Linas.P

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.

@Mossypossy - I am very interested as well where they got £500 "immaculate" GS450h which apparently was being scrapped! The idea is interesting, but the article is false "to electric power for the princely sum of just under £900." This is what - cost of the labour of just removing the engine? The idea is very good and not new or original either, to be honest if I would not be working in financial sector, then this would be my ideal work (maybe I will do it when I retire). There is huge potential in these conversions and as car enthusiast I love to see cars preserved and resurrected for second life. However, costs are nothing like that and there are no such culture to make this feasible business (not only in UK, but around the developed world). Issue is not ICE, issue is consumerism - people want new thing even if their current things are perfectly good. A lot of cars meets premature demise for this reason and pollution from this is many times bigger than pollution from transportation itself. So going back to why this article is nonsense - yes indeed you can transplant crashed Leaf or Tesla battery into body of old or classic ICE car. Cost of ICE car is what? Well let's say £2000-5000 depending on condition. Cost of crashed Leaf is what - another £2000-5000. Then you have to deal with simple maintenance and making your "host" car body road legal and safe to use. It doesn't seem like much, but if you taking 30 years old shell, there will be problems - so just as a ball park add another £1000 per corner, on suspension, rust etc. And then comes the labour cost - standard engine swap is easily £3000-5000 if there is no major custom fabrication needed, but with EV conversion fabrication is always needed! High voltage components are not cheap either. So to be on the safe side - £5000-£10000 just for work. What we have in the end is that the swap will cost at least £13,000 and depending "donor"/"host" you choose the complexity may wary and it could easily cost more than £20,000. If you think this is "steep" then check some professionals who does such conversions and see what answer you will get. yep - Fiat 500 - £22,000 https://www.adrianflux.co.uk/blog/2020/02/the-cost-of-converting-your-classic-car-to-electric.html and you will find this price quoted times and times again. I assume it could be done little bit cheaper, maybe indeed you can have GS in good shape for £3000 (saving of £7,000 right there), but it would still be in ballpark of "tens of thousands" - besides GS will require much more batteries and much larger motor to run than Fiat 500 (so saving on one side, cost on another). This article assumes that you miraculously have mechanically "perfect" old ICE car for free, you have electrically "perfect" EV as donor, you are advanced mechanic with space and time to work on them and you have all tools which costs thousands of £ to do it all. Not to mention such modification are legally complicated, you may struggle to insure the car afterwards, you may not get benefits of car being considered EV without lengthy and extensive process to legitimise the car as EV... and you may not even get the required components for it as basically you need to patiently wait for somebody to crash Tesla next door! I am sorry but I would call this article "naive" if not little bit dumb... perhaps somewhat true if you have your own car repair+modification+trade business and you can get some magic deals and merge two cars together for "princely sums", but for 99% of inhabitants of this planet this does not apply. As saying goes - "If it sounds too good to be true then. it probably is... "

Are you confused @Mincey? I was confused as well when I came to London like 12 years ago... you see I came from republic with "two tier system", where everyone are equal by the law, but some are "more equal". That is - if you rich you still going to get arrested, but the sentence will be more lenient then in case you just normal person or poor (in which case you will feel full brunt of the law). It is somewhat similar in UK - look at Mr. Sir. Lord. King. Philip Green, he goes around pillaging pension funds, gutting companies, leaving tens of thousands unemployed, paying himself £1.5bn in dividends, living in £200mln mega-yacht in Monaco and facing no consequences ever. Although, I despise such "two tier system" I was used to it. However, what confused me the most - in UK it seems you have "four tier system", you could be normal working person in which case you have to follow the law, have insurance etc,, or you could be violent criminal in which case you will be arrested and put in jail, or you could be rich in which case you going to avoid jail, but as well there is forth group with acronym S.C.U.M. - that is poor antisocial group which isn't violent, but equally law does not really apply to them. This is the same group which could drive around with 68 points on the license, without MOT or Insurance and somehow there is nobody to stop them! It is really confusing for me why this is allowed to happen... I don't have answer either - just seems like government is only interested in applying the law if there is money to be recovered.

