So the infrastructure bill has this included, according to this article. I just bought a car with it.
Good timing . https://autos.yahoo.com/adaptive-dri...155500631.html

There's some confusion as to whether it already is, but apparently only partially.

 

Good to hear it, however I think that with self-driven technology already on the roads, we really don't have to worry about fancy headlights, do we?

 

Nope, cause we will be binge watching our favorite shows and movies and let the autopilot do its thing.

 

I have told this in forum topics before that my 2010 E550 with Bi-Xenon lights has the adaptive head lights. I am not talking about the automatic Hi-beam switch, my low beams adapt to the distance to the car in front. I have had some "experts" deny this but my E550 has head lights like this.

Bi-Xenon lights are not like the new LED lights but they work really well for this function. What I don't understand is the talking about the legal side of it as my car from 2010 already has the adaptive lights.

 

Given how long the wait is, honestly customers should just take matters into their own hands and enable it by using that OBD module. All US cars (as far as I remembered) has the hardware required for it and just need it enabled in the software to get the functionality that European market MBs been enjoying all this time.

 

I'm not paying $500 for the module, that's just too much. I would pay $300 in a heartbeat though. Any ideas?

 

It used to be way cheaper, I guess the seller raised the price (if we are looking at the same listing, the one on amazon), another option is to PM vladimir.cdi on this forum, he might be cheaper.
https://mbworld.org/forums/members/2...dimir-cdi.html

 

No it doesn't. If anything you've got shutters on your beams that can lower a shade and occlude light from oncoming traffic, but unless you have LED lights with a large array of LED elements (80 something comes to mind) with the cameras and sensors to control each individual LED element so you can turn off a small section of each headlight's output to not blind oncoming traffic or to stop road signs from glaring back at you, you don't have adaptive headlights as is being discussed in this thread.

I do see what you're saying though, and my car does the same: It'll lower the shutters just enough to not blind the car in front of me. Curious where that lands our headlights in the "dedicated high and low beams" that the FMVSS 108 refers to in the OP.

 

We still rely on organic eyeballs, unfortunately. I know, so 2021.

 

Well, my lights are called adaptive head lights in the manual and adaptation they do when enabled. The adaptive LED lights are just a big step forward in how well they work compared to the Bi-xenon lights.

The biggest benefit from these lights you get when driving in dark long distance behind a car where the hi/lo switch keeps the low beams on leaving a long stretch of road un-lit. These adaptive lights make the beams far out giving light where you need it.

Driving conditions like this may not happen often. I used to drive lots in the middle of the night on interstate highways with only few cars on road. These lights were extremely handy when someone several hundred feet ahead of me kept lights on lo-beams but adaptation set lights far out to that car almost like hi-beams were on. In fact, these lo-beams at far setting are better than most cars with high beams that I have ever driven.

But, of course, the new LED technology must be a lot better, right?

 

I have adaptive lights on several vehicles and guess what? Las Vegas is always lighted up pretty well, so my high beams very seldom will come up when I turn into remote street.
Not a big deal IMHO, but I hate when car is trying to be smarter than me.

 

IHC (aka auto high-beam), IIRC is a primitive or gen 1 form of adaptive head light control that later came into existence. It can only vary the height of the cut-off... later variants can selectively block areas under the cut-off. Additionally they can light around corners, whereas again the early models just had a side facing bulb which would illuminate at low speeds to give "some" corner lighting.

 

Bi Xenons were good but LEDs are great .I like Adaptive Lights and very handy too. You don't have to deal with the lights when you come by an oncoming traffic . I have not tested Multibeams but I guess that's not our discussion .

 

My son has the '15 with lighting package LED's, I have the '13 with lighting package xenons, I like mine better, but that's just an opinion. He likes his better.

 

Polish always had good sense of humor and this is Polish response to self-driven vehicles.
"Joseph comes home this way for 40 years"