lol-lol

Well he is wrong of course as it is not just "software" there should be a physical accelerometer or de-clerometer to bring on or flash the brake lights with any substantial decleration. Again an issue that has come more to light with EVs and social media but it has been an issue with many vehicle ie motorcycles. If I throttle off from 70 mph on my motorcycle as it has a aero drag coefficient of approaching 1, it decelerates very rapidly, do not think it flashes its brake lights, so not a new issue. Trying to find a video which covers the 300k or so Zoes that have been made or the 300k plus LEAFs that have been made. Does seem to be an issue with Hyundai/Kia if the number of videos are a measure. Hybrids also have strong regen to. Will have to go out on the weekend and test both the Zoe and the Clio ETECH we are picking up on Saturday. Not an issue for the mild hybrid Arkana as that clearly only slows down slowly with aero friction, tyre hysterias and a bit of mechanical friction coasting to a stop with both clutches open and engine off in coasting mode hence I have to waste energy use the mechanical brakes and hence need to judge much longer stopping distances if I aim to preserve energy.

Absolutely welcome the chance to put the record straight, that is a great part of BRISKODA which I have been a member for almost twenty years. Correcting information is not discussion ie about EV braking. Graham does make a good point, or points about other pollution other than transport though. As we relatively push down the pollution from Transport, not just CO2 but NOX and PMs, but this is only about a quarter of air pollution so the other sources of air pollution need to be tackled ie domestic and industrial pollution and even agricultural pollution lastly I suppose. The point about EV's not doing much of any brakes using brake pads or shoes is not a personal opinion but a fact of what EV driver and vehicles do and therefore is not part of debate but an element of education of to what actually occurs and I am always happy to spread the truth on that. EVs may wear through tyres quickly, though EV makes seem to giulty sometimes of supply car with "EV" tyres with less tread on them, naughty naughty. Some EVs use to use, and even still do but less so, use rare earth metals in both the batteries and the motors, thankfully this is rapidly being phased out. EVs, 30 kW Nissan maybe excepted, look like they will have long service lifes, much against some rag publications and mis informed rumour mills. Great to have a forum to correct these misunderstandings.

I do not need to know Graham to know his statement on EV braking demonstrates a lack of knowledge on how EVs run ie by doing the vast majority of their braking using regen and not touching the brake pedal which even then can do some regen and only with severe braking actually actuates the vehicle's disc and or drum brakes which will turn the vehicle's kinetic energy, via friction in these discs/drum, in to thermal energy but in fact tend to covert somewhere approaching 90% of that kinetic energy back into electrical energy back in to the Traction battery. My own background, to help with completeness as the trend is being set above is ex Department of Transport and also getting a science degree with specialising in thermodynamic dynamic. Originally trained as a diesel engine Engineering Officer with the UK merchant navy, did a degree placement with Piper on engine tuning, including race engines. Got a 2-1 with honours in my degree. I actually own an EV, have done for nearly two years, driven over 12k miles in which time I have hardly done any use of the brake pedal, I have a dodgy left knee so like the one leg one pedal driving. Also had around 50 diesel, petrol, petrol-hybrid cars over the last near 45 years plus numerous 4 and 2 stroke motorcycles. There are so many mis informed news items like about EV braking systems or how many EVs catch fire, which seem to be being perculated by several so called news platforms that need to be called out so we can save this world, as far as possible, for our children, which I have several, and want to see them have a good chance of enjoying this world rather than inheriting an environmental catastrophe as it is looking like if such inaccurate statements as allowed to persist and are not called out as propaganda, or ignorance on the subject, whichever or both.

Dishonest practice. One simply does not use the brake pedal in an EV, or one really should not as vast majority of quite recent EVs have massive regen braking, think my Zoe is whacking in 30 kWs ie 40 hp, 30,000 joules per second in "B" strong regen mode. Some cars have even stronger regen ie LEAF, Megane-e have even stronger levels of reg which can add 10, 20% or more to the range ie the onboard computer shows I have started with say 52 kws but has have regen'd another 10 kWs which at say 4 miles per kW, not that hard as I have been getting more like 4.5 miles/kW in high summer, means my battery can take me say 220 miles and my regen'd power another 40 miles on top of that. Regen cannot happen so strongly when battery is over 90% charge as it cannot take the 30 kW feedback in to the Traction Battery. But as to brakes, as Clarkson said, if you using brakes you are not a good driver, paraphrased.

You are so lacking in knowledge it is amazing you can write so much with so little knowledge of the actual facts. Electric cars very rarely use their disc brakes and therefore produce brake dust. EVs tend to suffer from their brakes being so inactive that they often suffer from under use, being partial seized because of so little use as commonly over 90% of the "braking" is done by the regen process. Brake disc, pads etc will last many times longer in an EV than an ICE car.

