A variety of cars and trucks now come with HID headlights, including the Ford F-150 and the Toyota Avalon. The first North American car to have HID headlights was the BMW 7-Series. That could become a safety issue, so HID Xenon headlights employ lens-cleaning systems and automatic beam leveling. If HID headlights have a disadvantage, it’s glare. Again, they produce more light with less energy. Unlike sealed-beam incandescent and halogen lights, they’re arc lamps (as in neon signs). What about the brightness of Xenon headlights? They are three times as bright as halogens and operate at low voltage.
HID lights average 3,000 hours or 90,000 miles in the car, while Xenon goes for 10,000 hours. These lights do not need a warm-up period to produce the brightest light, and the light produced is a more natural white light.Ī major advance over halogens, HID or Xenon lights have twice the life expectancy. Xenon headlights are a form of HID bulbs, utilizing Xenon gas. But in an HID, electricity moves between two electrodes in the bulb (filled with a gas). They work by passing an electric current through a gas mixture in a glass cylinder. HID lights are similar to fluorescent tubes. In limited use since the early 1990s, HID or xenon headlights have twice the life expectancy of traditional halogen. HID or xenon lights have twice the life expectancy of traditional halogen.