Throwing Some Light On The Subject Of Lights

Once upon a time, cars were fitted with carbide lights, practically identical to the sort old-school miners wore on their helmets.  These had to be lit with a match, a cigarette lighter or, if you were lucky, a built in flint and steel striking mechanism.  They weren’t in the business long, as electric lights were put on cars in around 1912 or so.  We’ve certainly come a long way since then and we’ve got more than a pair of carbide lanterns.  If you’ve thought about adding some aftermarket tweaks to your vehicle, lights are some of the first things that we can try adjusting or adding.  However, it pays to know what you’re talking about, so let’s look at what’s what.

Headlights

These are your bread and butter basics.  They are there to stop you running into things at night and see where the road goes.  They probably don’t need any introduction, but we’ll touch on them briefly.  They are at the front and they’re white.  The idea is that they illuminate as far as possible when on full beam and are dipped when another vehicle comes the other way.  We know how they work.  However, please remember the following: (1) you turn them on when there’s not enough light to see a person in dark clothing 100 m away, i.e., when the sun is below the horizon; (2) don’t play Headlight Chicken where you see who dips first.

Auxiliary Lights

Auxiliary lights are the ones that aren’t the bog-standard headlights, indicators and taillights.  Not all cars have them when they roll off the factory floor, but many of them can be fitted as after-market mods.  They’re particularly popular on off-roading vehicles, and for good reason.  If you’re going out into the middle of nowhere, you really need to see all the rocks, holes and wandering animals, so more lights are needed (doubly so if you go spotlighting for rabbits).

Let’s have a look at the different sorts and what they’re for.

Fog Lights

Fog lights are for moments when something’s blurring visibility rather than for when it’s dark.  Fog lights tend to keep the beam of light low so that it lights up the road but doesn’t hit the fog or dust and make the problem worse.  If the light hits the dust or fog, then it will be scattered and make visibility worse.

Fog lights can be either amber or white.  They have to turn off and on separately from the headlights.  You’re not supposed to use them at night time as auxiliary lights, and you’re not supposed to use them at all unless the conditions warrant it.  

Daytime Running Lights

Daytime running lights, commonly abbreviated DRLs, are lights fitted to the front of a vehicle that aren’t there so the driver can see but so that they can be seen. They’re supposed to be wired so that they go off when the headlights go on (unless you’re flashing your headlights temporarily to alert another driver about something, like the fact that their boot is open). 

In some places, DRLs are required by law on all new vehicles.  I’m not sure whether I agree with this or not. Certainly, out on the open road on an overcast day, DRLs have alerted me to a grey car on a grey road under a grey sky that would otherwise be hard to pick. However, around town, when every vehicle has DRLs and everything around them seems to have lights or at least be reflective, DRLs fall victim to the “if everyone’s special, then nobody’s special” syndrome and they don’t act as a warning of the presence of another vehicle more than the big metal box on wheels they’re mounted on.

Additional Driving Lights

Additional driving lights are like your headlights but they’re in addition to your headlights.  Instead of having two headlights (or, in quite a few cases, four), you can have four (or six).  Because they’re not as sophisticated as your main headlights, they only come on when the headlights are on high beam and should go off when you dip the headlights.  This is for the simple reason that these auxiliary lights can’t dip, so if they stayed on, they’d dazzle the oncoming driver.  They are sometimes called spotlights or spots. 

The exact laws about where you can install additional driving lights vary slightly from state to state and they seem to be updated all the time. The general idea is that you are supposed to install them symmetrically about the centre of the vehicle’s bumper and that you can’t put them somewhere that could be dangerous, either because they protrude like horns or because they block the driver’s vision or dazzle the driver.  In general, if you put lights on the front of your 4×4 so that they are surrounded by the bull bars rather than sticking out from them in front or on the side, you’re all good. 

Light bars are a subcategory of additional driving light. Light bars are made up of a strip of LED lights, all acting in tandem.  Legally, they are considered to be one light if they all turn on and off at the same time; if different bits turn on and off at different times, each bit of the light bar is considered to be a separate light.  As lights must be mounted symmetrically around the front of the car, you can have a single light bar in the front and centre of your vehicle.

