Graham Butcher

Exactly, it is no hassle to just pull into almost any garage forecourt, you don't need to have any special app or mapping program to plan your route and unless your using motorway services, you can pretty much rely on the price within a penny or two a litre regardless of what brand of fuel is on offer, and in just a few minutes be back on the road again and in almost every garage you can if you wish, pay using good old-fashioned cash.

If they can, as many of the parts and materials are sourced from China, so they are bound to retaliate and shove their prices up.

All true, but sadly not all cars do that.

And so would I, but then you and I are not the typical car buying public are we, we know what makes them tick and are capable of doing things, most cannot even change a flat wheel.

But a FMDSH does show that the car has had regular servicing and give the pending new buyer of the car a level of confidence that would not be there if the car was serviced on a DIY basis.

Because there is no dependant verification that you as the DIYer actually did anything, but a dealers stamp in the service handbook does say that the car has been serviced and this can be further backed up by keeping the detailed invoice that the dealer provides at the time, that was correct up until main dealers went with digital service history. However even with digital history, provided you give any dealer the cars VIN details, they can print you out a detailed history for the car. If you don't use a main dealer then the indie garage should be giving you a detailed invoice detailing the things done to your car and showing all the relevant details, mileage, date, registration number etc and providing you keep this safe, it forms the service history for your car. How are you going to be able to do that as a DIY job? Just for the record, I too used to do all of my own maintenance years ago but then the cars were also far simpler then, they had no canbus system with modules talking to each other and sealed units etc and the cars were what would be considered to be bangers by todays standards and had extremely low values so nobody was looking service history on cars rapidly approaching the end of their life. This Pathé News short film shows BMC cars on German Autobahns undergoing destruction tests on engines and the tests were set to be 20,000 miles or 3 to 4 years of normal driving, they passed this test so they extended them to 25,000 miles, and they still passed, but the point is that the cars of that era were never expected to last long and so as they approached those kinds of mileages, their value dropped faster than a falling stone.

As a person who actually has a black box fitted, it strikes me that the odd bit of acceleration or hard braking does not score against you, as there will always be some circumstances beyond your control. They would act if the box records frequent events which would suggest that you are driving in an inconsiderate and unsafe fashion. The only thing my black box is suggesting to me is that I should consider not driving at night, as it thinks drivers are more likely to crash at night than daytimes. That is impossible to avoid night driving in the winter when taking and collecting people from their place of work because mornings and evenings it is dark.

It strikes me that this is being driven by a desire to control us rather than any actual safety aspects. There are so many ways that this could go and be implemented and so many ways that the system can fail in a catastrophic fashion that has the real potential to seriously injure or kill more people than it can save. Will it be an interactive system or a passive one that makers will adopt, if interactive, how will it be enacted, will it suddenly cut power until the car complies with the new limit on that stretch of road, will flash brake lights as a warning to older cars behind that don't have the system to try and prevent them running into the car in front when it suddenly drops speed at a rate of knots in order to comply with the speed limit?

Actually, the article seems to indicate that it would be just a warning. However, there is always the chance that it could at some point in time actually be used to set the maximum speed the car could go to and if that were to the case, it could potentially lead to some nasty accidents.

For the record, I actually called him out on this both in my post which I used as an example, as you always wanted evidence to back up my claims, so I gave you that evidence. And for the record, I also went into his comment section of his channel on that video and called him out on the bogus information he was spreading. He has not replied, I wonder why??

@wyx087 you know perfectly well why I posted that video by Dave Takes It On, he is 100% pro EV which I don't have a problem with, but I do have a problem when people have a selective memory / reaction about things. If a YouTuber or anyone else posts anything about EV which you and/or anyone else disagrees with, then you all jump up and start shouting that it is misinformation, but when one of your own fellow EV enthusiasts starts to spread misinformation then that's considered to be OK? Really? In fact he has just released yet another video just 5 hours ago where he even doubles down on that same misinformation in a video where he is talking about the various EV battery options and their expected lifespan among other things. Now will you actively call him out for the misleading information that he is putting out there? I seriously doubt that. He is also talking about the fire risk associated with EV's and comparing the data with that for ICE and is even calling a ICE fuel tank a bomb FFS. Nobody I know is saying that EVs catch fire more than ICE, plainly stupid to say that when ICE vastly out number the numbers of EVs on the road and have been around for many years and many of the ICE cars that catch fire are considerably older than the oldest EV car and is therefore more likely to be developing faults which could result in a fire. What people are saying and this is also all the world's fire brigades is when the batteries go into thermal runaway they pose a much greater risk with all the toxic fumes and also the huge amount of toxic water that is just allowed to soak into the ground as there is no way to contain it and also the fact that Lithium-ion fires are really difficult to extinguish whereas fossil fuel fires are much easier and quicker to deal with, and yet I have not heard a pro EV YouTuber actually admit this very simple fact. Am I the only person who can see the problems and admit that they exist on both ICE and EV cars, but one is still causing major issues in regard to safety if things go wrong while the other we have decades of experience and know just what to do? Geez.

@Stonekeeper I also seem to recall that there have been incidents where the brakes have become seized due to the excessive use of aggressive regen braking, meaning that the brakes are not used, thus are less than ideal in an emergency.

I used to have the car that this is based on, the Isetta 250 and just as Johnny says, there is plenty of legroom, and I'm 6ft 4". I used it to go to and from work every day, but it never had the boot space as that was occupied by the single cylinder petrol engine and fuel tank. I really enjoyed that car at the time.

