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Renault Fl4wer Power: Yellow headlights are back?

The study, based on the Renault 4 E-Tech Electric, glows yellow. Nostalgia or reality?

Will the yellow headlights, which were characteristic of French cars thirty years ago, return? With the Fl4wer Power Concept on display at the 2024 Paris Motor Show, Renault seems to believe so.

In fact, the details of the yellow headlights, created by overlaying a colored plastic sheet on the front LED lights of the Renault 4 E-Tech Electric, are only part of the show car, which focuses on the effect of nostalgia and allusion to the sixties and the "flower children". (Hence the name 'Fl4wer Power'). So is this an impromptu action with a high impact, at least among the baby boomers, generations X and Y, or something we will soon see on the streets? Let's figure it out together.

Yellow headlights on French cars from 1936 to 1992

This is not the first time that Renault has returned to the theme of amber headlights. In addition to the study based on the Renault 4 model that was presented in Paris, there is also a current example of the Renault 17 Restomod with bright yellow headlights, although here a classic car was used and modified as a basis. It is clear that images of cars with yellow headlights driving through the night are still fresh in the collective imagination of the French, a vision that triggers a flood of memories for many.

In France, orange headlights were mandatory for all vehicles registered from April 1937 to 31 December 1992, later replaced by white headlights, which are fitted to vehicles in all other European countries. In short: for more than fifty years, only French cars and a few others had orange headlights. When imported to other countries such as Italy or Germany, they were equipped with white lights. Speaking of Italy: they had white turn signals there for a long time.

Do they work better in fog?

The reason for this uniqueness of the French? According to some sources, the first to request orange headlights were soldiers. On the brink of World War II, facing imminent conflict and invasion, they believed they could distinguish French vehicles from German or Italian vehicles, which used white headlights. For others, the "selective yellow" headlights were chosen by the government in Paris based on a study by the French Academy of Sciences in 1934, which came to the following conclusions:

"Observations by users, especially scientists, show that headlights illuminated with orange light are less dazzling than those with white light, and that when two vehicles meet, the time it takes the eye to adjust after being dazzled is significantly reduced. Yellow light causes light to reflect less in the case of fog or liquid droplets in the case of rain. It seems to increase the value of contrasts and thus reduce eye fatigue.”

Europe opted for white headlights

In practice, these claims seem to have been disproved by later studies, so apart from the French colonies and former colonies, Japan and New Zealand, no other country in the world has ever introduced mandatory orange headlights. It seems that even in Italy, orange headlights (low beam and high beam) can only be fitted to vehicles registered before October 1, 1993, such as classic cars.

This suggests that Renault is unlikely to request a change to the ECE 48 regulation of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, which confirmed the obligation to use white headlights for vehicles homologated from July 31, 2016, and for fog lights only allowed a free choice between white and selective yellow color.

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