Graham Butcher

Exactly what I have been saying, EV's can catch fire in the same fashion as ICE cars can and the method of dealing with it is exactly the same in both cases, no big surprise there, they all use wiring, plastics, foam, leather etc in the general construction of them. Diesel and petrol seldom get involved in the fire itself, and if it does, then foam generally puts it out pretty quickly. If a battery in EV gets involved in the fire itself, then it is a much harder fire and far hazardous to deal with and can take huge amounts of water to cool the battery enough to stop the chemical reaction before it can be extinguished and even then, they can reignite at anytime.

Oh dear, you have got confused with the Sydney Airport Fire video, this is entirely different to that one .🙄

Well that is a shame, you can skip past all that guff and get to the real good content, if I can manage it, I'm damn sure you can if you want to learn something. I keep my mind open to new concepts.

I know a lot of folk will take this the wrong way, but please, I beg you, play this video, he makes some sensible points and like, me is not anti EV at all.

I think it seems to be the same the same everywhere, pickup drivers seem to be taking over from Audi and BMW drivers when it comes to arrogance.

Yeah, I can see that would apply to some of them, but not the majority. I actually ended up with the Superb via a similar route as a company car driver, while many of my colleagues went for bigger more powerful engined cars like the Ford Mondeo's, Volvo XC90s, Audi's and BMW's. All those cars actually cost the company more in terms of the leases and yet at the end of their 3-year lease had far lower residuals. I checked to see if any are still on the road, and very few of them are. I'd love to know why, did they meet with a nasty accident or what, strangely enough, all but 1 of my Superb's are still on the road, and that includes my recently written off one, which has just been granted a MOT.

All of your observations beg the question just why are there so many of these big beasts, regardless of their drive train, it has to be one of snobbery I feel, one-upmanship, look at me in my big ultra expensive car, just because I'm better than you and thus I can afford to let everyone know it.👿

All this increased HP and performance that EV's have is also having the effect of pushing up insurance premiums, not only because of the increased likelihood of a car being written off if there is a chance that the battery might have suffered damage in the accident, but also because of the increased performance in acceleration terms over that of an ICE car of the same HP rating. We really do need to look at restricting the performance of cars full stop, we don't have the roads capable of using the performance, so it makes a mockery out of having all of that power, and that goes for ICE and also EV powered cars

Well, I watched this video and saw nothing that showed how the Renault Zoe dominated the Nürburgring, it was constantly being overtaken by others, blatant clickbait and nothing else.

That surely is only because there has never been any real incentive for the ICE designers to do anything else. No legal or governmental pressure has been applied to them. Governments have been perfectly happy to keep taking the massive taxation that has been applied to oil and as long as the money was rolling in, why would they wish to disrupt it. The only real times the ICE designers ever really made great strides in the engine performance has been in F1 and at times when there has been an oil crisis which forced them to look at increasing economies. I suspect that big oil has invested very heavily in the EV side of things, especially on the battery side of things as they can see the opportunity to make billions with far fewer people involved, therefore even greater profits, no oil refineries, no great oil tankers required, maybe easier extraction of the required minerals, follow the money. It is all to easy to swallow the stuff we are all being told about the EV being a magic bullet and the answer to the planet's problems, but is it? If we all had to live with the mines used for extraction of the rare minerals for the batteries and all the toxic waste and poisoned water supplies as result of the toxic lakes, the hazardous living conditions that people in those areas have to endure, the poverty, poor wages paid to the workers, even young children etc, would we still think that the EV's were a good thing? These are the side effects of EV's that we and most people do not get to see or have to put up with all we ever get to see are the good side of things and is this not just really a massive case NIMBY syndrome?? Man created the climate change, man could also reverse the change, but the problem there is of course no commercial gain to be had from doing so, once again we are back to the money. Even if there were zero toxins coming from the adoption of EV's, it will not cure the climate change, it will still be there. What we need to do as a planet is to restore the forests, make the planet as a whole far greener with actual growing plants, that will convert CO2 into oxygen. Also develop processes that actually take CO2 out of the atmosphere and restore the ozone layer, yes it would cost money and nobody would be able to make a profit from such actions, but we need to stop the relentless pursuit of amassing as much wealth as it is possible and locking it away in various tax heavens that the top few elites love to do. Maybe if they had paid their fair share of taxes over the years, their taxes could have been used for the purposes of tackling reversing the damage we as a species has done.

@toot Not to mention all the ridiculous EV's that are coming out on the market with upwards of 250hp in the UK, where are you ever going to be able to use all of that available power here with the speed limits coming down all the time, utter madness.

I don't think that any government, anywhere in the world, were elected purely on the strength of their plan to ban the sale of ICE cars, circumstances change all the time.

Why, the EU have also decided on 2035, way before the UK did?

I mentioned this yesterday.

