lol-lol

Dacia such good value cars. A Logan, the estate version of the Sandero, was my divorce car, when left with little money I went for a £10K mid spec Logan, about ten years ago. A car one could claim mileage on the UK HM Treasury mileage rates and actually make a bit of money as well as cover ones costs. Then selling it 3 years later it was due to be worth about £3k, quite high mileage per year ie 20k, it was still worth £4k so got an extra £k doing that. Of course doing what the EU is all about, bring Eastern low earnings countries within the EU market, giving them relatively well paid jobs for the country ie Romania, now Dacia are in winners circle of one of the best 7 cars in the European Car of the Year. VAG did this with Skoda back in the 90s but this century VAG just seem to have lost their war sadly.

I thought that which was why it was squeaky bum time when my Scenic 60 kwh hit zero % and no range showing. 11 miles, that about 18 km i reckon, car suddenly says performance will be limited. Drive another mile and get to Rugby charging super hub. So is range 261 miles or 273 or more I wonder ?

Bjorn took a while to recognise the V2L connector in the boot of the R5.

Worse reliability figure of any brand I read somewhere.

The A290 Alpine has the track gizmos, starts at 32k and goes up to £38k which sounds a lot for a B segment car. As long as less than £40k and not getting the Expensive Car tax of an extra £2k i syppose is OK if power and toys are worth it. Even Retro cars should be aero efficient as possible. My Scenic at 0.295 I think it is is not great meaning motorway blasting not great on efficiency.

The Five keeps getting the journalist thumbs up and all models gets heat pump when others makes don't. Hope to get mine next month but only if get good deal. Green 💚 as Plymouth Argyle fan.

Family has found the Clio full hybrid very easy to live with. Only 55 mpg in winter and with its 39 litre tank only 420 mile range in the winter time. More like 65 mpg on summer and some hypermilers have been getting 80 mpg plus Really nice to drive with the 100 hp or so electric motor providing good torque and the 1.6 naturally aspirated engine good motorway experience and all for around 22k it was. Of course will not be great deals new as dealers want to sell electric ie Renault 5 to hit their mandate and that would be at similar monthly cost.

Not a difficult engineering challenge for when the electricity fails the door locks become unlocked. Many places where this is the situation, nut just Die Hard for the magnetic seals as the final vault security measure. More worried about electric windows on all cars when one accidental drives off the quayside. Windows with hand winders are better so one can gradually let the water in and one the door at the last second to swim to the surface.

And yet car parks show no inclination to limit or perscibe if or where EVs park in car parks. Recently parke in Luton airport multistorey, where the diesel land-rover started the fire, and no hint of measures. They should have fire suppression systems but few car parks do of course.

It costs the government to send this out, got to be a fiver or so costs to do so, crazy from last government. Happy to pay a few quid per month for my EVs to use the roads and me checked for MOT etc.

Why not go into the retax system and relax now to move it until Feb 2026 when you start paying ? I was in two minds, pay what is fair dues or do what seems to be allowable and shift the tax month. Dirty diesels registered before April 2017 will still pay almost nothing. Fair ?

Anybody think that UK government would just start charging the £195 EV VED from 1st of April 2025 and not go by the renewal date ? Is that a possibility ?

Mainly seeing it reported on ZAP maps and other Apps for both DC and AC chargers but these thieves, vandals may well go cut tethered home cables as well as suspect they are stealing anything of this type.

I have been looking at a cabinet for the cable of the one charger i have with a tethered cable. The other ie podpoint charger has no cable so I only put it in when charging. Got a better security camera being delivered but I expect the come hoodied up. I see Mr Martin has just died who was imprisoned for shooting an intruder. Shooting is over the top but perhaps a snare ?

Am I paranoid or are there certain people going around bolt cropping EV charge cables either just for the copper or to actually sabotage the EV agenda ? We seem, to have had a whole spate of cut EV charge cables ie the DC public ones, putting many of the local chargers out of commission. Is this just scroats who would otherwise be taking lead of church roofs or a target agenda driven mission like with the angle grinding of ULEZ cameras I am wondering. I fear the latter.

One website reckoned the R4, built on the same platform and using the same battery packs and motors, would be from 30,000 K Euros uop to 38k Euros. Sounds about right, £25k to £31.6k for version with all the bells and whistles. This depends on RoE staying about 1.2 Euro per pound but it all could change. EU economies could take a big hit if the US buys a lot less EU goods, GB may do quite well out of Trump's antics. JLR may regret moving a chuck of its car production from the UK to EU ! Maybe Stellantis will maybe extend its Ellesmere Port site and JLR its Hailwood site with these punitive tariffs in place ?

New Fiat Grand Panda, cheap price but no heat pump so not going to be great in winter like other Stellantis cars. Late to the party and with a mediocre offering ? Stellantis still in lots of trouble it seems. Peugeots not performing well in winter test I see from the Norwegian winter test recently released. Then not was TESLA oddly ie over 100 miles short of WLTP.

