Linas.P

Don't forget taxing corporations their fair share of taxes. As I have said - only taxing apple, facebook, amazon and microsoft would bring all the lost revenue from VED/Duty. The VED and duty should priced appropriately to only fund the road infrastructure and this would already have huge benefit for society, because the society as a whole benefits from good roads, but only drivers would pay. So even if we reduce VED and Duty 5 times, it would still be good enough. General coffers should be paid by general taxation. It is not like drivers use NHS or schools more. And for that reason I think the fairest tax would be to tax corporations. Employees already pay PAYE and rarely one escapes it, the only group which isn't contributing is the large multinational corps all worth billions and making billions out of us. So it is just about time they pay-up for everything they benefit from in this country - education, healthcare, infrastructure etc. The only reason they making those billions is because they work in the country which is sorted out and good place to do business.

As well, regardless if they counterfeited or non-brand, the question is longevity. Mine where going pink and one started to flicker when car was 10 years old... inside I found original bulbs from factory! Then I have replaced them with Osram bulbs and paid like £56 I think... is if Osrams would have lasted at least 5 years (and I hope they last longer) that is not much money. Question is - who know is these bulbs won't fail after 1 year?

Great advise... if you could afford the mortgage... house prices are now ridiculously inflated. If I could get a mortgage then it is definitely best time to do it now (assuming bubble is not going to burst), because you right - keeping cash nowadays is ridiculous. But realistically no under-40's could afford the house without parents support...

There is some truth in it, that is what you get when you go for protectionism in the market. However, we kind of need to get things into perspective. USPS are buying trucks, not vans. US average MPG for Tucks are 6MPG, it is considered great if fleet achieve 8.5MPG and most efficient available trucks (not fleets) are at 10.5MPG. Now I don't know the answer to the question whenever they need to buy trucks to do last mile deliveries, or it would be better to do it using electric vans, or these trucks they buying meant to be used for last mile delivery (by the looks of it they are) however that is not question we traying to answer here. When we look at the fleet - USPS will be amongst the best fleets in US if they can achieve 8.4MPG average, and even their current fleet is fairly decent. If you think Europe is better, then you are mistaken - Euro IV Trucks achieve ~34.5L/100KM or 6.8MPG in Germany. Note as well, that MPG quoted is American, so that equates to 10.6 British MPG or 24L/100KM. In short - there is nothing wrong with Oskosh Trucks. Perhaps the question we should ask - does USPS needs trucks or the vans would do? So it seems outrange is here, because ecomintalist Karen in her Prius thought that 8.4MPG is horrible figure, but have not realised this is not cars we talking about and fuel economy for trucks is not the same. Don't forget as well that big 3 own a lot of European makes Fiat/Chrysler... GM and Ford has now disinvested. There is some truth car americans are easily satisfied, but that is the market... frankly being car owner in US is so much better. Yes quality of the cars is not comparable to Lexus, but they simple, last long if maintained, cheap to buy, cheap parts etc. You know when you can buy Ford Mustang 5.0 for the price of Golf in UK... then it is very different place... and I know for sure which one I would have to choose. That our governments are literally at war with motorists it doesn't mean it has to be that way. I am not saying US is perfect, but neither is EU... I think balance sits somewhere in between.

Kind of is - low rate encourages borrowing and borrowing excessively increased inflation. Do you know who benefits from inflation - billionaires who can get access to government money printer and buy real estate and public property for paper money, whilst our savings gets devaluated each year. And as Malc mentioned, banks now charge more for loans, but pays nothing for savings, so the increase in rate is simply not reflected.

I like how they always blow everything out of proportions - "high performance" cars, driver who did not care for passenger (as if passenger was abducted and there against their will), on the busy road (surely, one can't reach 100MPH on busy road). Obviously, drivers were not the smartest - racing and then filming your crime for social media... sounds like bunch of idiots. Could have simply said "driver failed to choose appropriate speed, lost control and that resulted in passenger death". Sentencing was kind of ok, bit much for my liking but not excessive. From my point of view, as Toyota driver I would have admitted to speeding, but not racing and fought for simple 3points + fine, because speed is hard to prove from video. For the driver who crashed 1 year jail probably would have been more appropriate, but in this country we hate drivers so he got 3... some like some rapist and more than drug dealers.

It will never be lowered, like fuel prices almost never go down when price of oil drops. Well they sometimes fall, but nowhere near as much as oil prices.

...and I think this last point is most important - if they are not available where we need, at our homes, then BEVs won't work overall!

More likely, you just going to find out that government allocated you the charging time for the car next Monday at 2PM... and how you get where you going today is your own problem. I mean I am sure they won't black out homes or businesses to charge the cars, and I do agree that it would be right priority... however, we need to realise that all this is not necessary at all, if government would simply have coherent plant and phased approach. Instead of having no plan and going big bag at 2030s regardless if we ready or not. Obviously, there is still possibility that when comes 2030, goverment in power will realise it is not possible to do without loosing to much votes and push the date back.

