Graham Butcher

Not disputing that there are people doing it, but that takes away the big bonus point that so many of you EV'ers rant and rave over, the ability to charge while you sleep and set off in the morning with a fresh cheap as chips (and no free lecky) charge which is a clear advantage over ICE cars, not that 5 minutes at filling station cannot cure and provide a full tank. Also, if you have declare to the insurance company that your PHEV is actually parked/stored overnight at some random charging location, will increase your premiums. These are all points that every owner of a car, regardless of its power plant also have to consider.

But that still requires the ability to park your car off the road and within reach of a available 13A socket which is a luxury that still huge amounts of people do not enjoy, and of course it takes far longer to charge on a 13A lead true?

@lol-lol Interesting as your reply is, it still does not address the question I asked does it? The Scenic is not available as an ICE car so you are not comparing apples with apples. In fact it is about as much use as me thinking a Skoda Enyaq which is an all electric car is the same as my Skoda Kodiaq when the actual dimensions are as follows: Enyaq 4649 x 1879 x 1616mm with 585 litres boot capacity. Kodiaq 4758 x 1864 x 1659mm with 2035 litres boot capacity. I suggest that you were deliberately only looking for electric cars when you selected the Scenic as your car of choice. You can only really be fair when doing a comparison when the option of both power trains is there and hence my selection of the Mercedes Benz. Your throwaway comment of the Mercedes Benz being a premium brand is not the point, the point is the buyer might be looking at a premium brand range of cars, and in that scenario is also highly unlikely to be keeping the car any longer than 3 years before buying another new model. Is that buyer going to be willing to accept a potential higher loss on their investment at the end of 3 years by opting for the electric version (given that EV residual values drop like a stone). The big difference between most ICE owners and EV owners is that EV owners generally do seem to be incapable of understanding the differences in real terms between the 2 types and they quickly turn the discussion towards other issues, such as running costs, charging while your sleeping etc. On the other hand the ICE owners tend to be a bit clued up about about both types as there will simply loads of ICE owners who would love to be able own an EV but as has been already mentioned before many people, we are currently a nation of the "haves" v the "have nots" when it comes to the ability of home charging, and thus is a REAL barrier to more ICE owners making the switch.

Not strictly true, just for a starter, the only camera on my car is the built-in one on the windscreen for lane departure function. But if they restrict its access to their own charging network, the repaired car instantly drops in value to anybody as that is one of the reasons for owning a Tesla, is the ability to charge at their large network and at their lower rates.

The thing is that it is not all about finding a cheap electric car in isolation only, the car has to be able to carry all the people you need to, also have the same level of space as its ICE equivalent and also offer the same levels of comfort etc, it is not just the running costs now is it? I just looked at the Mercedes Benz range of cars that come in both power trains and are the same exact overall dimensions etc, the difference in the on the road price is absolutely staggering, so I would like you to be 100% honest with yourself and the rest of us, to do your homework and tell us, how many miles you would to do in the electric car before you erode the massive cost difference alone. Also be 100% honest and tell how long with your current average yearly mileage, how many years it would take you to do it? The cars in question are MB GLA180 OTR price £36,230 and the MB EQA Sport+ with OTR price of £49,760, some £13,640 lower price for a car that looks very similar to each other, offers the same space, comfort and are precisely the same physical size (weight excluded) so if one fits in a given size of garage, so will the other, exactly. I know that that saving would pay for approx 5 to 6 years driving for me, and for people, they would be looking to replace the car long before that time.

With cars that have the SOS system currently that may true, but we all know that if asked or mandated to hand over the data, they will all have no option but to comply is that not correct? Currently all VW cars the SOS system is only active as far as the owner/driver is concerned for the first year of its life, after that if you wish to make use of the feature, it is like so many other things today, subscription based.

I think that is more a fact of that it will not move until the crash data is reset etc.

I see that they replaced the water pump, did they also do the cambelt as well? I hope so as they are both supposed to be done as a pair because of the amount of work needed to gain access to either.

Well we do hear of similar alleged things happening, but not proven either way, perhaps the Salvage Rebuilds videos might answer that one for us?

This is a channel that I follow and already watched this video, it will be good to see the final conclusion of this repair and just how Tesla play along with this as they will still have the final word in as much as they have the ability to allow this to proceed or shut it down with their remote access to the car, they may even be able to prevent the car from using their chargers at the very least. Great channel though, hence it is a must view one for me.

Why is it that many of you EV'ers just cannot see anything outside of the EV domain? Again my reply to your post was about your statement where you said "That's why I think pay per mile is doomed, doomed", so you sort of conveniently ignored the fact EV cars are being used as mobile spies that could be used to impart all kinds of information to to both hackers and government bodies about where your car has been and even down to what time and date, as well as your speed etc at any given point along your journey. This has tremendous implications for the driver as they can see if you were speeding, or in a certain location where you should not have been etc. There are so many reasons why they would like to have access to that data, i.e. Police would be able to see if you actually were in the vicinity of a crime or not, especially useful to them if you are suspect number 1. Also extremely useful in the event of a major RTA as they would be able to collate all the data about your driving prior to the accident and what you were doing speed wise etc at the point of the accident and could thus pinpoint the real cause of the accident. George Orwell's dystopian masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four where big brother was watching everyone and thought police would crack down on anyone not complying with the rules, well this could be about to become reality. What a better way of doing so then to create the scenario where in order to get about we all have to plug into a digital world and an electric car that has to be plugged in is a great place to start. Smart speakers already have the ability to eves-drip our conversations at home all of which are stored in huge databanks, our mobile phones track us everywhere we take our phones. The slow fading out of cash for digital transactions, Digital ID cards etc, all of which are being sold to us as a modern convenience factor, enriching our life style in order to encourage us to sort of sleep walk into the position where we give away so much personal information and control of us to others.

