Facts About  Xenon HID Headlights

Have you ever seen a car that appears to have blue Headlights.  Most of us have, but if you have not you probably will see some in the near future.  These are Xenon HID headlights and they come standard or as an option on more and more new cars.

   The standard headlights on most cars uses halogen bulbs. They are quite different from Xenon HID headlights. However some people who can't afford the Xenon lights will paint their halogen bulbs blue, in an attempt to fool you.

   A true Xenon HID headlight will produce more light than standard bulbs and last longer. The HID headlights also render colors at night to look more like the colors you would see in daylight. So better night visibility is a major safety factor for using HID headlights.

   These HID headlights use bulbs that are a different technology than the older halogen bulbs. HID headlights stands for High Intensity Discharge lights. Common HID lights you might see are street lamps and outdoor lighting for stadiums. They use either a mercury or a sodium vapor as a high pressure gas.

    Now this type of technology is available for automobile headlights. HID headlights use high-pressure technology like street lamps. However there was one major challenge for the designers for use in cars. Mercury and sodium vapor lights have a long start up time.

   This would be unacceptable in an automobile application. So the designers of HID headlights came up with solution which uses both the gas xenon along with a special controller. This is an expensive HID headlight solution, but like many other products, the more HID headlights you can manufacture, the lower price you can charge.

So we should expect to see more of HID headlights as standard equipment on less expensive cars as well as after market HID Headlight kits for those of us who want to add this safety capability to our standard headlight cars.