lne937s said:
Is "1000 lumen" the max rating of the LED's used? All the light from the LED? Light output on the surface of the road?Unfortunately, there is a lot of BS in manufacturer claims.
Exactly. Very few OEMs even have the ability to measure LED output, as I discovered during 25+ years of selling LEDs for Japanese and American companies.
The principal designer of the Leaf headlamp, Valeo, is the conglomeration of several companies. One of them is/was Cibie, a French manufacturer of very high quality halogen headlamps "back in the day" when US autos used horrible sealed-beam tungsten. In fact, their European-code 7" and 5 3/4" headlamp modules fitting older automobiles still, to this day, outperform many new "integrated" designs.
Useless trivia #2: The new Audi A8 has LED headlamps with two different and qualified beam patterns: one for continental Europe and one for left-drive Great Britain. The changeover from one pattern to another is controlled by the car's GPS!
Nearly-useless trivia #3: I've not seen one with its headlights on, but the new Leaf will probably have conventional halogen hi-beams. Our DOT requires hi-beams to be instantly available, and the easy way to accomplish this is with separate modules. Volvo (I think) uses a motorized mirror on its HID lamps to accomplish this. There are some two-element HID bulbs out there, too. I think the A8 referenced above uses LEDs alone.
Herm, I don't what the replacement cost of the Leaf module will be, but it
will be very expensive. Fortunately, a well-designed LED assembly should outlast the rest of the car. Just don't hit anything!