Linas.P

Indeed - I agree that countryside is beautiful, I just could not agree that cycling is a mode of transportation. I love cycling but only as a leisure activity. I have similar pictures, just with the car - somehow for me it is the car which makes picture better not the bicycle. Which brings me to one partially funny story - when my bike got stolen I realised I didn't have a single picture of it and I could only upload stock ones which is not ideal. On top of that my bicycle was completely stock without any mods or accessories making recovery much more difficult. I guess that just goes to show that cycling (despite me liking it) is not important part of my life, where motoring is truly important part. I even said that in situation where I would not be able to drive to work, I would quit... working.

L-finesse design of tail-lights came in 2009. Mike - I am sorry to sound obvious, but you should not be reversing into main road from driveway, it is extremely annoying and dangerous. I know that is not exactly your question, but the best practice would be to reverse into the driveway when you park so that when you need to leave you can have front of your car forwards. That is as well compliant with highway code: Your idea of having powerful light on the back of your car may be MOT failure, so perhaps better idea is to have lights fitted near the exit of your driveway and not on your car (that is if you insist reversing out of the driveway).

1. Are you sure that is what you meant? "People believe that Tesla is not the car because it does not have ICE engine"... can somebody show me such a person? I am sure this is not about me as I am not important, but just to clarify - at least I never said that or think that way and I have never said any sane person saying it. EV cars were one of the first invented and in early 20th century were competing with ICE and steam cars head to head. The have practical issues with batteries but besides that it is just different source of power like Petrol, diesel, LPG or Hydrogen. 2. SUV topic is very simple. All manufacturers says that "market wants SUVs". Why market wants SUVs - because all manufacturers spent at least 20 years marketing them. Why did Manufacturers spend so much time marketing SUVs and not other body styles - because profit margins on SUVs are much higher. Take for example Lexus RX - it is made on Toyota K platform, same platform Camry is built on... How much Camry costs and how much Lexus RX costs? Yes RX is like double the price, but do you think it costs double for Lexus to make it? So ... why manufacturers forces us to transition to SUVs? Because they can justify higher prices and thus higher margins, whilst simply making car with larger body costs them just marginally more. 3. So why ES... Again it is quite simple - saloons are not target market because of point 2. As such Lexus wants to spend as little money as possible on supporting this market, ES is global model based on inferior platform and inferior drive-train. It is fact that IS, RC and GS being dedicated Lexus platform models simply costs more to make than ES, which is basically badge engineered Avalon. So having ES is double benefit fro Lexus - not only they benefit from economies of scale, but as well they can increase the margin yet again - selling inferior car which cost less to make for more money. In whole this story the only thing which doesn't make sense is that they still made new IS. If they would have dropped IS worldwide it would make perfect sense, now it is rather confusing why they kept making it. I could speculate maybe refresh was already in the works when decision was made and because it is actually kind of mk3.5 (more than face lift, but not entirely new model), maybe they decided to recuperate some of development expenses already made and keep it alive for another 3 years before finally killing it for good. Who knows...

welcome to 1885 mate... this may even be considered advanced for those times. And who the hell doesn't count car depreciation in the cost of the ownership?! This is the reason why I said I will never buy brand new car (unless I win lottery or somehow money is not the object). And this is not because I cannot afford it, but simply because it is complete waste of money. Buying say 3 years old car will always save 30-60% of the costs - more expensive luxury cars looses the cost far quicker than cheaper ones but on average say 45%. And this part of value is literally wasted - it adds nothing to ownership experience, ownership costs and nowadays you are even expected to pay extra duty on cars over 40k. Simply said there are no reason to buy new car, especially pay for it cash and upfront.... well unless wasting money is the goal. You not planning to sell it, doesn't make "effect nulled" either - depreciation concept is very simple, if you car was worth 60k 3 years ago and 30k now, then you lost half of it's value over 3 years. That is depreciation. It does not matter if you planning to sell it or not, that money is lost to depreciation. no matter what you will eventually sell it - even if after 25 years you going to scrap it for £250... then it still counts... just instead losing 50% to depreciation over 3 years, you will lose 99.99% over 25 years... still depreciation.

