Graham Butcher

I still have a MK3 manual and I have been through it and there is no such warning in mine.

True, but my cars came with 19" rims, but also don't forget that the dia quoted is the rim size, not actual tyre diameter which should in an ideal world match that of the standard normal running wheels.

Do they? Is the official spare smaller in diameter? I think they might only be smaller in width, load and speed rating. That said, I have always had mine supplied from the factory with a full size tyre on a steel space saver rim.

If the circumference is smaller, then it will certainly keep flagging a warning about low tyre pressure, as the wheel will be rotating at a different speed to the others. That system relies on the fact that a deflated tyre will make that wheel rotate faster than the others, and the system will flag a warning.

@Binx1310 Just a quick observation: are you 100% certain that that spare wheel will fit your Superb? The seller only quotes it as being compatible with the Karoq?

It seems that more EV's are failing their first MOT than other cars so they are not quite so maintenance-free after all, it seems. The main reason for failing is down to tyres, it is claimed. Why so many electric cars fail their first MOT (and how to prevent it) | Regit

Hmm, I think that they were doing what anybody does who drives an automatic, and that is when in traffic, apply the brake, and when the traffic begins to move, slowly lift your foot off the brake and the drive train creeps forward or backwards. My Superb did that, and so does the Kodiaq. Now my MK2 Superb did it very gently, but the MK3 and Kodiaq will happily shoot off to about 5 mph with no throttle input. Put it into neutral, and the engine idles at about 800 rpm; select drive, and it jumps to 1000 rpm. I queried this with my service dept, who told me that all Euro 6 engines do it as part of the emissions control.

Wow, thats scary.

This is the reason for China banning flush door handles and door handles that need electrical power to operate. How long before the rest of the world follows suite, as he says, this car because it was electric burst into fire within 60 secs. but ICE cars, even if the fuel tank has been ruptured, do not do so, they need a source of ignition. Watch the video for the full info.

As have Dacia I understand?

While this is not all about electric cars, it will apply to all cars soon.

Do you get the impression that the UK government really have much of a clue what they want to achieve here?

Well you'd better believe it because it all seems true. Diesels have gone down only because there are so very few of them made today. Only a complete idiot would ever believe the stupid mpg figures being claimed. Look at the petrol powered version of the car and knock about 10% off the cars claimed mpg and you would closer to the true figure, after all you're lugging about all the extra weight of the battery and the other gear.

Agreed and not before time either, all to often basic safety is ignored in pursuit of fashion, saving money etc. The next thing that needs banning is touch screen controls. Sure they look lovely but they are extremely dangerous as you have to look at the screen to use them. PS, you also meant 2027 not 2017 😉

@Stonekeeper I think that Jag I-Pace was good all-round car, not one that would appeal to me. I loved the XJ series personally and have driven them as well, what a car, full of waftability. The points raised in that video, I think, just sums up the UK in general, not just the car industry. UK as a entire nation over the years has just got complacent and just let the rest of the world catch up and zoomed past us and we are now struggling in their wake, trying to catch up again, but that level of depreciation is making living with not just Jags but all electric cars in private ownership hard to live with. I paid half as much again for my 6-year-old Kodiaq, which, like all diesels are holding their value well, especially when you factor in the fact that when my Kodiaq was new, it sold for half the price of that I-Pace and outperformed it on the depreciation stakes as well.

