lol-lol

You better decide which side you're on This ship goes down before too long If Left is right then Right is Wrong You better decide which side you're on Too bad for the gay revolution This is as far as we get And if you think you're free, well listen to me You ain't seen nothing yet We're all gonna feel the backlash Of puritanical power And kicking us down into the ground Gonna be their Finest Hour You better decide which side you're on The chips go down before too long If left is right then right is wrong You better decide which side you're on Too late, trendy thinkers Your time is running out Ain't no time to wonder why Ain't no time for doubt Joseph, Reed and Whitehouse Are out to get your guts You better decide which side you're on Forget those ifs and buts. TRB.

The last true Moped ie something you could use pedal assistance, went out in the 1970s from mainstream I recall with the FS1E ie fizzy being the greatest of them all. 49 cc engine, good for 50 mph in pre-restricted form. Problem with a£5k electric scooter it is up against a £1400 Chinese bike that is pretty good ie the electric bike would need a £2.5k subsidy like the cheaper EVs cars get. Lexmoto Assault.

Make sure one buys the green stickers for the number plates that have "UK" and not the "GB" ones which are on still on sale but not legal to get you accepted in to the EU as the date for allowing GB has already passed and one may get refused entry to EU countries at worst or falpping around for UK stickers to paste over the GB ones.

So many companies want Teams calls rather than meetings so not doing many miles in the Zoe but hopefully that will change for Chrimbo. Came across this vid of the R135 components.....

Even when loaded up and in bad weather conditions tester was getting 3.5 up to 4 miles per Kwh with that 57 kWh battery and such as reasonable buy price one can understand why he was so happy with the car. https://ev-database.org/car/1526/MG-MG5-EV-Long-Range Some very good deals on new one and I expect the lower battery sized model is still a worth consideration..https://ev-database.org/car/1313/MG-MG5-EV with its 49 kWh battery. Then there is the ZS SUV (bit close to the "5" in nomenclature perhaps) with its 68 kWh battery and circa 300 mile range and all for well under £30k. SAIC supplying these in big numbers, along with their MAXIS vans as can be seen by them rolling off the car transporter ships by the thousands down at Bristol docks. Odd that the Cinch deals on second hand ones seem to have monthly payments higher than what can pay for a new one. The MG 5 was up there in my short list. All these estate cars working real miles and the MAXIS vans could make quite a big dent in the UK consumption of fossil fuels I reckon.

Which tyres are going to be used and give the extra range ??? Good to see some incremental changes in motors, heat pumps. As the temperature falls I am checking the tyre pressures as the will fall roughly 1 PSI per 10C of temperature drop and keeping those backs at 40PSI I think will help a bit with the range. I have bought the optional false boot floor for the Zoe to ride the cables I carry so added a few Kgs as a negative measure but it looks better and easier to get the shopping out as not such a deep hole to pull the shopping on the boot floor up from.

The Maxis vans were a bit more upbeat..... (Beautiful photography too) Below this video article in the motorcycle press of a lecky bike that did over 5,000 miles round whole of UK in 3 weeks and spent less than £20 on lecky !!

On the flip side their stock of cars probably went up 1,2 3, 4 grand each as the value of second hand cars have just climbed and climbed. I have heard some real incredible stories of owners going to trade in their cars and getting a really pleasant shock of just how much their trade in is worth, that is if the garage was fair about the Glasses trade in value as I suspect they are not always. I was bowled over by what I got for my 5 year old Octy with 70k miles on it. Dealers also make money on parts, especially tyres the sell, for example quoting me £110 for a tyre that I can buy for £55, not a bad margin. Lots of overheads but usually best part of £100 an hour charge out rate for their servicing and additional work, not quote consultant and lawyer level but not bad. It is a different world post covid with many people only doing half the mileage that they use to but apparently round her is Worcestershire car dealers seem to be doing OK.

SH!te...... One of the better networks. Goes to show how much over and above the acutally cost they feel like they need to charge. .......... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- InstaVolt issues statement in response to unprecedented rise in wholesale energy prices – 25 November 2021 25th November 2021 InstaVolt announces increase in pricing from 40p/kWh to 45p/kWh, effective 1 December 2021. The network has maintained its underlying price since 2017 despite a continued increase in wholesale energy costs during this period Adrian Keen, CEO of InstaVolt said: “We are in a period of unprecedented increases in the wholesale price of energy that is affecting consumers and businesses nationwide, including InstaVolt. As a result of this I am announcing a price increase on the InstaVolt network from 40p per kWh to 45p per kWh, effective 1 December 2021. Rising energy prices are being felt by all. A homeowner seeking a new energy supply deal today would be offered a tariff similar to public charging, demonstrating the price pressures being faced. Whilst we have put our prices up 5p, this does not reflect the full cost impact of wholesale prices more than doubling, and we have for now absorbed the difference whilst we await market price stability.