The UK figure of shortened lives due to air pollution was 40k for the UK of which 10k were in London. EVs are part of the solution but heat pumps attacking the domestic and industrial pollution from hydrocarbon pollution being added to the air, rather than heat pumps run on renewable energy should cut air pollution very significantly. London air pollution is not a long solved issue which happened in the 50s and has been solved by moving to smokeless coal or banning log burning but is clear from my "digging", or actually just looking for the facts rather than digging up seventy year old mainly anecdotal information and pictures as is linked below. Worth bearing in mind that the level of "moderate" can trigger health issues especially for those with pre-conditions.... https://www.london.gov.uk/mayor-london-issues-high-air-pollution-alert 12 June 2023 - Air pollution alert issued - The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan has triggered a ‘high’ air pollution alert for tomorrow, Tuesday 13 June, as London experiences the effects of pollution which has travelled in from the continent alongside a build-up of local emissions and sunny weather with high temperatures. Imperial College London forecasters advised the Mayor to issue the alert due to a strong likelihood of high ozone levels, caused by the hot, sunny weather tomorrow and south-easterly winds blowing existing pollutants from the continent towards London. This is the second high air pollution alert this year. The last alert was in January, with one day of high pollution followed by three days of moderate air pollution. Tomorrow will be the 201st day of either moderate or high levels of air pollution Londoners have experienced over the last five years. In total there have been 15 high pollution days (including tomorrow) and 186 moderate pollution days since the start of 2018.

It only takes the wind to stop blowing for an hour or a few hours and the air quality will plummet from the ICE traffic. If the traffic is predominately pure EV or good hybrid then air quality should be much better but the tackling of domestic and industrial pollution are problems that also need addressing and as road transport ie cars, delivery vans and even motorbikes move over to electric power then those domestic and industrial sources of pollution which be relatively worse. I occasional work with Transport for London and they are moving to cleaner vehicles buses, trains etc but it is taking a long time and with central government being so hugely in debt ie 100% of GDP, paying £200B in interest because the did not fix the roof before BREXIT they are in deep do-do financial hence nearly all aspects of government spending up the creek, not only the green agenda but social care, prison building, asylum processing, probably only military spending looks to be on the up in real terms. Glad I do not live in London or anywhere in the SE of England, interesting I see the slow down signs on the motorway due to the pollution in South Yorkshire ie slow down to 60 mph due to air quality. Bit unfair when I am driving an EV or a hybrid in EV mode and not adding to the pollution. I thought the Tube was electric and the overland trains diesel, is that not the case ? Sooner more of that goes over to electric the better for the 40k cases a year of life shortening air pollution, a figure I hope we can bring down quickly of the next few years.

The UK is also at a disadvantage adopting EVs, especially the cheap models mainland Europe has ben getting and we have not because we need Right Hand Drive cars. At the cheap end we have not been getting the Dacia Spring which has been a huge hit in mainland Europe and in the middle to upper range of EVs we do not get any more TESLA Model Ss or model Xs as they are currently only making in LHD. We will have to wait to India or the like to start wanting to buy RHD cars as they are forth biggest buyers of cars in the world, UK is 8th with way less than half what India buys but not such a high percentage of EVs, yet. https://www.factorywarrantylist.com/car-sales-by-country.html China is so far ahead in sales and manufacture, same in power generation and just about every other metric, it almost does not matter what anybody else does but India is adopting much stricter pollution regs as their life shortening pollution is even worse than London's in cities like Mumbai, New Delhi and Kolkuta which are bigger than London but have even dirtier vehicles, particularly from two and three wheel vehicles.

China is by far the most important country in the world and it is looking like they have peaked in CO2 output. As they do not have their own oil and gas they are rapidly deploying solar and wind farms. They use coal a lot but such is the rollout of solar and wind, and battery storage, coal will not be needed so much towards the end of this decade. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/12/economy/china-carbon-emissions-record-intl-hnk/index.html China is also making electric cars that are now cheaper to buy and run over their life time, such as the MG4 and Maxis vans, that more and more people and companies over the world are running EVs rather than ICE vehicles. The Biden-Harris $20B projects are reducing use of hydrogcarbons massively https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/07/14/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-launches-historic-20-billion-competition-to-catalyze-investment-in-clean-energy-projects-and-tackle-the-climate-crisis/. Australia is under going a massive change for coal power stations to renewable which means half priced electricity, very nice..... Price of solar panels and home installed batteries becoming cheaper and cheaper so people can pay even less to the those UK suppliers who fleece their customers. I am with Octopus and happy with them and my day price should drop from 40p to 30p per kwh but night rate up from 7.5 to 9.5p per kwh, all renewable sourced of course. North Sea will soon be one huge wind farm making more electricity than Northern Europe can use at sometimes so more storage is being rolled out to with GWh batteries planned for Old Trafford and several other similar plants..... https://www.edie.net/plans-approved-for-worlds-largest-battery-storage-scheme-in-manchester/ . The UK rollout of renewables and energy storage is happening despite the UK government's lack of help as the rollout is a technical and economically better way forward for energy companies as well as individuals.