@lol-lol I get your point about there being more trailers, but the point there is you just don't see many tractor units from the companies I listed hauling other people's trailers. Yes, I have seen the odd one or two here or there of, say, Turner's tractors hauling trailers with other names on them, but very few, so I think it is reasonable to assume that the majority of the HGVs listed as registered in the UK are for complete units, not just tractors with trailers making up the majority. Don't forget that a trailer has no power unit, so it is NOT registered, and from what I have seen and learnt from my time when I was a truck driver for a number of years, there will be significantly more trailers than trucks. When trucks arrive at a warehouse/factory, etc., with a trailer full for that customer, it is highly likely the driver will back the trailer to a loading bay and drop it, then pick another trailer, either empty or maybe full of new products produced at the factory, etc., and then transport them to their destination. And then that process starts all over again and again. When a truck is not moving, it is not earning, and with many transport companies, especially those with regular contracts moving stuff between factories and distribution centres, etc., it will very much be a 24/7 operation with drivers on shift patterns and changing over when a truck rolls into one of those centres. Anyone who watched the TV series about Eddie Stobart truckers will have seen that in operation. Now with a diesel, maybe 20 to 30 minutes of refuelling, and then that tractor could leave the complex with a fresh driver at the wheel and a new trailer attached. A 22 or 25 kW charger would stick in the battery in a short time. What, 10 or 15 miles of range? They will have to go with the largest chargers available, and that is where your massive load on the grid will come from. Don't forget that currently the grid struggles at times, and we only have currently a low percentage of electric cars on the road, and at times those with V2G capability are selling some of their cars' power back to the grid to help out. When you start getting HGV trucks demanding chargers of 350 kW and higher to keep trucks moving as much as possible, the grid will severely stretched. You say yourself that you was disappointed to see chargers at Exeter and Baldock were only 350 kW and hopeful of seeing 500 kW and even 1 MW arriving in the 12 months. So that will make matters even worse, not better.

That advert actually turned out not to be for a particular car, it was a generic advert for electric cars in general, so I'm guessing it was sponsored by the government to help prop up dwindling sales and try to get back onto the right path for their ambitious targets.

Well, that 350 KW and the 400 KW is much much more than the 22 KW that you was talking about to begin with, but you are missing the point I fear when you try to compare the UK with Europe etc, we are not ONLY lagging behind in the charger network, but we are seriously lagging in the generation stakes, which is the very point that I was trying to illustrate when mentioned the amount of power that just 2,700 32-tonne juggernauts (Turners of Soham fleet, only) would require to recharge their batteries overnight. These trucks will not want to take a risk on partially charging their trucks because of operational factors that are likely to impact their daily routines, and destinations and routes can and do change to reflect local circumstances, and the last thing they want, and indeed you would want, is to come across a number of these trucks stuck on the motorways, dual carriageways, etc., because they miscalculated the amount of energy required for their working day. You may want to take risks in your car, but they would not. A simple car breakdown in the wrong place causes enough problems to the traffic flow; think of the consequences of one of these trucks doing the same. For example: Based on data regarding the UK's largest logistics operators, the top 15 transport and logistics companies operate a combined fleet of over 35,000 to 40,000 HGVs (Heavy Goods Vehicles). Key industry leaders contributing to this total include: DHL Supply Chain: One of the largest, frequently topping fleet lists with thousands of trucks. Wincanton: Operates over 3,500 vehicles. Culina Group: A major player following the acquisition of Eddie Stobart, Great Bear, and others. GXO Logistics: A leading operator, with trailer fleets exceeding 5,000 in some reports. Royal Mail Group: Operates a very large,4,000+ trailer/HGV fleet. Kinaxia Logistics: Operates approximately 920 vehicles. Other top firms in the top 15-30 rankings contributing to this, as identified by CILT(UK) and Motor Transport, include XPO, DPD, Kuehne + Nagel, Turners (Soham), Maersk, and Eddie Stobart. Context on Fleet Sizes: There are over 530,000 licensed HGVs in Great Britain. The top 1,000+ fleets in the UK collectively hold operator licences for over 300,000 trucks. The top 25 trailer fleets in the UK are responsible for well over 100,000 trailers I'm not talking large fleets with small to meduim sized vans and last mile delivery vans but proper full sized trucks like those below. If the electric dream actually does continue and not get derailed, then I have no doubt that the UK will get there in the fullness of time

I think I'd trust my rough calculations over yours on this one. Single-phase or three-phase makes diddly squat difference to the huge amount total power required to recharge those HGVs. Typical HGV especially the articulated trucks used for tramping up and down the motorways (32-tonners, etc.), will not have car-sized batteries but something in the 700 to 800 KWH range, these will require huge amounts of power just to recharge 1 truck overnight ready for the following day's work. We already know that towing a caravan behind an electric car will approximately halve the range; that's the practical range, not the theoretical range quoted by the manufacturers. These HGVs will be using the 150KW+ chargers, not the 22KW ones that you mention and given Ed Miliband's ambitious plans to effectively drive diesel trucks off the roads within a very short time frame. Hinkley Point C power station is not due to come online until the mid-2030s, and those DC chargers are already three-phase chargers.