GRIDSERVE talk a good talk though I struggle to find out exactly where they are installing and therefore how the whole program is going. Two charger units, even with 6 outlets, being a Zoe owner I am happy with the 22 kwh AC outlet which I hope I can use if someone else is using the DC outlets but can I park in a space and plug in to the 22 kwh using my lead when someone else in using the DC tether I wonder. As I said good video talking the talk but is it the reality ie one new implementation a day and therefore the Electric Highway on the truck roads is just weeks away ?

Hope the trip experience got better since the post. It is frustrating being a pioneer sometimes. I do not know about other EV owners/users but I have formed the opinion that I will only rely on journey stop off places which have half a dozen chargers or more which should be 22 kw AC or 50 kw DC at least. If I can start with a full charge, I am getting down to 180 miles shown for a full charge in this colder weather although it also shows I am still running at around 4 miles per kwh, that I can charge up at my destination. Heating seems poor at start off unless I use the demist windscreen which is awesome and that seems to heat the cabin very quickly and then the cabin heater seems OK, even on ECO mode, but one has to wind the temperature up to 25c sometimes in ECO mode to get then temperature up to around 20C. Mixture of excitement and fear for my first longish winter journey.

LEDC has made over 5,500 electric range extended taxi but the city which has most is London but then London is about ten times the size of Glasgow. Looks Like Manchester will adopt as Taxi drivers can get £20k off the price and we have some in Birmingham I gather. https://www.automotiveworld.com/news-releases/levcs-electric-tx-taxi-and-vn5-van-are-the-obvious-choice-for-drivers-in-manchester/ LEVC’s products include the world’s most advanced electric taxi, the TX – of which more 5,500 have been sold globally – and with the support of a Transport for Great Manchester Clean Air (TFGM) grant of £10,000 and Plug-in Taxi Grant (PITG) of £7,500, combined with an LEVC deposit contribution of £2,500, drivers and operators can save up to £20,000 off its price.

New BRZ, aka GT86.

I think the Zoe just sets quite a low Amperage ie 125 Amps, which means that either using AC or DC charging it is not going to quickly shorten the lifespan of the battery by not being over ambitious, or over promise rapid charging which may be quite impressive in the short term but owners may be less impressed if it is significantly decreases the life and on-going capacity ie like with Youtuber's ID3 losing nearly 10% of it capacity if the first year of ownership after he did lots of rapid charges. Renault have quite a good replacement policy I reckon and it will be interesting to see what percentage of batteries get replaced. There are Zoes out there with over 300,000 km done and still having well over 90% of their capacity. So I have seen nothing in the software limiting charging current, only what Bjorn Nyland has shown either via the DC charging station and/or the OBDC software and over 40 kwh from a few percent until it gets well in to the 80%s is OK with me though that clearly take about an hour. Will continue to use home and destination chargers in the 2, 3.6 and 7 kw range and be gentle with the charging and hope the car pays me back with continual good battery capacity. More just charging to 88% or so I think and make some pres-condition for half and hour just before I am ready to journey will be my policy until I hear better advice.

The Spring, aka City, KWID and several other names is probably OK for many physical smaller drivers, front passengers and rear passengers. It produces 125 Nm from 500 to 2500 rpm and then 44 hp between 3000 and 8200 rpm, so is going to be fairly good off the line 50 kph/30 mph. It probably show an over-speeding the motor message at something like 135 kph, ie down a slight hill or with the wind behind it. Plenty.

A quite honest video from Mercedes which strongly suggest using lower current wall-box charging at home rather than fast public chargers and even setting maximum charging current to 80% rather than 100% and only reset to 100% if needed on that occasional long journey. It repeats itself in the second half to reinforce the messages, they really do want to push the better policy of slower wall-box charging rather than using rapids.

Review said the Dacia Spring would do 100 kph in ECO code ie 62 mph but 125 kph out of ECO and that is 78 mph so 8 mph more than the UK national speed limit. I got knicked for 80 mph in a 70 mph A road down the bottom of a big hill. I bet one can knicked for a similar speed in the Spring in the right conditions.

