How to Add Police Cars to FiveM (ELS vs Non-ELS Explained)

To add a police car to FiveM, drop its resource into resources, ensure it in server.cfg, then add its spawn code to your police job's vehicle list. A non-ELS car needs nothing else: its lights run on the game's own siren system. An ELS car also needs the ELS resource running and a VCF file for that model. Lighting is where most new owners get stuck, so start there.

What is the difference between ELS and non-ELS?

ELS (Emergency Lighting System) on FiveM is a server resource, such as ELS-FiveM or one of its forks, that takes over a vehicle's lights and drives staged, scriptable patterns. Each ELS vehicle needs a matching VCF file (an XML config) in that resource. Players do not install anything themselves: like every FiveM resource, it downloads when they join. Non-ELS vehicles use the game's own siren system, defined in the car's carcols.meta, and need no extra resource at all.

• ELS pros: lighting stages, takedowns and traffic advisors, per-vehicle patterns.
• ELS cons: one more resource to maintain, a VCF file to write or source for every car, and an ELS-built model shows no lights without it.
• Non-ELS pros: drop-in, nothing to configure, works on any server the moment it is ensured.

For most servers, non-ELS keeps support simple. Goodara's police and EMS units are non-ELS, so there is no lighting resource to add.

1. Check what each car was built for

Read the listing before you buy. A non-ELS car runs fine on a server that also uses ELS, but a car built for ELS needs the ELS resource and its VCF file to light up. Most departments are happier picking one system for the whole fleet.

2. Install like any vehicle

Drop the resource into resources, ensure it, and (for ELS fleets) make sure the ELS base resource is ensured too. The car-install steps are the same as our custom car guide.

3. Lock them to the right jobs

On QBCore/ESX, restrict police and EMS vehicles to whitelisted jobs through your garage/job scripts so civilians can't pull a cruiser from a normal garage. On QBCore that means adding each spawn code to Config.AuthorizedVehicles in qb-policejob, grouped by grade; esx_policejob has an equivalent list in its config.

EMS works the same way: ambulances and medic cars go into Config.AuthorizedVehicles in qb-ambulancejob, or the vehicle list in esx_ambulancejob's config. Use the spawn code from the product page, not the resource folder name, and restart the job resource after you edit it. If your stations use a separate garage script, the job list alone is not enough: register the same spawn codes there.

4. Pick the fleet before you pick the lights

The lighting system is a smaller decision than which cars the department runs. A working garage needs a patrol sedan, a patrol SUV, an interceptor, an unmarked car and a SWAT truck, plus two ambulances and a response car for EMS. Our best police cars guide picks each one by model (Charger, Tahoe, Explorer and Crown Vic stand-ins among them), and the ambulance and EMS guide does the same for medics. Two of the police units are free downloads at the time of writing, which is a cheap way to test your job config before you buy a fleet.

Air support installs like any other unit: the Police Maverick is a lore-friendly police helicopter with working emergency lighting and a livery. If you would rather buy the department in one go, the police and EMS packs guide compares the fleet packs with single units.

Why are the police lights not working?

• No lights at all on an ELS-built car → the ELS resource isn't running, or it has no VCF file for that model.
• Sirens with no light bar → the car's carcols.meta didn't load; check the manifest and the console.
• Another car's light pattern → two resources share a siren id in carcols.meta; change one of them.
• Wrong skin → missing livery .ytd; see fixing vehicle errors.

Skip the headaches with a coordinated set: browse the police units and EMS vehicles, or the certified lore-friendly police cars if your server is public and wants GTA V-style names instead of real ones.