Why the Toyota C-HR nameplate only lights up when stationary

Illuminated logos are allowed! You can have all kinds of opinions about that, but in a world full of car-wide LED strings and illuminated grilles, it at least seems justified. After all, it is a bit strange that a car like the Volkswagen ID4 carries a light bar at both the front and rear, while the logo contained therein remains dark. A BMW 7-series has an immense illuminated fence on the nose, but the logo cannot be seen in the dark. It has been allowed since the beginning of this year, so some cars with illuminated logos have now been announced. The new Volkswagen Touareg, for example, gets this, just like the new Renault 4.

The condition for such a logo is that it must be part of the light unit, which in most cases will mean that it is part of a continuous light bar. The new Toyota C-HR also features an illuminated logo in the rear light bar, where it lights up neatly between and in line with the two wide LED rear lights. Yet the ‘logo’ turns off while driving, because it does not meet another condition that the European regulators have devised. An illuminated logo may only be the brand logo of the car manufacturer itself, in this case the Toyota logo. If Toyota had chosen not to place the written type plate at this location, but to place the well-known logo, it would have been allowed to light up continuously. The ‘Toyota C-HR’ in the rear light of the car of the same name therefore only serves as a ‘greeting’ and lights up when unlocking, and then remains dark during the entire journey.

Symmetrical

Moreover, the extensive and hardly comprehensible European lighting requirements also state that lighting must be the same on the left and right, i.e. completely symmetrical. The logo is an exception: as long as only the brand logo itself lights up and that logo is neatly in the middle, the logo itself does not have to be purely symmetrical. Brands such as Kia, Lexus and Ford are probably very happy with this.