Lighting is not my area of expertise, but I thought I would throw in my two cents on the subject. We all know that incandenscent lighting is inefficient. The power going in produces way too much heat for the amount of light. A good automotive high beam headlamp produces about 1700 lumens from 65 watts, or about 26 L / w, along with a lot of heat. NIR bulbs (Dodge Viper) harness that heat to produce more light, giving something around 2300 L, or about 35 L / w. HID headlamps are better yet, producing more light and less heat, but require a high voltage transformer and other packaging/weight/fragility/cost issues.

There is a lot to be said for the efficiency of LED lighting, but I don't think we are anywhere near the ultimate in construction, packaging or volume cost yet. I receive tons of advertisements from the trade rags claiming all sorts of specially doped 3-5 materials (indium gallium arsenide, etc.) that are capable of full spectrum light up to 60 lumens per watt!! Price for this little wonder? Still high at about $4 in quantity. But they offer incredibly compact form factors making them perfect for really wild designed automotive (and bicycle) headlamp use when clustered.

Lots of good stuff coming down the road....