I really can't see that working out, the sheer amount of power needed to charge those trucks is massive and its fine saying that will have those charging locations at roughly 4.5 hours distance from each other to coincide with the legal driving hours of a truck driver. That does not take into account of where the truck starts its working day and or the traffic/weather/road conditions etc all of which will have massive impacts on the distance travelled in that 4.5 hours from their starting location. Take 2 of the top 15 truck fleet operators in the UK, Eddie Stobbart and Turners of Soham who have almost 6,000 HGV's between them, if they all get plugged in to charge overnight, then those 2 operators alone will take as much power from the grid as 2 cities the size of Birmingham takes. So 2,700 HGV's (Eddie Stobarts fleet alone) @ an average of 200KWH charging speed equates to a staggering 540MW per hour. The city uses daily 13,424.6MW so divide that by 24 gives a figure of 559MW per hour. It is estimated that drops to 30% at night, that drops to approximately 168MW per hour, these figures are not allowing for heating, so add on the HGV total charge per hour, 540+168=708MW. Bear in mind that there will be some element of solar energy supplied during the day, zero at night, so the extra energy will no doubt come from fossil fuels before Hinckly Point C comes online in about 10 years time but it will only supply 3,200MW so we still need many more stations to power the massive demands of electric road transport if the above figures are correct, and they only allow for just 1 fleet of 2,700 HGV's. Bear in mind that there are approximately 742,000 HGVs registered in the UK currently and this is growing. Edit to add some more precise info on some electric trucks. i.e., Volvo have battery capacities to 565 KHw and designed to charge from DC chargers 250KW to 350KW, full charge on 250KW in 2.5 hours or 350KW in 90 minutes and has a range of upto 300Km or 180 miles, so roughly London to Sheffield (140miles). So that trip would require a minimum of 90 minutes to recharge for the return trip, and that is twice the time normally allowed for a drivers break by law, which is 45 minutes after 4.5 hours driving.

Yes, even I have some trouble trying to use the touch controls for the radio, sat nav, telephone etc on my central screen, Thank god there are major controls like heating, etc. controlled that way.

Latest news is that Jaguar are now thinking about walking away from making only BEV and instead looking at ICE as a REX. Jaguar explores part-petrol car after pledging to go ‘all electric’

This morning I heard on the radio an advert for an electric car. I forgot what the car was, but it was the way that they were advertising it that caught my attention. They were say that it can drive from London to Sheffield on a single charge, which costs just £5. That struck me as being extremely misleading because they are assuming the car is charged at home and the car has a capacity of at least 45 kWh, and based on getting 4 miles to the KW, it would require a full charge of 6 hours on a 7 kW home charger in order to get 42 kWh stored. What about the return trip, that is highly likely to cost around 6 times as much, approx £30.

I know that some of the electric owners/drivers think that this YouTuber is very biased against electric cars, but as it turns out, he isn't; he drives a Tesla in reality, as he explains in this video. His gripe with them is very much with the fire hazards posed by them (not surprising as he is a fireman) along with the safety issues presented by the touch interface for controls and the lack of proper mechanical door handles to prevent people being trapped inside them when things go wrong. (859) I Drove an EV 400 Miles in Winter: A Real-World Test - YouTube

All these figures being quoted do nothing but show precisely what I've always said about what car you have. If the car size is fine for you and meets your usage, wish list or dream car, and you can afford all of the costs involved, then those are the only things that matter. If the above is fine for you, then you should be able to go out and get whatever type and size of car that fits the parameters that work for you. When I started driving, the cars were petrol powered, and diesel was very much the domain of heavy transport and buses. I've always had petrol cars up to the time when I was given a diesel-powered loan car when my company car was in for servicing. I enjoyed that time I had with it and the relaxed driving style compared to petrol. I asked for a diesel car when time came round to replace the old car, and was granted my wish and for the last 30 years or so, that has been my powerplant of choice. That has always been my argument about electric cars, the other issues I raise are secondary ones, but the main reason for not liking the current situation is that the choice is being removed. You want to have a NEW car; that's fine, but its slowly becoming the only option available.