Oh dear, misunderstood what I said again, you smugly asked the question if there was a way that you could free fuel with diesel or petrol cars? My reply to that question showed that there was indeed a way of not only doing it, but how they ensure parity for the average user, it just needs the will to do it. At no point did I actually suggest that I was getting any free fuel.☹️

You might think that pay per mile is doomed, but I don't. I know for a fact that TFL and Mr Sadiq Khan has been recruiting people for working on PPM systems for a while now in such places as Coventry for example and have personally seen job adverts to that effect, so there are indeed already well established plans to introduce the scheme as soon as possible. Like it or not but electric cars are just ripe for such schemes as every time your car is plugged in, it has the capability of providing the authorities with your details of how far you have driven since the last charge and also a hell a lot more info can also be given up even without your knowledge such your precise location at anytime, the exact route taken (that could zap your theory about short cuts as they could actually price them out to prevent villages etc being overrun). Don't forget, there is already in place some bans on some electric cars actually being within a fixed distance from certain sensitive locations such as military airfields for example. Hence why the report states that the PPM will only be applicable in the first instance to electric vehicles because the technology already exists and is preinstalled within the vehicles software and with more and more over the air updates, you are slowly giving over complete remote control to your electric cars thus enabling any hacker or authoritative body the ability to know your cars location etc and it could also be killed at anytime with out the need to even be plugged in. Still feel the same about the future being electric and that you are being told the real truth about the emissions?

Short answer is yes, there is a way to that for diesel and petrol cars. Lets look at it this way, you have home charger of 7KW and assuming 100% efficiency and get around 4miles per Kw, that 4 x 7 = 28 miles, so that about half a gallon of free fuel for the average car, so that works out at approx £3.20 discount of however much fuel you fill you car with between 2 pm and 3 pm, simples. So you shove £20 worth of fuel in, so you actually pay during those times, £16.80 for your fuel instead of the full price of £20, so yes, the same opportunity does actually exist.

Nice, what's the cost versus a respray?

Yes, that is it, there is a thread on the Superb section, but it is so disjointed and assumes that every one reading it is very technical and can follow the flow. It needs to pulled together in coherent fashion so those who want vide their radios can do so with VCDS etc and get it all working again. Skoda should be fixing the issue when doing services etc, but their not.

Thanks, finally I have done it and all is working just fine, I can't believe how slow the actual update on the car, it takes ages to do. Next I'll update the radio station logos and then I'll see if I can find a complete step by step guide to resolving the traffic programme problem and get it functioning again.

Instructions say Fat32, so have you also had problems with the instructions before then?

@SimonB68 Thanks, that is where I sourced my update from but I missed the instructions. However I have now followed the instructions and my unit announces that it is unable to read the SD card no matter which slot I plug it into. As a test I tried loading some MP3 files onto the card to upload to the jukebox, but that also said that was not able to read the card? I wonder if the unit is fussy about certain cards. I did manage to update the maps and load MP3's onto the MK3 Superb with no problems what so ever.

The maps on mine are out of date and I'd like to update them, I have downloaded the latest maps from their portal but the instructions on how to install them are non existent on the site. I have the Columbus system fitted to mine and the download contains two directories MIB1 and MIB2 but which one do I need to install and how?

Well that is not what I would call a surge, an extra 0.5% in 5 years. I have panels on my roof and have had for years, the only one out of 20 houses to have have them, so that ties with in with the 1% figure nicely. I have no storage though would not want any either.

I suspect in that case that there is still some sort of master plan at play here.

If that was 100% true then why don't all suppliers do the same for all their customers and not just those who have an EV?? It just reeks of a marketing ploy to encourage the greater uptake of electric cars. Either way, make hay while the sun shines (see what I did there?) because those perks will be swept away away as they need to bolster the public purse as fuel duty falls away, it will be transferred to the electric cars.

Oh dear, that is precisely what they want you to believe, we shall have to wait for the real truth to be released on that one for sure, just hope I'm around to see it happen.

This only happening because of the whole push for Net Zero that you get free periods of lecky if your with the right supplier and have the ability to use it in the intended manner. I expect that if the status quo was reversed and we were driving around in electric cars, and it was discovered that electric was not as good for the environment as they thought and they wanted to get more of us back into ICE cars, then yes, free petrol/diesel would very much be on the cards. Or should I say a price cut, I mean, just how many miles of driving can you get from 1 hours free lecky, it would take just mere seconds to put that much fuel into a tank. Not only that but once they have us all driving electric, you can wave bye bye to free lecky and also all hopes of cheap motoring as they will need to replace the current fuel duty and that will be coming from the EV drivers.