The ultimate in auxiliary lights or spotlights is the roof-mounted rack of lights that you’ll see on some 4x4s and are popular with hunters going out after dark.  These are not legal in all states of Australia under all circumstances, with some states allowing them for use by hunting or when the vehicle is stationary or when the vehicle is off-road.  These rules also seem to be updated every time you turn around, so check what applies to you before going to the effort and expense of buying or fitting them.

Puddle lights

The sole purpose of a puddle light is to cast a patch of light on the ground beside the door – very useful if you don’t want to put your best shoes into a puddle or a pile of dog poo. Some of the cars that have them as standard have a clever design so as well as throwing a patch of light onto the ground, it can also throw down a logo as a shadow – or even a patch of light thanks to LED tech. Aftermarket puddle lights are also out there, some of which have some quite quirky styles.

Talking Tyre Tech

Wheels, alloys, and tyres are pretty mesmerizing things.  My mate’s dog thought they were biteable too, especially when moving.  He did manage to learn, eventually, that this wasn’t the smartest thing to do, and rather spent his time running alongside the car to welcome visitors instead.   

The wheel has been around for a wee while now, having first been thought to have been applied particularly well by the Sumerian people in 4000 BC, in the lower Mesopotamian regions, or what we know as modern-day Iraq.  These folk inserted rotating axles into solid discs of wood to move objects from A to B.  In 2000 BC, the discs began to be hollowed out to make a lighter wheel.  Nowadays we use wheels for all sorts of applications, not least for rolling ourselves from Point A to Point B in cars. 

I’m sure that the thought of using something soft for surrounding a wheel’s rim entered the mind of many an inventor or entrepreneur.  However, in 1847, it was the Scottish inventor Robert Thomson who patented the first standard pneumatic tire.  It wasn’t until 1888 that the first pneumatic tyre, made by John Dunlop (yes, as in Dunlop tyres), was able to be used as a practical application for bicycles.  He found that rubber was able to withstand wear and tear and retain its resilience when being used as a bicycle tyre.

The tyre as we know it now has advanced tremendously in its science, physiology, and even application.  Generally, a new tyre that we use on our cars today may contain up to 25 components and have as many as 12 different rubber compounds.  Rubber still comes from the rubber tree (Ficus elastica), where the basic component (liquid latex) is extracted from the tree and coagulated with acid.  It is then cleaned with water and pressed into bales, ready for all sorts of applications, including the tyre. 

New developments in tyre technology have been rather underwhelming recently; that is, until Michelin’s latest invention.  This exciting development by Michelin has potentially seen the pneumatic tyre being replaced by this new tyre technology.  The new Michelin Uptis tyre technology utilizes a non-pneumatic tyre that relies on modern composites.  The Michelin Uptis uses aluminium for the wheel, a combination of rubber for the tread, and a flexible load-bearing structure made from reinforced plastic with glass fibre that is used as the tyre’s substance for cushioning road imperfections on impact and coping with variable weight forces, while also maintaining the tyre’s rigidity when accelerating, braking, and cornering. 

This ‘substance’ as we know it in a conventional tyre is known as compressed air and the tyre wall, which all work together to maintain grip and the tyre’s structural strength, and to soften road undulations.  It is, however, prone to punctures.  So, instead of simply air pressure providing the right mix of stiffness, flexibility, and durability, like on our conventional tyres, the new Michelin Uptis prototype tyre uses clever yet simple new technology that will even eliminate the hassle of having a puncture. 

Michelin has recently said that this new tyre technology could also help reduce the cost of tyre replacement by up to 20%.  Michelin’s Uptis tyre technology has and is being tested, having been fitted to 50 DHL delivery vans in Singapore last year. 

Michelin Uptis tyres look pretty cool, too, because you can see right through the outer sidewall of the tyre to the other side and beyond, thanks to all the vacant spaces between the incredibly tough and elastic plastic pillars holding the integrity of the tyre together. 

What’s Behind The Automotive Supply Chain Shortage?

