You may have seen HID headlights in ads or in automotive stores and wondered what they are about.  Have you ever seen a higher end vehicle that seemed to have much different headlights?  Well, most likely it had HID headlights.

HID or high intensity discharge lamps are really neat headlights that contain a gas and metal salts.  It is an arc lamp, meaning an electrical arc forms between two tungsten poles.  The gas gets the arc going and the metal salts really provide the luminosity.  These kind of lights are much more efficient than say incandescent bulbs.

The most common of the HID headlight is the Xenon gas headlight.  If you have ever seen a halogen headlight, it’s pretty bright.  It’s a much bigger improvement from incandescent.  Now, HID Xenon is 3 times brighter than halogen.  Yeah, ouchy on they retina.  They also last a lot longer than halogen and use less power.  A lot less power.

And there are different color temperatures for Xenon HID headlights.  That means that you can get anything from white to blue to purple.  They are 4300k, 5000k, 6000k, 8000k, 10000k, 12000K in the spectrum.  It looks like most aftermarket attempts will require a conversion kit that includes a ballast for the bulbs, much like commercial fluorescent bulbs.

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