HID lamps - driving in Europe

Hello all. Just got my GX4h last week. Still getting to grips with it having come from a Q7 (!) but already feeling richer as have not had to go out this week and blow £120 on a tank of diesel ...

Plenty of things I miss about the Q7 but economy was not one of them. Certainly an interesting purchase/dealer experience after 20 years of Audi and BMW ownership.

Anyway here's my query and I hope you can help. And if this has been answered elsewhere I apologize.

Going to continental Europe soon with the car and was expecting to have to get 'beam benders' or something but the handbook says that cars with HIDs don't need any adjustment or masks for driving on the right. It can't be (can it?) that the lights are told by the nav that you're driving on the 'wrong' side of the road and adjust themselves (like on an A8 with LED lights and the 'bells unt whistletechnick')? :lol:

Comments and guidance please!

The light beam is markedly higher on the right side on my LHS car, so I'm skeptical about that claim...

The light beams of my right hand drive car is higher on the left side on the low beams. Probably be offensive to other drivers in a country of LHD vehicles. Why are the beams just not flat? The stepped beam appears to be just a poor design.

gwatpe said:

The light beams of my right hand drive car is higher on the left side on the low beams. Probably be offensive to other drivers in a country of LHD vehicles. Why are the beams just not flat? The stepped beam appears to be just a poor design.

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The theory, of course, is that HID beams are symmetrical with a sharp cut-off below eye level and hence do not need beam deflectors when driving on the wrong side of the road. Mine do seem pretty symmetrical, and annoy oncoming drivers equally irrespective of the side of the road I'm driving on.

Hi there. I had exactly that question as we took the car to Germany about 10 days after picking it up. I came to the conclusion (per your manual quote) that we didn't need to adjust the lights. But I think I had some beam adjusters in the car in case - not sure if we would have known how to put them on as presumably our car wouldn't have been in the instructions.

Then again at this time of year and with small children we weren't going to be doing any night time driving in any case so it wasn't really an issue for us.

I don't do much night time driving here either come to think of it, but I am conscious that my lights seem rather unpopular with oncoming drivers...

Cheers
H

Can't find any way of adjusting them sideways, but they're easily adjusted to aim lower with an 8mm socket. Set the car on a level, give it a good bounce to settle things down, and adjust away! I found the dipped HID's were set too high, judging by the number of times I was getting flashed.

Drove to Paris a few weeks ago and had no problems. Beam adapters are a possibly a waste of money.

HIDs are 100% compatible without need for conversion or deflectors.

I drive a RHD,UK purchased,PHEV in France. My one frustration with my UK dealer is that they insisted that the "continental pack" including LHD Headlights was necessary to make the vehicle road legal for registration in France. I accept that the rear fog and reversing lights needed to be swapped out, but the garage door test proves that the HID is utterly flat. I have driven regularly in UK, France and Germany without any hint of irritation from oncoming drivers.

kentphev said:

Drove to Paris a few weeks ago and had no problems. Beam adapters are a possibly a waste of money.

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I have been driving on the UK last week, mostly country roads, and haven't been flashed once. Beam converters are superfluous IMO ,

Slightly off-topic but I did fit converters to my Gx3 for the trip to France at half-term, as I don't have the HID lights. And certainly I can see the reduction in beam to the right. However, I've left them on since I came back as I can't see how this significantly affects their use in the UK either. :?

Thanks all for comments. I did some night time driving and the beams seem to be reasonably symmetrical so we'll put some deflectors in the car (just in case) as suggested above (good call) and see how it goes.