.

If the engineering sample of the L-Prize, tested for 40,000 hours, this means that the test began at 2007, when the LED lighting was still much less popular than at 2011, and incandescent lamps were in homes everywhere, and HID lamps in commercial and street lighting.

I have seen Cree LEDway street lights in my area and they've lasted long, and worked well since installation, around a year ago. They don't seem as glary as people seem. IF you see the link to the cree sight, those swatter looking lights are what I am talking about. Read more about the discussion I had several days ago here.

What I don't like with LEDs, is that the LED start instantly and restart instantly, while HID takes time to warm up and cool down.
Also, LED can't be replaced in the lantern as HID can.

That's kind of depressing to read 😣 I was hopping LED technology would die out no such luck. Just a couple of days ago I was in a local bar that had some LED lights in the ceiling behind the bar and 4 of about7 fittings were flickering wildly they are less than 6 months old and before you ask this was before I got drunk! In fact it was before ide touched a drop!

All of the LED track lighting at my timeshare cafe was wildly flickering, yet no one addressed it.

The "L-prize" cost $50 each, that is just not any viable option. To bring that down, someone must "optimize" a lot. Now the question is, how this "optimization" affect the reliability. And we are back at the start: There would be new, optimized lamp, but who know, what would be the reliability then? And I'm pretty sure no one would invest into 5-year long testing of any cheap product, the LED's would be no exception.
The development may seem to go way faster than it was with the fluorescents, but I doubt the accuracy of such long term tests would be any close to similar tests from the past. Just because the management mentality of "If the development took 5 instead of 20 years, why the tests, that lasted 4 years could not be done in one year?".
With the computer tools you may do all the analyses, so the actual design work way faster, but when it come to validating the expectations by the long time tests, there is just no way to make these shorter without affecting the accuracy and reliability of the results. But this fact the present society is just not willing to accept, the results are the claims of "test showing 30 years of traction battery life" and then surprising end of life after just three years (many EV's using LiIon cells and operated in warmer climate)...

It is a rather simple conspiracy: Philips designed an LED bulb to last, then assembled it in the U.S.A. to make sure it was done exactly how they wanted. The cost was high because they wanted a durable product. After it hit the market and got their name out as a reputable LED manufacturer, they discontinued the bulb in favor of cheap imported LEDs that are inferior in build quality. Now the people that bought the original L-Prize bulb bulb spread the word of how well their Philips bulb works, so others go out and buy the low-cost imported Philips bulbs, putting money in exec's pockets.

I know the technology exists to make LEDs last and not flicker, but it is expensive and manufacturers don't want to spend the money to make bulbs that people will buy once and not have to replace for many years. High quality LEDs don't fit in with today's 'planned obsolescence' manufacturing theme.

It is a rather simple conspiracy: Philips designed an LED bulb to last, then assembled it in the U.S.A. to make sure it was done exactly how they wanted. The cost was high because they wanted a durable product. After it hit the market and got their name out as a reputable LED manufacturer, they discontinued the bulb in favor of cheap imported LEDs that are inferior in build quality. Now the people that bought the original L-Prize bulb bulb spread the word of how well their Philips bulb works, so others go out and buy the low-cost imported Philips bulbs, putting money in exec's pockets.

I know the technology exists to make LEDs last and not flicker, but it is expensive and manufacturers don't want to spend the money to make bulbs that people will buy once and not have to replace for many years. High quality LEDs don't fit in with today's 'planned obsolescence' manufacturing theme.

I bought the "cheaper" version of the tri-lobes bulb. The 60w equiv AmbientLED first and I liked the quality of the light. Incandescent like that fooled a lot of people in the house when I showed it lit in a uplighter floor lamp with a opaque bowl.

The L-Prize I bought much later as it's was to be a collector piece. And I'm glad I did since I no longer see it on the shelves.

Aside from the glare caused by improper use of LED, I really dislike the flicker especially when used on a dimmer. The one that really gets me (and I cannot do a thing about it) is the car tail lights and dashboard lights. The tail lights are normally dimmed when on and when the driver applies the brakes, they get to full brightness. Really annoying when following such a car at night.

The dashboard is lit at full brightness during the day (at least some models are) and then the display dims when the headlights are turned on at night (so it makes less glare for the driver) and there you go, more flicker but worse as it is right there in front of you. My wife's Honda Civic 2014 does it and some of my coworkers drive Volkswagen Jetta (Vento) and they do it as well. Very, very annoying knowing the Volkswagens available here are not the least expensive vehicles out there. You'd think (hope) they would invest in better dimmers than that but...

I completely agree with the fact, where practically all of the known aging effects you may quite accurately predict by computer simulation or validate in accelerated tests. So if you are a bit careful, you may pretty well design the product to not be affected by them for practically as long life as you wish, the QL's and L-prize could be good examples of that. And I agree, most cheap makers ignore many of them...

But the main problem is with those effects, that are just not yet known, those you can not model, nor spot in any form of shortened test (except if you are lucky, so the acceleration method for the accelerated test happens to accelerate that effect as well), so the only reliable method is the real long term test.

Simply said without real full time tests of any new technology trusting the accelerated or tendency tests is just a lottery, nothing else. Sometimes you win (QL, L-prize), sometimes you loose (Nissan Leaf and related). So could the "50khour lamp life" or "15 years traction battery life" promise trusted before significant number of examples of that technology have really made it through the stated periods of time?
Not much more than some win in a lottery, when in fact it actually is a lottery...

Based on my little survey, regular consumers dont really care extra long life offered by good quality led lamps when it comes over certain point. 40 000 hrs lamp life is like 36 years (if calculated using 3hrs per day) so its like half of human lifespan. My observations tells that people are more interested how much electricity light source consumes and how much its cost since those are more immidiate things to take on account. Also if poor quality lamp dont last that rated 20 000 hrs at somepoint people dont remember anymore precisely when they bought that lamp so its not that big deal if even the rated life did not fulfill.  If you have to hire somebody to change burned out lamps(like in businesess etc) then its important to have accurate rated life as every lamp change cost you not just new lamp but also  labout cost has to be taken account.

The main problem with LEDs is that they cost A LOT to do right at any kind of serious illumination level, as was the case with the Philips L Prize lamps at $50 each at introduction and up to $59.95 from online retailers.  While they can be made to work, the relative economics of them compared to mature lighting technologies is a killer as they have to be cheapened heavily to be able to compete with said mature technologies on the grounds of price.  Thus the frequent failures.

I think over the time even the LED's would become cheap and reliable at the same time. The potential is there, many new design styles aimed to address the known problems in a cheap way as well, now the technology would need the time to filter out, which of those ideas are viable and which aren't.

No light source technology was better in such infancy as the LED. The problem is really in the hasty people, who want just barely decade after the first examples of that technology higher standards than the mature technologies were able to get after many decades of their development. Of course, the LED's won't meet such expectations, no such innovative technology ever did and no innovative technology will ever do. You just can not fool the time...

Any light source, whether LED, HID, fluorescent, incandescent, when improperly used, will not work well. I find these to be quite glary, for example.