Ok, I don't share anything that I know to be false, just because a person has a different point of view to you, does not automatically make it false. These points don't really make any difference to the average person who buys a new car, most will be only be planning to keep the car for maybe 1, 2 or 3 years and then trading it in for a newer model as they don't want any hassle with maintenance costs and possible breakdowns. Most new cars on the road these days, at least here in the UK, is a company car, and they get changed regularly at 3 years. Company cars are on a lease contract and all servicing is done as part of that lease deal or, the manufacturer includes 3 years servicing as part of their deal, so in most cases the true cost of servicing is being bourne by the person who buys the car second-hand.

I think your right here, if they made electric cars so the consumer had a free choice back then, then by now we would have had many more years of experience under our belts and many of the current issues with EV's would have been resolved and there would be many more of them on the road and then governments desire to decarbonise would better received by the public.

I think that you sum it up nicely there, for many people and also for me, as I would hope that comes across that I'm not anti EV, despite the fact that I mention the hazard about fire risk with them, as it really is a risk that has yet to be fully addressed in my opinion. We have had many decades to get to grips with fossil fuels and the hazards that they present, we are still in the steep learning curve when it comes to EV's and it seems to me, that it is the older generation who are more hesitant at making that switch from ICE to EV currently. The younger generation are happy to make that switch now.

Correct, that is what a speed limiter does, but what if the one in your car does not get the correct signal or misses out on a speed limit road sign or miss reads a sign and your driving along at say 70mph and the speed limit changes to say 50mph which does on a motorway when road works are happening, but your system reacts as if it is a 30mph and you car suddenly responds and cuts power until you reach 30mph and then someone else, who got the right message of 50mph, ploughs into the back of you?

@Ootohere yes, you made the point before, but he has also made the point that he did not know about his Porsche navigation system would direct him to these chargers, he was using Waze, and also such chargers were not available on all of his trips. But things are slowly improving all the time and improvements in the charging network still need to move on at a pace if the government want to their deadline.

This is a point made by the McMaster that many people at the time, I seem to recall, slated him for pointing out precisely the same thing.

That was a good balanced video, I thought.

When I share things, I don't just automatically share things I agree with, but I try and share good and bad things so anyone reading this thread can then form a more balanced opinion, hence why I also posted that video of the 430,000 mile Tesla, or have you already forgot that I posted that? Equally there are also things that could go wrong and sometimes do go wrong with EVs like broken springs or wheel bearings and even faulty electronic control modules, inverters, chargers etc, and even damaged/worn bearings in the drive motor which would almost certainly totally wreck the entire drive assembly as any coming together of the rotor and the stator would cause a catastrophic and very expensive failure to put right. Not forgetting that you still have oil in the reduction drives etc on an EV which also require servicing and changing at set periods of time. So in essence, EVs suffer from mechanical wear and tear just like their ICE counterparts and also all suffer the dreaded tin worm disease. In reality however, unless you are one of the very few people who actually buy a car and plan to keep long term, then you are hardly likely to actually experience such problems and if anything goes wrong, then there is a good chance of the warranty covering it. For the majority of private owners, then there is good chance of the car being scrapped for other reasons such as structural damage from rust or RTA's before many major failures occur. When I said supercharging, I was not simply referring to the Tesla supercharging but the really fast 150kw+ CCS chargers so you could top up in as shorter timescale as possible so those odd longer trips don't have to be any longer than they need to be and thus minimise any inconvenience over a ICE car which can fully "recharged" in about 5 minutes or less, including a quick comfort break for a pee. Why can't all chargers just accept a debit/credit card and have reasonable costs as well, in the same vein as liquid fuel pumps and if you have a loyalty card that could be scanned at the same time if the charger is one that accepts such cards. There should not be the need to carry loads of different account RFID cards in order to get recharged.

If @Gaz V70 is a D3 than it will do with ease on decent journeys, around 69 mpg so his 94-mile trip would be something like 10p per mile so costing more like £9.40 which would be cheaper than in an EV of similar size if relying on public chargers. You also give it what it costs if home charging, which we all agree is not available to a large slice of the population. I think that we would agree that if anyone was looking to buy a car right now, and a new one at that, and you have the capability to charge at home then an EV can seem to quite an attractive option in terms of running costs, provided the car you were looking at buying had the capability of supercharging if you needed it on longer trips, especially if the driver and any passengers are like you and need comfort breaks at regular intervals. Personally, I don't need comfort breaks that often although, I certainly would need one long before my car did 🤣 thats for sure.

Equally there is a whole load of guff sprouted about ICE by EV owners, for instance Dave Takes It On, says that ICE cars are having engines failures after 100k miles and after about 150k catastrophic engine failure is on the cards, as he claims in this video. So how would Dave explain this Audi A4 with 540,000 miles on the clock? Yes the car does have some faults, like a broken coil spring, but then again so would almost any other car of that mileage, I hear that Tesla's are renowned for broken springs?

It could maybe be one of those duff far eastern cards which is pretending to be a better card than it really is. Or on the other hand, it could a problem with your radio, some things will only accept cards of a maximum size. I have across that with dash cans and also some cameras will lock up if you try to use a bigger card.

Just found this video of a Tesla that has done 430,000 and is still on its original battery! I had to play this twice to make sure, but he claims to be getting free Tesla Supercharging as long as he has the cars for and that makes a huge impact on the overall cost of buying and running of the cars, I bet Tesla are no longer running that particular scheme. The fact that there does not seem to be any Tesla owners coming forward to dismiss the claims that the batteries do die to a large extent after a few years, despite all the claims that the batteries do degrade, makes this claim seem too good to be true or just a lucky coincidence, we shall find out a bit more over the coming weeks.