Graham Butcher

Maybe it I didn't make my point clear enough, ignore the part about my feet etc, that is not relevant to private hire/taxi cars, the sheer size was the actual point I was drawing attention too (badly it seems). I don't know about France, but here in the UK, there used to be a minimum size standard for cars used for carrying fare paying passengers and have not seen anything smaller than a Škoda Octavia being used for that role, the Yaris is comparable to a Skoda Citigo, considerably smaller than a Octavia.

I'm just wondering at this point if you actually watched the second video at all? If you did, had you already decided that the YouTuber was just a "click batting loon" and therefore a just another Youtube maligned fantasy piece of crap? I admit that I was at first puzzled but when he played the video clip that he received, I began to have my suspicions about a possible greenwashing attempt as I didn't think it was possible to fake that 2nd video clip. So with that in mind I did my due diligence and after reading the news article, looked it up on both Google Earth and Google Maps. The fire was at No.7 Endeavour Place and the house had recently been built, as the aerial view and street level view clearly demonstrates. The 2 screen grabs here show one taken from Google Maps and clearly shows, same power pole to the left of the driveway, the same house and the garage and hedges even down to the same tree/shrub growing adjacent to the house, which to my mind, which is always an inquisitive one, so the logical conclusion has to be that this is a cover up, not only by the local media but also the fire dept and is clearly not as Mr Ed Hopping is claiming it to be, or at least how he is quoted in the press. Has your opinion on this now changed as a result of just a little bit of digging? I learnt a long time ago to never take everything at face value that it is as reported, there is usually a deviation and that can and so often does expose a can of worms, good or bad. Sometimes, things are just how they are presented on YouTube, these presenters can sometimes cut through all the smoke and mirrors and expose the real truth.

Just found this new video that has done some actual tests on after market lamps v OEM the results might surprise you.

If proof that main stream media are actually feeding us a load of BS designed to fit the narrative that TPTB around the world, then this might well be that proof. Did anybody actually know or were aware of the 2 houses that were destroyed by fire in New Zealand, this week? The eyewitness reports it was started by a Hybrid car being charged in the garage. Then a couple of days later, the media tried to divert the blame from the car to claiming that the fire did not start in the garage, the car was not the cause and the car was not even in the garage at the time and the fire started at the rear of the house, as claimed by the fire dept. This second video, shot by a neighbour, completely destroys that theory and clearly shows that there is a definite cover-up for fires that were either caused, or believed to have been caused by an electric car. This narrative was rushed out to distract public attention from electric cars being a risk. If electric cars are actually as safe as the authorities around the world are claiming, then why is this particular fire clearly being green washed? Oh, and please, don't shoot the messenger, I'm just asking that's all.

Following on, the taxi theme briefly, today I had to take SIL's Toyota Yaris to get her tyre replaced for her (she was at work in London), after she ran into a pothole last night and split the side wall on the O/S front I had to inflate a bit first, I had to be a real contortionist to squeeze myself into the driver's seat. The steering wheel height and reach was not sufficient to allow me to get my leg under it, I had push the seat all the way back and lower it to the floor and sort of slide myself sidewise into the car and still struggled to get my leg upright enough to be able to drive it. Totally impossible to rest me left foot anywhere without fouling the clutch pedal, so had to hover my foot above the clutch. So how on earth they could use one as a private hire car baffles me. I also saw a Toyota C-HR today as registered taxi in the city, WTF 😬 Anyway, I was never so glad to back into my Superb then I was after that experience in the Yaris, noisy, cramped, uncomfortable and so unrefined and the radio was total crap. Makes you appreciate the better refinement on comfort of the Skoda's after that, it felt like I was riding on an air cushion, driving mine, chalk and cheese.

I think I'll just leave this here and wish everyone a very happy Christmas.

When I was young and skinny as a rake, I did indeed drive a few minis and your right, there was a lot of leg room in the front due to the dash unlike todays cars which extend into the car. Also the mini's steering wheel had less of a rake on them as the column was almost upright IIRC.

I expect the taxi's are going smaller then usual as the new cars like Superb's are either petrol or petrol PHEV, diesels are either ceased production or are very limited supply these days. I suspect that my car was a private hire car for the last year and half prior to me buying it, as it did 120,000 miles in that time and I think it was sold while it still retained some reasonable value.

Correct, I think all cars now have side impact beams inside their doors.

The mini is clearly the car that fits you the best, I doubt I'd fit in one though being tall and a 5xl with size 15 clown feet 😂 personally, I like you view a car as transport and as long the inside is pleasant, I don't care about the outside, I can't see it from the drivers seat 😉

Nor me either, it kind of reminds me of this ugly looking car as well.

