As usual, legislation lags behind technology and innovations and improvements in fields as important to safety as lighting are delayed by bureaucratic problems. After years of prohibition, it is now allowed to change the halogen lamps of the car for LED, but there is an important obstacle that must be pointed out.
Just published the change in the regulations by which Industry accepts the change from halogen lamps to LEDs in cars, Thousands of users have rushed to the stores to buy the conversion kits that flood accessory stores and sales websites on-line. Be very careful if you have been one of the unwary who has fallen into the trap because it is most likely that if you are stopped by Traffic, you will be fined and what is certain is that your car will not pass the ITV.
The reason is that halogen bulbs in car headlights are governed by the ECE R37 standardwhich establishes the dimensions, geometry and technical characteristics (lumens, voltage, power…) that the lamp must meet and, for now, no manufacturer of the thousands of LED conversion kits that exist comply with this standard.
Indeed, on November 1, the pertinent changes in the Vehicle Reform Manual prepared by Industry were published in the BOE by virtue of which the change of a halogen lamp for an LED is no longer considered an important reform, so that You do not need a project and its corresponding approval. The problem is that, although it is not a major reform to change one lamp for another, both must comply with current regulations, and this has not changed and is governed by the aforementioned ECE R37 standard.
By the way, in the aforementioned manual the consideration regarding led lamps has been changed, but the installing xenon or bi-xenon kits in headlights designed for halogen lamps is still prohibited if the corresponding important reform project is not carried out.
Until now, the only thing offered by both the most “pirate” kits and even those from leading brands such as Osram or Philips are simply leds with modified sockets that allow said led to be accommodated in the different types of socket of each headlight (H1, H2, H3, H4, H7, etc.), but are not governed by the ECE R37 standard, at least none of the ones currently on the marketwhich does not imply that, now that the door to a large market has been opened, some manufacturer is not willing to invest a million dollars so that their products comply with the legislation in question.
If they do not comply with ECE R37 you cannot change halogen for LED
2 photos It is convenient to read the fine print of the products that are sold to us, even leading brands.
The screenshot that you can see above this text is from a quality and important lighting brand and supplier of first equipment for many European car manufacturers. This brand offers several halogen to led lamp conversion kits, but none are ECE R37 certified, so its use in vehicles that circulate on public roads is not legal.
Have these lamps installed (or any other that does not comply with ECE R37, whether led, halogen or xenon) involves a fine and the immobilization of the vehicleIn addition to being considered a serious fault in the ITV.
If you do not want to take risks, make sure that the lamps you buy comply with the aforementioned regulations and that it is clearly specified in the characteristics of the product and its packaging.
Maybe it’s not worth changing your headlights to LED
2 photos The light of the car has many more characteristics than its color. The really important thing is the lumens.
It is very likely that even if you find an LED kit that does comply with the law, it is not worth changing your halogen lamps for LED ones, and there are two main reasons for this. The first reason is that If your car is one of those that warns you that you have a burnt out light, when you put the LEDs on it, it will be alerting you that you have a lamp in bad conditionbecause the working power of LEDs is much lower than that of incandescent lamps (they are usually around 12 watts compared to 55/60 W for halogen lamps).
The second reason is more technical: the ECE R37 standard sets a brightness limit of 1,500 lumens for 12-volt halogen headlamps (it goes up to 1,750 lumens for 24-volt systems). Most quality halogen lamps already provide that lumens, that amount of light, so, Even if you put LED, you are not going to get your headlights to illuminate more or further. The only thing that will change is the color of the light, and a whiter light is not always better than a more yellowish one.
Two factors must be taken into account so as not to become obsessed with the fact that it is best for the light in our car to be as white as possible. The first of these is that our eyes have what in digital cameras is known as “automatic white adjustment”. Our eyes (or rather, our brain) adapt to the tonality of light. If we go from a car with a halogen light to one with LED, we will notice a radical change in the color of the light and what we see illuminated, but that initial shock fades as they get used to that tone of light.
The second factor is that very white light is really counterproductive in certain driving conditions. With rain, snow or fog, the whiter the light, the more self-glare it produces and, in addition, the medium absorbs more light, so that it loses intensity more quickly as we move away from the light source.
With all this in the balance, and taking into account that a quality led kit costs about 4 times more than a set of quality halogen bulbs, most likely it will not compensate the change in any case… unless halogen lamps end up being banned and filament lamps are no longer manufactured.