dutchie01

I took thesame route. Couldnt find anything interesting in the Lexus range after the 250 and 300h and went for Volvo. ( or OVLOV as we called it in my SAAB days..) Got an XC40 and now a V60 T5. Cars are really fine. Chassis wise above par, very practical and its not a German. Buildquality is good but not as good a lexus. Materialchoice etc. Infotainment big step forward but coming from Lexus everything is... Styling great, good looks. Engine not good not bad as is the gearbox. Overall positive. I will not go for another ovlov again as the Brand does not stick to me i feel no emotional connection which i did with Lexus. But that is personal of course! In your T8 make sure you dont run it without warranty. Turbocharging, supercharging and an electric motor paired to a 4 cylinder pumping out 400hp is quite a complicated unit..

KIA/Hyundai are giving a 7 yr warranty and no need to have the car serviced at an official dealer. Been doing that for a long time. Also the other conditions seem more " easy going" . I think forcing the customers to have a service each year is where the money comes in. especially in small city cars of which Toyota sells many this is questionable as these just don't do the miles. Shopping trolleys and baby buggies for the school run. Rough numbers: Toyota on average sells 100.000 cars in the UK each year. Service prices average from 200 to 350 sterling, small or large service. Times 100k this is between 20 and 35 million pounds only for 1 yr of sold cars. Suppose people will go for this plan and lets say all cars from the last six years will come in. Then we are talking between 120 and 210 million pounds. Those are big numbers...

It's all marketing. They know exactly what each model is costing them in warranty claims per year. In the case of Toyota/Lexus that wont be much due to reliability. New cars are likely to be serviced by main dealers until the warranty expires and then move away into local garages that will be cheaper than the dealers. By changing the warranty they hope to tie the customer/car to the dealer for 10 years which from their perspective is a great idea. 10 times contact and options to sell another car, 10 times new oil service etc. For company car drivers making miles and miles it does make sense to have an annual service but for the average motorist? My wife has a BMW 1 series and drives 10.000 km annually. The car will tell you when its time for a service which in this case is once every 2 years and not each year..... Another catch?

easy, correct! another easy one.. You talking to me?

Here's Johnny!

Iḿ The Dude full metal jacket

Imagine the ultimate Monaco humiliation. only some parking spaces in front of the hotel and guarded by the hotel porter. If your car is expensive enough he could tell you to park it outside in front for all to see. Eternal glory will be yours. However you have to hand the keys and could find that on return they drive the car up from the underground parking as a more exotic expensive car took your place!

The fiscal climate is...

I do like your Stadler or Waldorf imitation but in the real world there is much more to it. I accept that charging stations in the UK are in the build up phase like in many countries but this will change rapidly. As more BEVs will drive around the demand for chargingstations will increase. When there is money to be made private companies will step in just like what is happening now in Scandinavia and the Netherlands where Shell is installing high speed chargers in ALL of their petrolstations. BTW a friend of mine regularly drives his Tesla S from Holland to Spain without any problem. Things are changing Linas.

Or are at the office or have a sandwich at a petrol station. Most people are under the impression that you need to charge full every time which is a misunderstanding. The car will tell you what % charge is needed to reach the destination and that could be as little as 30% wich could be 10 mins. Times, they are changing.. but not everyone is ready for it.

toyota yaris gr as a daily citroen 2cv ( nostalgic reason had 3 of them in my student days) bmw 7 series 6 cylinder from the seventies Chevrolet C10 V8 Alfa Giulia 2 ltr

that could well happen if they start to become a real threat to home manufacturers. Already lots of import duties/tariffs on other products from China

NIO is only 1 of the Chinese car manufacturers that are about to enter the EU market. China is by far the biggest car market in the world and the Chinese government is pushing for BEV's granting permissions for manufacturing etc. Volkswagen is producing in China in a joint venture EV's as well as BMW and Mercedes but we will now see Chinese cars making it this way. ( Chinese Teslas already do). www.nio.com www.lixiang.com www.byd.com www.global.geely.com https://en.xiapeng.com All these companies are not to be underestimated and financially very strong. Geely is currently the largest and most known over here owning both Volvo cars and Lotus. Lynk&Co is their next global brand. Another movement is that Chinese tech giants are getting involved in BEV manufacturing. Companies like Baidu ( Chinese google) Alibaba and Huawei are teaming up or buying vast amounts of shares in the above names. Baidu for instance is starting to build cars with Geely. The " older" ( relative in China) car manufacturers have the manufacturing skills and supply chain and the tech comes from Baidu. I also expect some manufacturers to start producing BEV platforms only and supply other manufacturers that use it for their cars. Lotus for instance is developing such a thing as we speak. In short the automotive landscape is changing at a dizzying pace and China will claim a strong role in the Global market soon. Where does that leave traditional dinosaurs like GM, Ford, Fiat etc? time will tell.

The used price of EVś can be a surprise as well. Currently very very strong but Unlike a fossil car an EV is basically a driving computer with battery. And i see comparisons between these products. Remember the first 64mb desktops? everybody bought one until.. the 128mb came out making the 64 basically worthless. 2 things in EV land at the moment. Battery capacity ( and range) and charging capacity. Both are improved with every model hitting the market. Charging currently possible with 800 volts and avarage batterycapacity sits around 80kw. Next up will be 100kw and 1000 km range and so on. Just look at the BMW i3 and compare this with the latest competitors from korea etc. China is also entering the market so the challenge will be to keep "old" models up to date. If this fails i am not so sure of second hand values.

There are many different types of cyclists. Children peddling about , people riding old slow bikes going to the butcher, and so on. All relatively slow and predictable. And then there are the racers on racebikes wearing racy lycra gear and mostly in groups small or large. The problem is their speed and total silence. When in a car you dont expect them, all of a sudden they are there arriving at 20 mph or more and no intention to slow down as they are in a group and a certain agressive group mentality takes over. Shouting insults at everybody that stands in their way. The road is theirs. I had various interactions with gentlemen like this and none of them pleasant. I hit the brakes come to a standstill but even that is wrong as i am in their path. And they are gone before you know what happened. So yes i do understand the clarksonesque idea although i am not a fan of violence. However not all cyclists are thesame, the vast majority is just fine. I havent started about the latest craze, the speed pedelecs..

Not sure about that. If it would be realistic for a manufacturer to launch a vehicle with a 1500 mile range and half the weight it would be, as the article says, the holy grail. Pooring some billions into this will be a no brainer. The fact that has not happened yet tells me there are some big drawbacks somewhere.

Interesting article. I do not have the knowledge to judge this so maybe someone can help out . Google and Wiki tell me the technique has been in development in various countries for at least 2 decades. If the automotive world has not taken it on board there will be a reason for it i guess. Sounds too good to be true?

Any problems with oversteer John?

Talbot Tagora. Some obscure French sofa on wheels. Car was a disaster and production halted after 2 yrs. Nobody wanted one

innocenti

I have posted this before but it really is tailor made to this thread. Youtube and look for How the Dutch got their cycle paths 6 minute clip so not too long

Shell is rolling out 175kw chargers in all petrolstations also in innercities in Holland. I guess it will be a matter of time..

Just for the sake of discussion, suppose you have a BEV with a realistic mileage of 260 from a full battery and the average total miles you drive is around 300 miles per two weeks is there still need to charge it at home? You just plug it in at a high speed charger wait 20/30 mins while shopping and thatś it done for another week and a half. It seems to me that with increasing charging speeds from both cars and chargers homecharging could well be irrelevant?