One thing that I’ve noticed (and perhaps you have too) is that sometimes, car manufacturers can’t quite pump out as many units as they had planned, meaning that sometimes, we have to wait for a great new model to hit the Australian market – or else we find that when it does get here, it might not quite have all the electronic features that had been planned.  What’s behind all that?  This hasn’t happened before for as long as I can remember, including during the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–08. 

The problem seems to be that the automotive manufacturers can’t get hold of enough computer chips (semiconductors) to produce as much as they want to.  After all, car manufacturers make cars, not computer chips, so they have to get them from somewhere else.  These semiconductors are used in just about everything inside a new car, from the power steering through to the entertainment system, to say nothing of all the driver aids and sensors that every modern car comes with. Given their importance to motoring safety and convenience, a shortage of semiconductors obviously has an effect on the amount of cars that can be produced.

Like many things, you can blame it on COVID-19.  No, you really can.  It’s a supply and demand thing.  The problem is that the companies producing these silicone-based semiconductors can only make a finite number of these chips in a given amount of time.  After the semiconductors have been made, they have to be shipped on to the companies that put them into cars… and into other things.  During all the lockdowns and other madness of the pandemic, two things happened.  The first is that productivity in factories and in the supply chain slowed down dramatically because of the newly introduced hygiene measures. Extra cleaning meant there was less time to make, check and pack the semiconductors, staff shortages meant fewer people to do the work, and quarantines and travel restrictions meant that the products couldn’t be shipped as quickly.  So the semiconductor factories couldn’t produce as much.  This slowdown was particularly noticeable in the countries where the semiconductors were made – mostly in the East and Southeast Asia, which had stricter and stronger lockdown measures.  So that was one reason.

The second reason why COVID-19 led to a supply shortage was because the semiconductor chips are used for every single electronic device you can imagine (and in some you can’t imagine as well).  Now, what happened during the lockdown?  We weren’t driving as much, and we all had to stay home for work and for entertainment.  This meant that a lot of people invested in better home computer systems that allowed them to work from home or work remotely, and quite a few people decided to upgrade (or get into) gaming equipment.  I know I bought some new tech over this time, and you might have done so as well.  Given that the demand for new cars was going down but the demand for home-based electronics was rocketing, you can guess where the makers of the semiconductors decided to channel their products.  It didn’t help that a lot of car companies reputedly cancelled a bunch of orders at the start of the pandemic into the bargain.

Now, this slowdown was a bottleneck in the supply chain.  Things have calmed down at the supply end of the supply chain, but the after-effects are still being felt in the automotive industry, and it’s going to take a while for this to catch up.  However, things are taking longer to catch up than expected for a couple of other reasons.  One of them is strictly car-related.  There has been a push towards more electric vehicles, both BEVs and hybrids.  These cars need more silicon chips and semiconductors than ICE vehicles, and the supply of these chips is still catching up.

The other reason why it’s taking so long for supply to go back to normal is because of the Ukrainian conflict.  When armed conflicts break out, there is inevitably a huge demand for bigger, better and more sophisticated tech.  This is nothing new, and a lot of today’s big-name car manufacturers cut their teeth on producing war-related equipment 100 or so years ago.  However, this means that companies producing the componentry – such as silicone chips and semiconductors – will be on the hunt for big contracts from governmental defence departments, as these pay quite well.  Once again, this means that there aren’t as many semiconductors available for the automotive industry.

Given that Pestilence and War have led to Shortage, it would be easy to get gloomy and believe that The End Is Nigh, but I prefer to be optimistic.  If we’re patient, I think things will get better.  Stay cheerful and keep on driving safely!

Alloy Wheels 101

Many new models trundling out of car showrooms these days sit proudly on alloy wheels, which are usually measured in inches (only two other things are habitually measured in inches these days, with the other two being display/TV/computer monitor screens and a gentleman’s 11^th finger).  These alloys look very pretty but do they have any other advantages other than simple aesthetics?