Honest statements by Mini website. Comments about Renault 5 being much lighter and even more premium have given BMW much to think about. Hope it benefits Oxford Cowley plant. BMW are one of the Employers I get getting invited to apply to their customs department and they clearly see much more."customs" goings on in their business now the trade war has gone full chat.

Starting to lean towards the Alpine A290, just the mild trim of 180 hp. Price is not a huge amount more than the 150 hp R5 but seems to be much more attractive. Renault UK already doing £555 off the R5s, finance good but not great ie 5.5 % APR, I got 4.9 % on the Scenic. Maybe better finance deals about if interest rates are cit this week ahead as expected.

Stephen Fry has fielded a joke (not very PC) :- Elon Musk is not a Nazi ! Nazis made very good cars !! Ferdinand Porsche and his company were quite accomplished engineers hard to deny.

Sounds like the LFP, lithium iron phosphate battery version of the 5 will not be around until towards the end of the year, can order from June maybe, perhaps a month or 3 later in the UK. Battery size is stated as 43 kwh on EV database for the nominal size stated as 40 kWh. Going to be a difficult choice between 52 and 40 nominal battery sizes. Like my Zoe ZE50 the 52 kwh battery R5 is 55 kwh including buffers etc. Going by the WLTP ranges of 194 miles and 248 miles these cars would need to be doing about 4.8 to 4.9 miles per kWh which would be good going.

Yes similar. Renaults regen does not bring car to stop ie not one pedal driving so it needs a dab. Marked difference in regen when battery cool, ie not much, to lots ie 30 kw plus when warm and battery SoC less than 90% ie room to put high levels back in. Other than that foot brake is just for emergency braking. Literally drive with the panels doing the regen as the brakes. Level 1 is freewheeling and then 2,3 and 4 is mild, mid and strong respectively. Looking at the energy stats the regen can add more than 10% to the range on non motorway journeys.

He got the 293 just plain wrong. I have heard 248 and 253 miles for 52 kwh. I think a lot of these journo wordsmith struggle to convert kilometers into miles. The conversion should 1.60934, some seem to use 1.6 and some seem to use 8 kilometers is 5 miles, maths not many of their strong point it seems.

Looking forward to a good full test on the "nominal" 40 kWh battery vehicle. The 40 kWh figure is going to be very nominal and Renault have a longish history of giving models a model name including a figure for the battery size but the actually battery size can be 10% or even more different to that figure. The Zoe ZE40 was nominal 40 kWh but legend has it that it was actually as high as 45.6 in total, I have head it had as much as 20% of cells that were on standby, it was certainly more way than than 40 kWh. And my smaller battery Scenic, nominally 60 kWh but the Scenics had an upgrade LG Chem battery packs from the Megane etechs as this next batch of LG batteries had superior energy density by about 5% so is my Scenic actually 63 kWs, EV database quote actual total battery at 65 kWh. The car's BMS is definitely holding back a couple of KWh in reserve at the bottom end, maybe one at the top, the Zoe ZE50 seems to hold about 3 or 3.5 at the bottom end and 1 or 1.5 kWh at the top ie it displays 100% but keeps on accepting charge for quite a bit longer. If I was to guess I would fully expect the 40 kWh LFP Renault 5 to be around 44 kWh but Renault will not want to let that out the bag as they want punters to spend more and buy the nominal 52 kWh version. I am strongly thinking, like my 60/63/65 kWh Scenic that the smaller battery version could be the better buy especially with it lapping up charging to 100% where the Lithium NMC versions will be saying oh no please only charge me to 80, 85, 90, 95% like my NMC Scenic does. Looked for any test drives on the LFP 5 but not seen any yet. Renault dealership here in Burtie Worcestercestshire already lining up to get me in to a 5 in March but I will play my usual hardball and say I might wait for the LFP version. 120 hp but with quite a good torque figure, 9s to 60 rather than 8s, I can live with that. Hopefully a game changer, the press seems unusually excited and hope it lives up to the hype.

Lithium (Nickel Manganese Cobalt the common type), we are warned not to charge and leave unused at over 80 %. Even my new Samsung S24 phone now does that ie only charges to 80%. As I understand it when pure lithium batteries are very full they do not like standing around and experiencing decreases and increases in temperature. Same for phones and all our other straight forward Lithium, NMC, batteries. Some good youtube videos on the actual chemistry taking place. Blowing up is rare but longevity much harmed by wacking them up to 100% frequently and not letting the discgarge down. We are told that neither leaving the highly or very low charged is good for longevity. Lithium Iron Phosphate, so also principally a lithium battery is quite different as it does not mind going to 100% oft but it has lower energy density but also cost. These packs have been pierced with stakes and still to to short circuit so seem much safer than lithium NMC batteries. Sodium batteries are starting to come through as also cheap and work better in cold conditions. Mixing NMC, LFP and Na is thought to be a good solution to cost and temperature performance going forward, maybe more ultra capacitors too like we have in the regen systems.