Audi R8's LED Headlights Save the Planet

Wheels Weekly (WW) has the heads-up on Ingolstadt’s claim that the LED headlights adorning the front of their uber-R8 are good for Mother Earth. The blogger-in-chief’s prose sounds a bit like the flanking English translation in a German airplane magazine, but he nails it in the incredulity department. “Now as times are tough for manufacturers, every little selling point are scavenged and placed under a magnifying glass looking to woo any sort of buyers they can gather, pretty much the case with this Audi R8 V10, we’re abit loss [sic] reading an entire page of press release which had nothing to do with Nurburgring records or skidpad figures, rather, boasting about its all LED headlamp, how much CO2 it saves.” It’s not an entire page of greenery, and I’m a big fan of incrementalism. And a car nerd. But it is strange world where Audi’s Head of the “Light and Visibility Department” trumpets CO2 savings. [excerpt after the jump]

“The order book opened in Britain for the V10 engined Audi R8 this month (1 January) and with it the German car manufacturer demonstrated another element of its pioneering Vorsprung durch Technik technology. The range-topping R8 is the first car in the world to be equipped with all-LED (light emitting diode) headlamps. For the first time the high intensity diodes have been used for low beam and high beam settings, as well as for daytime running lights and indicators, intensifying the sports car’s visual drama…

Greater safety, lower fuel consumption

LEDs can also reduce a vehicle’s fuel consumption. When daytime running lights become mandatory in the European Union in May 2011, Audi models with on-board LED technology will be ahead of the competition.

Drivers in a lot of European countries – such as Italy, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, and Sweden – already must use their lights during the day. As a result, just one vehicle’s conventional low-beam headlights, taillights, and license-plate illumination consume some 200 watts – which the alternator must constantly generate.

By comparison, a mere 15 watts is required to power the new Audi A4’s modern LED daytime running lights, which have the added advantage of far better visibility for other road users. All in all, that equates to a decrease of about 0.2 litres of fuel per 100 kilometres and about 4 grams fewer CO2 emissions per kilometre.

A statistical example clearly illustrates the significance of these figures: Thanks to this new technology, the Audi models with LED daytime running lights sold in 2008 alone consumed – during just their first year in use – about 10 million fewer litres of fuel and emitted approximately 25,000 fewer metric tons of CO2.