Automakers are oblivious to the headlight expense issue, gleefully discuss plans to worsen it

 https://www.wired.com/story/you-wont-believe-what-car-headlights-have-in-store/

This will harm not only those of us who are unfortunate enough to damage our cars' headlights or taillights, but also all of us who pay for car insurance by proxy through increased average repair costs. I have to wonder if insurance companies may even start incentivizing their customers to retrofit cheaper lighting to their cars at some point to reduce potential expenses.

I feel like in a sane world, cars would currently be produced with non-computerized and non-adaptive LED-housing lights (like the aftermarket ones commonly retrofitted to older 4x4s and motorcyles) since those are the value-for-money sweet spot right now.

I also think the fact that the average new car buyer now has well-above-average income is contributing to this problem. The costs of new car headlights may not be scary enough to the people buying new cars, it's only when the car hits the used market that it becomes a major problem. This is another issue that could be improved if cheap DOT-compliant aftermarket replacements are available - used car buyers could swap these in for the safety of their wallets and sell the originals on the used market to more than recoup the cost.

What is even more fun is the tendency for them to only sell complete assemblies rather than just a single control module. Fancy lights don't have to be stupid expensive to repair, but we need to right to repair laws about sub assembly availability.

I had this issue with my Infinity. 

OEM assemblies were $$$$. Aftermarket assemblies were terrible.

I ended up gutting the housings and installing Hella incandescent guts in them. They were amazing after that. 

The average person is screwed. They either pay the money or end up with crappy headlights. 

I'm getting ready to do the same thing to the Hummer except in this case the OEM headlights are crap. 

My 98 Mark VIII has a relatively early set of HID headlight bulbs that are NLA. When one died, the only options were ebay, the junkyard or MacGuyver a solution. The average person isn't going to do that.

Cool when a headlight bulb can potentially send a car to the junkyard.

Cadillac XLR taillight will total the car.

I don't see how this is any different from any technological advancement, automotive or otherwise. E36 M3 gets expensive the more complicated and option filled things are. How much is a factory radio nowadays vs 40 years ago?

Or are you specifically calling out the lack of modularity of headlight design? I could definitely understand wanting manufacturers to sell more pieces instead of entire assemblies but requiring automakers to use those trashy LED sealed beam replacements would be visually terrible. 

How often do the lights fail?  

In reply to alfadriver :

Pretty much any time they are involved in a collision.

In reply to alfadriver :

On their own? Probably pretty rarely. When hit by a rock or when they're slammed into something? Pretty much every time.

I'm okay with improved lighting. There's some real promise in matrix lights when we're allowed to have them.

I'm not okay with annual headlight refreshes just so the manufacturer can make them look a little different for a new model year. This leads to a real challenge in trying to repair older cars as you have to find just the right light. Tesla gets a lot of flack for keeping the same styling year on year, but at least you know that the headlights for the Model 3 didn't change for 6 years. Ford seems to change the F150 lights about every three weeks, and the second biggest news about the new Maverick is that it has new front lights for no reason.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

But people are complaining about fixing them as if the broke, not that they were involved in a crash and the insurance company is so cheap that a $5000 light totals a $80k car.  

What is the actual issue?  The only car I would personally repair if crashed into is the one that would actually need a professional to restore it.  Otherwise, it's up to the insurance company to deal with.

In reply to Toyman! :

I like that idea. My R53 has the base-level lights (Xenons were an option the original buyer didn't choose) and they are on the marginal side, especially with cloudy lens plastic.  I need to get one of those lens restoration kits and see how much that helps, but perhaps something like your solution could be in my future. 

It's cute that WIRED thinks this is new. 

I got my '13 135i with the steering headlights, in 2018. A headlight assembly replacement was $2400 then, so I turned off the steering factor. 

alfadriver said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

But people are complaining about fixing them as if the broke, not that they were involved in a crash and the insurance company is so cheap that a $5000 light totals a $80k car.  

What is the actual issue?  The only car I would personally repair if crashed into is the one that would actually need a professional to restore it.  Otherwise, it's up to the insurance company to deal with.

Sometimes they do break. Not all tech is infallible - see the stories above about HIDs going out. The actual LEDs might be long lived but they're part of a whole electronics assembly. And $80k cars become $40k cars become $20k cars and so on, while this $5k light is only one component that might need to be fixed. If you only ever deal with cars that are leased and are always less than 3 years old, this may not seem like a big deal. But the average age of cars in the US is over 12 years now.

I've fixed two Miatas that had mild deer strikes. Not enough to require any significant repair - not even a new hood on either one - but in both cases I had to replace the turn indicator lenses. You know, the ones that live where the headlights do on a modern car. In fact, in one case that's the only thing that got damaged (weird hit). Insurance involvement was not required in either case, although a paint shop was needed to spray a fender, nose cone and headlight cover on one car.

