... Fully legal in NZ if you fit an entire assembly and not just a bulb, it's to do with the reflectors not working with the led bulbs hence the incorrect beam pattern
Is that why LED headlights are reported as not throwing a good beam of light?
A filament globe throws off light as a full sphere
So some gies directly ahead while the rest hits the reflector and is bounced forward
An LED is a flat element that only throws off light in a forward direction
Add to that the foreward only facing cone can be anywere as small as 15 deg to as wide as 120 deg
So to work for a headlamp you need a deep conical shaped columnator rather than a parabolic reflector
What most LED globes try to do is put the LED in tha smae place withing the reflector as the element of the globe would be but facing backwards into the reflector to get the full beam spread that a std globe would get
However the LED generates heat that has to be removed using a heat sink and that hea sink asts a shadow of itself in the middle of the beam of light so you get a sort of ring of light, bright at the edges and dim in the middle which is the exact opposite of what a normal globe does which is bright in the middle and dim on the edges
This is why you will hear LED globes being acused of throwing a "hollow" beam
The high light output type of LED ( there are lots of them ) usually used in globes is the CREE which are 3 V
So for a 6V system, 1 for low ( 3V ) and both for high ( 6 V )
The smae globe is used for 12 V systems but as they have 12 V then they can use 2 for low + 2 more for high so the 12 V British prefocus globe works really well in the standard reflector.
And because they use so little power it is viable to pop a 12 V regulator on a 6 V dynamo with a 5 Ah battery and all LED globes .
The 4 element LED globe draws 0.5A so a 5 Ah battery will power it for 10 hours running total loss ( no dynamo )
