European Legal HID Upgrade: Ask Help

Everything is possible - for a price.

HID's are dreadful. Stick with what you have and if you want them brighter, just use those brighter bulbs - though they don't last as long.

 

My '06 has factory hid, it's problematic, actually I don't drive it at night.

It has the auto leveling feature, it's mechanical, and problematic (threads here about rebuilding it because of water entering the assemblage), I've had mine apart twice for inspection, it's working.
When using the low's with street light's, not to bad, low's in the country, poor lighting, the high's are a joke, in town or out of town, yes I could use an aftermarket bulb, to be exact a 100w bulb, illegal in the US, but easy to do, I prefer to not use the car at night, my '11 has great lighting, no problem with night vision, anywhere, I'd suggest having the light beam analysed at a competent shop for spread, might be a mechanical adjustment to the assemblage, and if it's spot on, putting in stronger bulbs (100w), but if you need the hid for the coolness factor, as it must have self washers and be self leveling to pass inspection or your version of inspection, good luck, share your results.

 

I've been using 65w H9 Halogen bulbs in place of the 55w H11 Halogen bulbs. You just need to do a slight modification to the tabs in the base and socket of the H9 bulb to make it fit:

DIY: Converting an H9 bulb to fit H11 fog light socket. - RX8Club.com

Pictures in the first post detail what you need to do.

The thing I've found is that the regular H9 bulbs don't have the cap or coating on the tip of the bulb like the H11 do. This can cause a hotspot of light directly in front of the car on each side that may or may not be distracting to you. Therefore, I've been looking for H9 bulbs that have some kind of coated tip to prevent these hotspots of light. They are available if you look. I've even seen one 80w bulb out there, but I'm not sure about going to 80w or 100w bulbs.

I use a Dremel type rotary tool with a small grinder tip to remove both the plastic tab in the base and the metal from the mounting tab.

 

Hi Hortevin, I've been using plug and play H11 4300/4700 K HID kits for low beam in my 2010 Prius for a couple of years and about 100,000 kms. I'm very happy with them. They are much better than halogens. The stock projector works very well with just an insignificant (to me!) triangular semi shadow at the extreme edges. The HIDs don't damage the stock headlight which I confirmed after a kangaroo "dismantled" my left hand headlight. The HIDs are hot but don't seem hotter than Halogens.

My Prius has stock manual leveling from a rolling switch in the dashboard. We have the stupid design rule about headlight washers here too but even the manufacturers are not installing them, unless as a high end extra. The police only hassle drivers who use unprojected HID in standard halogen lamps.

Sorry I can't help with Q2 for France unless you buy the OEM headlights with those options fitted!

 

I think you might find 6000K too blue. 5000k is still very white but more visible to human eyes.

 

Priuschat member Dawit installed LED bulbs like that in his Prius. He's using them in his foglights now. He went with an HID kit in his lowbeams after seeing how much better the HID was compared to the LEDs.