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ELS vs Non-ELS FiveM police cars — which to choose

Most FiveM police cars come in two builds: Non-ELS, with the lights and sirens inside the car's own files, and ELS, driven by a separate lighting script. Both look right in game — the difference is what your server runs and how much control you want.

  1. 1Non-ELS: lights built into the car

    A Non-ELS car carries its light patterns in carcols.meta (a siren setting that flashes the model\'s siren1…siren20 lights) and links to it from carvariations.meta with sirenSettings. Nothing else is needed: drop the car in, ensure it, and the lights work and sync like any GTA emergency vehicle. Build or change the patterns in Signal Bench.

  2. 2ELS: lights driven by a script

    An ELS car is set up for an Emergency Lighting System script on your server. Each car has a VCF file that maps its light extras (extra_1, extra_2…) to stages and patterns, and the script switches them. You get more control — light stages, custom patterns, takedowns and alleys depending on the script — but the server must run a compatible ELS resource, and every car needs its VCF. Edit or convert VCFs in ELS Config.

  3. 3What your server needs

    Non-ELS: nothing extra. ELS: an ELS script that reads the car\'s VCF format, set up and started before the cars. If you\'re not sure which your server runs, look in its resources folder and server.cfg for an ELS resource — if there isn\'t one, Non-ELS is the build that works out of the box.

  4. 4Which to choose

    Pick Non-ELS for a simple setup, fewer moving parts and lights that just work on any framework. Pick ELS when your department already runs an ELS script and wants staged lighting across the whole fleet. Mixing both on one server is fine — each car follows its own build.

  5. 5Check it before going live

    Run the fleet through Pack Doctor: two Non-ELS cars sharing a siren setting id is the classic "wrong lights" bug, and it finds that. Then spawn each car and test every light stage.

Every GXD police and EMS car is sold as both an ELS and a Non-ELS build — compare the UK Non-ELS and UK ELS ranges, or try the free police cars first.