True, the Nissan Qashai is only 12V, and the real reason for Telsa opting to go with 48V is to reduce the amount of copper needed for the cars wiring as they can understand that we are using loads of copper in EV cars which puts a strain on the available amounts of copper and also of course, it also allows them to make weight savings as the cables can be a lot thinner as a result.

I love soft suspension, it forms part of the luxury for me, I hate to be shaken up when going over normal roads, the Passat was up to the introduction of the Superb the go to car for me but on long trips, that could be tiring due to the lack of space. The Chrysler 300 was always out of my grasp as a company car user as it was marketed as being an equivalent to the more upmarket cars like Mercedes-Benz, Jaguars, BMW's etc. Interestingly, the 300 used a Mercedes-Benz E class (W211) class floorpan.

I went from VW Passats onto the Mk1 Superb, and TBH I thought it looked way better than the Passat and with is extra length, also rode far better as well. Yes I know that many of the motoring journalists at the time criticized them both as being dull and boring in the twisty country roads, lacked feel etc, but I never had any such experiences, and TBH, you shouldn't be whizzing around on those roads as they are the worst possible roads for enthusiastic driving unless you know that you have the road all to yourself like so many of those journalists did.

Well, I can't vouch for anything really other than Škoda Superb's as they have been my choice of car for the 19 years and really suit my needs of a comfortable car suitable for long journeys, fast and efficient enough for my needs, both as a company car and private car, that needs to carry 5 adults in comfort especially when 4 of those adults are at least 6' 4" tall and 2 of those are also well-built. I don't need to have a superfast accelerating VRS type of performance etc. So for all my requirements, the Škoda Superb ticks all the right boxes. It looks great, handles great, goes fast enough, has enough luxury, has space that puts many cars from classes above it to shame, is reliable, holds its value well (unlike Audi's) etc.

Oh, how can I be a decade behind the curve when my car is a 2016 model, it is also a VW group car, being that it is a Skoda, it has an ECO setting and part of that setting is the coasting mode, where the engine disconnects from the wheels when I lift my foot off the throttle, providing of course, that the car is actually going faster than the engine speed, as soon as the car is going as slow as the engine the drive reconnects as normal automatically. So explain how my car is 2016 and this is 2013 and that makes my car just 7 years old and yet you claim that I'm a decade behind the curve, does not compute.

Well my Superb will sometimes switch off the engine just prior to completely coming to a halt, maybe rolling about a meter or so with no power, but the car does not class that as coasting. I get a warning on my instrument cluster when I lift my foot completely off the throttle pedal that displays "COASTING", but the engine is still ticking over to produce the power needed for the steering and brakes. Like @lol-lol I too have coasted by slipping into neutral in a manual car, especially if running low on fuel but it is frowned upon as you do not have full control of the car while doing so. Unlike my current car with its DSG transmission, a push of the throttle or brake pedal, complete control of the car is restored automatically and no further input is required, it is a completely natural and instinctive action. In fact there were cars that had a freewheel device fitted to it many years ago. Freewheel - Wikipedia

Well, my 2016 superb (also a VW group product) doesn't, it drops the revs right down to a tickover and as the steering is electric, it also keeps power applied to the steering and the brakes, engine off means no servo assistance to the brakes and also no steering, so how do these VW group cars circumvent those two requirements?

No ICE vehicle should ever be driven with engine switched off, it is totally dangerous to do so as the engine is required to either power the hydraulics in the event of power brakes and steering in cars such as Citroens etc and in other cars for the vacuum for servo brakes, and of course, there is zero motive power to accelerate out off danger if the need arises.

Some people are already saying it is getting difficult to buy some ICE cars now, as many manufacturers appear to have reduced their output of such vehicles or have already announced stopping their manufacture in favour of hybrids and EV/s.

Well, that is interesting, my car in ECO mode will coast for very long periods and is in fact how I drive it most of the time with a light touch of the brakes to re-engage the transmission to get engine braking at junctions etc with a further light touch of the brakes to come to a halt as bus drivers have been taught how to, in order to treat passengers as if they were eggs. So that, according to you, makes my car into a mild hybrid? In fact, any vehicle is capable of coasting by dipping the clutch or slipping into neutral. There are in fact for more polluting things that should and could be tackled before attacking the car, but that won't happen because it involves authorities investing huge sums of money, but charging the public money for driving in low emission zones, and making the public purchase hybrids or EV's will produce an income stream for them. I wonder just how many would drive an EV if the actual mining of the rare metals was done over here in their backyards with all massive toxic lagoons etc, with the real potential of making water dangerous to drink.

Well, I always did think that in reality the 2030 date was way too ambitious, but then it was just like the blonde buffoon to make these grand gestures before the world stage without actually thinking things through, or perhaps it never really was his intention, maybe he thought it was yet another stick he could use later to pass the blame onto others, who knows.....