Eco Headlights measured and compared

[RedDevil]

Would like to add my equasion on my cheap 35W CANBUS HID set, 2.5W LED city lights, 0.9W LED license plate and 3W LED "fog" lights (now used as running lights).

The HID set cost me €58, the LEDs approx. €25 (combined order with map and boot LEDs not mentioned here).

The '11 European Insight has no running or marker lights. Many drivers use low beams by day, but the use of LED DRL's is increasing rapidly.

As I have not tested the power-off loss on my car I simply put no lights to 0 and add just the affected lights. I calculate the wattage from the lamp specs.

State	OEM power draw	HID/LED power draw
No lights	0W	0W
City+license plate lights	20W	6.8W
" + fog lights	130W	12.8W
" + low beam	130W	76.8W
all OTA combined	240W	82.8W

So the €58 HIDs save me 40W when I use them. They should earn themselves back (power wise) in about 2000 hours of use, which means several years. But they have a life expectancy of 6000 to 8000 hours, so in the long run they will gain extra by outlasting the OEM halogens. I got a free set of spares when the shop messed up and fixed the delivery (with their consent).
Should be noted that the HIDs are much brighter, which works great with the Insights projector lenses; they have little stray light and get hardly noticed outside the beam when using halogens.

The LED city and license plate lights save me just 13.2 W compared to stock, but I use them all the time. So they will earn themselves back quicker.

Biggest gain however are the LED fog replacements. The pair of 3W H11 cost me just €9 and are as bright as proper DRLs; mitigating the need to run low beams by day. That saves me another 64W (compared to the HIDs) or even 104 W (compared to the halogens). They have already earned themselves back.

The drawback of those LEDs is that they don't do much good as fog lights. But as the lows are neatly bundled and over 3 times as bright as stock, I feel I will not often need fogs anyway.
Also, traffic over here is usually so dense that the fog gets torn up even if it blankets the surrounding fields. Real thick fog is a rarity here.