Haha, I expect that sound effect might scare the **** out of them On a more serious note however, just because you wouldn't disable your sounds, does not mean that other wouldn't, because they would just to revel in the hushed travel that EV provides.

There is a reason for them being a little larger than your mini as they are both more comfortable and safer if you are spending a large part of your day behind the wheel as part of your daily job or doing longer journeys on a regular basis, of course, just plain and simple you need the extra space to accommodate the driver purely on safety grounds only. A comfortable driver is a lot safer one than one who is so cramped for space that they cannot operate the controls safely. I don't call that particular Hyundai a big car at all, in fact cars like that I consider to be a liability for any passengers in the back as there is hardly any crumple zone left.

I don't think you're wrong, I was just curious after someone said it was not hereditary, I wondered if it was possible being exposed to loud noises at some time in the past might explain it.

Tesla making wildly inaccurate claims? Oh dear 🤥 This video is new today.

How about this horror story? This was uploaded to YouTube 4 days ago.

Since those ads were on TV about the increased chances of surviving a accident at 30 rather than 40mph, there has been a great deal of work done in designing pedestrian injury mitigation systems in the 14 years since then and cars now have things like bonnet hinges/catches and crumble zones etc that cushion any pedestrian impact thus making fatalities at 30mph far less likely anyway. More and more cars these days come with emergency braking systems to detect a pending crash before it happens and apply maximum braking to reduce and possibly prevent any impact from actually happening in the first instance, so 20mph zones are not strictly required these days and of course in parallel to these advanced measures, they have greatly improved braking systems/tyre technology so actual stopping distances have been reduced. As to EV's that emit noses, or as you say "sing," that's all well and good but in reality what is the point if you can actually override the sound system and shut it off anyway? As to the aftermarket add-on digital GPS speedo's, some cars such as the Mk3 Superbs come with both analogue and digital speedo's as standard, but the digital one is not GPS, it uses the same system as the analogue and so shows faster readings so would be inherently safer than a GPS system as they are always 2 to 3 mph slower than a GPS digital, so when my analogue shows 30mph, the GPS units are reading 27/28mph with the last digit flipping between the 7 and 8, meaning it is probably doing around 27.5mph. This percentage error (7%) reading continues throughout the range, so an indicated speed of 40mph is in fact closer to 37mph and thus, 60 becomes 55mph. So if EV cars use GPS signals for their speedos, then they are inherently more dangerous to pedestrians than ICE, ironically, especially if any sounds (singing) can be turned off.

But it has already been said, in truth the only parameters that really matter are the type of battery, AGM or EFB and the AH rating. As long as they have been inputted correctly then the battery will charge correctly.

Yes, I remember when I was given a C class as temporary hire car while company was being ordered. It came with no owners manual and the person who delivered the car, managed to leave the speed limiter switched on and never explained how the system worked. I had to be a quite a bit of head scratching that day to discover what the problem was and how to disable it. Once I had learned about, I used that to keep within the limits as It is even harder to gauge your speed in a strange car.

I had the same thoughts, a seres of speed limiters, a cruise controller in reverse.

@lol-lol I do like the idea of that large digital display, but seriously, I think your way of course with that belief. I have not seen those before and I see very few people with add-on in their car adhered to the screen or anywhere else for that matter. Used to see it a lot before, with after market handsfree phone kits and satnavs, but most cars these days are coming with a built-in microphone and Bluetooth radios for pairing up to their phones, and the one thing I have seen a few times is people using their phones as a satnav with Waze, or Google Maps installed on it. Most people still rely on the cars built in analogue speedo. I use both methods, my Tom-Tom is mounted in the centre of the screen, has GPS speedo which has a very small font and is next to useless because it is so small. I also have Next base dashcam which also has a screen blanker to prevent distracting me, and then it displays GPS digital speedo, but this is located behind the rearview mirror, less than ideal for the driver use, so the main speedo is the analogue one. I do know that the analogue one is fast by a margin, and that margin increases the faster I go. I think that the big push towards a 20mph limit is more to do with the fact electric cars are so quiet that they normally cannot be heard, and rather than spend more money trying to educate children like they used to before they axed the funding, they are getting the lower limit in place now so that by the time EV's are the norm, they know that their will be more accidents with pedestrians etc, but if they occur at 20 rather than 30, that their will be fewer fatalities.

Your lucky then, most have seen increases.

I think they preprogram the battery monitor in the factory all the same because they know which battery they are fitting as standard.

A couple interesting articles I came across, not sure if the second one is an EV or not, but given the recent discussions reference insurance companies and storm damaged cars (EV) I thought it would be of interest. UK firm to convert 30 vintage Rolls-Royces into electric cars | This is Money Our car was flooded in Storm Babet: A month later, Sheila's Wheels STILL hasn't helped us: CRANE ON THE CASE | This is Money

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