The Amazing Lack of Efficiency in Most Machines

I remember how surprised I was when I learned what the efficiency of a modern car engine is. It's around 20% on a typical driving cycle. Actually, the radiator is sized to dissapate about the engine's output power and another complete engine power goes out in exhaust heat. By the time that gets to the wheels, it's around 10%, most of the rest being lost to aerodynamic drag and rolling resistance. That's a shockingly bad efficiency!  Nevertheless, a typical car can go 350 miles on a tank of gas, making it very convenient. Imagine if the efficiency could be improved!

Which brings us to LED lights. Light bulbs are a similar story. An incandescent light bulb is around 10% efficient. Extremely bad for such a useful device!  But LED's, after years of research and experiments, flip that equation. They are around 90% efficient. Therefore, it seemed a very good idea to convert BB's lights to LED. That would reduce the load on her tired electrical system substantially!  So I plugged in!
This kit from Moss worked very well.

I changed out the tail lights and blinkers.

Because of the better efficiency, the blinkers don't draw enough current to activate the blinker unit so it has to be changed out for a digital one.

The new lights look great!

Now, if I could only invent something to raise a car's efficiency!  Hmmm...