It kind of highlights the potential issue rather than masks it. I guess it is ok to use for yourself if you want to protect the dash, but I would imagine any buyer would be immanently put-off after seeing it, even if there is nothing wrong with the dash.

Thanks all, it solved now. My plan was to lock everything before connecting negative terminal, then just shut the bonnet and try using key fob to lock and unlock car until it calms down. That didn't work. Eventually, I got inside of the car and with everything closed started the engine and alarm stopped.... that is - until I opened the door to get out and it started again... but then simply locking and unlocking it with fob whilst sitting inside with everything closed turned off the alarm for good. In the end of the day, I cannot confirm that any particular sequence works, so be prepared to listen to alarm for a while. What seems to help in general - having everything closed and trying to turn on the engine as soon as possible for immobiliser to get recognised. After that it seems that fob starts working properly and not only locking/unlocking the doors, but as well turns alarm on and off. The morale of the story - if you planning to keep the car of the road for a while, then make sure you don't have alarm on, disconnect negative terminal and then just lock the car with the key. As well don't leave too much petrol in the tank. Mine had ~1/4th of the tank and petrol was already off, good that I was expecting it and brought 5L canister of 98 Octane + Redex Petrol system cleaner and octane booster. On old petrol car would start for few second, splatter a bit and stall, but after adding fresh petrol it ran perfectly fine. I would as well advise burning all old petrol before attempting MOT as surely it won't burn very cleanly. Besides - how to know if you thread is till above legal limit ? Well... if such worms live in the main channel then they are good to go 😅

OBD2 should show battery voltage, both when engine is on (so alternator is working) and when off - just turn on accessories and it will show actual battery voltage. By having 2 values (when charging and on it's own) it may help to better pin-point issue.

Wasn't it from speakers? From my memory - you could certainly hit 6000rpm or thereabout, but you can actually "redline" it, eCVT changes like 500 or 1000 rpm short even if you keep it in manual and set it to particular ratio etc. To be honest that makes sense as these engines are not "rev happy" - by which I mean they don't get more powerful the more you rev them and there isn't much point to go past ~4500. By contrast IS250 is quite rev happy, anywhere above 3000RPM it just starts shining.

I will tray tomorrow... as waiting for 5 minutes is rather difficult when car horn is beeping continuously. To be honest that is the only solutions I have found myself - i.e. combination of locking and unlocking car doors, with key, or the fob. User guide does not say anything either. The reason for the alarm is quite simple - it was armed when battery gone dead. The door was unlocked with the key, meaning this is intrusion and the battery was disconnected - so there are like 3 different reasons for it to be angry. However, what guide suggest is simply to close all the doors, lock and unlock the car and that should be it, but I have done it already. As during the day we not going to be so bothered to wake up all street I will try to repeat all steps few times and maybe it will calm down.

So I got a call from the guy who got my old IS250. The battery was dead on the car for over 6 months and now he got new battery (Bosch S4 as you suppose to) and as soon as battery is connected alarm goes off (both siren, horn and back-up siren). Car has factory alarm+immobiliser and no electrical modifications. My initial answer was simply use the key fob to unlock the car so that alarm stops. Does not work. Then I said - try closing the doors and everything, lock the car and unlock. Still does not work. My final idea was that maybe fob battery is dead as well, so I said try touching the fob to the start button to turn of immobiliser. I got there and we tried it together - does not work either. Basically, car locks and unlocks with key fob as it suppose to be, you can start the engine, shut-it off, lock the car, unlock the car but alarm won't stop. So now I am kind of out of ideas and it is extremely embarrassing as well when you doing it at 10:30PM 😅 Any suggestions?

