cars with incandescent lighting in interior

[jsp56]

Hi,

Does anybody know if there are any cars available new or up to three years old that are lit with incandescent light bulbs rather than LEDS (and with no screen)?

I know that the old Vauxhall corsa is, and I think the Toyota Avensis is, but I wondered if there are any others?

LEDs do weird things to my eyes. Long story.

Thanks!

[jsp56]

That's beautiful! I'm pretty certain that my son would disown me. :-)

[jsp56]

I just looked at the pdf. I would love to buy one of those and park it next to my neighbour's Mercedes e350 bluetech. What a beautifully simple lovely car. :-)

http://www.markkey.co.uk/nivacar.html

[jsp56]

Yes I asked about that, but it didn't seem to be possible to do it in reverse. Many new cars even have LED-backlit screens. I'm not looking for a big car which is good because the smaller they are, the less likely they are to have screens in them.

I'm kind of wondering whether I should just grab one of the recent generation of corsas while they are still newish. That would keep me going for the next ten years while the industry sorts of the lighting problem.

I have a 2006 Mondeo, but it keeps going wrong and I'm not sure I can rely on it for another ten years. We have to take it to the garage about three times a year at the moment for fixes.

[jsp56]

Hi,

Yes I'm fine to drive but just prefer a car without the bright lights inside. My FIL tells me that it was like this when fluorescent strip lights were first introduced. Apparently oodles of people had huge problems with them just as oodles of people have problems with LEDs. He reckons the thing to do is to just make sure that I buy the things I need with the old style lighting to keep me going for about ten years, and by the end of that time the problems will have been ironed out. That seems like a good scheme to me. It means I buy a lot of technology stuff on ebay, which is a whole lot cheaper too.

One of the big problems apparently is that LEDs are not able to be dimmed, so the LED backlights of computer screens the LEDs are flashed very rapidly to make them look as if they are being dimmed. That works out really badly for some people, in the same way as the 60Hz refresh rate on old computer screens caused problems.

People seem to think that organic LEDs may be better, so I will wait and see.

I think the Mondeo plan may be the good one, tbh. Ours is still going fine. We had turbo trouble recently but got it cleaned out for £50 and now it seems to be fine.

It's good to know what the most recent non-LED car is though, so I know what to buy secondhand if the mondeo ever gives up suddenly. :-)

Thanks for all the tips!

[jsp56]

The Nivas do look lovely btw. :-)

[jsp56]

I did think about putting grey film over lights and things, but there are a few cars that are still available that would do (corsa and Toyota Avensis) so they are the better option.

I stick film over things like fridge lights, and that works a treat. :-) Thanks for the idea. :-)

[jsp56]

Ooo! That Saab feature does sound good.

I was reading the Ford documentation justifying the extremely bright lighting that they include now and apparently its meant to keep drivers awake. (!?) Bizarre.

[jsp56]

Thanks for the mention of the DS3. I hadn't heard about that one.

I gather that one of the issues with LEDs is that blue LEDs emit 20 times as much light as other colours. tvs and computer screens ( and mobile phones and tablets) are backlit with the blue LEDs which is why they are so difficult for so many people. I always used to get on just fine with the nice muted green or white LEDs on mobile phone keypads. The other comment is probably quite right though, I think car manufacturers are just not putting in the right electronics to dim the lights sufficiently inside the cars. Apparently many years ago one make of car (I can't remember which) came with a "P" button that just turned off all internal lighting. I think that sounds great, but it's not available now. I've always been a Ford person and for some reason the Fords are super-bright inside.

[jsp56]

I'm not sure if the flickering is the problem for me. I gather that that is the problem for others. I think it is just the brightness that bothers me, but tbh, it's quite hard to tell.

Obviously if there is a car with LED lighting inside that can just be turned right off then that would be a pretty good option, though a lot of them have screens now, so would lose significant functionality by turning right off.

[jsp56]

Hi Krikkit,

I can't see the refresh rate at all actually. We just read about the when I last tried to buy a new laptop and found that it was very spiky on the eyes. We tried all sorts of things, including I think, software that claimed to turn down the brightness by different methods, but none of it worked.

The whites on these modern laptops are just super-spiky-bright on the eyes for me. It's almost like staring at the sun. My old CCLF laptop and CRT tv have an almost sepia look to them by comparison, which is much more like reading a piece of paper. I see that manufacturers are bringing out computer screens that claim to have this sepia look but I haven't seen them in person yet.

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.e...

Thanks for all the ideas. :-)

[jsp56]

Hi, Yes I tried sunglasses and gunnar glasses but they didn't help. The brightness controls on LED backlit laptops don't seem to help either. If I look online there are oodles of other people with the same problem. I figure the manufacturers are working on it though. I wrote to HP and they said it was a known problems and they were trying to sort it out.

[jsp56]

LOL! The MX-5 looks excellent. I could totally live with having to buy one of those 'for my health'. :-)