Replacing tail lights with LED bulbs?

LEDs in general light up faster, are brighter, lasts longer and the big bonus is they use less electricity. All parking and marker light bulbs can be replaced including the reverse lights. If you want to replace the turn signal lights with LEDs, you also have to replace the flasher control (I forget what its name is) with one that works with LEDs.

They do look nicer than regular bulbs.

 

Cheap LEDs may not last as long as OEM bulbs and may not be as bright either.
The power "savings" is generally inconsequential.
What do you hope to gain by changing them ?

If you do try them out, look at old and new in both daylight and after dark.

 

If overall cost is your goal (and for many it is), you should buy the 50 pack of 'old style' (T10 194 168 2825) Halogen 12V 5W bulbs for $7.59 with free shipping. Might not be the best quality, but with that quantity they're sure to outlast any LED bulb on the market many times over.

If you were local I would split a 50 pack with you

 

Some of the cheap led bulbs are dimmer than the stock ones. The brake lights are pretty easy to replace and should be replaced in pairs.

 

I'm a big fan of LEDs and the technology keeps improving, but these days you still see "off-road use only" on most of those packages if you look closely enough. The issue turns out to be the design of the fixtures.

A filament bulb sheds light in all directions from one very small filament, and the fixture reflectors and lenses are designed to take that omnidirectional, nearly point source and produce the size, shape, and uniformity of lighted area that the highway regulations require. Most LED replacements are still trying to fake "omnidirectional" by having a bunch of LED chips facing a bunch of directions, and they're very far from point sources.

That's most critical for headlight replacements, of course, but also applies to all of the DOT required signals and markers—basically, any of the lights whose purpose is for other drivers to look at them and see them. The license-plate lights are an easier call because they aren't there to be seen themselves, but just to light up the plate, and anything that gets adequate light on the plate is probably ok. (You still have to check carefully the direction the socket sits in the fixture; some LED retrofits could end up shining the wrong direction when installed.)

I wouldn't hesitate to replace any interior light with LEDs if I liked the effect. So far, for the outside, legal signals and markers, if incandescents were what the lenses/reflectors were designed around, I've been sticking with those. They don't cost much, and I've never had a car last long enough that I had replaced more than a few.

-Chap

 

Anyone who thinks that LEDs will last "forever" just need to pay attention to the traffic lights that have been converted.
It is not unusual to see 30% or more of the individual elements "dark" after only one year.

 

This is a particular vendor's manufacturing problem, not an inherent LED problem.

My locality has been using LED traffic lights for a very long time, accelerating the changeover during the 'California' 'Enron' electricity shortages & crisis about the turn of this century. Those partially failed signals are quite uncommon around here. Your locality must be using different suppliers.

 

I have replaced almost all outside lights with led lights.

The only remaining normal filament ones are the headlights and the front parking lights. The parking lights will be replaced shortly too.

All of my interior lights are led also. As are the door lights and the license plate lights.

The flasher relay has been swapped to a tapturn relay. It gives me programable multi flash and a coming home / leaving home settings too.

You can buy leds that are bright enough for day time use as tail and indicator and reverse, but they aren't cheap.

If you want, I'll find links to similar to what I used to replace the tail and reverse and indicators.

I have a video on YouTube showing the tapturn functions. It's a great unit. Highly recommended.

Those are the led indicator globes in the video too.
Jason.

 

Not sure about the regulations in OZ, but in the US there is not only brightness to think about, but the pattern that results when the bulb is reflected through the faceted reflectors/lenses that were designed around a filament-like, omnidirectional, point source. The LED retrofit bulbs here will probably not lose their "off-road use only" designations until the tech advances to make that possible.

-Chap

 

Granted it's not all about brightness.
The leds I used are actually multi directional. There are led chips mounted all around and on the end. So illumination is very good.

I wouldn't however recommend led retrofit of headlights into the std reflector style housings. But for other lights, they are fine.

But you might still run into legality issues, so it's up to the individual to decide if it's worth those risks.

Jason.

 

I've seen it all over the country.....at least the eastern half.
It is an overall manufacturing problem, in that it is cheaper for the companies to replace the units that fail than it is to test the parts that go into them. Of course, it is WAY cheaper if they don't get returned within the warranty period.

 

That illustrates the difference between the Alfred P. Sloan school of manufacturing, and the W. Edwards Deming school of quality control.

The former made GM big. The later helped Japanese makers to clean GM's clock.

 

I have replaced the interior lights and the tail marker lights with cheap amazon leds. The interior lights are actually brighter than the originals. I replaced them because my kids kept leaving the interior lights in the on position and this would drain the starter battery within 24 hours. I measured current of the leds vs the original bulbs and there was a huge diffference. The originals were about 200 ma and the leds were about 10. So I am not too worried about the kids leaving the interior lights on anymore. The rear marker lamps look the same as our other Prius with regular bulbs.

 

A theoretical advantage not yet mentioned in this thread? Response time.

LEDs can reach full illumination nearly instantly, a few to a hundred nanoseconds, unless a transistor regulator circuit slows them down. Cheap LED taillights should have only series resistors, which don't cause any slowdown. Ironically, higher quality lamp systems with internal regulators will be slower.

Incandescent bulbs take closer to 100 ms to light up, and significantly longer in some situations with poor electrical systems (e.g. long or corroded wire runs in truck-multi-trailer combinations). At highway speed, this difference can mean that LED brakelights will flash on quicker, giving trailing vehicles more than a half car length earlier warning of emergency braking situations. While not huge, this earlier warning can be enough to significantly reduce crash severity, and prevent a certain small fraction of collisions.

But don't sacrifice brightness for response time. Humans (and even machines and measurement instruments too) have slower response times to weaker signals, so a fast but dim LED has no advantage over a slower but bright incandescent brake light.

 

If it can snow where you live there’s big advantage of using incandescent bulbs in tail light parking lights. Heat. Incandescent bulb will produce enough heat so that most (or all) the snow falling on rear lights will melt. This will make the rear lights, including brake lights, more visible to others.

This is really only about rear parking lights. That’s why I did replace the front parking lights and license plate light bulbs with LEDs but kept the incandescent in rear parking lights.

 

Depending on this incandescent heating to clear taillights is an irresponsible cop-out.

In daylight (taillights off), this won't clear the brake lights until long after the collision has happened and all the flying debris has settled. At night, this clearing takes longer than many of my driving segments.

It is the driver's responsibility and obligation to clear any snow accumulation from the headlights and tail/brake lights BEFORE DRIVING!!! After that, I've found that headlight heat is effective at melting snow from headlights that accumulates during forward driving. I don't see this accumulation happening on the taillights except in the very rarest of circumstances, and even then only on vehicles with large, blunt, aerodynamically inefficient tails, not on Prius or the previous hatchbacks in my household.

 

Totally uncalled for insult.
He said "so that most (or all) the snow falling on rear lights will melt."
This is quite different than what you are talking about; snow that has already accumulated while the vehicle is OFF.

 

No I meant the snow that collects there when driving! If there’s snow on windows before driving I will clear the snow from them and lights as well.

But with the shape of a Prius snow covers rear end pretty fast when driving in certain conditions. This can happen in less than 20km if it’s snowing or even without snowing if roads are covered with snow. These sorts of conditions can be here for maybe quarter of winter so I wouldn’t call them “very rarest of circumstances”. If you would understand something about aerodynamics you would understand why aerodynamic Prius has more of this problem than many of less aerodynamic cars.

And if you’re driving in snowy conditions (snowing or your car is just lifting snow from road) without taillights on that “irresponsible cop-out”!