Lexus has UX300e, which is not bad as a second car in household, the one which is used occasionally and only for nearby shopping trips, school runs and similar use, but it is not suitable for main and only car. I think part of the reason why Lexus do no focus much on EVs at the moment (and I am sort of just giving excuses for them here) - as said in video Tesla has to cut a lot of corners to make Model 3 a £38k car. If Lexus builds EV car with quality of say IS, then the entry level will be £60k at least and it will be hard sell. Secondly, no matter the hype there is still no infrastructure for EVs and most people simply cannot have one, I know there is much debate about it, but just very roughly I would estimate 75% of drivers who could afford EV have no means of charging one. I think for same reason Lexus stuck with their "self-charging" hybrids and never introduced PHEVs. If not for UK tax initiatives destroying Lexus hybrids, they are more efficient in practice than PHEVs, especially if you go past the 20 or so miles range. Finally, Lexus generally caters for more conservative and older buyers - the ones who would have an issue with technology and Tesla quality... so they are not really impacted as much by EVs. What is more surprising is that Toyota is not leading the way, they pushed on hydrogen cell, which ended up failing (despite being better technology) and perhaps this put them behind. I am sure Toyota will be in the game much sooner and Lexus simply going to take tested and trusted EV technology when times comes for it.

Besides, I have seen the video and I think it is great! There are so many spot on claims: 6 years ahead in technology, 6 years behind in quality and car building standard - that is spot on. If you are tech person and don't understand much about the cars, you may not notice the terrible built quality, but if you car person and you coming from any entry exec car it will bother you - exactly. Has power of super car, but handles like mid range car - yes my experience in Model S. That they build like disposable gadgets That it is unfair and stupid they charge 10k for you to do their job and help them build their system - I said the same, I would expect to be paid for baby-siting it. etc. I really cannot disagree with anything in the video.

There are systems to monitor your batteries, at least in mainstream EVs. Basically, you will get battery fault warning and will be unable to charge or drive, rather than car becoming fireball when charging. But physical damage is an issue with EVs - if you just run off the road and banged-up the floor it is not good idea to go ahead and start charging it. As it happens batteries are relatively exposed compared to petrol tanks at the moment (especially for underside damage) and therefore we need to start thinking about different risks when driving EVs. Even if you ran over piece of derby on the road in EV it would be good idea to check if battery didn't get damaged, whereas that is really not an issue with modern ICE cars. I am not sure what caused first fire, but the video I have copied I am fairly confident it was physical damage the battery. Probably the owner hit something on the road and dented the battery shell a little bit. This was not enough for battery to fail, but it was enough for maybe one cell to get slightly deformed, it started heating-up and overtime this caused domino effect, one cell burst, surrounding cells burst and eventually it got critical mass to blow through the insulation and cause major fire.

Roy, when you say European, maybe you actually mean British. If yes - then I agree with you, British roads and driving skills are certainly no good for 2.9s 0-60 cars. I am not saying Brits are alone in Europe, but Germany is stark contracts in terms of both the roads and driving skills. Besides amuricans drivers are not better than British and I would argue overall culture is much worse there, than anywhere in Europe. That said I agree to some degree what you said about restricting EVs and I have partially touched on this previously. Tesla by design is just overkill for most of European cities in many ways. We don't generally commute in cars for 80-100 miles from suburban sprawl in the city on 8 lane motorways, we don't have parkings and other infrastructure dedicated to cars, but we have developed public transport etc. And for people living outside of the city or doing longer miles they are not good either. Simply said we just don't have use case for long range and fast EVs like Tesla here. The whole concept of the car is very much designed to cater for amurican middle class. Obviously, we both looking into it from different perspectives, but I feel we both going into the same direction. Considering differences between US and Europe - Tesla is overkill where it does not matter and it is compromised in areas which do.

Yeah, charging EV (unless Tesla) is not as straightforward as you may think - there are dozen of different networks, prices, subscription models etc. I am sure at some point there will be regulations and service providers which will make it possible to have single plan (maybe there is something already), so that anyone can use any charging point. I would add as well, that refilling petrol is not risk free either (you see dinosaur juice are flammable), so you will see warning not to smoke, use lighters and all things mobile phones when refilling. So the positive take - at least you can smoke when charging EV 😄 I think in summary - charging EVs is not somehow more dangerous than refilling petrol, however risks there are different from what we are used to. In the end of the day energy dense fuels always needs to be handled with care - be that high voltage batteries, hydrocarbons or hydrogen e.g. you would not refill the fuel with punctured fuel tank right? Likewise it is unwise to charge the car with damaged battery cell.

