Graham Butcher

@lol-lol oh, so the petrol Kodiaq is less clean than the diesel then, and the 2020 facelift and MK2 versions are better still? I expect is because the engine has to work a bit harder in the Kodiaq then it did in the Superb as it has larger body to haul around, catching more wind than my old car did.

That seems to be right, there is a 2019 a Rolls Royce, 6.6L V12, tax is £195 but CO2 of almost 499g/km for sale at £200k. I think your 2016 bit is off however, as my 2016 Superb was taxed just £35.

You don't know the half of it, remember England is not Scotland. I don't have Ubers in my City, just normal regular taxi's and recently I had to use one, just measured it on the route-finder I have, 2 miles door to door, 6 minutes, £11.50. Using buses, to cover the trip, means 2 buses but with the concessions out of peak times total cost is £0, in peak times, which the trip I had to make was, £6 and the total time to the nearest bus stop would be 1 hr 30 mins, and this is supposed to be the councils and governments preferred choice for us pensioners for getting about in our city. It really is a total pith take. Incidentally, the time for that bus trip back in the days when I used to work on the busses would have been about 25 minutes because they ran a proper service being part of the nationalised industry it was run as a service, not a profit centre. Pensioner offers in cafes, chip shops etc still can't cut the mustard. We have a Chinese curry takeaway once a week for the 4 of us, the wive does the boiled rice and stir fried chicken, for 3 of us while the youngest has chicken nuggets and 4 pots of curry sauce and a portion of chips costs me £17.90. To get 4 portions of boiled rice, 3 chicken curry's, and 1 portion of chips would be £45.50 for a takeaway, welcome to my world.

I'm not one of them, but I have however, never smoked, gambled, or drank, never had holidays away from home. I have however raised 3 of my own Sons and a step Son, whose Father never paid any maintenance, worked full time and for a number of years when the kids were little, also had 2 part time jobs in the evenings and as my Father died young, I had to help support my Mother and help with the upkeep of her home, which needed replacement windows. Worked 2 years after my official retirement date and never started taking my occupational pension until this year and this month should be my first month of it starting to pay me an income., So from £1226 State Pension, I have to pay £1008 a month, for rent, council tax, gas, electric, so leaves very little for anything else. I have been told that I don't qualify for any of the benefits that you listed as my savings are too high and this government have also grabbed my winter fuel benefit, and I don't get any Council tax relief or housing benefits either because my sons chip in each month as does my wife otherwise we would be up **** creek. I used my tax free pension pot to finance the Kodiaq.

Well, as a pensioner, there is no way that I'd be paying out £6 for a hot drink, new business or not, I'd not be able to afford that level of support. Many pensioners are scared to turn the heating on in the winter months even and £6 would buy a reasonable amount of warmth at home. I can get almost 3 jars of instant coffee from Lidl for that £6 and that will give me many cups of coffee.

@lol-lol , the VED band is E and annual tax is just £195 which is more than the old Superb was at just £35, but that was a lighter car, but still at £195, it is still fairly low.

Yes, I'm well aware of that, but it does not fill me with happiness as I'm unlikely to be in a position to be able to buy a brand new car, or be still be driving in 20 years from, I'll be 95 then. I do still firmly believe that unless the policy is reversed in double quick time to be 100% electric, that you younger people will be in a very sticky place indeed as the folly of banning fossil fueled cars will be become a nightmare as the flaws become apparent.

@lol-lol Sensible - Dual motor Teslas ?, who ever said that they were?? To me that is as bad as having a V6 or V8 stonking great motor under your bonnet, you like me, drive something sensible, yes I have a great Skoda Kodiaq 4x4 diesel, but it is only the 2L 150bhp one and returns on a decent run upto 53mpg. Why I say that the modern combustion engine is head and shoulders cleaner and far more efficient overall than its predecessors is because when you consider my fist car was a 1957 Hillman Minx, weighs 968kg, 35bhp, 1200cc, 4 cylinder, did 31mpg, top speed of 66mph with a 0-62mph figure of 39.7seconds. Compare that with my 2019 Kodiaq, 1968cc, 150bhp, 1714kg, 53mpg, 0-62mph of 9.6seconds and a top speed of 122, they are a completely different breed of engine and getting better year on year. We have millions of mechanics globally who fully understand them and can do carry out repairs in a timely manner, compare that to modern BEVs with anything other than normal day to day servicing, requiring specialists to work on them and we have a global shortage of skilled mechanics with the right skill set and qualifications to actually work on them with repairs taking months to complete.