Alloy wheels are often contrasted with steel wheels.  Here, the pedantic geek in me has to stand up to tell you that, technically speaking, steel is an alloy of iron and carbon (and other bits, such as chromium, vanadium, boron, tungsten, titanium and other obscure elements on the period table).  It’s probably one of the most common alloys, though it’s not the oldest: that honour goes to bronze (an alloy of tin and copper) and electrum (an alloy of gold and silver that can occur naturally).  There are lots of alloys that have been used since ancient times, and the ability to create them is one of the earliest metalworking technologies out there*. 

To be more precise, alloy wheels are made from alloys of aluminium or magnesium.  This is why you’ll hear some people referring to mag wheels or mag-alloy wheels; mag is an abbreviation of “magnesium alloy”.  This term probably dates back to the 1960s, which is when these wheels, previously only available to the car racing community, hit the market.

Steel wheels have their benefits, such as being cheaper and being easier to bang back into shape after a serious ding.  However, they’re usually only fitted to cheaper cars and entry-level variants (if at all), and will never be found on any luxury vehicle worth its leather seats.  So why do they use them? 

The metals used to make alloy wheels tend to be a lot lighter, but they still have the strength needed to stand up to the rigours of driving.  Getting the weight down is important to car designers (the weight of the vehicle, that is, not the designers) for a number of reasons. Firstly, lowering the unsprung weight of the vehicle makes things easier for the suspension, which, in turn, makes the car handle a lot better.  So that’s definitely a good reason for fitting a car with alloy wheels.  Being lighter also improves the fuel efficiency of the vehicles they’re fitted to because the lighter something is, the less energy it takes to move it.  Needing less force to get moving also means that acceleration gets better. The reverse is true as well: objects that don’t weight as much are easier to stop and/or slow down.

Having less weight also means that a vehicle can have bigger wheels without adding extra kilos, and the general thinking is that if it’s measured in inches, bigger is better.**  

However, having less weight is not the only advantage.  The aluminium and magnesium alloys have better ability to conduct heat away from the brakes, meaning that the brakes perform better.  If you’ve got an aluminium frying pan and a cast iron or steel skillet in your kitchen, you can see this easily.  If you get them both up to the same temperature then whip them off the heat, the aluminium pan will cool down more quickly than the steel one (have your oven mitts handy).  However, because of the greater strength of the aluminium or magnesium alloy, the wheels can be made with an open design – you know, those pretty stars and spokes.  Yes, these are a lot more aesthetically pleasing than a plain old steel wheel but this sort of design isn’t just beautiful but functional as well.  The open design allows the aluminium or magnesium alloy to release some of the heat generated by braking to the air, and the more surface area it’s got, the more heat it will lose.

The main ways of making alloy wheels are forging and casting.  Forging involves heating up the metal or alloy, rolling it, hammering it and generally mashing it about.  This process of heating, etc. makes the alloy grow stronger (I can see a nice little metaphor for a life lesson in there).  However, it’s a long and complicated process, and is more costly than casting.  Casting is where molten metal is poured into a mould, where it hardens.  Cast alloy wheels are cheaper and easier to produce en masse, but they aren’t quite as tough as forged alloy wheels.

Of course, these days, there is a new kid on the wheel block: carbon fibre.  Carbon fibre is even lighter than aluminium or magnesium alloys while still being super tough (diamond is pure carbon, remember).  Carbon is also better able to withstand bumps without forming microcracks, meaning that it’s tougher in the long run.  However, carbon fibre is a lot more expensive.  Will we see carbon fibre becoming more common (and cheaper) as time goes by?  I suspect we will, especially as EVs weigh a lot more than ICE vehicles, and thus cause more wear and tear on our roads, so trimming the weight down will be important (there’s also part of me that wonders if carbon fibre could be a way to sequester carbon, ultimately leading less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but this part is probably wrong).  Anyway, in EVs, regenerative braking transforms a lot of the kinetic energy lost during braking into electrical potential energy rather than heat energy, so there’s no need for open wheel designs that dissipate more heat. Instead, the designers can go for aerodynamics for even better efficiency (and look even cooler).  It will be interesting to see what they come up with.

* Could somebody please inform the writers of Amazon’s The Rings of Power of this fact?

** This may be true of wheels and screens, but speaking as a straight woman, it’s not true of the third.  Seriously, size really doesn’t matter.