How do the blue-ish headlights on expensive luxury cars work?

Blue-ish headlights are not very common yet, but they are likely to become the norm because they produce more light than normal headlights while at the same time using less power. This combination is hard to beat! There are several different articles having to do with light here at HowStuffWorks: • Halogen lights • Gas camping lanterns (the kind with mantles) • Lasers • Fluorescent lights • Electroluminescent panels All of these technologies excite atoms so that they produce photons. In the case of halogen bulbs and gas lanterns, heat is doing the exciting. In other technologies it is various forms of electricity or light that create the excitement. Most cars currently use halogen bulbs in their headlights. The new blue-ish headlights are using a different technology called High Intensity Discharge (HID). We normally see HID lamps in the form o ... more