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When it comes to getting the most possible efficiency out of a vehicle, the battle is often one of small steps, not giant leaps. Completely redesigning a vehicle from the bottom up to be the most efficient vehicle on the road is a big challenge. First there's the extra research and development costs, then, once the vehicle is designed, you'll likely have to retool your factories in order to produce the thing. So how does one increase efficiency without having to change the industry's ways? One way that Ford adopted in the Ford Mustang is the use of LED lights.
Using a gasoline engine to produce electricity isn't too hard. Using it to drive a car and produce electricity at the same time results in a lot of lost power, hence lowering efficiency. So, any measure that could decrease the need for electricity has an impact. The LED taillights found on the Ford Mustang, which uses Osram Sylvania's Joule system use 87% less electricity than a traditional incandescent bulb, and, because they have no fragile monofilament, they are far more durable.
The Osram Sylvania system also realizes the needs of the auto industry by constructing their LED fixtures in shapes and sizes that make them easily interchangable with previous incandescent features. As a parting word, here's a few figures from Osram Sylvania: LED lights on the 2010 Ford Mustang make for an annual fuel savings of 10.5 gallons and a decrease in cabron emissions of 205 pounds. This may not seem like a huge amount, but if you were to implement that system on the roughly 250 million light-duty vehicles (cars, pickup trucks, commercial vehicles, etc., according to a recent Osram press release) in America, that would mean a yearly reduction of 51.25 billion pounds of CO2 emissions and the use of 2.625 billion gallons of gasoline. That's pretty impressive for a small light fixture.
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