This actually makes sense, every-time I drive I am surprised that it isn't more common. I have no clue how some people got their driving license here?! I would say in London rules somewhat applies just around speed/red light cameras or bus lanes with cameras - if there are no cameras around it feels like there are no rules. And indeed most of the contraventions are minor - like not indicating, turning around where one should not do it etc. But overall, it is clear that people do not know the rules... I am not angel either, but at least I know what I am doing on the road... but it is evident that many other drivers just don't know. Finally, let me tell you the story about one lady I used to know personally to explain how this "exceptional circumstances" thing work. I temporary rented a room when I was studying whilst moving between campuses and my "landlady" had an antisocial niece who visited like every-other day and she was real nuisance. She was "sole" mother of 4 and every-time I seen her she was either drunk or on drugs. How this relates to the story? Well.. she was driving bashed-up Ford Galaxy and had no insurance, nor MOT... she never had one. Simply bought the car and was driving it. Apparently, she had driving license with 9-points, I have no clue how she got the license, but she had one. And during the period I lived there she used to continuously complain about all the court cases she had to go through. Basically, she would get caught like once a week driving in bus lane or stopped by police for not having insurance etc. the case would eventually go to court and she would go and say that she had "exceptional circumstances". Her excuse was that she had to take her 4 kids to nursery (which was 200 metres away from where she lives) and thus needed the car and pleaded not to give her remaining 3 points which would result in driving ban. I am not sure how many times she succeeded with this plea, but in like 8 weeks I was living there it must have been at least 6 times (she would come and leave her 4 kids with her aunt to attend hearings). The outcome would always be along the lines - police asks for 6 points, driving ban and £1875 fine, she asks to consider circumstances and the court would give her like suspended sentence for 2 days social-work and £45 fine due to "exceptional circumstances". Then she would fail to pay that fine and would get sued again at which point she would say that she has no money to pay it (income support, she was obviously never been employed), fine would be reduced to £28 or something along those lines. She would not pay it again and it would be eventually dropped altogether. How do I know she was not lying? Well... she was registered in that address and she would come to pick-up like dozens of letters with various debts and fines and would go around showing them to everyone... and indeed I seen decision saying that considering "exceptional circumstances" the fine will be reduced to £45 and no point will be issued. RIDICULOUS!

I actually quite like it, clean minimalist and partially retro design. I think they kind of succeed if you consider spiritual inspiration for this model was:

@javadude - few things to note here... One you comparing it with "now", whereas I am sure energy demand for EVs will rise by 2025 and 2030. It is inevitable that cars will have bigger batteries and longer ranges. So I would expect that even 150KW chargers will be necessity, never mind 22KW. Secondly, even if we take most favourable example for the powergrid and say that cars will be charged only every other day and only for the mileage they do (instead of 0-100%) that still going to require a lot of PEAK power. We may have sufficient energy production overall (heck we waste like 50% of energy produced), but we still don't have sufficient peak capacity. Even if I only need to recharge 55miles of range after I am back home, it still going to require full 7KW (or 22 or 150) for that short period. Perhaps I only need to charge it for 20 minutes, but does everyone else. Result everyone plugs their cars when they get home and we will have black-outs. Sure there are solutions for that - like smart charging stations where you will be able to plug-in your car when you got back home, but it only starts charging when there is capacity for it. I see issues even with that, but that is another discussion. Finally, don't expect electricity prices for motoring to stay low. Fuel is cheap as well, for example when petrol costs £100.0p/Litre the actual cost of fuel is just 13.25p (+59.75p duty, +~7% distributor retailer costs + 20% VAT). The reason you get electricity cheap is because it is subsidised at the moment. Once we have more EVs I am sure there will be different tax. Most likely you will have to pay per mile you drive (which is kind of fair). But the point is - via road tax and fuel duties government currently rackets £40bn out of motorists, when we switch to EV they will find other ways of getting same £40bn out. Even if we all stop driving and we switch to bicycles they then going to charge bicycles... if we stop cycling then they will charge us for walking, if we stop walking they will charge us for breathing. Point is - that money will be paid into the budget no matter what, if not from transportation then from general taxation. EVs are just initiative where you can temporary thrive on the backs of other people like us (ICE owners) who have to pay tax for you, but it won't be forever.