Two shillings. In the eighties bought a flat for £23k. The time of real fun with fuel was the early 70s and the Arab petrol crisis. So we are up with the all time expensive of fuel ie 150 a litre. In the US they introduced the double nickel ie 55 mph speed limit to control supplies so they did not run out completely. https://rdrf.org.uk/2010/05/08/a-very-moderate-suggestion-part-2-increase-the-price-of-petrol/ Average income using the Average Earnings Index (figures go back to 1963): PETROL PRICES Cost per litre (pence) AVERAGE EARNINGS INDEX (2000 IS 100) Price now, factoring in average earnings, based on 2010 price 1960 5.18 c.3 (1963=3.9) 235 1970 7.15 6.5 150 1980 26.39 27.4 131 1990 40.92 63.9 87 2000 80.84 100 110 2010 120 136.4 120

Well done Toprak and Yamaha taking the World Superbike title. WSB, WSS and motogp all win by Yamahas.

Great at Losail circuit Qatar like we who know it from motogp and so pleased that Alonso got drive of the day and Ocon both in the top 5 for the Oxfordshire team.

I always buy the car after the PCP time and the reason why 90% of cars obtained are "leased" via PCP in the initial phase is to avoid the massive VAT hit when one buys. Every buy after PCP period I have done ends up with me having a car that is valued at a grand or two more than the balloon payment I have made. It can go wrong if one bought a diesel and because diesels have been worth so much less one might have lost out but even that has now not valid as I imagine almost any decent smallish car, diesel or petrol, in worth more than it was a year or two ago but I have certainly not done badly out of PCP in that whilst I may have paid £260 in the case of the Octy or £284 in the case of the Zoe I will be amazed if it eventually works out closer to £250 pm as I end up with a car with substantial equity above the balloon price. As to electricity/energy for fuel it is 1p a mile as the mixture of home electricity at 5p per Kwh, and I am getting 4 miles per kWh even when tanking it around currently, and then the occasional free half a battery of electricity at offices/warehouses I visit work out at 1p a mile and therefore £5 a month for motive power. I gather servicing costs work out about £8 a month for EVs as there is no oil, oil filter, plug washer, air filter and time to do only the pollen filter and checks to do ie cost are between a third and a half of ICE so whole mot under £300 I reckon for a high spec car with numerous safety features like EBA, lane departure and assist, road sign recognition, blind spot warning etc etc. Very happy with it as a machine and it environmental credentials which I struggle to put a price on but I would be happy to pay £50 or £100 more not to be burning fossil fuel but overall I feel it is more like cost neutral over the Octy though I might miss the space one day if I want to help somebody move stuff but then I might just have to hire a van.

Friend of mine in Worcester got hell from his bosses as he did not get the fuel consumption published for his work Vauxhall Insignia, turned quite nasty. Mileage claims with HMRC are quite a grey area and hence open to some exploitation in respect to company mileage claims. Does not use the car's odometer which will often overread by about 5%, which also affects the car's computer readout of what it says one is doing in MPG ? Or does one use Googlemaps or a Routeplanner to report the mileage. Is it OK to divert off every hour or two and do a mile or two extra to stop for a comfort break ? How about, here is a doozy, do a journey that is 55 miles by more direct A road and 75 miles by motorway and claim for the 75 miles as it was your choice to go the slower A road route using your personal time ? UK governments have kept the mileage rate at 45p fore the first 10k and 25p after than for about 3 decades now and hence there are few cars, actually only 6 according to Autoexpress than do... https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/best-cars-vans/62858/cheapest-cars-run-2021

But one does not "purchase" the Zoe and certainly not pay £34k as there is so much other money thrown at the deal by Government, the Dealer and Renault which has £2.5k, £5, and £1k respectively and nice to get £1k more for the Octy than a thought I was going to get because of the nutty price of second hand cars. All that off the RRP price which went in to calculation, I recall the Renault finance deal is less than 4% APR, which is currently less than either the CPI and RPI rates so that the monthly PCP payment worked out at £284 and my only risk is that the car will still be worth £13k in 4 years with 24k miles on it by which time it will be my secondary car probably with a Megane EV as my main car. Fuel saving is around £100 a month compared to buying a petrol and diesel, still buying one tankful of petrol and one tankful of diesel for the occasional really long trip. Just need my company to trade the fuel card for an electricity card but the issue is which network. Will probably be GRIDSERVE. But always the principal reason is to stop producing CO2, even if it did cost be a few tenners a year. Each gallon of fuel produces about 10 kgs of C02, 10 Kgs !!!!! https://www.carbonindependent.org/17.html Time is running out.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2IuJPh6h_A

Remember there is less and less oxygen in the air as ICE cars use it up and put more CO2 in to the air.. Less oxygen in the air in winter due to less photosynthesis adding O2 to the air mix also.

Bit of snow tomorrow for you......