After all said above my lad is buying a Clio ETECH techno spec from our local dealer that I bought my Arkana and Zoe from. Also after my misgivings about getting a car with the hybrid system with such as small ie 1.2 kwh battery and a 95 hp naturally aspirated 1.6 litre internal combustion engine by all I can say now, having tried one, it bloody works. Car feels like an EV round town with the ICE only kicking in very occasionally and then a quite nice rorty worble kicks in, with the ETECH 50 hp or so to give both a healthy kick up the pants leaving the low speed restrictions. We will take 70 mpg or so and with a CO2 of some 93 grams per kilometer it is a bit below the EU level of 96 gm per km and we will still use the Zoe for some short journeys and the CLio etech for medium length journeys and the Arkana for the long motorway journeys. Less miles in the Zoe in deep winter when fossil fuel cars seem to make more sense due to EV cold weather range and "spare" heat in the ICE cars. Between lad and me we will be doing around 36k miles across the cars so balancing that for the PCPs is the art. A good video below of how it felt....... Expect the Clio, Arkana, Captur will all go for the 1 or 1.2 litre tce engine to match with the etech system next year. With Ryan Reynolds investing a couple of hundred million in Alpine maybe there is hope for at least one European HQ car company in the Chinese/TESLA onslaught.

Good few hours, days and weeks for Alpine. Ryan Reynolds and do invest 200 million Euros, got did of non performing management and get podium in Spa short race. New Clio Alpine etech warming to I am. Will keep Zoe though.

Next up, smashes the BMW M2 on acceleration, forward to 14th minute to se shootout........

Car vessels do seem to go up now and then for various reasons. EVs are getting much safer with the adoption of Lithium Phosphate batteries rather than Lithium ion but there should have been fire suppression systems on board which should have flooded the space with CO2 so the ships systems failed on two levels ie quick detection and then fire fighting. Hopefully investigators will find the real reason categorically. EVs with Lithium type batteries need to have the battery compartment shattered with massive force to create a short ie 70 mph wrapping around a lamppost so unless one EV smashed in to another one from several decks above I cannot imagine how such force could have occurred on a car transporter. As I said even if a fire started it should have been put out in seconds with CO2 suppression. I recall big concerns when seat belts came in and some random stats showed ten times as many people dying burnt to death from fuel leaks in crashes and the collapsed structure making it too hard for the passenger to release themselves from the seat belt mechanism.

Well VW Group, despite being hundred of billions of Euros in debt, as decided to splurge money on more Chinese assets with XPung and SAIC Chinese car companies. In a move that can only mean more use of Chinese EV parts and even China, Far East production of battery packs and cars, which has to be at the expense of its European workers. Be interesting to see if there are going to be strike at VAG car plants in Europe as they see their jobs going to Asia. Europe does not seem to be able to compete on price of cars to market due to the economies of scale and technical lead of the Chinese in to Lithium Phosphate batteries...

MG4 Extreme So good it mashes the Audi e-tron /Porsche Tycan. Audi did not want to lend What Car a car as they knew this half priced car was going to mash their car over the 0 to 60 and quarter mile. OMG.

Has Mr Kopacek, the quite famous Skoda rally driver bought them I wonder ?

Terrible news for those car manufacturers who do not have EV portfolio. Many of the world largest car companies set to disappear from the world's largest car market, and profit source, with massive effect on the their on-going viability. Japanese car companies toast as well as most European and US HQ'd car makers. Japanese economy set to reset as it did before the lost decades with stock market crash over their debt of over twice their GDP and loss of earning from automotive due to not having an EV portfolio ......

The Peoples Republic of China is being quite imperialistic in the South China Sea and economically around the globe and its treatment of Uyghurs is terrible but much worse than Britain (or France) in its history ? UK's treatment of the Irish, Slaves, mass exploitation of wealth and cultural artifacts from about a third of the world is well documented. The US president currently clearly distrusts the UK but loves the Irish based on his own heritage, as do tens of millions of other US citizens. Events of the past have bearing on the present. The major European powers should be very aware of history. The Opium war, the Arrow war where the British and French killed tens of thousands of Chinese, grabbed land, got Hong Kong out of one "treaty". From my studies in Asian politic and economics the Chinese education system go through this period and call it the "Century of Humiliation", but covers mid 19th century to mid 20th century, so pretty recent history and only beginning to be rectified with the arrival of the Communist party and its laser focus on making China not suffer at the hand of Western Imperialist again. What goes around comes around.