And here where BEV dream ends and real cost of driving "long rage" BEVs with large batteries meets the reality. Assuming above rates are true (and I think Steve estimation is good starting point), then charge Tesla will cost £46 for 297miles of range, which is very similar to average diesel car, but slightly better than petrol. So not at all cheap, not to even mention the time wasted on charging and finding the charger and initial higher car price. However, if taxation will be anywhere as bad as it is on petrol (59p/L) then it could cost even more (say 30p+59p+VAT) to own to recharge BEV then current ICEVs ~£76. And all that is assuming they not going to charge something stupid for KWH like some cities were reported to do (£4/KWH). Note as well, that we can disregard "what it would cost at home" - first of all, you may not be able to charge at home, secondly the tariff for car charging may be different at home as well.

If it has correct wiring harness for your model, then it will be plug an play - very easy. If not then it will require very capable electrician to figure out what should go where and modify the harness - so very very difficult.

I am sure the price will change and unlikely to be lower. Good shout on having it in writing.

Yeah LX600 looks slightly better in right environment: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/reviews/2022-lexus-lx-review/ Can't say it is much worse than Cullinan or Bentayga... I just don't like SUVs overall. However, if you envisage it as offroader on desert road, then it kind of looks right: Problem is that we as a nation in UK unnecessarily buy massive SUVs and drive them in the city, which is just silly.

Yes it will be like TV license thing, they will see that your electricity bill is rather high and send scammers in high-viz to inspect is you not charging your car "illegally". So better make sure you at least have garage with closing door and 2 massive electric heaters to show as an excuse for suspicious electricity consumtion. The funniest thing is that I said for long time that VED is unsustainable tax, because it is arbitrary, not justified and punitive. Punitive tax in essence is designed make discourage the use, but at the same time government heavily relies on this income... so they "cutting the branch they sitting on". Obviously, they used all sorts of deception and misinformation, demonising the drivers etc. to justify ever increasing this tax. However, result now society wrongly assumed ICEVs are actually bad for us and started using them less and demanding laws banning them. So as it is typical, politicians put themselves into corner by lying and now have to make laws which are counter productive (like ICEV ban). And now they worried that stealing from motorists will stop and there will be tax short fall... of course it will be. As well how funny when they say - "but by the way most of VED doesn't even go into the roads" as if that is good excuse! As well is not eve £7b, it is closer to £4bn they spend.. and even then most of it doesn't actually improves roads - £4bn is spend on transportation overall, which included thing like rail and bus subsidies.

Yeah... and I think we have seen that somewhere ohh yes Honda NSX, which was total flop! Can't agree with this. BEV great for short distance, but completely unsustainable for longer distances. As well at least in UK infrastructure just don't exist to support BEVs as default and mainstream choice. And at current rate we are about to run out of lithium by 2040s (well before we run out of dinosaur juice ~2100). This is despite us being nowhere near close enough to replace all ICEVs with BEVs, only 3% have been replaced. In short we simply don't have enough lithium to make all cars worldwide into BEVs - even ONCE! Not to mention it is unsustainable long term, because we most certainly won't be able to replace the cars once batteries in old ones dies. Besides synthetic fuels are technically renewable, hydrogen can be made with very low CO2 emissions by nuclear energy and we already waste like 40% of nuclear power, because reactors must run all the time, but there are peaks in demand, so during the time of low demand we simply wasting the energy generated. However, if we build hydrogen plant next to nuclear reactor, then any energy wasted could be used to generate basically free hydrogen, not to mention there would be no transmission and pumping losses, like it case of hydro-accumulation plants.

Yes indeed. I would say Lexus dealerships are exception - I continued to use Lexus dealer even when my car was at 12 years old and nearly 200k miles. They are actually best value for money in UK when it comes to car service and they give you free, accurate and fair inspection most of the times. When you go with service plan and especially essential care, you could get 2 years of service done for ~£400 (1 Major and 1 Minor) - I have never managed to find any chain which would offer such a good deal, and certainly nobody I would trust. When it comes to actual repairs, yes sadly Lexus prices are astronomical - you need to remember that this was once Luxury car costing £40k equivalent today, so despite it now being £2000-£4000, parts still costs like on £40k car. So what I did with overall maintenance - I would go to Lexus dealership once in 10-14k miles for service (because I was driving ~12k+ a year), they would do service and give health report e.g. Rear pads wearing thin, front disks close to minimal thickness, Tyres 3.5mm etc. And then I would do the fixing either myself or at trusty local garage where I can monitor what they do, I would get the parts myself and just pay for fitting, or fit it myself. And I would do additional oil +filter change in between - so basically after 5-7k miles. With this routine I had best of both worlds - trusty diagnostics and health report with reliable and good value service + book stamped. Cheap parts and repairs for major items. As result my car never had even a single advisory on it all the way to 193k miles * with one exception where chain network (similar to halfrauds) tried to scam me for £200 due to little hole in drop link rubber and as result failed MOT for me.

