Graham Butcher

Apparently EV sales are up, or are they? The truth is out there, somewhere.

I also think it is more to do with the battery failing, I had the start engine manually message come up a few months ago, which appeared following the engine stopping while sitting in a traffic jam with the stop/start. The message appeared when the car attempted to restart. Replacing the battery cured the problem. The battery was tested and it was duff.

@Ootohere haha, all true though every used car was new once. You have a point there with the plastics, we use far too much plastic in cars today, a fire in one regardless of its type normally results in its total loss because of the high level of plastics in them.

What, you're prepared to make a claim that we will be having EVs still in use in another 60 to 100 years time? That I find hard to accept, the electronics will have toasted themselves before they even reach 20 years old, and they will not be obtainable. Why do I say that the electronics will fail, because they are now well known for having a relatively short life, a tantalum capacitor can suddenly decide to kake its pants, and blow its head off in a small ball of flame and take with it one or more dedicated custom IC's that are no longer being made as they are customised to a particular car / hardware and the only answer is then going to be trying to find a second-hand unit that still will not work as the parts are programmed specifically for each car etc. This is just as true for many of the current crop of ICE new cars.

Thanks for posting, there can be no denying that there was were enough EVs caught up in the fire that raised the temperature to a significant level to melt steel causing the structure to collapse and subsequent demolition of the entire car park.

@lol-lolI think you paint a far too simplistic a picture of the whole EV v ICE. EVs are only cheaper to run if you can manage charge at home or at the workplace. Look at the vast amounts of real estate required to build a charging hub, that is not cheap, given the amount of time that it takes to charge an EV, the operators of the hubs need to make a lot of money in order purchase/lease the land and the expense of building the hub, getting the grid connection etc also mega expensive. I'm afraid I don't share your view, yes EVs do have a place in overall mix but solely, no, just what else will be there I don't have a crystal ball, but I'm fairly sure that EVs will not be the lions share of vehicles on the road just as diesel isn't today, despite that was once the policy of the UK government and was pushed down people's throats in much the same fashion as EVs are now.

I think predicting the end of fossil fuels is a bit to early in my view. Yes no doubt there will come a time when fossil fuel will cease to be extracted, there cannot be an endless supply of it at the rate we are using it, the end is a certainty at some point. But will replace it is the question, could be electric, or some other fuel, but I honestly cannot see the progression of electric cars with the current chemistry of the batteries with all the inherent problems they have, even Norway is now beginning to understand that and are supposed to be looking banning the certain locations.

I seriously doubt that somehow. I find it somewhat strange that we are attaching so much importance that he is almost alone in saying that China will anywhere near those figures that are being claimed. Please remember that this may well propaganda that the Chinese government want everybody to believe, it is a very secretive country. Meanwhile, there are plenty of other people around who are claiming that the reality is the reverse with loads of EV fires daily and power outages with very long queues for charging stations with many EV owners allegedly saying that they regret buying an electric car and are going back to petrol powered cars. Like always, time will be decider on if this true or not.

Oh yes, my bad, I forgot your car is a 57 plate, they started switching over to electric in 2012/13.

I think that your 62mpg is not a fluke because of a tailwind, I have had 67mpg sometimes if the conditions are right, just need to be relaxed in your driving style with very gentle right foot and let the engine torque waft you along. My son has purchased himself a 3-year-old Audi A5 special edition and went from Chelmsford upto Old Trafford and back yesterday on a single tank of diesel, 40 litres his tank holds and in his old Ford Focus diesel he always used a full tank of 60 litres so his A5 averaged 59mpg. Needless to say he is very pleased with that and his focus was manual and the A5 is DSG and 2 litre with twin turbos. Are you sure you PAS is hydraulic, I think it possibly electric as is mine and so have all the Superbs and Passats before them, so I doubt yours is any different. I think it is normal as well for your brakes to have no residual vacuum without the engine running.

Could still be worth trying, you seem to have had a good attempt at a doing a regeneration of the DPF with no joy, and it would be far cheaper of fitting a new DPF. Are you sure it even has a DPF fitted, how old is the car?

It might be worthwhile removing the throttle body and giving it a good cleaning and checking the pipes/hoses are not clogged up. I suspect that you perhaps might do a lot of short local trips which could result in the throttle body becoming clogged. Does the engine idle nice and smoothly, or is it a bit rough at all? I had this issue on my last Superb and after cleaning it was like a new car and was also far more responsive and fun to drive.

