Thought this might make a good suggestion to Infiniti.

If the car is moving very slowly or stopped under an overpass on a dark day for instance there should be plenty of time for the driver to manually switch the lights on. But if running at speed the lights need to come on quickly even if they have to turn off quickly, just to be safe.

Seems to me this would minimize or eliminate the spurious switching the static sensitivity setting causes when the lights are left in the auto mode. Maybe it could be a firmware upgrade? As it stands, it's a sucky function and pretty much pointless unless the cost of new HID bulbs aren't a big deal, IMHO.

Any comments?

Tnx, Pete

 

you can adjust the sensitivity of the auto lights in your system settings....if this is not what you mean then can you elaborate a little more.

 

the auto headlight feature is way to sensitive on all settings..when ever i go under a bridge 10-120 mph the lights always turn on and i hate it cuz i dont wanna burn out my HID bulb

 

logik05se, I have the sensitivity bottomed out but it's not really low enough. The auto headlights in our '03 Chrysler Concorde Limited don't have near the fast response and the sensitivity isn't adjustable. The timing is about perfect with the headlights never coming on pulling into the garage unless it's already near dark. The G's headlights come on transitioning from brilliant sunlight to the relative dark under an overpass before I can drive under it, if it's a wide freeway and I'm accelerating slowly from the light for instance.

What I was thinking is that the sensitivity should be related to the car's speed. That is, the slower the car is going the less sensitive the auto function should be, or in other words the longer it would take for the light input to integrate down to the turn-on threshold. The reason being the driver has more time to manually turn on the lights if need be, say in a parking garage where it's difficult to see after having driven into the garage from bright sunlight.

OTOH, driving at speed into a tunnel or under a very long underpass the headlights should turn on more quickly otherwise the driver would have to take a hand off the wheel to turn them on manually. I'm thinking that the light input should integrate to the turn-on threshold before the car can move an appreciable distance into the darkness and beyond the reaction time of the driver.

Driving very slowly or in stop-and-go traffic or slowly driving into an underground parking garage, the sensitivity would be reduced or if the speed is low enough, set such that a fixed, known (as in printed in the owner's manual) delay will turn the lights on after say, thirty seconds. Or maybe that's another user adjustable parameter.

The sensitivity should increase with speed so the car doesn't travel past the (typical) half second reaction time distance, once the optical sensor input integrates to threshold, before the lights come on. Finding the optimal integrator 'gain' (read: sensitivity) as a function of speed and the added delay time (half a second or a function of speed, too?) would be an interesting bit of experimentation or modeling though, I think.

FWIW, Pete

 

i think its a good idea - but for safety sake - i think there shouldnt be an option - make it bright - leave it alone!

 

Took me a minute, I'm slow... That's not a bad idea really, come to think of it. I wonder what the life of the bulbs are though, might be better to just leave it in auto.

According to the service screen at the dealer only the bulbs need to be changed when they go out rather than the ballast as well which was apparently required in the past, or so I'm told. I do know from working with power systems for HID lamps that a catastrophic failure of the bulb will wipe out the electronics up past the ballast depending on how its control interface is designed.

What kills 'em is not getting to temperature before dropping out again. The bulb ignition is fairly hard on it but not like it used to be. Turning the lights on really shouldn't be done unless they're going to stay on for a good while or at least if they're going to be quickly cycled it shouldn't happen very often. Or maybe this sytem is something entirely new, I don't know for sure, haven't got that far yet so I'll go by the manual and hope they last five years before I have to replace the car.

I'd still like for the auto-headlight function to be either always slow or intelligent enough to not be so annoying it becomes useless. This kind of coin for a car ought to buy a whole lot more smarts in features just about every other car already has, IMHO. But I like to whine...

 

its interesting, but I dunno if i want my lights going on all the time

 

i think thats agreat idea though - you should pitch that to someone ( mfgr ) or somthing - you never know man - good brainstorm!

 

leave it alone

 

I never thought that mine were that sensitive