Graham Butcher

CEOs of companies want that, yes but at what cost to the countries economy, when all of that home grown profit flies out of the country into the foreign owners banks. Even the camera controlled carpark at your local shops, pubs etc, all making massive profits and all owned by foreign companies. Just follow the money and you will be shocked, and all aided by successive UK governments, hence why the UK is broken.

But that is the cancer that industry suffers from, either bringing everything in house to make greater margins, or the opposite.farming all production out to subcontractors who are only intreasted in maxing profits.

Agree, but it would seem that Skoda must have been early adopters of these aids as my car is 2019 and the Superb before that had them on a 2016 plate.

All of these driver assist aids can actually work against you at times, especially if the software has a glitch. This morning in traffic, the car in front of me slowed because of a jam. I also braked, but somehow, my car thought I never braked hard enough, and slammed the anchors on hard and the ABS cut in. While it was bringing me to a complete halt, all the traffic in front of me had cleared, and there were several car lengths ahead of me, empty. It was a good job; the car behind me was far enough back to avoid ramming me.

Some MG electric owners are reporting that their cars try to steer into parked cars so they only follow white lines anything between them is apparently invisible to the system?

Sorry, but the fact millions, as you say, do it does not make it ethically right or safe. OK, so there is some sort of protection built in to cut the solar panels if they lose mains supply, so what if that fails to operate and someone were to extract the 13A plug top that is feeding the solar power to the house from the socket? That would leave the exposed pins of the solar installation still happily connected to 230V AC supply via the panels and inverter. What if one of your children or wife were then to touch that plug and get electrocuted? This is the reason why the industry is refusing to do the installs for their customers; they are the professionals and can see the real dangers the system poses to life. It does not meet the criteria for public safety; it is what happens when things get rushed through development. and governments (who don't have any clue or experience) get involved chasing an idealistic dream. There are loads of things where the government gets it so wrong time and time again. You think they are your side? Think again; they aren't. They are simply attempting to implement what they are told to do by those where the real power resides, and all the time the UK is being bled dry, and all money flows out of the country into the banks of overseas companies and individuals, and it has been for decades. As for the Chinese electric cars, they are not better at all, just better priced with corners being cut and overall poor quality. Have you ever looked at the MG electric car owners' forums, for example, and seen just how unhappy people are with their cars? The same goes for the others: Ommoda, Jeycoo, BYD, etc. The other person's grass is always greener, except it really isn't.

The plug-in home solar system hits yet another problem, with the IET saying it is dangerous and electrical contractors are refusing to install it. The system has to be installed by qualified electrical contractors, leaving some customers who have already managed to purchase the kit complaining that they are unable to get anyone to actually install the system.

It looks as if the UK was playing around with electric cars in the 1970s with a small startup company called Electraction and this video shows what is thought to be the prototype of a particular model known as Tropicana, which was powered by 12 6-volt lead-acid batteries. The channel is called "Look Mum No Engine" and some of you may (if you're into electronic and electrical engineering) know the presenter from his other channel, "Look Mum No Computer", where he makes all kinds of musical instruments and builds massive control systems to control them, even setting up a museum dedicated to them.

That is what I was going to suggest, to find a way of wedging or preventing the blind from opening, or leave it fully open so movement can be ruled out and see how the alarm behaves.

Is the sun blind manual or powered? Is there a spring in it that would tend to assist it opening if the magnets aren't holding it shut?

Yes, it could be. Is this a car that is in daily or frequent use, or are you still bringing it back to life? But battery failures are nothing new; the last time I experienced something like this happening was back when I was the electrical engineer looking after well over 100 buses and coaches in my 20s. I was just watching a video about brand new cars having a total turbo failure, completely destroying engines on brand cars with less than 50 miles on the clock, so it does happen. PS, A spider was what I blamed in the first instance when my alarms on the Superbs kept going off in the night, but that proved not to be the case in the end.

It should be OK, but if you have a battery tester to hand, I'd still test it under heavy load conditions; you have no clue how long it has been sitting on the shelf for before you purchased it. If nothing else, at least it would remove it from one way or another from being a possible suspect to either the the prime suspect or remove it altogether. I would not have suspected that a so-called brand new Yuasa 096 EFB battery would fail completely after 9 months (purchased 16/9/25) from GSF Car Parts on 15/6/26, but it did. Interestingly, I just checked on their website, and it seems that they no longer sell this brand. Form your own conclusions as to why that might have happened.

5.8V is perfectly acceptable. So it's looking like either the alarm itself is faulty or, as I said before, check the main battery for high internal impedance and SOH. You said before that it was pretty new but never said if it was a brand new one, a new second-hand one or how old it was.

Now before anyone attempts to accuse me of being anti-renewables, let me remind everyone that I have no fewer than 13 solar panels on my rooftop as well, so this puts me at a small risk as well. Solar panels can only deliver what they are designed to generate, so a 400w panel should not be able to deliver more power, therefore current, than what the cells are designed to do. If your cables are running hot, then that suggests that they are undersized, not pure copper, or the total length of the cable run is longer than it should be for the actual cable rating and is acting like a small electric heater element, or maybe two or more factors are in play? I'll leave you with this snippet of info. I did a Google search using the following data: "solar panel fires UK", and it has produced no fewer than 25 hits where government, fire departments, the construction industry, insurers, consultants, etc. are all showing concern about this aspect. Reports are showing a 60% increase in the number of solar panel fires in the last 2 years alone. It also seems the much-heralded Norway is also suffering, and other countries are experiencing similar findings, so this is not a UK-only situation; it's just another thing that is not receiving mainstream media coverage for some reason.

@lol-lol Sorry to go on about solar panels catching fire, I think you might be interested in this, where there have been 3 cases of them catching fire on schools in Suffolk in the last 12 months. Extracted from one of these reports "Suffolk Fire and Rescue said afterwards that it had "confirmed beyond reasonable doubt that the cause was a solar panel on the roof". Fires at Brooklands Primary in Brantham in March and at East Bergholt Primary in August 2025 were also both linked to solar panels. The NEU said it had contacted the county council in April to request urgent reassurances and a clear plan of action, but said the issue was delayed for further discussion. NEU Suffolk joint branch secretary, Wendy James, said it was "deeply troubling that no decisive action was taken until after a third fire occurred in a fully occupied school". Ipswich primary school fire caused by solar panel on roof - BBC News Suffolk schools to switch off solar panels after fires - BBC News Union has 'grave concerns' over Suffolk school solar panel fires - BBC News