Graham Butcher

Yep, I agree about the diesel grunt but they say EV is similar, never driven one myself but I can fully believe it, that is how electric motors are, fact. Motorbikes, nah never liked them personally too little personal protection for my liking 😒. The LEZs around the country are IMO just a revenue raiser. Some roads are split down the middle, one side is in the zone, the other not. So you could drive a poorly maintained diesel belching huge clouds of black smoke on outside section and the smoke won't blow into the zone, wind can still blow pollution in but you still have to pay to drive in the zone. Vehicles have to pass strict emissions tests after 3 years at their MOT tests anyway.

Well... if I were to perhaps win an EV in a competition for example, I might just keep it, but buying one, hell no, I just brought a £11k car. I'm happy with VW's cheating (not that I was aware of when it happened) but I just like the way diesels drive and because I used to have to cover some long drives in a day like Newcastle on Tyne and back to Chelmsford. These days not so often, but often enough to know that currently an EV is NOT a suitable option for me, thats all.

@automass Just out of interest, I decided to further investigate the dashcam angle as the intended market for this brand is America and I had a feeling that their standards might differ from us Europeans, and it seems that my hunch was correct. I downloaded the manual for one of their dashcams, and they seem to have 2 LEDS, 1 to show battery is charging and the other to show camera is running i.e, recording video. I have highlighted this in yellow for quick reference. The camera is designed primarly for cars that don't have the 12v sockets connected 24/7, so that when the engine is switched off, so is the camera. (Highlighted in green) For use in cars that that follow the normal convention, i.e, those where the 12v socket is always live (as the Americans call it HOT), they warn you about leaving the camera plugged will drain the car battery and the risk that you will not be able to start the engine. To overcome this if you do not want to keep pulling the power adaptor out when switching the engine off, you will either need to purchase a hardwire kit, OR reconnect the 12v socket to one of the cars fuses that is only live when the ignition is on (easier said than done, hardwire kit is easier to do). Highlighted in red. If you want 24/7 operation, this has to be to set it up in the camera setup menu which puts it into sleep mode and only comes on when an impact is felt, records for 30 seconds and goes back to sleep again. If this mode is required, it needs to have a supply connected 24/7 and this mode dramatically reduces the drain on the battery as it only draws full power in the event of an impact waking it from sleep. This mode however is no good for normal driving mode as it cause the camera to wake up and return to sleep after every pothole etc. In the event of an accident, only record the aftermath, which for insurance purposes does nothing to prove who caused the accident, so IMHO is useless. Highlighted in blue azdome dashcam.pdf

While these figures are good, however, if I had a ICE car which was the same age and could only do 79% of its range from when it was new, I would not be happy, I did have one that was 9.5 years and in fact that was doing miles per tank than when it was new, just saying, thats all.

Well if that was true, we would be hearing loads of people moaning about the sheer cost after such a short time by now as we have loads of EVs 5 years old now in the UK.

Very funny I must say. I knew oil floats on water, who doesn't know that, eh? As a part-time fireman, that is one of the first things they teach. Use water on an oil fire is just asking for major trouble, DANGER! Throwing Water On Oil Fire | Earth Lab - Bing video

Someone who knows what he is talking about.😉 I have missed all that talk about battery maintainers, though.

What you described is for a low capacity or a battery that has already suffered internal damage and degradation and is the very reason batteries will eventually pop their clogs and need replacing. We were actually discussing replacing a new small battery with a new larger capacity one, in which case the internal resistance when new is as @Breezy_Pete correctly stated is lower. And the only time that is going to be noticeable is if there was a dead short, or a higher demand placed on it, the battery would be able to sustain a higher current flow before the volts start to drop. A low capacity or old dying battery with a higher resistance internally would have the opposite effect as that resistance would then be limiting the current flow and the terminal voltage drop rapidly.

I just back in and saw this post, thats odd I could have sworn it weigh more, a imperial gallon of water is 10lb.

