As with automotive lamps, the specifications for boats do not stiplulate how many elements are in the fixture or how many are lit. All that is required to be legal is to have the minimum specified illumination, and in the case of automobile tailights, there is also a requirement of the size of surface area exposed. If you have an array of 100 LED's and 50 are not lit, you are still legal in both an automobile and a boat as long as you still meet the minimum specifications.
If there is a spec of dust on the lens of your tailight will you get a ticket?
Hmmm, Old/little knowledge is worse than lack of knowledge. How about vitamin D then? Auro immune disease did not happen over night. When it was coming with all kinds of signal/symptoms, I wonder what people did to prevent it.
Osram, who makes incandescents, CFLs and LEDs, did a study indicating very well that only a very small percentage (about 2%) of energy used by all 3 of these throughout their life cycles, including manufacturing and transportation, is in everything other than the electricity consumed by them over their lifetimes.
Flashlight bulbs tend to mostly be less efficient than ones used for home lighting.
One advantage LEDs have for flashlights is that their energy energy only changes slightly (mostly improves slightly) when the batteries weaken, while incandescents greatly lose energy efficiency.
Another thing: The cost of LEDs needed to achieve an 800, 1600 or 1710 lumen light is fairly prohibitive, more so for warm white, and the amount of heatsinking needed is a tall order now to get into something the size of a regular lightbulb.
As for LED taillights: They make those. Cadillac has been using them for many years already. Some other cars are now being made with them.
An LED retrofit bulb to put into a taillight made for an incandescent is another story. It is quite a tall order to get an LED light source with the same emitter shape and size and same radiation pattern and suitable output so as to achieve the same optical results as with incandescent.
A light to serve a legally required function on a motor vehicle has to fall within both lower and upper limits of candela into a few dozen different specified directions, and must be properly certified to do so, in order to be street legal. An incandescent light with an LED retrofit bulb generally fails to achieve this, let alone be certified to do so with any particular mfr/part-number LED bulb. It is illegal to refit a legally required motor vehicle light with a bulb other than one it is certified to use.
And they produce less light than 1157s, have different directional characteristics than 1157s, and produce light from different physical locations than 1157s do. They do not achieve the same optical results, and none of them have much chance of meeting specified upper and lower limits of candela in every one of the dozens of specified directions in any legally required motor vehicle external light fixture ever certified to work properly with incandescents.
They do make street-legal LED fixtures to serve taillight, brake light, rear turn signal, and backup light functions. They even make aftermarket ones, though they generally fit more easily into buses and trucks than into cars, pickups or SUVs.
There are nav lights out there sufficiently simple and non-critical in design such that someone can make an LED retrofit for the bulb that gets the light to meet the spec - despite the difference in emitting surface geometry and directional characteristics.
Motor vehicle lights are not as easy to make LED incandescent-retrofit bulbs for with achievment of legal requirements being maintained.
This thing has a couple items wrong. Not only do no lasers get anywhere near 700, but the chart also states incorrectly that xenon achieves 400. Xenon is doeing very well for xenon when it achieves 60.
The maximum possible is 683 - for a 100% efficient source of monochromatic light at the yellow-green wavelength at which human photopic vision is most sensitive.
Truckers and USPS seem to love those retrofit kits. Almost all the little Grumman postal vans and 40' commercial trailers I have seen recently have them, with mounting rings looking newer that the rest of the vehicle. Makes sense- for people on a schedule, a deadlined vehicle due to a burned out bulb costs a lot more than the 1-time cost of the changeover to LEDs, which basically should outlive the vehicle. Just program the changeover in whenever the next scheduled service is. I presume they are factory installed on any built in the last few years.
My experience is that they are usually LEDs. Most but not all cars with LED tail/brake have dimming for tail function achieved by pulsing at a low duty cycle. (This is done because most LEDs do not have low-current performance sufficiently predictable from one run to another for certification.)
Such LED tail/brake lights in tail mode usually show a stroboscopic pattern if I move my eyes while looking at them.
There are now legal LED backup lights, although so far I have only noticed these as aftermarket replacements for truck backup lights or for manufacture of truck bodies and trailers.
If the light continues to meet the specification of upper and lower limits of candela in all required directions, then there is no way to deserve a ticket. If the percentage of LEDs being failed is small, chances are fairly good that the light will meet every letter of the legal requirement.
I would agree that a multiple LED light is likely to fall short of the spec sooner than a single-LED one is. However, since red LEDs usually honestly achie 100,000 hour life expectancy (white ones generally don't), I expect a multi-LED tail/brake light to meet the spec until the light has been used a few tens of thousands of hours. More, since most of the time it will not being used at full power as a brake light.
In a Crown Vic used as a police cruiser and after that as a taxicab, lights may have to run for a few tens of thousands of hours. Otherwise, any decent brake/tail or turn signal LED light should have little trouble outlasting the car unless it gets broken in a collision that does not total the car.
I haven't seen that but some of the cars have one incandescent bulb and a reflector with many small domes that make it look like many small lights. I have had friends mention them as LED lights because they look like an LED array until you look close and find the one actual bulb.
You have made it pretty clear you hold no grudges and have let the whole thing slide right by without hardly noticing.
Perhaps I should retract my humourous (from this angle) comments I made. I clearly have underestimated the intensity of the situation and how hostile it has become...LOL
Hey, don't sweat it. It isn't my fight and I would forget who you are, online in two posts, unless, like some, you really agressively stalk me (or call me on the phone and threaten me with your gun..been there, too..LOL). I don't want to remeber who everybody is. Information is information and you provide some good stuff as well as many do.
Now, I have to go and get back to my meeting about which joints to break on another member...LOL
LEDs have typically been used where visibilty of the LED unit is required, but for visibilty for the user of the LED they have not proven very economical.
It is important to see the difference in these two usages. An LED for visibilty for other can be flashed on and off and become more visible but for a flashlight, for visibilty for the user (holder) flashing on and off reduces the visibilty.
Because, overall **white** LEDs do not put out much more, if any, light than an incandescent bulb for the energy used!
LEDs are more efficient in their usage than incandescents, can be. They are directional, focusing all their output in one direction. The only produce one colour of light, efficiently and do it well. An incandescent bulb with a filter only wastes energy from heat, losing all the other colours. LED's are also quite small with intense output, making them more esily seen to the human eye (noticable). When it comes to flood illumination white LEDs are too costly to compete for the small increase, if any, efficiency.
I have plenty of experience where I have been able to track individual units due to fading and/or a few LEDs being burned out and/or LEDs of a particular spectral characteristic are obsolete for the purpose due to lower efficiency than more modern ones. I can tell you that LED traffic signal units have a very high rate of lasting a lot more than 2 years - more like 5-10.
This all may be replaced soon with ESL bulbs. I know they have been talking about this for along time. Time will see if it is vapourware, like so many other tech announcements.
Cost is an obstacle, but plenty of available white LEDs are now a lot more efficient than incandescents. Efficiency like that of CFLs is now the cutting edge for available warm white ones, and cool white ones without high color rendering index now get as efficient as T8 fluorescents.
Osram recently put an 8 watt LED bulb on the market in Europe, with as much lumen output as an 8 watt CFL.
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