I can’t think of a single modern car that uses pop-up headlights still, but that doesn’t mean the collective automotive lighting fetishistic community doesn’t long for them, every day. That’s why I’d like to take a moment to share with you the patent for pop-up headlights, filed for patent 83 years ago last month.
On a long, tedious night drive, the mind sometimes wanders. As you watch the twin beams of your headlights reaching across the black, featureless landscape, your mind may wander to this thought: if those headlights are sending out billions and billions of photons at the speed of light out from the front of my car,…
If you own a fairly new car, chances are you’ve got an absurd amount of liability hanging right on the very front of your car: your headlights. Modern headlights, as beautiful and amazing as they are, are incredibly expensive parts, with many light units costing $2,000 or more. Each. That’s insane.
Today’s cars are beacons of technological achievement, more powerful, efficient and safe than they have ever been before. So how is it possible that people are somehow driving around at night with their daytime running lights on and nothing else so help me god I will drive us both into a ditch if it makes this madness…
Yesterday, hopeful Tesla-fighting startup Lucid unveiled the prototype of its new car, the Air. It’s a striking design, and Lucid claims it’ll go 400 miles on a charge and let you launch it off a bridge with its 1000 insane electro-horsepower. But I think the real revolutionary thing they’ve done is resurrected…
The night, I’m told, is dark and full of terrors. That’s why we have lights on our cars. And while lighting is unquestionably better than it’s ever been, ironically, two pieces of relatively new lighting technology actually seem to be making things worse, visibility-wise, partially because they’re too good. Let me…
The 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps is a huge deal for World Endurance Championship fans, as teams often compete with third cars and Le Mans-specific kit for the first time. Porsche may not have a third car, but their Le Mans package works: they locked out the front row for this weekend’s race.
LED headlights throw extremely intense light with very little draw on your car’s electrical system. Now that they’re trickling down to the aftermarket, you can buy a simple plug-in “LED retrofit kit” that straight swaps your halogen bulbs. We installed a set to see if that’s actually a good idea.
Winter's fast approaching, and with the snowy season dead ahead, it's important that your headlights are as clean and clear as possible to make sure your front bumper doesn't become someone's rear bumper. Here's how to polish and restore hazy headlights the right way.
I suspect we take for granted just how amazing modern headlights are. They’re bright, precise, and each and every car can have ones custom-designed to fit just the right shape. We live in a golden age of light. But some of us remember a much darker time. And I think there’s just one vehicle left that remembers, too.
I recently learned that Mercedes-Benz, official automaker of drivers who put tissue boxes on the rear shelf, has updated the CLS for the 2015 model year. This is great news, and I invite you all to join me in expressing our collective excitement by asking the following question: They still make the CLS?
When I was growing up car headlights were pretty boring. They were blocky ovals or rectangles, all made out of the same chunky clear plastic. Now car designers get to play with some of the weirdest headlight shapes since the 1960s, and the new Lexus RC shows that perfectly.
To celebrate the launch of Night Breaker Unlimited, the latest upgrade halogen headlight bulb in its range, Osram is launching a Twitter competition inviting car enthusiasts to ‘guess the headlights’ for a chance to win some great prizes. The competition is simple: over one week in October (14-18) @OsramUK will tweet…
We've done Parking Lot Mechanic before, and that was both great and great fun. But I am no certified mechanic, nor do I have a parking lot, so why not kick back, relax, and watch some movies?
Headlights broken? Just fix them with some plastic you found around the house, you'll be fine.
Further proving the idea that in the future we'll be driving clusters of robots that have grudgingly agreed to drop us off somewhere, Carnegie Mellon University researcher Srinivasa Narasimhan has developed a new smart headlight system that prevents glare in the rain by actively dodging the droplets of water.
Like most car guys, I have a wildly overestimated faith in my car-identification abilities, especially at night. Ever since I was a kid, bouncing around in the luggage well of my dad's '68 Beetle or the family's vast '73 County Squire, I loved trying to identify cars by just their headlight/running light patterns at…
Take a look at the front of your car. If it's a few years old, there's a good chance that those cheap plastic headlamp lenses the manufacturer slapped on there are starting to look as yellow as a heroin addict's teeth.
Normally, I wouldn't want to bring up something of this gravity during the holidays, but I have to take a firm stand on an issue that's been bothering me for a long while. I've sat by long enough and did nothing while wrongs were committed, on greater and greater scales. But no more. Today I make my stand. Here goes:
A new report from Munich reveals that, while Audi was busy trying to shove 300 LEDs into the snout of an A7, BMW's been working on the real future: laser headlights. My cat is going to flip out.
