Following up on the Halogen -VS- LED Headlights with pictures | PriusChat thread, this morning I shot a few quick photos on my way into work. First I took 2 pictures showing the beam cutoff with the car facing head on towards a wall and then took one with the car facing the same wall but at an angle. Then I took 2 more photos with the fog lamps turned off and then on. I am not using the stock fog lamp bulbs keep in mind. I am using PIAA 15211 H11 Style Xtreme White Bulbs. At the end I'll provide a link to where they can be found on Amazon.com for $59 and change with free shipping. You can see the fog lamps do make a difference directly in front of the car where they should but I also noticed, because there was an overpass on top of me, that they really made a difference on the amount of light above the car on the bottom of the overpass. I guess that's because they are just reflector bulbs and not greatly focused ones(?). Anyways, here are the 2 photos (no fogs first, fogs on second) And as mentioned, here is the link for the fog lamp bulbs on Amazon... PIAA 15211 H11 Style Xtreme White 55=110-Watt Bulb - Twin Pack : Amazon.com : Automotive I hope someone soon finds out how to mod the foglamps so we can use them without the headlamps being turned on...
Anyone wonder why Toyota didn't use projector beams for the fog lamps as well? Do you think that that would have kept even more of the light on the road down and low where it should be and not displaced up high where it shouldn't be?
Cause foglights are for lighting up the nearsight so you'd want a short and wide beam. The foglights on my smart are fantastic and much better than the fogs on our 2005. They're also angled to light up the curb so you can see the markings (some countries have curb markings) in the fog. I don't know how useful projectors would be (those on the last gen BMW 3 Series look useless to me)
But wouldn't they have been able to focus all the light wide and short using projectors instead of loosing so much light everywhere else with the not so great focused reflectors being used now? Or maybe the reflectors just needed to be focused better so the light didn't get so spread all over the place...
Probably the latter. i know the BMW ones aren't wide because they're inset quite a bit into the bumper.
Urgh, the site transition months ago broke MANY picture links. I went in this post and the one comparing LED to Halogen headlights I did years back and fixed the pic links to work again.
Thanks for updating the links. Do you think the 2012 LED lights are different in beam pattern since they got rid of the flood light? The main projector is bigger now also I think.
Yeah, they changed the size of the projector(s) to make up for removing the 3rd LED which acted as the flood light for 2012. I really don't know about the cutoff and how it would pertain to being different but when I got into my 2012 after the 2010 I didn't notice much of a difference in the lights themselves when driving.
Any opinion on the difference between stock and these replacement bulbs? Our Canadian "Touring" model came with the fog lights. Turning them on/off the difference is barely noticeable. I'll likely not ever replace them (unless they burn out), but curious.
The 2010s use H11 bulbs which are 55W. The 2012s use H16 bulbs which are 19W. Imagine how little of a difference you will see with a 2012.
When I still had the 2010 the PIAA's were definitely whiter and brighter than stock but they still didn't wow the heck out of me to be honest.
