LED Daylight Driving Lights

Normally I drive with my headlights on all the time. Also during the daytime. It is proven that this improves your visibility on the road. But if you turn on the headlights you also turn on the city lights (Europe only?), dashboard lights, license plate light and the rear lights. This all adds up to 143 watts! This energy must be created by the engine which uses fuel for doing that. The automotive industry has come up with a solution to this problem. They now have LED lights specially designed for being seen during the daytime (a lot of Audis have it). LED lights use very very little energy compared to conventional bulbs. These lights are always on when the ignition of the car is switchted to on. They are called daylight driving lights. But, due to europe legislation, the daylight driving lights must be switched of when you switch on the normal headlights.

I bought some aftermaket LED daylight driving lights at Halfords, which costed me 39 euros. But I had to use a relay to switch em off when I turn on the normal light, that costed me another 10 euros.
They are only 0.9 watt a piece, so instead of the 143 watts, they will only use 1.8 watts! I will probably not really notice a big improvement in fuel consumption, but all little things help, and it saves the headlight bulbs, so they should last longer.

I installed them under the front bumper, they look like small fog-lights.

Lights off:

Daylight driving lights on:

In the picture the lights don't look bright, but they are!

Headlights on:

As you can see, the daylight driving lights automatically switch off when I turn on the lights. I used a relay that can also switch things off. Those relays are sometimes used for fog-lights too.

This is how I wired them:

The wire to the horn and the wire to the city lights can be found at the left hand (drivers) side in the trunk. There is a bundle of wires that runs through the inner wheel wheel to the headlight and the horn.

Don't pay attention to the thick blue, gray and black wires that are attached to it. You'll not find those in your 1303 beetle. These run to the radiator fans.

I cut open the mantle of the bundle so I can get at the wires:

Then I soldered the wires that will run to the relay to the black/yellow and lightgray wires, as mentioned in the wiring diagram.

After that I had to mount the daylight driving lights under the bumper, and run the rest of the wiring to the relay and grounds. See the wiring diagram for more details.

Energy Savings

If I ignore the LED light I allready put in the taillights, dashboards light etc, the savings to a normal "bulbed" car would be:

I am very happy with a 10.85 ampere saving!