 This is another issue that could be improved if cheap DOT-compliant aftermarket replacements are available -

There are apparently plenty of aftermarket headlamps available.  That is why as a dealer I don't sell very many.

iansane said:

I don't see how this is any different from any technological advancement, automotive or otherwise. E36 M3 gets expensive the more complicated and option filled things are. How much is a factory radio nowadays vs 40 years ago?

Or are you specifically calling out the lack of modularity of headlight design? I could definitely understand wanting manufacturers to sell more pieces instead of entire assemblies but requiring automakers to use those trashy LED sealed beam replacements would be visually terrible. 

The difference is that the price is going up, usually with technological advancement the price remains stable or even falls. Look at electronics or even cars overall - I'm sure average costs are increasing due to more high-end cars being sold, but compare basic cars over time and their inflation-adjusted value is pretty stable, even with both improved and increased technology.

The lack of modularity is a problem in itself but so is the up-front cost. Toyman's DIY'd headlights look fine and I'm sure manufacturers could do at least as well with basic LED sealed beams.

Noddaz said:

 This is another issue that could be improved if cheap DOT-compliant aftermarket replacements are available -

There are apparently plenty of aftermarket headlamps available.  That is why as a dealer I don't sell very many.

 

I'm pretty sure DOT would give compliance to one of these. The aftermarket lights in the G35 were unbelievably bad. They sent light everywhere but where you needed it. I went the Hella route when one of the LED drivers failed. 

Noddaz said:

 This is another issue that could be improved if cheap DOT-compliant aftermarket replacements are available -

There are apparently plenty of aftermarket headlamps available.  That is why as a dealer I don't sell very many.

 

I spent over $2000 in 2024 dollars to replace the aftermarket headlights in my E39 with for-real OE units because the aftermarket ones on the car were terrible. Took me a long time to make that decision because of the cost, but I don't regret it now. This was back in 2015.

I do have a set of aftermarket headlights on my old Grand Cherokee because the factory ones crazed badly in the sun and could not be polished. I went with a reputable brand that actually understands optics and with LED bulbs they're better than the factory ever was. But street price for those bulbs alone was about $500.

Keith Tanner said:

In reply to alfadriver :

Ford seems to change the F150 lights about every three weeks, and the second biggest news about the new Maverick is that it has new front lights for no reason.

That's because they are still perfecting how to blind every oncoming driver within half a mile.

I'm reminded of a line from kind of a spoken word song called Anna Calls From The Arctic:  

"Everything's expensive

And opaque and privatized"

Yup.

As for this idea in the first post:

"I have to wonder if insurance companies may even start incentivizing their customers to retrofit cheaper lighting to their cars at some point to reduce potential expenses."

That's an interesting point.  

I wonder though, if an insurer wants to get into the business of automotive regulatory compliance.  I don't see much of an appetite for them to do so.   They've got enough on their collective plates having to deal with the varying insurance laws in what amounts to having 50 separate fiefdoms (the individual states) that I don't think they'd want to tackle the demands of a federal agency like the NHTSA.

If a manufacturer represents to the Feds that all vehicle systems are compliant with Federal law, is a liability created for the insurer if the insurer says "go with the cheaper retrofit even if it isn't compliant with the federal standard in effect for the model year of the vehicle"?

I've been in the insurance industry for 25 years and the carriers I've worked for would shy away from that activity and decision.

Although they are "expensive, opaque and privatized," I like the idea of systems like Porsche's HD-Matrix LED headlights.  But admittedly, I can't overstate the "expensive" aspect of them.

Duke said:

Keith Tanner said:

In reply to alfadriver :

Ford seems to change the F150 lights about every three weeks, and the second biggest news about the new Maverick is that it has new front lights for no reason.

That's because they are still perfecting how to blind every oncoming driver within half a mile.

 

Quoted for TRUTH!

"It increases driver safety!"

Yeah, by decreasing it for everyone else within a five-mile radius. Berkeleying morons.

BMW has jumped out of the LED headlights and into Laser headlights. No, those don't cost $5500 each for a housing without any control modules. Add in the radar in the grille, and a light front end collision is now $15k dollars in 3 parts. 

Headlights are wear items. Period.

They have a much shorter service life than even the paint or glass at the front of the car. 

bobzilla said:

BMW has jumped out of the LED headlights and into Laser headlights. No, those don't cost $5500 each for a housing without any control modules. Add in the radar in the grille, and a light front end collision is now $15k dollars in 3 parts. 

I have a friend who is an insurance adjuster and he commonly says "there's no such thing as a simple fender-bender anymore."

Learning that our 2015 Jaguar F-Type had $4,000 headlamp assemblies was one reason why we sold it - I didn't need the anxiety, along with the realization that I had ventured too far toward the deep end of the luxury car market.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I understand they break. That's why I asked how often. The leds are better than the halogens which are better than the incandescent.  
 

As for the expensive cars turning into cheap cars, that's a different problem that is far, far more than the lights.