NHTSA Complaint #11543976 — 2012 VOLVO S60

These headlight assemblies commonly develop significant water ingress problems as they age. Owners report issues in wet climates even when these cars were relatively new, resulting in bulb ignition problems as water finds it way into the ballasts, resulting in high-voltage shorting. The water in the headlight housings also "fogs" up the forward lens, resulting in a poor distribution of light out the front, both poor for the driver and dazzling for oncoming traffic. The headlights can work fine for weeks or months, and then a wet week comes along and 1 or both headlights fail to operate or work but poorly and blind oncoming traffic. If caught after dark in the rain the headlights often fail to function. If this could be solved with new headlight assemblies for a reasonable price, I would not consider this a major safety issue, unfortunately, they are difficult to source, astronomically priced (~$1100 per assembly), and replacing them doesn't seem to fix this problem for many owners of these cars. The way these assemblies are vented from the factory seems to be problematic for water ingress and the position of the ballasts ensures that any significant water ingress causes the ballast to short internally. I believe that the atmospheric vent on these must be positioned in such a way that they suck water in as they cool if its raining. The all-halogen assemblies for these cars work better, likely because there's no ballast for the water to leak into and more heat from the bulb to quickly evaporate the water out of the same assembly design. The poorly designed housing is "saved" by the simpler electronics and thermal output of the bulbs. Unfortunately, different factory programming is required to run the all-halogen assemblies. A recall should be issued to replace all of these gimmicky (and distracting) "steerable" xenon headlights with the halogen versions, with the reprogramming effort included in the recall.