BMW F30 Xenon vs Adaptive Xenon

[drdino]

I am looking at an F30 which has the S522A package (xenon) but not the S524A (adaptive xenon). Has anyone performed a retrofit of the adaptive ones? Anything else required apart from the appropriate light clusters and the appropriate coding?

[South tdf]

I am no expert and don’t know about the xenons but I have adaptive LED headlights which use a screen mounted camera to detect oncoming vehicles like high beam assist does. It must also have a sensor linked to the steering for the cornering and a speed sensor as they adjust at higher speeds. On top of this I heard the units are very expensive.

[drdino]

For high beam assist, yes, it would need camera input. For the adaptive part (swiveling, beam raising, etc) it would only require data that's already available on CAN. The vehicle has Lane Departure Warning, so it might be able to support high beam assist anyway, but I am not too fussed about that. Looking at the schematics, the wiring between xenon/adaptive xenon is the same: the light units just receive power, ground and the LIN connection that provides the necessary data. Looks like it might be doable by swapping the parts and configuring the FEM correctly. Hmmm...

[xjay1337]

Anything is possible.
But the question is cost.

Check to see of they are the adaptive lights which create tunnels around other cars. My friend has them on his m4 and they are quality.
But, wouldn't be a "must have" feature for me personally.

[drdino]

If it's just the headlight clusters required + config, it's alright; I can offset the cost of the adpative units by selling the base xenon ones.

I don't think the adaptive xenon package (even with the high beam assist) had the fancy tunneling mode. The schematics only show an additional motor in the unit for the left/right swivelling. Tunneling etc was provided by the adaptive LEDs that came in with the LCI.