No - this is actually normal way lithium burns (it is more akin of explosion) and as Peter mentioned it is very difficult to extinguish it e.g. water won't work and it could make it worse as the fire could be electrical as well. As per above, I do not believe this is specifically overcharging... it could be many reasons - damaged batteries, charging terminal, bad contact etc. At least most of western made EVs and charging stations will have multi-step overcharge protection. I don't know how it works in China and some corners may have been cut there, but overcharging should not be an issue here. As for insurance my guess is - the insurance of the vehicle which get on fire covers everything.... unless it is proven that fire was caused by the charging station - in which case the station operator insurance covers everything. At lest that is what I would expect to happen in UK... In China I am potentially everyone will cover their own costs, I don't think insurance is mandatory there (but I may be wrong).

Yes - the eCVT will upshift and downshift regardless, you could not cause any damage even if you wanted to. S - sort of keeps the chosen ratio for a bit longer, but still switches gear well below redline, or under optimal RPM i.e. you could not stall.

Kerb rash, peeling paint, oxidation... they are worth refurbishing if you ask me. I mean the aluminium it self is fine - if it is acid stripped and sand blasted then as good as any wheels, not buckled, cracked etc. But I would say they are in the condition where they have to be refurbished before using.

Yes the size of mk2 and mk3 wheels (offsets etc.) are identical. I think mk3 uses narrower profile tyre in the rear, but that is about it. Here is my old one on mk3 F-Sport wheels: p.s. I have spare old battered mk2 wheels - for free if you want.

Other thing - simply check the error codes with OBD2 reader, plenty around under £10. Perhaps it is going to tell what fault codes ECU is sending when dashboard goes crazy.

No... I didn't proposed to ban that... besides protection and contraception exists for better half of last century. I think my point was towards family planning - responsible people plan it carefully and financial situation has a lot to do with. If having kids would be more of financial burden and less of source of income then less antisocial families/mothers would go through with it - you do realise that there is group of people who count the "best number" of kids to have to min/max on benefits right? Is this comprehensive solution - no probably it isn't. Without financial motivation we would probably comeback to times of orphanages - although that sounds better than your own mother twisting your arms and legs just because child support is £60/week higher for child with disability (disgusting)!

Potentially... However, the other side of the coin - I assume government thinks it is cheaper to leave this anti-social group of people be as long as they are not violent. If they enforce the laws properly, confiscate their cars, ban them from driving etc. I am sure they still drive, still without insurance, just instead of getting some banged-up car for £200, they would steal it across the street from working neighbours (with violence if needed). Then as results government will have not only to cover costs for neighbours, spend extra on enforcement, but as well fill prisons with thousands more criminals. Problem is - between anti-social and violent anti-social is very thin line, especially when drugs and alcohol is involved, so I don't believe the "leniency policy" works. I am more for "total policing" - meaning that every crime has to be investigated, no matter how small and ideally the perpetrator found, finned or otherwise dealt with ("total policing" is apparently Metropolitan Police slogan, which cannot be further from the truth). Over time lack of enforcement on petty crimes, creates environment where anti-social people feel untouchable and this leads into increase of criminals overall. I know you probably meant it as a joke, but breaking their legs or spines probably would not work. Doesn't sound very humane to begin with, but it could be argued they are sub-human anyway (not my opinion, just potential point of view). The problem is that we live in welfare-state and we would still need to cover their health expenses. Unless suggestion is to put them down like an animals straight away... dark jokes aside there are several cases where such anti-social "mothers" deliberately maims their kids to get extra benefits - as you can see we don't even need to break their legs they will do it themselves for more benefits... On the serious note - this is not just relating to motoring, this this huge problem in UK - the article simply highlights the area where motoring issues overlaps underlying social issue. What is worse - such people are no longer exception, they are still minority, but in some areas they may be substantial minority. The situation is so bad, that it is becoming generational thing. My idea would be to somehow implement birth control, perhaps curtain certain people from benefits - essentially removing the motivation to have kids for financial gain and benefits. Yes it will hurt genuinely poor families and it would still take few generations to take effect, but it is still better than current situation where we basically paying anti-social people to get as many kids as they can in a hope that somehow those kids grow-up normal (spoiler alert, majority don't grow-up normal).

