SauRoNZA
Honorary Master
So when we bought the Kia Picanto I thought it was very odd that they would fit LED's to mostly everything but then suddenly stop when it came to the rear indicator lights that have normal bulbs instead.
I started looking around and observing and to my shock it turns out most cars do this where they'll have LED Running Lights at the back but if you look closely the brake lights, indicators and reverse lights are all old school bulb based often just in a fancy projector housing to make it look like an LED cluster.
Audi seems to be the exception in this regard but last night I spotted this on a brand new BMW X1, this morning on a few new 3-series and coming to work a brand new Hyundai Tucson Turbo N has a thin little running light strip in LED at the top with everything else being massive bulbs all over the place.
We've had the centre rear-mounted brake lights in LED strips for many years now which is a further oddity to this behaviour.
So my question is WHY? Surely it makes more sense to build the entire light cluster as a sealed unit using LEDs that will never need servicing? Outside of maybe the reverse light these aren't projector LED's that need to cast light and only need to be seen from afar so it's not a cost thing either.
And it doesn't seem to be a case of selling an upspecced version to a discerning buyer if this is the norm for top end models?
We've had LED's all round (outside of headlights) on bikes for the past 10 years easily so I wonder why is the car market so far behind? There must be some engineering logic or something here that I'm missing.
I started looking around and observing and to my shock it turns out most cars do this where they'll have LED Running Lights at the back but if you look closely the brake lights, indicators and reverse lights are all old school bulb based often just in a fancy projector housing to make it look like an LED cluster.
Audi seems to be the exception in this regard but last night I spotted this on a brand new BMW X1, this morning on a few new 3-series and coming to work a brand new Hyundai Tucson Turbo N has a thin little running light strip in LED at the top with everything else being massive bulbs all over the place.
We've had the centre rear-mounted brake lights in LED strips for many years now which is a further oddity to this behaviour.
So my question is WHY? Surely it makes more sense to build the entire light cluster as a sealed unit using LEDs that will never need servicing? Outside of maybe the reverse light these aren't projector LED's that need to cast light and only need to be seen from afar so it's not a cost thing either.
And it doesn't seem to be a case of selling an upspecced version to a discerning buyer if this is the norm for top end models?
We've had LED's all round (outside of headlights) on bikes for the past 10 years easily so I wonder why is the car market so far behind? There must be some engineering logic or something here that I'm missing.
