LED do heat up. They are more efficient than other light bulbs in producing more light than heat, but they are very concentrated consumer of several amps of current and not perfect. Have you seen their heat sinks, they are pretty big. Also their light output is more concentrated so they project radiant heat out of the lens. They are pretty warm to the touch when the LEDs are on. So far it has melted ice and snow in my car in past winters after accumulating on a parking lot at work all day and then I drive home at night, but I do not have very cold winters.

 

Picture taken last Saturday after a 15 minute drive in wet heavy snow WITH THE LIGHTS ON.

You can see the blue snow on the bottom of the headlights from the headlight washers which were useless in these conditions. I shouldn't say useless. The washers definitely were able to turn the snow on the headlights blue so they definitely accomplished something....

 

Wow - that was quite a storm it appears. NE CT?

 

More like SE CT. About 20min from the shoreline.

 

I don't think the headlight wshers are intended for this purpose, more for mud & dirt.
Did you have the wiper defrost on ? Also did you radar work? It looks like the sensors are covered in wet snow. It happened to me in similar circumstances where I got the message to clean my front sensor.

 

40-60 MPH thru wet snow at night? Where do I sign up for a ride with you? : )

 

Drove through a storm like that once with my wife's RX - grill looked exactly the same when I stopped. Sensors all disabled etc.

 

Not sure what wiper defrost is but I had both the windshield and rear window defrost on.

 

This is another pet peeve of mine with Lexus. Instead of having a simple button, one has to go into the settings for A/C and there one finds another little thing to click on to activate the wipers defrost.
Since you are in CT you're going to need this feature sooner than later.

 

Thanks I will certainly check it out! Does this feature happen to warm up the headlights as well to melt the snow??

 

Alas no! Things are actually worse than with the old incandescent bulbs as those provided some heat, whereas the LED don't provide any heat.

 

A feature I sorely miss from the Mercedes I punted when I bought my first Lexus LS 31 years ago are the little wipers on the glass headlight lenses that kept them free of snow and did a better job of cleaning off grime than the pressure headlight washers do on modern cars. While I appreciate that plastic headlight lenses are lighter, more break resistant and allow for more complex exterior styling, glass headlight lenses that were compatible with the use of wipers were in some ways far superior. Dang, "progress" sometimes sucks.

One of the little headlight wipers on the Mercedes is barely visible in the only photo I may have of the car which was taken by my wife on the day I bought my first Lexus LS. The reason the Lexus dealer's lot is mostly empty is that they didn't have many cars to sell when the Lexus brand was first introduced in the U.S.



.

 

I had a 1975 SAAB (when Saab was Saab) and it had headlight washers & wipers, that car was eons ahead.

 

There is rain-x for glass. And rain-x for plastic. The chemicals in the glass version do attack plastic over time. Use the plastic version on the triple beams lens.