George, you probably would not be surprised to hear how many customs clerks pick out the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea as being the South Korea and the Republic of Korea as North Korea as it sounds the right way round but it is the wrong way round. Clerk use KP when they should be using KR and then they are in a whole world of questions on sending high tech etc goods to an embargoed country. My uncle fought in Korea. The Korean work ethic probably exceeds even the Japanese one. ISO 3166[1]ISO 3166-1[2]ISO 3166-2[3 ]Country name[5] Official state name[6][a] Sovereignty[ Alpha-2 code Alpha-3 code Numeric code Subdivision code links Internet ccTLD[9 Korea (the Democratic People's Republic of) [p] The Democratic People's Republic of Korea UN member state KP PRK 408 ISO 3166-2:KP .kp Korea (the Republic of) [q] The Republic of Korea UN member state KR KOR 410 ISO 3166-2:KR .kr The changing world order...https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2020/07/asian-countries-to-surpass-european-economic-giants-by-2024-suggests-data.html

Don't mention the war..... ahh, shrapnel from the war, ......KOREAN Are Hyundai/Kia making money and can they upscale to compete with TESLA, BYD, SIAC etc ?

Reports around that Nissan, like VW Group, are so indebted that the are going to have to restructure or die. Toyota have been caught with their pants down with the BZ4 as it has gone down as one of the worst product launches with the original spec car full of flaws and not performing to barely half the level as advertised. Mazda, Suzuki and other Japanese car manufacturers seem to have not invested in the EV quantum market change, Toyota forever stuck at the Prius hybrid point. Not sure North Korea will ever amount to anything in the automotive world. India is the big mystery. Love their bikes and 3 wheelers and Tata is a major worldwide player in automotive as we know. As with everything else China will make goods to such a low price point and at a middling quality standard that you either buy it or settle with a far inferior home grown product. Nationalistic protectionist measures, anti-dumping, countervailing measures, tax breaks for home grown products sometimes only put off the inevitable for a few months. China makes the majority of so many key products and increasingly controls many key minerals. It is their time, best try and be friends rather than enemies.

Well it is happening and the first 6 months of 2023 have clearly been the inflection time with the TESLA Model Y becoming the best selling car in the world, taking over from the Camry, and a host of other cars which many are made in China as is the MG4, Polestars, Volvo, London Taxis etc. The 21st century is the rise of the Asian economies to the fore, overtaking the US and previously the UK as the centre of the industrial world. My main other thought is how much India will be a player in the new world order ? The UK is a fading industrial power, riddled with inefficient working practices, management structures and infrastructure. Hopefully our generation will see the next couple of decades out quite well but our off spring will have a tougher future than we had and slipping in to Third World levels of comparative wealth looks inevitable. I would recommend migration to either Australian, Canada or New Zealand to any UK citizen who want to maintain a good living standard in to the second half of the 21st century. This may apply to all of Europe, except the Scandinavian countries which seem to have lots of resources and much less population to share that wealth with. It is the Fall of the Roman Empire, or any other empire. Each region has their time, the European time is just about over, just how thing go. VW, and the most the other European brands, maybe Volvo and Renault less so, have been blind sided by the disruption to the automotive markets by EVs and caught napping and it looks like it will cost them their very existence. Sad but Darwin rules.

We can look forward to the UK launch ie the Right Hand Drive Dacia Spring next year which has been a top seller in Europe but not made in RHD only LHD. https://www.autotrader.co.uk/content/news/coming-soon-dacia-spring?lid=librtewvkfeh&utm_source=consumer-marketing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=at_braze_cars_web_email_scheduled_monthly_bau_electric-newsletter-july23&utm_term=cars&utm_content=

I think Renault have a different outlook to VW Group which is good for China but not good for the Czechia, as we are supposed to call it now, not sure what that means for Romania but in general mass car manufacturing is leaving Europe en masse. The Renault factory in Morocco made Europe's best selling car for April 2023 ie the Sandero and the Dongfeng/Dacia Spring has been Europe's best selling EV for under £40k most months. Renault does seem to have many things right over the last few years whereas most other European HQ car firms have not and need to move quickly to avoid oblivion.

I heard Spain as HQ with the other 6 sub branches at places all over the world but not UK. I would expect some Geely-Renault work and integration of Geely-Renault parts for the London Cab and van business up at Coventry and helpfully using some of the fine brains at UK universities such as Aston. Shame the UK so often fails to capitalise on it engineering prowess except in those elite areas like Aston and McLaren.