H.I.D. Lamps

Have you ever seen those blue lights on Lincoln’s, BMW's & Mercedes’
coming at you on the road?
Those lights are HID.

What is HID and how does it work?
High Intensity Discharge (HID) is an arc lamp in which the bulb is a quartz
glass tube filled with xenon gas and metallic salts with two electrodes inside,
separated by a gap. Like fluorescent lamps, HID lamps require a ballast to
start and maintain their arcs. The supplied ballast transforms 12V on your
vehicle to 20,000V to the lamp just like a coil induces high-voltage for the
spark to jump across the spark plug gap. When the arc jumps across the
gap, it produces intense light, much like an arc from an arc welder. Once
the arc is started, it heats and evaporates the metal salts forming a plasma,
which makes more visible light per unit of electric power consumed than
fluorescent and incandescent lamps since a greater proportion of their
radiation is visible light in contrast to heat, meaning that HID lamps are 3
to 4 times brighter than halogen (iodine) and draw less power (wattage)
than incandescent lamps.

Are HID lamps Hi/Low beam?
No, they are one beam only. Some come equipped with an additional
halogen bulb to use for hi-beam.

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