Those with LED headlights- Would you leave them on to act as DRL's?

I was wondering if anyone was going to mention this.

I was pretty astounded at how slow the electrons drift around in a conductor. Imagine how many days it would take one electron to leave the battery and run through your motor and back to the battery. heck, just turning on your head lights would take an electron a couple of days to get there and back again.

Fortunately the electrons don't run out the end of the wire when disconnected.

 

Does anyone know if the LED headlights are modulated like the tail lights in many cars? This is done to get brighter light with less heating.

 

I have the 2012 v Five, as well as the AUTO stalk, and am told by the dealer that despite representations in the owners manual, the car does not come with, has never come with, and has no factory option for DRLs... Hmmmmmm.

 

Maybe the owners manual is including info for the Canadian Prius v?

 

Back in the 20th Century, LEDs were often pulsed to get better energy efficiency. But the loss mechanism that caused lower efficiency at lower current was found and fixed. Today's high brightness LEDs are far more efficient than those old designs, and don't need pulsing for maximum efficiency.

 

On Canadian model they used High beam at reduce intensity, the bulbs are Sylvania HB3-9005
Here is a picture on my after about 10-months of usage; it shows brown deposit discoloration on the corners.
I hardly have any need of bright High beam headlights so I replace them with 20W CREE LED's to save on energy.
Instead of waisting the energy on headlights I would rather forward that energy to battery.

 

I drive with the headlights on, because the tail lights are on as well. DRL design missed the boat when they did not require tail lights to be on at the same time. I don't know how many times I've come up on a car in low visibility (snow or fog or rain) that had DRLS on, but no tail lights, and they were a danger to everyone behind them! You can fix this fairly easily with a wire and a diode to connect the DRLs to the tail lights. Have not done that yet but if I do I'll post it here.

 

In that case you'll only want to drive the driver's side tail light as a fog/position light.

 

I assume that's because it feeds the passenger side from there?

 

No, because a rear-facing red fog/rain/positioning lamp should appear only on the driver's side. It is usually also a separate red segment, so as to differentiate it from a tail/brake/turn lamp.

 

until toyota gets their head out of their %^& i will use my led headlights when i feel the conditions call for it, and i won't worry about blowing a bulb.

 

Well I don't understand that at all. Both rear "marker" lights come on when the headlights come on. That's what I want to come on when the DRLs are on. So wiring the DRLs to the taillight feed should do that.

 

It also doesn't melt snow that collects and covers the light. Though this could be solved by adding some sort of heating element into the lights, but that may negate the power savings and labor costs of the LED's in the first place.

 

For that we have gloves, mittens and snow brushes...

 

Clearly, as far as rear-facing red fog/rain/positioning lights go, you "don't understand that at all"...

 

You scrape the snow off traffic lights yourself? What a good samaritan

 

Headlights; hoods and the wind take care of snow on traffic lights.

 

Not necessarily. However, this problem usually only appears in municipalities that did not want to spend the extra money for heated traffic lights.

 

That's news.

 

I have a 2008 Prius, with of course the HID headlights. We have driven with the headlights on for all of the 128k miles we have put on the car. I refuse to drive without DTRL's. We have had both right and left headlights replaced (one each side) over life of car. One at about 60k and the other around 90k. Both replaced by dealer. Also we consistently maintain 50 + mpg, so power drain does not seem to be an issue. We will continue to always run with the headlights on for safety.