Totally agree with this point of view, I recall that when TFL hired UCL to do a study into what benefits expanding the LEZ into the ULEZ and spreading it to cover all points with in the M25, the report from UCL was that there would be no or no discernable benefits and that the mayor's office had to put pressure on UCL to alter the wording of their report to make it more ambiguous. Presumably because, as it was, their original report was too easy for the average person to read it and decide that the proposed scheme was just a way of plugging massive gaps in their funding.

The ZX Spectrum was assembled by Timex in Dundee, was it not?. However, I really don't think that Scotland can make the claim that they started the Computer Gaming scene, as it was not the only computer around at the time. The was the BBC Micro, Commodore Vic and C64 as well and social media really wasn't around unless you count the Blackberry Messenger, but there is no denying that the Spectrum did spawn a huge programming movement here in the whole of the UK.

This incident sure looks nasty, was it the batteries or is there more to this, we will have to wait for further info.

Things are getting bad for Jaguar, besides the awful rebranding debacle.

Here is a genuine tale of woe with a 2-year-old Ionic 5, spoiler alert, it also mentions several duff chargers.

This is a classic example of why it is so important to try and establish where these scientific reports and YouTube channels etc receive their funding from, and you can get a pretty good idea from seeing who these are associated with as they will a vested interest in the "right" result. Remember, "Follow the Money" and "He who pays the piper calls the Tune"

No surprises there that council /public funded ones are the worst ones at repairing them even despite there being regulations and requirements, who is going to challenge them, when they make the rules themselves? Back in 1990 when the Poll Tax riots were taking place which actually did manage to bring about change to the tax situation, social media was almost non-existent and not many people had access to the hardware or software then so mass public demonstrations which often ended up as riots were the only way to get the full extent of public opinion known. Sure, there were loads of people writing letters of complaints to the respective authorities, but they are much easier to placate than an angry mob on your door, which would you personally prefer to see, more riots or massive social media peaceful upraising making it clear that these peoples continued tenure in office really depends on being re-elected at the next elections as opposed to massive public gatherings which get quickly out of hand and become full-blown riots with all the injuries and property damage that results from it?

If people just give up and don't voice their objections then yes, there will be countless others schemes introduced. Think about it, when everyone starts to switch over to EVs, the revenue from them will drop away. Do you think that will just accept that, or will they lower the threshold to include EVs with their tyre emissions etc? What about the long issue of the non working chargers at Edinburgh Airport and others you keep going on about @Ootohere, are they fixed yet? Maybe if there was more users around were also voiced their views they might get fixed? I expect the reason for them not being fixed is that are not profitable for them so they are tardy about getting them fixed, cheaper to leave them not working. It's about the money.

To highlight the point I made about Port Talbot and the docks and Tata Steel plant and the emissions coming from it, you can see from this screenshot taken just a couple of minutes ago the figures are all in the green today indicating no risk of respiratory or other problems from the local air at the moment. By a combination of the air quality website maps when zoomed in and Google Earth / Google Maps in a lot of cases it is possible to locate these monitoring stations as they are often hidden in plain sight as these screenshots show, starting from the top of the map, location 1 to the bottom, in a school compound by the M4. I have indicated where I think it is located, can't be 100% as I can't get close enough to get a view from street level as there is high screening wall between it and the M4.

To highlight a point, you made, this video appears to back that up.

Thats my thoughts as well, I think vehicles are being scapegoated for other reasons. You can use the website itself and interrogate those areas that you mention by looking for them on the interactive map and pausing the mouse over their locations and the map will present a rolling 12 month record for each of the sections monitored so you can look at a summer record for each item, and it will give you an idea of what it would look like.

EV's should be a personal lifestyle choice IMO at this stage of the game, especially while there are still so many problems to be resolved to enable everyone to really consider an EV as a truly viable option to having an ICE. Whatever air quality improvements we make here, and it is a proven fact that our air is far superior to most other countries, including parts of Europe, is not going to make a single iota of difference to the overall situation. It really just down to politicians playing out their ideas of looking great on the world stage while ignoring the simple facts that our people will suffer as a result of the madness that they are creating. Look at the sheer amount of real estate these hubs take up, simply because they need to space to accommodate the cars while charging, something is not required with ICE, and all that concrete etc is just adding to the flooding risk.

Clearly not bothered about people using the slippery surface they have created for their users. Much cheapness to be had I expect that not buying antislip treatment, until someone has accident and sues them.