German Car Forum

I have never seen it on Japanese cars sold in Europe, but I have not been inside one for ages. Perhaps they've adapted to the European market by now.

Bravo, Christian!

Marcus, hope this explains.

I can't see the pics!!!!!

The firewall here blocks anything photobucket it seems.

M

Yes they did.

Weird... It does happen to you lately, right? Not being able to see wimmer's pics?

Yeah I just figured it out, its anything from Photobucket it seems. I got a mesg when trying to access it even via Firefox.

M

Are you at work at the moment?

I was just wondering, because I notice you can't often see pictures, and I find that when I'm at school, due to filters!!

Hi Yaz, you've been gone for ages! Where have you been? How are you?

Correct. The lights are not fully illuminated, they're optimized in this mode to use as little battery power as possible - just enough to create a lightsource to be seen by passing traffic. I once left the drivers side lights on for several hours at a party when I parked the E320 on the side of a dark road and several hours later, the car started without problems - during the winter too.

Uhh....yeah something like that.

I can look at the pics later from a different location.

M

Hold on, Imageshacking them right now...

DAY


NIGHT

Oh ok I can see them now. I can see the theory behind this feature, but on a little street like that in the U.S. what we'd almost call an alley people would be knocking on your door to tell you lights were on or calling you if they knew you/your car. Then again such a small unlit street such as that is as rare as hen's teeth here in the U.S. I'd be scared that it would run the battery down. I wonder how long you can leave such a light on, I'll check my owners manual. As you all can see I'm pretty much fascinated by this, like a child as they walk into a big room when they do a 360 and say wow...

This would confuse the hell out of American drivers. Hell, when I use my rear fog light (only in real fog BTW) I get people telling me I have a brake light out!!

M

LOL!! Sorry, Marcus, but that sounds funny! But i understand you.

I used to leave it like that for the whole night and nothing happened with the battery.

I can see that you're indeed fascinated by this.

I'll check our E320 owners manual to see how long you can leave them on.

Very interesting feature! But both mine S60 and dad's XC90 don't have it, so i think Volvo doesn't follow the maintstream german carmakers...

Anyway, Christian i think you can live it like this for ages - the battery won't de-charge! Once, i did a 150 night journey based only on the battery, since the belt connecting the engine to the dynamo somehow fell of the car... To my surprise everything worked ok, all the lights and the radio, but in the end, like 10 mins before my house everything was almost dead, i used the highest beam lights and it was very weak...

Well, congrats my friend. Knowing you though, I thought you'd get an S or an E.

So my guess is that this is why we have those orange reflectors. They'd reflect light in a dark alley or road.

I am fine Chris, thanks for asking. I was away backhome (the Mideast) for a while. Also, thanks for the illustration above .

Parking lights are a fairly recent feature (which would explain, Merc1, why you haven't noticed them in older benzes), and they certainly aren't exclusive to Europe. Most new cars sold here have them, and I'd hazard a guess it's the same in America - just people are unaware or unsure of the feature.

Dad uses it all the time but I think it's a bit of a gimmick - lights have (by law) reflectors encased in them anyway.. you'd have to be blind not to see a parked car while driving at night (unless, of course, you didn't drive with your headlights, in which case you'd be stupid).

Or dead drunk! Because of such - i always turn it on at weekends when i'm in the city.

Anytime and it's great to have you back.

Yeah, that's exactly the same thing. Both our family cars, Seat Αrosa and Seat Alhambra have exactly the same feature. If you turn on the indicator while the engine is turned off, the head and rear lights will illuminate. Mind that our cars are 10 years old, so I guess that every VAG model has that feature, at least since 1997.

Hot stuff.