Normally the red light on a dashcam means that it has now entered into the recording mode, the green light shows power has been applied and it is now waking up from its sleep mode. I think if you refer to the user manual for it, that it will confirm this to be the case. Every dashcam I have ever had, and I've had a few, has used this system. When you power it up, it has to go through a POST system much like your phone, computer etc does before it is fully operational and the LED changes colour to show its state of readiness. Remove the power and the LED will go out completely, it will not change to red like you seem to suggest. You are lulling yourself into a false sense of security, don't believe me, well fine, but time will tell you otherwise I'm afraid and history will be repeating itself all over again..

Logically it still makes no sense, as in the first instance it was the dashcam switching off and then coming back on again. Also a dashcam should have some storage device in it to keep the time and dates and also the user setup options retained, even if the dashcam is not being powered all the time (bad thing to do anyway). What use is a dash cam that cannot remember the time, and date to validate any footage of an accident that you might be involved in. My own dashcam has that and when power is removed the internal circuit detects that and starts a timer after X seconds will switch off, unless power is once again restored, and then it stays on and does not switch off. When it switches, it also makes a dinging noise to let me know it is switching off. If the USB charger was getting very hot to the touch, then again I'd be happy to accept that it was consuming far too much power and so was faulty, but none of this seems is happening so what I think may be happening is that the charger originally had a small electrolytic capacitor connected across its input to allow any small minor hiccups in the supply such as a momentary voltdrop and because the OP has not been pulling out the charger from the 12V socket, it has remained powered up and as such the capacitor has now suffered from the excessive heat that builds up in a car during summer months the electrolyte in the capacitor has dried up and can no longer store any power. Hence why the new charger with a new capacitor in it does not disconnect when the start kicks in. If this is the actual failure mode of the charger, the OP was lucky, sometimes they can just become a resistor and keep drawing more power than the chargers should do, another reason why such devices should never be left plugged to a live feed. There is somewhere on this forum a thread about dashcams and when they are required to be left on, there is a special kit that houses a small rechargeable battery that charges when the car is being driven and has switch on it to switch from normal mode to the unattended mode in which mode it is fed from the small battery and does not then drain the car battery.

Sorry but you keep saying this, how do you know it was faulty, did your dashcam and phone work, yes or no? I could accept the charger was to blame if you can give me something that is logical, but that has not happened here. You are likely to spend money buying new ones, only to discover that I was right all the time, so what is it that makes you sure that they are faulty, and my explanation is wrong?

On the cereals side, I'm a shreddies and cold whole milk guy and no sugar on the shreddies.

Well I agree with much of what you have said, but the weight issue does also depend on the size of the vehicle and what it is made from. But that aside, batteries are indeed incredibly heavy and so is the power plant, but equally so is the power plant in an ICE car so there are 2 things to consider here, 1 is that modern ICE cars are getting larger and heavier anyway and also have a fuel tank which when full adds more weight. On the other hand EV cars do not weigh any more when they are fully charged, than they do when they run out of charge. There are many aspects to whole debate, as an ICE car drives along its weight gets less, an EV remains constant (ignoring tyre wear) so an ICE actually gets more efficient as the fuel tank gets emptied, so we have to compare ICE car with full tank against the EV equivalent to see which is heavier and the results will vary depending on model and specs etc. But like you, I also saw that same report and I can't hep but think that must be some substance in it as the publication does not have a vested interest either way. I do know that my local multi story car park built in the late 60s has recently been strengthened. The rest of your post I agree 100% with.

The above still makes zero sense, they were more than likely being temporarily starved of voltage due to a bad connection and as the start takes great power from the battery and causes a volt drop to happen and that voltage drop was enough that bad connection could not accept as much power as it needed until the starter switched and the voltage drop was thus removed. Think of the voltage as being water pressure, if you have a hosepipe connected to a tap and turned on, water will flow, now place your foot on the pipe lightly (this is your bad connection) and get someone else turn on the taps in the kitchen full on, you notice that water flow from the hosepipe has been greatly reduced, turn the kitchen taps off and the hosepipe flow is restored. Remove your foot from the hosepipe and repeat the test and you will see the water is better from the hosepipe. Clearly a shorter hosepipe is better for this test. The point is that your foot was adding resistance to the water flow, remove the resistance (your foot) and the water flow is better. A long hosepipe will also add resistance, and water flow is less with a long hose than it is with a short one. See the attached picture for clarity Volts = water pressure, Current = water flow and resistance is your foot on the hosepipe. So when your stop-start kicks in and the engine starts, there is not enough flow to the charger to keep your plugins working, until the starter stops, the flow is restored, and your plugins start to work.

