What did you do to your Prime today?

We also use the shades mostly to vent the heat without stuff coming in. Sadly, they don't keep out the wasps.

 

Today I installed the interior LED bulbs I bought from Amazon (from the link in previous reply). The bulbs fit right in, no polarity problems with this current generation of bulbs. Whiter light but not vastly brighter.

The only tricky bulbs were the map bulbs. I looked at a few YouTube videos before I found one that worked for me - pivot down the gray plastic, then carefully remove the clear plastic lens, then the bulbs are accessible. I have a good selection of plastic trim tools and used a few of the flat ones (carefully).

I replaced the map lights, vanity lights, puddle lights, dome light (different bulb) and the trunk light. $22.47 delivered (US) for the bulbs and a bit of my time.

 

Similar experience here. That map light housing was TIGHT!! When I finally got mine off, something broke off one of the clips somewhere. But I never could discover where it came from and when I reinstalled the housing, it felt perfectly secure. I haven't yet gotten a dome light and didn't dive down to replace the lights under the dash or get the vanity lights (which we almost never use).

I replaced five lights and had to reverse one of them. It's a nice appearance upgrade.

 

When I changed interior lights of my other car, I felt the same. I did not notice them to be much brighter than original incandescent bulbs. Yes, whiter but in some areas such as courtesy lights I prefer the warmer glow of yellow incandescent lights over colder white LED.

That said, I have a question about changing to LED bulbs in PRIME. Does LED bulb of equivalent brightness always use less electricity than incandescent bulb? I think so, but how much? On PRIME, changing all the incandescent bulbs to LED save the traction battery charge by appreciable amount? Or are they so small of gain, it is basically negligible?

 

I never use the vanity lights for their intended purpose, but when I travel and camp out in the back woods I like to have all the light available in the car that I can get. For that purpose, the vanity lights are like extra map lights. Additionally, if I don’t want a lot of light to disturb nearby campers, all the interior lights switch off so I can open the door and just use a single vanity light. Lastly, each is now a spare LED if I need one in another position.

 

Yes, typically by a factor of 8. A 60W incandescent house bulb can be replaced with 8 watts of LED light with same lumen output. Each of the 5W5 equivalent bulbs in the car draws 5 watts, so even a 1/5 ratio of power with an LED saves 4 watts per bulb. Replace 7 of those and thats a savings of 28 watts, and a reduction from 35 to 7 watts.

The dome light is probably 10-15 watts (Edit - it is spec'd as 8 watts) (screaming hot when I touched it to remove it), so thats another 7 watts saved.

 

What @jb in NE said. But compared to the capacity of the Prime's traction battery, it's not a significant amount of power, especially since the lights are usually on very briefly. Yesterday, I saw a video about camping in the Prime and at roughly 75F he ran the air conditioner all night and not only did the ICE not start, he had over 4 miles of EV range left.

Regarding brightness, I don't have a lumen meter, but to my eye, the LEDs are somewhat brighter than the incandescent bulbs. But not drastically brighter.

 

OK, thanks. I get it. For campers, the saving of power by changing all incandescent bulbs to LED may become somewhat meaningful. I don't spend enough time driving (or using a car for camping) at night, the saving probably would not increase my EV range in my daily commute.

 

The issue is that the traction battery won't charge the 12V unless the car is in Ready mode or actively charging from a wall socket. Running the interior lights with the car off puts the draw directly on the 12V battery alone. For however many lights you are running in the interior at a time, you can run them for 5x longer on the 12V battery. The 12V battery is relatively small, rated at 45 Ah, so every little bit helps.

When you are in Ready mode and driving, typically none of the interior lights are on and there is no extra load on the traction battery through the DC-DC converter.

In the charging test video by Weber State, he noted that the LED headlights on the Gen 4 he was testing drew 4.2 amps, while the Gen 3 halogen headlights drew 18 amps. Headlights are a load on the traction battery in EV mode, so the LED headlights on the Prime are installed to reduce that load and extend the EV range.

 

Because all the interior lights are off while you drive. LED or incandescent, the power draw would be zero.

 

Good point. Even if no gain in EV range, in the light of many reports of early demises of 12V battery, reducing power draw when any lights are on would be a good thing. With that information, I will change my PRIME's bulbs to LED. Thanks.

 

Yeah. Unless you have a bad habit of forgetting to close your doors or something like that, the LED interior lights will probably never pay for themselves even at the great prices we found on Amazon, but they will make life easier for the 12V and (for me) they look better.

 

One more oddity of the car noted - the selection for door/on/off on the map lights also affects the dome light. if the dome light is set to turn on when the doors open, this only works if the map lights are not turned off. This seems odd. There is no setting availalble to have the dome light come on when you open the rear doors, and not have the map lights come on as well.

 

I don't think I'd want them independent of each other. I like that I can hit one switch and not have to worry about draining the 12V while working on stuff with a door open.

 

That is why I had them on my Gen II. Also to vent some air while driving without the noise.

I noticed the first door bulb I replaced was noticeably warm, pushing hot, when I took it out. The second wasn't as warm since by then I knew how to get it out of the door and disconnect the power plug so it wasn't on as long.

 

For me, the factory incandescent bulbs on the interior were both dim and yellow. I prefer the cooler white of an LED, so that and what appears to be increased lumen levels, drove me to LEDs. Having less current draw on the battery when parked is a secondary advantage. I have daylight LEDs through most of my house, and that's what I prefer. My wife likes the warmer tones, so those are in the vanity area and a few other places.

 

I won't buy anything under 3,000 Kelvin. Prefer the 5,000 outside, looks the same as a full moon on a clear night. Very good light.

 

And most of these cheap car LEDs from Amazon have a very low CRI (color rendering index), so they look particularly harsh. A good household bulb has a CRI > 90, and I'll bet most of these Chinese car LEDs are in the 60s or 70s.