Q&A with Senior Ben Scholer

What have you changed about  your car?

I’ve put a lot of lights on it. At one point I had 1,200 LED lights, which totals up to the light output of 105 40-watt light bulbs if they’re all on and at their highest setting. In addition, I’ve put reflective tape all over to make it look like Tron. I’ve done a lot of other little things with the lights as well. I put brake lights on the back and turn signals up on the window, which makes it look like a Tesla or Cadillac.

What inspired you to do all of this to your car?

I’ve seen a lot of a people online who’ve done it, and I’ve always enjoyed working with LEDs. Really what inspired me to work with the LEDs was my dad. He put LED lighting under the cabinets in our kitchen, and he had some extras for me to mess around with. I sort of got my introduction there, and then I saw how cheap they were. You can get about 5 meters of the color changing ones for around $15 on eBay. So I saw how cheap they were, and I (thought) this could go all over my car.

How many color variants can you make with the LED lights?

Quite a few. The remote that the lights come with has 44 keys on it, and you can create custom colors and there’s some programmed patterns. A lot of the times you have a red, green and blue component to the light. There’s actually three separate LEDs in the LED. Depending on how much of each of those colors you light up, they blend together and that’s the color you see. So say you put red and blue together; you would get purple. That’s sort of the premise of all color changing lights.

How much attention do you get for your car now?

I would say a solid half of the people or maybe three-quarters that drive by will glance at it and look a little more longer at it. In the daytime it draws some, but at night is where it shines, literally. The reflective tape reflects light really well and lights up especially with the headlights on the road.