Yeah... seen that... makes me sad that Lexus spent so much money in developing such great car and technology and only ended-up making few hundred examples. Feels almost criminal for me not to continue with it. Once it is all developed (that is where they spent $1 billion) it really doesn't cost as much to continue making it - yes first 1000 cars costed them on average 1 million to make and they lost money selling it for $300k, but second 1000 would not cost much extra at all. Obviously, I am not expecting these cars to be cheap or many of them to be sold, but making it available would be even bigger statement then just making 1000 cars for collectors and closing the shop. Maybe even making LFA mk2 with updated interior and technology. Or using some or most of the tech in LC-F, somehow I think that developing new LC500h "multi-stage hybrid system" costed far more than just making 10000 more LF-As.

You are welcome, there are many members from other countries. Most of internet shops will deliver parts to Denmark as well (eurocarparts, carparts4less, https://www.buycarparts.co.uk). As a matter of fact some of them are not even based in UK e.g. https://www.buycarparts.co.uk posted their parts to me from Germany and the box says that company is actually Autodoc.eu (registered in Germany). As such if you got to https://www.bildeleshop.dk you will see it is the same site, just called differently - the underlying company is still German. That said Lexus is very rare in UK as well (in whole Europe to be honest), from "European" countries the only one where Lexus is little recognised is Russia (if you call it European). As such Lexus parts are difficult to come by across EU. If you really need something unique to Lexus and not shared with Toyota (most parts are shared) then your only option is to order them from US e.g. https://www.rockauto.com - sometimes they are subject to import duties, sometimes not, but be sure to factor it in when ordering. Generally, ordering from US still works out the same as getting parts from EU, most often little bit cheaper if the part is small and especially if EU fails to apply duties.

Yes but the car in question has aftermarket lights, not the original Lexus FL ones with DLR's. Hence I was little bit surprised you struggled to find them... and yes I agree it is nearly impossible to find OE Lexus FL lights for sale, the only option is to pay like £1600 per unit from Lexus itself.

If that is what satisfies you, then a way to go. Although, standard projector lights are quite weak and are you sure you OK without auto-dimming mirrors? seems minor thing, but could be very annoying. ML on IS mk2 is little bit pointless. Standard system is already 13-speakers and ML adds 1-speaker in the centre console (the speaker layout is slightly different). Yes ML amp is better, but equally it is known to go wrong more often - all in all minor difference. People realised that and not many cars with ML were sold, as result Lexus realised they gave mk2 too good standard system and in mk3 they put standard system so bad that upgrade is necessary. There are minor benefits of ML e.g. if I am not mistaken it should accept DVDs, but is that really relevant anymore? The only benefit I see is that SE doesn't have headlight washers - they are just so annoying! 😄

First link when I google "Lexus IS250 Headlights": https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/123365355261?var=0 Maybe not exactly the same, but you get the point - they are plentiful on ebay/alibaba/aliexpress.

No it doesn't, it just leaves your DERV in the puddle of oil and trail of black smoke behind you 😄 It is called "self destruct button". Turbo Diesels are inherently highly tunable for few reasons. One is that they already have turbos, so simply adding more air and more fuel makes more POWWWA! Secondly, because most of existing TD engines are tuned with quite big reserve in power so that they can last quite long time. Any tuning is always balance between reliability and power, but reasonable tuning could make car more powerful without compromising much on reliability. Neither of these benefits applies for 2AD-FHV, because it is inherently unreliable and bad engine - Lexus already took it past reasonable compromise from the factory and it is simply not fit to do even the 179hp. This is exactly reason why Lexus detuned the engine to fix it and hence why 2AD-FTV exists. 150hp is the most this engine can do whilst staying somewhat reliable. Could you take it to 215hp... I guess you can... you can probably even take it above that... but this means your engine just going to be more likely to grenade itself even more immanently than otherwise. I have seen some many such DERV racer wanabees with deleted DPFs claiming to have opened pandora boxes with their IS220d, just to see the cars being shifted for £500 with "engine defects". Conclusion - if you want to tune TD engine and make power, at least take reliable one as a basis... not the one which already barely works even at the standard tune.

I am pretty confident it is wrap, that is why they not done the door shuts. Either way - somebody made rice rocket out of it and now expects top money for C Cat car. I would say if it would be listed for £850 I would consider it 🙂 but even then risky, nobody knows what is under that nasty wrap. Original paint was the best colour as well dark-blue.