If you really want to know the true state of the air quality, then take a look at these snapshots taken just a few minutes ago. It shows the parts of the world where real efforts need to be made to improve the air, but by and large, the UK and Europe is not one of them. The last chart shows 12 years of historical data for just one monitoring station, at Stanford Le Hope, the same for the chart above it which shows the CO2 and Nox levels etc, and it also shows where the sources of the data have come from, the same sources as government and TFL etc get theirs from, form your own opinions on if we are being told the real truth or not.

Oh dear, there you go again, you really cannot see the problems can you. Yes, I get it that the mini cannot actually take 150kW at a go. You actually drive something sensible, but you know as well as I do that there are those who have far bigger more expensive cars, with bigger batteries and dual motors etc that are capable of accepting charges of 150kW and far higher. I was asking what might for now be a hypothetical question but it is reasonable to expect that there will times when there would be 2 higher charging capable cars connected to the same charger and then they are more than likely going to throttling in action.

Well all of that above is all very interesting to those who have the space and the ability to charge at home, off road, but at £12 for 10Kw it just shows one of the main stumbling blocks. I really don't know if the UK Government for example are even aware of the fact that they are just perpetuating a two tier social divide on yet another angle? There are those that that are the higher wage earners and are therefore far more likely to own their own home, or can afford to rent a home with off street parking and the ability to add in a home charger in order to take advantage of the added benefits that provides in considerably lower running costs. Then to further add insult to those lower paid people, the government actually giving those wealthier ones grants to purchase the cars. While those in the lower income brackets, are more than likely to live in a house with no off street parking and no access to a home charger, they are also more likely to not be able to afford the payments on a new car anyway and driving a sub £5k car and even if they were able to get a secondhand EV for that kind of money, then even at 4 miles per kW , that 10kW is only enough for 40miles, thus making it far far cheaper to run an ICE car than to rely on having to charge at public chargers. 🤨

Well, the other side of the coin would argue the opposite. Lets say for now that your right, they source from ethical sources, seeing as there is a high demand, those that were originally sourcing theirs from the same supply, who now cannot meet their requirements because more demand then supply, those others will obtain their Cobalt from not so ethical sources, whats the grand difference? Wither way, because of the EV's increased demand over the years for Cobalt, it has lead to more environmental damage being done, just cannot escape from that aspect. Yes and Yes, as more manufacturers switch their battery tech over to LFP, then there will be improvements, just as you say, that is also an inescapable fact, but however, that still resolve the other issues that already out there and as EV's grow in their artificial popularity and will in the powers to be, get their way will be the dominant mode of transport then their other inherent problems will come to the forefront even more and then we may be in even deeper water as a result. Let me once again, reiterate that it is not EV's in there own right that I object to, it is the enforcement of their adoption as the ban on fossil fueled new cars gains more momentum. Remember this is not a natural consumer lead change. Lets go back to the days when it was either walk, cycle or use horses, then Steam trucks were invented, then we saw the ICE cars slowly catching on. Was there at that time any forced adoption of mechanical transport? No, it was consumer driven and slowly the manufacturers improved their product, both in terms of efficiency and safety. Lets come up to date a bit more and then we begin to see diesel being used as a fuel for trucks, and a few cars along the way. Then we had a massive coercion by governments to adopt diesel as the fuel of choice, it was the saviour of the human race, then they were told that it was not the magic bullet that they had believed it was and they have replaced that with the EV, history repeating itself all over again?

Whoa, I never said I was OK with the mining, you're taking what I said and like many others, putting your own spin on what I said or did not say. What I said was that EV's had put an increased demand for more Cobalt, the rest is your spin. I'm not anti EV at all, what I'm anti is the forced uptake of the technology before we have learned how to handle the many negatives that also come along with it, to add to the other negatives which we already have.

On that score as to when the new BEV breaks even, when the old ICE vehicle it was purchased to replace might well have been a classic car which only tend to be driven for around 2 to 3,000 miles a year, and indeed many other older cars are indeed only used for a few short trips, as many people I know would rather use public transport for their commuting to work etc as many places now have limited parking and public parking is so expensive. So in essence unless you are using the car a lot for work purposes, and doing a good few miles in it, the actual differences may not that much at all.

Well no, the point that everyone seems to be missing (and yes, I understand that LFP batteries don't use Cobalt) is that the EV's are actually increasing the demand for Cobalt, not reducing it. Yes it will still be required for all the other things that it was before. There will be a heavy demand for all kinds of oil based products for many years to come so that demand for Cobalt is not going to go away and die. So those videos and arguments about EV's being the large driving force in the increased demand for Cobalt and the damage that the mining of it is causing, is like it or not a reality I'm afraid and its about time it was accepted as being factual and not used as a counter argument against ICE vehicles. Which, again, like it it or not have been steadily getting better over the years, more efficient in extracting far more energy from the Dino juice, so a gallon gets you considerably more miles today, then it did before, less C02 and other pollutants as well and that trend was all set to continue.