They already decided and I believe as of this year it is already mandatory to register car charger and it could be charged at different rate. So all newly intalled car chargers will now have to be metered separately and registered. I think most likely it will be that using ISA they will introduce pay per mile VED/Duty.

And that is fine, I am just "apolitical", I felt Trump was simply not suitable for the office and that is all, I don't care if he is republican or democrat. And despite Biden is not suitable for the office either, Trump is just less suitable.

That maybe scam thought... it is halfrauds we talking about. If anyone else would tell me that, then I would not question it, but this is typical halfraud up-sale tactics - "battery health is x%", but how they define "health". Happened to me as well - they said my battery health is "25% and 2 cells are short". When I said that it is their battery under warranty, so they can indeed replace it for free. Then they said it was halfrauds retail who sold it, so they can't replace it, and halrauds retail said battery is fine 😄 They found as well that my side light was blown and wanted £22 to replace it. And when I told them I have replaced them with LED lights and they can't be blown, they have removed the charge as "good will", but refused to answer whenever they changed it or not. Sure enough it was still Philips LED bulb there when I checked, so they didn't. So check the battery for sure, but stay away from halfrauds.

Most certainly... and that is the case in other countries as well.

Amuricans certainly have different taste for car style. I sort of understand it for post or military vehicles (function over style), but some of their cars are really ugly. Sorry to say, but I find ES to be distinctively amurican as well "so called loaf on the wheels", sure it isn't ugliest car, but it is distinctively non-European like GS/IS was. Current generation is best looking ES yet, but in the past they really looked horrible and in principle similar to what americans are familiar with (bloated, not sculped shapes):

I still like how ecomentalists straight away go into rage mode. So they buy new trucks which will improve MPG by 0.4 across the fleet. Now MPG being a little bit stupid measurement when it comes to averaging fleet fuel consumption, it may actually be 5% more environmentally friendly than current lot and they are made at affordable price. Potentially using EV trucks in most build-up areas and using petrol trucks in more rural areas (as you can imagine in US there is loads of remote areas to deliver to). Postal service doing what it can based on their reasonable business earnings and profit made a weighted decision to go with this, rather than going with some new ridiculous EVs which would drive their costs-up and make them unprofitable or increase the delivery costs 10 times. That is just good business sense. What ecomentalists have to say? No they not saying that maybe some vehicles could be hybrid, or diesel/hybrid or trying to understand issue at all, they have not seen the cost of EV alternative, they have not bothered to calculate the impact of costs, they like entitled 5 years old "want it NOW" - "ecomentalists and <...> have called on the EPA to block the Postal Service from moving forward with what they described as a poorly thought-out purchase that would harm communities across the country (by reducing pollution not as fast as we desire and by not significantly increasing the cost for thos communities to use the services). They asked the EPA to refer the dispute to the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which mediates disagreements between federal agencies over actions affecting the environment and public health." Biden the incompetent demented guy he is obviously went ahead with it and supported the motion... (just note I would have voted Biden over Trump if I were american, but it is typical case of choosing least bad candidate - neither was good).

What is worse... if they bring it here it would sell! Imagine being stuck in traffic with these things around.

You need to contact the seller to confirm, the unit itself is 100% compatible, but depending on your car you may need different harness. Basically they will send same unit to you anyway, but they will include different harness depending if it was Sat-Nav/non-Sat-Nav/ML/Non-ML ect. As for loss of audio quality - depends on the source. If you had ML and if you used lossless DVD audio, then going to chinese headunit replacement, there would be loss of sound quality. ML system in particular is very picky on source quality and if source is poor quality, then it just amplifies the noise. However, if you car has standard audio system (13 speaker), then it is not very picky on source quality. Secondly if you just stream the music from your phone via bluetooth, or listen to the radio, then the source quality is bad anyway and putting new headunit won't make any difference. In short - sound quality is not something you should worry about, unless you listening to lossless audio, via ML.

Yes, make sure you replace the battery, but as for not shifting to 3rd, there are only 2 possible explanation - either solenoid or solenoids doing the shifting are faulty or there is faulty connection. Cleaning solenoids may not be enough, you may actually need to replace them. I am not sure what combination of solenoids does 3rd>4th shifting, but I am sure shop can figure it out. That said I probably would go with full new set - last thing you want to to get one solenoid and fluid replaced and realising that car now won't shift to 5th>6th... requiring the work all over again.