Graham Butcher

I honestly don't know how many or where they are, but then again, even knowing where they are could be cold comfort because, as we have already seen, you can never be 100% certain if the one you select is going to be functional even or if thieves have been and stolen the cables. If that happens, would you have enough left to make it to another location? Fuel hoses are of no commercial value to thieves, so to my mind it's just like you're playing Russian roulette but with added bullets in the magazine if you don't always try and keep about 100 miles of range in reserve all the time. Oh hang on, there is a large Gridserve hub at Braintree, which is about 15 miles from the start of the diversion.

A while ago there was a discussion about how far your electric car could go beyond an indicated 0 mile range left, in order to get back home and take advantage of your low EV home tariff rather than top up at an expensive public charger. I didn't think that it was ever really worthwhile taking the risk because you can never be sure that something else is not going to happen and force a longer route on you. Well today EssexLive has posted up a planned diversion for drivers on the M11 travelling south between the A129 and the A414 when that 9.5-mile section of the M11 will be closed from 9pm to 5am on July 20 and 21st for resurfacing and a diversion will be put in place as follows: Full diversion route:Drivers will leave the M11 at junction 8 via Birchanger Green Roundabout; At the roundabout, take the first exit onto Thremhall Avenue; At Priory Wood Roundabout, take the third exit and join the A120 eastbound; Continue on the A120 to Great Notley; At the interchange, follow the A131 over the A120; Continue southbound on the A131 towards Chelmsford; At junction 19 of the A12, join the A12 southbound; Continue to junction 15; At junction 15, follow the A414 Three Mile Hill towards Hastingwood Interchange; Rejoin the M11 at junction 7. This diversion is 50 miles long; this is why I seriously don't believe that it's worth penny-pinching in order to try and limp home and save a couple of quid on charge costs. Ok on this occasion there has been a heads-up posted, but this kind of event does indeed happen pretty frequently when there has been a bad vehicle fire and the Highways Agency deems the roads to be resurfaced urgently, so there would be no advanced warning.

Now, back to the main thrust of this topic, electric cars. I see people commenting on how good the Chinese electric cars are, knowing personally just how poor some Chinese products can be after spending most of my working life in the electrical industry (I had a few years lorry driving across the UK). I see no reason to change my suspicions that things are not quite what they seem to be. I have seen content from independent motoring journalists and vloggers alike who refuse to attend Chinese car launches and other such events because they are not free to say what they want, regardless of if it is positive or negative; they are controlled events. I like Johny Smith and the Late Brake Show, but he did one of these, and the video of it is here. It has since been mentioned on both the JayEmm on Cars channel and also the Geoff Buys Cars channel; here Jay addresses the problem head-on and fully explains just why he flatly refuses to get involved in such events unless he is free to give his honest opinion about the cars. Geoff also refuses to take part in any such staged events as he wants to present his honest opinions.

I think it is not the result of the higher currents as much it's caused by bad connections giving rise to heating of the connections and subsequent fires. Maybe also due to incorrect sizing of the cables in some cases?

DC is deadly; it is far worse than AC, which passes through the zero point each cycle/hertz, which does make it easier to disconnect yourself from the live power. DC does not and will make you grip the connection so that you cannot break it. This is part of the issue with electric vehicles, and you can see the high degree of danger with DC traction batteries with voltages sitting around 400V and most of the newer and performance models somewhere around 800V by watching the YT channel OGS & Mechanics and observing the PPE that they wear while working on them. DC is also extremely difficult to control, requiring special equipment to switch circuits on and off, as breaking the connection can draw a pretty hefty arc and so the switchgear costs considerably more.

@lol-lol don't forget that there is a major difference between the USA and UK, voltage. Our 230V is far more likely to cause electrocution than the 110V of the USA is. There is is another angle on this, insurance. It would not surprise me to see any claim be refused if it is clear that plug-in solar had been fitted, or any solar/storage system had not been installed by a qualified electrical engineer.

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

If you read my posts, I said that I have NEVER had to replace a horn battery or, indeed, for that matter, a horn. In all of my experiences of the car alarm being triggered, it was the result of the car's main 12V battery beginning to fail. It was also the cause of my neighbour's Ford Fiesta alarm being triggered several times in succession. Fitting a new 12V main car battery in each case cured it. The car that was written off had an alarm that was 10 years old, and in the car's 10 years it had 3 new 12V main batteries, and twice the alarm was the sign that the battery was failing. The last time that happened and the battery failed to start the car, I was outside of the Essex Ambulance Service depot on North Weald Airfield, and they brought their breakdown truck over to me, tested the 12v main battery and pronounced it had a bad cell, then jump-started me, and I drove to GSF, and they replaced the battery under warranty. Bingo, no more alarms and no more starting issues.

Oh, OK, I've had the alarm horn going off for no apparent reason on my last three Superb and the main car battery in each case was the cause. Just after the alarm started being triggered, the main battery failed completely. The last time the main battery was only 18 months into its 4 year warrenty. Replacing stopped the alarm being triggered. Just 2 weeks ago, my 9 month old main battery failed on the day I should have been taking my wife to the airport. So when you say it is very new, I wouldn't dismiss that completely I have never had to replace the alarm rechargeable in any of my cars.

That is an early indication of a failing 12V battery, I kid you not. Test your battery with a proper battery tester that tests it under a sustained load, and I expect it will report a higher than normal internal resistance and cause a voltage drop.

If people cannot understand and accept that as a car lover, I'm going to have a strong interest in all cars regardless of their drivetrain. As an electrical engineer, I'm naturally going to be interested in EVs, but currently not to the extent that I would have one until the bugs have been eliminated. Those that have EVs, I defend their right to have them if it was their free choice. I and others object to being labelled as anti-EV; we are not. We are against being forced to accept second-hand cars because new ICE cars are being phased out. Imagine (if you can) EVs were the norm and they were being withdrawn and those who wanted to have a new car were being forced to have an ICE car and your freedom of choice was removed. I cannot for a single minute accept that you would be happy. Now if people cannot see and accept that I'm being 100% genuine, then it is they who have the problem and closed minds.