And we were assured that LEDs would basically 'last forever' ...

Funnily enough, on my Citroen C5 none of the ordinary bulbs at the back gave any trouble in the 15 years that I had it but the LED high-level stop light had to be replaced after about 10 years. Hmmm ...

As a massive Toyota fan I'm deeply shocked by that....disgraceful.

There's Toyota reliability shot to pieces.....but I'll risk it...lol

Heard that some manufacturers fit bulbs to new cars that are filled with argon or another inert gas which prevents any impurities reacting with the filament.

But these Stanley bulbs are amazing !

Remember seeing some equipment at Bletchley Park which had electronic valves that had been operating for over 50 years. But this was continuous use .

And to think Bill Tutte and Harry Flowers who were the designers of the worlds first electronic computer were turned down for funding by the MOD as they considered them to be unreliable and cost too much to replace . So they bought them out of their own pocket.

No wonder Jeremy Clarkson voted Harry Flowers as the worlds most unrecognised engineer in his TV programme next to Brunel.

But I’d put Flowers as no 1 IMHO

I knew BMWs are less reliable! My 2008 3 series had a headlight bulb go at 11 years and 95k miles.

On the subject if LEDs, people think they last a long time, and they should. However, the LED chips themselves are rated at several tens of thousands of hours, but the weak point is the electronics that drive them. These don't seem to last anywhere near long enough, and are expensive. Thankfully all the lights in my BMW are bulbs.

I can vouch for the control gear problem with LEDs - at my last job in construction (2017), a college that just had a refurb had LED spotlamps in the halways that were going after just one year, and they weren't cheapo ones either. Turning lights on/off a lot seems to be what triggers most failures via the controls.

I noticed a similar effect on the streetlights on the development where I live (private road), and weak control gear alawys caused the lamps to fail early, though the OEMs were metal halide lamps, but they had a PCB, igniter and capacitor plus photocell.

Failures in any of these, though especially the igniter or photocell often led to the malp going on/off a lot (even though it was dark) and knackering th lamp in a matter of a few weeks, if that.

We held off replacing them lock, stock and barrel with LEDs because they were a) far more expensive to buy (combining the PCB, and 'starter') initially and b) the early gen units were, according to colleague (see above) not much more reliable.

The later gen units appear to have dropped in price and improved reliability. The OEM metal halides were only lasting 1-3 years (better if the control gear etc was reliable), most about 1.5 years, but aside from one failure (water ingress issue), the LEDs have not yet failed, the oldest now 3 years old, plus we're saving about 70% on electricity.

A shame cars have to have all those fancy-pants light clusters that cost a fortune rather than a direct replacement 'bulb' for the headlamp, dipped and side lights plus rear lamps. A former neighbour's Audi that was hit by an i**** in a car park said the reapir job (not much damage) cost about £1200, and a good portion was a replacement front left light cluster which was LED.

Seen quite a few LED DRLs fail within a short time. Waste of time if you ask me.