How Much Current Does A Car Headlight Draw? (With Examples)

Are you aware it took the first cars 30 years to start running with electric-powered headlights? Knowing your car amperage helps you understand why they might not work at certain times, how to diagnose their problems and which one to switch to that will give your car the best performance.

How much current does a car headlight draw?

A normal 55W 12V car headlight draws a current of 4.5 Amps.

To get the amperage draw when you want to calculate a given electric item, divide the watts produced from a given source by the total volts available from that electric outlet.

The amount of the current flowing that will get into the wires is measured in amperes or amps. What you earn as power at the electric source are voltage or volts. The energy that electricity produces to be used is measured in watts.

When you combine all these interrelated measurements, you will arrive at your car electricity usage.

Calculating from Watts and Volts

For instance, if your vehicle has a 100 watt light bulb and draws power from a battery of 120 volts. It will draw 0.83 amps.

Find the wattage load that your car bulbs need electricity. It is worth noting that any device that draws energy is known as a load. An example can be a bulb or a microwave.

You can find the wattage indicated on the device. But if you can’t spot the number, kindly check the owner’s manual.

Divide the wattage rating by the voltage from your car’s power source.

Does the amperage change with led/sealed beam/halogen headlights?

It will depend on the actual wattage of the lamp, a stock wiring harness. The difference can be straightforward. You need to take each type of bump watts and divide it by the volts, and then you will arrive at the amperage that each kind of bulb will produce.

The voltage will dictate many amps and the load, so the longer the source can supply it to the headlights. However, LED emits less energy than sealed beam and halogen headlights, making it more energy-efficient.

Do led headlights draw fewer amps?

They draw fewer amps than fluorescent lights and are incandescent, producing the same brightness. For instance, a 14 watt LED lamp is specified as being equivalent to 100w incandescent; you might think that your LED is brighter.

Power being equivalent to current x volts, your led bulb will take about 1/7th of the present that incandescent uses.

LED lights, by their nature, use low voltage but are also known to use low current. Therefore, they are more efficient than halogen and incandescent bulbs and more down in power consumption.

Generally, we speak about 100 to 750 milli-amps which depends on the voltage needed to switch on the LED. Someone even measured that when they connected incandescent bulbs to an amp meter, it drew about 1.6 amps after a given time. His exact measurement with an LED bulb for the same time pulled about 0.26 amps.

Advantages of knowing the headlight amperage

You can know the advantages of upgrading your car headlights from halogens bulbs to more superior LED lights or HID to improve your vision of darkness at night; they will also save you a fraction of what you will pay to change to better HID and LED lights or more advance laser.

When you understand how your headlight amperage works, you can tell when your bulbs are aging or an issue with the voltage supply and replace to experience good lighting performance on your car.

It helps you upgrade your car’s headlights to better ones with the most simple maintenance work that will give you better performance, consume lower voltage, and save your money.

For instance, you can choose clear bulbs with more watts to help your car and give better performance when driving at night or during foggy days and abandon bulbs with opaque finish or lower wattage, which won’t give you better performance.

It can also help you know when to change your car filament and gases that carry electric current; this can play a big difference in determining how the bulbs will become brighter. It can improve up to 130 percent when you change your car bulbs.