Sorry but it isn't, what ever the internal resistance is, does not have any effect on the outside circuits, Ohms law states that current flow from the battery to the load is determined by A the voltage and B the resistance, so a battery with a voltage of 12V and a side light bulb which (pre LED) was 6W and had a resistance of 2 ohms. Current= V/R so 12/2 = 0.5A (I=amps)and watts is simply V x I so that is 12V x 0.5A = 6watts. So nothing externally changes without either the voltage changing or the resistance changing and nothing has changed other than you have effectively swapped the AAA battery for a AA battery, same voltage etc.

The internal resistance only comes into play when and if extra external loading is applied, but if being used on a standard car with nothing extra has been added, then the internal resistance means nothing. In the case of a circuit that was taking X current before the bigger battery is installed, the same circuit will still take X amount of current and that can demonstrated using a test meter set to amps and connected in series with the circuit. That lower internal resistance is partly the reason why the battery has extra capacity. In fact maybe an easier way to understand is if you think about standard batteries like AAA and AA batteries, both of them have a voltage rating 1.5V, but connected the same fixed load, the AAA will die long before the AA would.

On an earlier car I added a 2nd battery, placing it in the boot and running heavy-duty battery leads through the inside of the car in the door sills and connected in parallel with the battery in the engine compartment to cope with freezing nights. This was because I was working on the buses on the early shift I had to get the buses started and warmed up so that the drivers and conductors arrived, they had nice warm buses to take out and so the passengers could ride in comfort. That meant on freezing days I had plenty of power to crank the engine until it fired into life. I sold the car a few years later, still with the 2 batteries fitted, and I had zero problems, and that is essential exactly the same as fitting a larger capacity battery.

Well its my understanding, that your car or indeed any car can handle a larger capacity battery as long as it can physical fit on the battery tray and the connection leads will fit onto the battery OK. It is not always a necessary thing to recode the system when going from a smaller battery to a larger one, as the battery will not deliver any more amps to the starter motor, as that is governed by Ohms Law and the starter motor has not been changed and neither has the voltage, so the resistance of the starter will remain the same. The battery just has the ability to crank for longer periods before it shows signs of loosing power. If the alternator is not capable of providing much in the way of increased amperage output, it would just mean that a flat battery that is larger, will take longer to become fully charged. What is not acceptable is if a larger battery has been removed, that was correctly coded to the system, but the coding is not changed to reflect the smaller battery, the charging profile might be too aggressive for the smaller battery and cause it to overheat and shorten its life.

Hmm, the OP's engine is not that hard to crank, being a lowish CC and petrol, had it been a diesel then the battery cranking AH rating is going to be far more critical, but hey ho.

I'd love to know what has made you suspect that the USB charger was faulty when it was providing power to the dashcam, so it seemed OK and also presumably your mobile phone? It just doesn't make any sense, if it was faulty, how come the devices it was powering were working OK?

I thought the OP said that he also checked the list for the correct battery for his car and agreed that it was the correct battery, this thread has more twists than the TV series Dallas had 🙄 It is pretty easy to check on their website as it is on others, just enter the cars' registration number, and it will list all the compatible batteries or what ever part you're looking for.

I must say one thing, it really is important that if we are talking about problem solving that these are posted in the right sections so others with similar issues can find thread.

That is the beauty of a forum that is not so rigid about rules, as long as people are not disrespectful of others 👍

Didn't you once say that you had someone manually adjust the lights as they were pointing at the sky?