Not sure about TV show on Quest, but all EV conversions I have seen were based on parts recovered from crashed EVs. I assume this is not because there are no other ways to source them, or that Tesla battery tech is the best, but because sourcing them in low volumes would be very expensive. Tesla could offer large capacity batteries which don't cost £500k, because they benefit from economies of scale and can drive down the costs on enormous orders they make. If enthusiast just going to try to order cells required to make the same capacity battery as Tesla have, it may cost £100k for cells alone. As result getting crashed Tesla and butchering it to make 3 mediocre EV conversions works out cheaper. Let's just take for example standard 60KW (Model S 60) battery - it has 7104 cells and each of those cells would cost like £5 individually. So if you wanted to reproduce such capacity that is £35000 just for Chinese cells alone (better quality Japanese cells used by Tesla is double the price). As such it makes sense to buy something like this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/143740093042?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=710-134428-41853-0&mkcid=2&itemid=143740093042&targetid=1000558127966&device=c&mktype=pla&googleloc=9044952&poi=&campaignid=10199630368&mkgroupid=107296288492&rlsatarget=pla-1000558127966&abcId=1145987&merchantid=6995734&gclid=Cj0KCQiAk53-BRD0ARIsAJuNhpsS5cZmx2NOBZsbjpgA_MfUhHpJsYiDfkWBlLyN6T53w2LYyDw7CWgaAqGsEALw_wcB it it works out at £3 per cell (£1400/444 as one module in Tesla has 6x74) + you already have them arranged into module, so it saves hours of work on ironing all the contacts etc. Sure - getting whole 60KW battery would still cost a lot of money, but 2-3 such modules are enough for cars like Fiat 500 or Mazda MX5. But even then - the cheapest battery pack will set you back £4000-5000. Which just makes it even funnier considering article claims £900 for full conversion? Where did that price came from? 😄

That would be good, although looking to UX300e it seems that Lexus is about 5 years, or one generation away from properly hitting this market. Furthermore, UK and rest of EU is kind of secondary markets where we get just some stuff nobody else wants (bar few models like all Fs). So I would imagine to see EVs announced in US before they do it in Europe and in Europe before they do it in UK. What I am saying - even if there would be proper Lexus EVs, we would still need to add 2 years before they make it on our shores.

You are likely right - they would be easier to convert. However, I am not sure if that would make them good EVs overall. GS is heavy car and that 180HP electric motor isn't exactly enough. Not to mention in GS (or any hybrid) electric motor is designed to support ICE, not to act as primary motor for propulsion (at least not for extended period of time). This would mean few things - one I would imagine the car would be slow to the level which could be unsafe (especially on motorway), secondly - I don't think this would help reliability of that electric motor, especially if it is used for prolonged periods of time as the only motor which drives the car. There are other things to consider - is GS motor even efficient? Not all electric motors are equal and as with ICE certain types of motors are good for certain things e.g. how much KW they use per mile - perhaps there is different 180HP motor which was meant to be used as dedicated motor and thus just better for that purpose. For reasons mentioned above, currently the most popular cars for conversions are Beetles, Fiat 500's, old Porches (basically Beetle with different badge) and other vintage cars. First of all they are classy and the only people who may appreciate them are are big car enthusiast who are very dedicated and appreciates the "patina". Secondly, they are generally small and simple cars meaning that even drive-train for most basic EV (like Leaf) is enough to make them relatively swift and enjoyable to drive. And finally, RWD is better suited for EV - so these cars being RWD and rear engined makes packaging more convenient. On top of that you are taking EV system with all components which were designed to work as dedicated EV (and not a part time/hybrid) and thus the conversion should in theory be more reliable, components more suitable and effcient etc.