Lady Elanore

This is fun and the brake test is very unexpected, at least by me

The thing about hybrids that stagger me is the complexity of the beast. It really does seem to have the regular complexity of a petrol engine car, plus that of an EV and also the compromises it makes having two different systems working independently, sympathetically, assisting each other and also filling in the compromises, such as in EV mode the 12V batteries aren't charged! But it does get around range anxiety for people such as myself who do bigger mileage and pretty long runs.

I wonder what happened to this car? Hopefully still with the same owners

BMW have come up with some smart solutions to chip problems. For instance, my BMW doesn't currently have Android Auto/Apple Car play because BMW sourced chips away from their regular supplier (due to shortages) but they made sure the replacement could eventually be updated to provide this. I've just heard that customers cars are now being updated, some OTA and some needing a dealer visit. First world problem, but it avoided BMW having to pay £500 compensation to its customers (that was the agreed amount with its dealers).

I run a PHEV and it's almost impossible to tell when the petrol engine fires anyway, but I usually let the car decide which is its preferred method, my M3 however, I turn the stop start off. I think with the 123D I had, BMW considered the amount of energy that would be needed, to replenish the energy used from the battery in restarting the car, had the afore mentioned 4 second break even rule. That was a car that decoupled ancillary devices under acceleration, had some early form of brake regeneration and closed its grill vents for areo/thermal efficiency reason as well as stop/start. Quite ahead of it's time for a car that was first introduced nearly 15 years ago.

Interestingly, BMW are selling so many EVs and PHEVs, they don't have to put any limit on the numbers of carl like the M3/M4/M5/M6/X3M/X4M/X5M that they make. Their average emissions are sufficiently low, they can build silly ICE cars with relative impunity. This will change however, as PHEVs are about to have a reclassified CO2 rating which will be much less positive (although no mention of the CO2 produced in the giant 100kWh+ batteries in their latest behemoth)

I assume buying new EVs is as tough as buying ICE cars at the moment. Availability is awful, unless you want to buy higher end models that manufacturers are understandably prioritising. ICE models are still in demand and in my industry, very few people have gone over to the 'blue side', mainly because of range anxiety and the hours we work stopping them from searching around for stations that are either nearby, available or actually work. I will be hanging on to my enthusiasts ICE cars as long as I can realistically afford to run them and hope that and alternative to pure BEV comes along before I am forced to buy one. Having said that, I was not joking about a PHEV for my work car.

I will run a PHEV for work though. I've badgered a colleague who has a history of daft cars, previously he owned a beautiful RS4, to bring his wife's car on a job, so I can have a decent ride in it. It's a Mustang E, apparently. Athough according to the above TED lecture, she might have bought the wrong car

I want my V8 to run on petrol.

When I had my BMW 123D many, many years ago, I read somewhere (think it was in BMW blurb) that the stop/start was worth the effort if the car was stationary for more than 4 seconds.

The important thing to take from that TED talk is we should really all be driving V8s

BTW I'm not totally against EVs and I rather like PHEVs :)

It's from 7 minutes (roughly) that I found most interesting. I knew EVs produced a lot of CO2 in the manufacture of their batteries, but this chap is suggesting it's a huge amount more than most people realise. The irony of his words, is that the potential 'right solution' for these current times are quite possibly PHEVs, which is exactly the latest vehicle type to come under scrutiny and seems to no longer be considered in a favourable way by many governments. It certainly makes you think that Porsches synthetic fuels should have a future and not be automatically dismissed, as seems to have happened. Also, Hydrogen ICE cars should maybe given more consideration. But I think the TED talker is correct in that people in power have decided that the easy fix is EV and they don't necessarily want to look at the larger box as was demonstrated.

This opened my eyes a little further. EVs appear to be worse than I thought at contributing to global warming! Assuming this is all true, of course. We should all be buying V8s is what I took from this TED talk. Oh and that hybrids are probably the best current solution!

That's an amazingly circular mini rainbow!

Red delete.

Oh dear 😞

Sound has been mixed and balanced by middle-aged men (and sometimes women) for decades, Lord knows what has been lost in the mix I was once called into the truck (I was quite young) to listen to an alleged high frequency tone on the desk output. I could hear it, but none of the middle-aged peeps could, what worried them was they could see it on the meters though

The colour is a new one to the M3, unfortunately everyone is now picking it (it's a no cost option) so it may well become one of the dominant colours and it's also available on the 2 series family wagon I believe 'Exclusivity' is a not a club I am a member of

I wondered if the car had done a bit of cabbing?

This is interesting reading. The mileage ramped up in later years14-20K a year https://www.check-mot.service.gov.uk/