Not too long ago, the only car that had LEDs on its nose was the Knight Industries Two Thousand from that most 80s of television shows, Knight Rider. These days however, LED technology has progressed beyond KITT’s sweeping red bar to something that more closely resembles a proper headlight, and in a first for a European manufacturer Audi have developed an all-LED headlight cluster for their R8 supercar.
While the R8 has always had those 24 LED running lights (which, incidentally, make me involuntarily cream myself whenever I see them), the $7439 AUD LED option adds LED low and high beams into the mix, as well as orange LED indicators. What’s the advantage of LEDs you ask? Try lower power demand, mechanical simplicity and resistance to vibration. Colour temperature is around 6000k too, which means the LED lamps emit a light that’s very similar to daylight which increases contrast and therefore nighttime safety. They also look pretty cool.
They’re smaller and easier to package than your conventional halogen or gas discharge bulbs, meaning all those zany headlight designs you see on autoshow concept cars stand a better chance of making it into production. Whether that’s a good thing or not depends on which concept you’re talking about, but at least it gives designers more freedom when it comes to designing light clusters.
There’s no word as yet whether we’ll see these on the options list for Australian R8s (in fact, I’m not sure if there’s an Australian Design Rule that covers the use of LED headlights), but we’re sure that they won’t be far away. Pester your local Audi dealer to find out how far.
Loading ...
Comments
Click here to jump to Add Comment box
How do you get a picture next to your name?
Get a Gravatar. Click here to find out more.
Should be no problem with ADRs - the Lexus LS600h was the first production car with LED low beams and that has been allowed thru onto the Oz-spec cars.
@ Godspeed: That’s true, but what about the Audi’s LED high beams? They probably won’t be an issue, but you can never tell when it comes to those nit-picking bureaucrats…
Hey does Crud Rudd work for em as an optional upgrade for LED’s amounting to $7,439 AUD seems like someone should say it…………….”I have done all I can with interest rates and the cost of living”
Translated that means……after 6months of being voted in Iam really giving up and I hope people dont notice that it is worse under me then before I got voted in; but hey Iam doing my job!
Epilogue is “WHAT A OVERCHARGE COST TO UPGRADE TO FULL LED’S”
Good point Tony, ADRs are notoriously fickle. I have an instrument dimmer switch that protrudes from the lower part of the dash in the GTR, that was fitted to comply with ADRs when it was imported, but in a frontal accident that could be dangerous - would go right through my left leg…
@ Naughtius Maximus: My guess is that if you could afford an Audi R8, you A)Aren’t really troubled by dropping an extra 7.5K on fancy headlights, and B)Probably didn’t vote for Labor, although I’m still puzzled by how politics is related to this story.
Politics is related because the pollies could probably each afford an Audi R8 on their salaries, it would just be a little too blatant as opposed to hiring a butler or getting 5 star treatment everywhere they travel
Yep thats what I think Tony…….$7000 option.pfftttt thats nothing when spending that money and if want to be scared by the cost of options have a look at BMWs option list….hahaha .I think if you have to replace the angel eyes{genuine} on a 5 series the cost is about $5000-6000 …..GODSPEED would correct me I think! i found some nice wheels for a BMW 5 series sport once…..o and also wanted to get an individual colour,4 wheels and different paint colour….cost $27,000 ,they were nice BBS wheels though.
What about BMW sat nav $7000,Comfort seats in your 525 {poverty pac} $4,370,BMW phone $3000,Upgraded sound system $3200,metallic paint ,$1500,I could go on……BMW are the option kings!