Yes, but only dirty cars if the old car was scrapped and crushed in order to get the grant. An older car if its still working OK, is considerably cleaner to keep running than it is to buy a new one with all the massive footprint to make it.

@lol-lol I always think its odd just how similar the S type in appearance to the Rover 75 which is it self supposed to be a class leader for ride comfort. If they had been that good when part of BMC and British Leyland, then may be we might still have a motor industry. We used to be world leaders, but like always, we got complacent, workers got lazier and management got ever more greedy and the rest is history.

It would be interesting to see if those 8 chargers could actually sustain 8 cars even charging at 100kW, let alone 8 x 150kW.

If they were, I'd join you, I've always loved jags, especially the XJ series. I used to drive my old bosses one years ago, beautiful cars.

That peeling chrome is also flipping sharp, I had the same thing happened on part of my gear lever and I often cut myself on it.

Yes, just as MG and others still use Lithium Ion batteries, (Cobalt), so as per my original post, you are not being open minded and are prepared to condemn that video and its contents based a thumbnail, which is not out of date, but you happy to promote and watch Electric Viking videos, when he is largely talking about info coming manufacturer's with vested interests, is he not getting revenue from that then? You have just once again shown the points I mentioned earlier and can only really see things from your view point while there are millions who cannot enjoy the benefits that you do, a case I'm alright jack.

As mentioned, NMC batteries are still being used and made. 😞

Interestingly it seems that LFP batteries are actually worse for the environment than NMC batteries, or so it would seem if you can believe the information put out by the Cobalt Institute In-Use EV Battery LCA - Cobalt Institute. Their report is attached. Now, I'm no expert in these matters but I'm savvy enough to understand not to attach too much weight to any information coming from any party that has a vested interest in a certain outcome and that is a major problem these days as most reports are produced by such people. If they don't have the expertise themselves, they fund universities etc to come up with the reports for them. It always pays to whenever possible to follow the money trail and they will often take great lengths to distance themselves from it, but often links within links that lead right back to the people with the vested interest in a certain out come. This is why I don't take anything at face value, eg, yesterday Electric Car-Nage put out a YouTube video of a car transporter in America that had 6 Teslas on it being delivered on the trailer, that caught fire. TV channels videos show that the main fire was concentrated on the car above the semi trucks cab, which was also on fire. So was the fire started in the cab and spread to the Tesla? I don't know. CI-Battery-LCA-Report-V5-2.pdf

Once again, I fully acknowledge what you are saying, but I was asking specifically about the various points raised in Mark McCann's video, which you never watched and yet still commented on, so that is demonstrating the typical Ostrich principle of head in sand, blow you jack, I'm alright principles that many YouTubers accuse the EV evangelists of doing, and just creating arguments which are completely unnecessary because they have already formulated their opinions and have closed their minds to anything that pose a threat to their viewpoints. By not actually watching the video and paying attention to the points that Mark is raising, you are just adding more fuel to those arguments and proving them right, surely you must understand that? You are as good as saying that nobody else is right or has any valid points, you're the only one who has it correct! Is that the message that you wish to convey to the world?

Thanks for your honesty, but the fact is that not all EV cars are using LFP, are they, the ones you use maybe, but not all, and that was only one small part of the information contained within that video. It is also true that Cobalt is used in steel making and other things, so while the Cobalt aspect may be less indicative of EV's, it is still not out of the frame and still needs exposing for the other uses that force the kind of things exposed in the video. There is so much more in that video that also affects so many people, so why bother to make a comment about something based on a single snapshot, it just makes everything else, valueless. Its like your video of the Xpeng P7, actually watching video, it is just Electric Viking talking about it, and he is only going on what info he can glean from what maker claims, he was not there and actually witnessed the event, and the claim that the cars did not overhead etc, breakdown etc cannot be verified. If that feat actually did happen, it could not be repeated in the wild as it needed to have a massive power supply and charger for instance, lets all see these things demonstrated on the world stage in front of the public and world press as witnesses. He makes claims about LeMans 24Hr ICE cars nearly all breakdown and overhead during the endurance race, which again is not strictly true. The entrants would not bother entering the cars if they had not been thoroughly tested before hand and they thus had a high degree of confidence that they would last. At least I do tend to watch the videos that people post, before making comments, its being open minded enough to be put in a position where maybe I could learn something new, but sadly, the only thing I often learn is I can see who some people call some EV owners/drivers evangelists, because they are not in the slightest little bit open minded.