlights were sized
and shaped like the old sealed beams which were either round or
rectangular. This was convenient if you wanted to upgrade your
lighting to the new halogens, but eventually the bulb and the
headlight capsule or lens became two separate items. This
allowed manufacturers to design the smooth streamlined
headlights that are common today. The halogen bulb merely snaps
into the back of the unit to provide the light source and is
actually self-contained.
The latest technology
regarding headlights deals with eliminating the tungsten steel
filament that has been the common component of lighting since
Thomas Edison. Such is the case with vapor lamps. Mercury and
sodium vapor lamps are used in streetlights and at sports
stadiums. But for automotive applications Xenon gas is the way
to go. Xenon gas headlights produce a brilliant bluish light
three times brighter than a halogen bulb, while using 65% less
energy. The automotive industry has dubbed these style
headlights “High Intensity Discharge” or HID headlights. While
very bright, they use a special controller or ballast to create
an arc between two points which excites the gas and creates
light. To accomplish this, the ballast steps up the voltage from
12volts that the vehicle runs on, to 20,000 volts to ignite the
xenon in the bulb.
Unfortunately, all of
this high-tech magic adds to the price of having HID lighting.
HID bulbs and ballasts can run hundreds of dollars to replace
while a halogen bulb is twenty dollars or so. And don’t be
fooled by imitations – HID produces a blue light but not every
blue light is an HID.
Didn't find it? Try GOOGLING our site!
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Cadillac Tunes ATS for Refined
Performance Sound
DETROIT - The
all-new 2013 Cadillac ATS is being
exhaustively developed to achieve excellent
driving dynamics - and that performance
focus extends to the sounds it makes.
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New Buick Buyers Include One With a Familiar Name
DETROIT - Buick attracted more than
40 percent of its customers from outside General Motors in 2011.
That number rose to more than one in two last month for the new
Verano compact luxury sedan, which went on sale in December
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Chevrolet Cruze Remains Best Selling Compact Car in U.S.
For the fourth month in a row, the
Chevrolet Cruze is the best-selling compact car in the United
States, recording a total of 21,807 sales in August. It is also
the fifth-consecutive month of Cruze sales exceeding 20,000
units.
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Offering set of application programming
interfaces to utilities and energy companies
DETROIT -
OnStar is inviting utilities,
energy companies and tech firms to develop Smart Grid solutions
for the Chevrolet Volt using a set of proprietary OnStar
application programming interfaces, or APIs.
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DETROIT - General Motors
remains the No. 1 innovator for the fourth-consecutive quarter
among 183 companies ranked by The Patent Board in its quarterly
automotive and transportation industry scorecard.
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Chevrolet Sonic Digital Efforts Help Drive Early Sales
DETROIT - The all-new Chevrolet Sonic
is building a digital reputation and a legion of fans by bungee
jumping, sky diving and successfully completing a
skateboard-style kick flip. The one thing missing in its first
six months on sale - traditional TV advertising.
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