New emitters and arrays for use in LED headlamps are being devised and commercialised all the time. One can scarcely get up from the desk for a fresh cup of coffee without returning to find new emitters on the market. The pace of innovation—and therefore also the pace of obsolescence—is scorchingly fast compared to that of any previous lighting technology. Accordingly, there’s justifiable concern and clamour, largely centred in Europe, for efforts to standardise certain aspects of LED emitters for headlamps. Because we are still very much on the left side of the development curve, with output and efficacy climbing and emitter architecture and optical techniques evolving rapidly, it will be very difficult to standardise meaningfully without crimping the innovation that must be allowed to continue at its own pace to bring performance up and cost down to the levels needed for widespread market adoption.
LED headlamps are in their early childhood. Will they become the popular kid seen everywhere and emulated by everyone? Or will they be that strange kid who’s really smart but doesn’t have many friends? It’s up to us. We are more or less all aware of the various cost, price, and marketing reasons why Xenon headlamps have utterly failed to even slightly approach the volumes predicted when they first hit the streets in the mid-1990s. They were going to banish the halogen headlamp from the developed world’s highways and roads, remember? Instead, they scarcely made a dent and the halogen bulb is still overwhelmingly the most common headlamp light source. The decisions that must be made right are greater in number and complexity with LEDs than with Xenon or halogen technology, so perhaps this is a wise time to take a look in the rearview mirror and ponder some of the things we didn’t do as well as we could have in the past, so we don’t make similar errors again.
Consider the HB2 (“9003”) headlight bulb, introduced as an acceptable headlamp bulb in the North American Federal regulations in 1991 and known only thereunto. It looks, fits, connects, and functions the same as the H4 headlight bulb introduced in the international European regulations two decades earlier in 1971.