Linas.P

Sounds like an excuse for me... because same as they can buy normal leather for repairs, they can as well buy perforated leather for repair. There is nothing special about perforated leather that makes repair somehow more difficult.

My goal was exactly the same... I agree - moaning about it won't make the difference, but I must admit it feels me better speaking about my grievances. And you right - the people with money and power will be the ones who decide. I think bigger problem than simply taking money is that instead of just taking money, now they created this nasty environment narrative. Well... I guess they are linked, they realised that there is no way raising taxes any higher without causing revolution, so they invented the environment narrative to further the threshold of how much people can take. And I am not saying environment is not important or that pollution, or global warming is not real - what I am saying they using these things as an excuse to extract more money from us without actually doing anything really to resolve the problems. At least that is the conclusion I have arrived to. Ideally I would like them to take the money and actually do something about environment, or if they not willing to do anything, then stop moralising and stop collecting the money. Kind of similar to the smaller issues like road tax - I don't mind VED, I don't believe anyone minds VED as long as the money collected makes the roads better. Problem is - it does not make roads better, they are the worst now then they have ever been in my experience (not very long mind you... just ~20 years). And other people say - sure, but it supports NHS and everyone wants NHS so not an issue. First of all I have never used NHS and I likely never will, I have no GP and I never needed GP and if I ever going to need medical protection I have private healthcare and as for others and funding NHS... I feel there are better sources of revenue for that, alcohol and cigarettes are already taxed, so maybe it is time to tax junk food and sugary drinks more, at least unlike the roads there is direct link between health problems and those things (50% of health issues by 2030 will be obesity related). Anyway - that is a bit of the tangent, but the point I am trying to make - taxation is not a problem as long as it goes to right places... it doesn't sadly and on top of that now it is apparently our fault, hence the grievances.

I use them as well!

Agriculture overall is ~14% (so indeed more than transportation), however it is not only cows and not milk in particular, meat produces more carbon per calorie... but that is besides the point. Point is - net-zero would mean that we all have to at very least stop eating any and ALL animal based products. Imagine what a disaster that would be, famine at very least not to mention complete destruction of agriculture... and for what little is worth I would rather stop living than stop eating meat. And what is next? we start eating grass and farting out methane (we already do just less)... what is proposal to deal with that - screw the plug in the buthole or pay tax? 😄 As I said this net-zero goal is directly anti-human, there is no way for human life to exist in net-zero environment... unless as I said we find the way to harness limitless power to do carbon capture. I know this is reductio ad absurdum, but not the suggestion that this needs humans to stop exiting, it is the net-zero goal itself that is absurd. Cars is just start... we still have 97%+ to go.

As you may know I always like good debate, so just to be clear was wasn't necessarily disagreeing with you eihter, but rather like yourself making an argument "from another perspective". And that is exactly what I mean by debatable - yes statements you made may be right, but they may be wrong and really it depends on perspective. Generational thing is as well very important, I am definitely in generation which didn't have very good for them... when I got my first car in UK I was already 25... I simply could not afford insurance before that (not the car, but just the insurance), I already from the start lived in environment where drivers are attacked from all sides, free parking becomes paid parking every day, free road becomes ULEZ or whatever other scheme and I think I just about managed to overtake "being priced out of owning the car" train by the time I was 25. However, entire generation growing-up now are completely priced out, this as well shows - because majority of teenagers now no longer looking to get driving license, simply because there is no realistic way for them to drive even if they had one. If not for insurance, then for simple reason of places which don't allow/welcome the cars. I guess my main questions is - who is to say that time is now, that this generation is the one to pay? As well let's get one thing straight - planet does not care either way, we simply can't ruin it even if we wanted to. CO2 levels are historically very low if we look at the perspective of "planet lifetime", yes we can observe the world is warming now, but to be honest much bigger issue would be if it would be cooling. The thing we traying to avoid is 2C increase, which would melt the ice, but realistically there would still be plenty of places to live on (sure not Florida and not Netherlands, and few islands would go under water etc.). In short - whenever global warming is actually and issue is a matter of perspective. If I not mistaken the estimate what would happen if all ice would melt was something like 4% of land mass would go under water. Well we will still have 96% left... So this whole thing about caring for next generation is little bit hyperbolic. Yes if we say that climate we living in is "good" and climate with 2C higher temp is "worse" then yes - they will live in worse environment. But it is not "catastrophe" like they would like to put it, just different environment - sort of equivalent to moving from UK to live in Spain. Yes clearly climate is different in Spain, but is it necessarily a bad thing? I would even argue that for more colder climates it could be a good thing, for already hot climates probably not so much... Likewise I am not political at all, I am just saying - if we want to do it, if we all agree we want to do it, then let's do it correctly, let's tackle major problems, let's leave cars alone, because they honestly make no difference either way. And when I say "we want to do it" I mean WE, not some retard identifying as soya been telling us what we have to do, currently all these decision are forced from "elites" down to "masses" and I just don't like that. Especially when elites are the ones flying in private jets, have 4 yachts each, have mansions and gold courses all over the world and then they tell us that we have to stop driving and use public transport instead. How about they start from themselves? Lead by example if they really want so great for everyone. You know it is easy to say - we need to do more about environment when looking down on everyone from crystal palace. At least that is my perspective - I don't see this fight as "fight of the people", or something that majority really cares about and want to see tackled. I personally want to do everything I can to help, but only as long as it doesn't hurt my living standards which I personally believe are mediocre at best. Furthermore - I will not be supporting it until everyone will have to sacrifice equally. Why should I sacrifice when other are clearly taking advantage of it? I don't know that much about fusion reactors either, but I know enough to say that at least in theory they are suitable solution and as well in comparison of landing on moon and atomic bomb they should not be much more complicated to make, especially considering the technology we have nowadays. The renewables are not solution in my opinion... why? Solar only works when sun is shining, makes no sense because we need most electricity when it isn't shining (at least in most of central/northern Europe), wind only make electricity when wind is blowing... hydro only works on specific rivers which could be dammed, wave/tidal only works near shore and only when there are waves/ or tide is right... in short all renewables are either unreliable, or only available in specific limited locations... and biggest issue of them all - they simply do not make sufficient amount of energy, we would need to cover entire country with them to get the amount of electricity we need... remember 4% lost to all ice melting? How is it better to lose 80% of land to some for of renewables. And by the way even renewables are not carbon neutral, just low on carbon. My view - we should go for nuclear in short to mid term (~20-30) and try to develop fusion in the mean time. In either case we need A LOT clean energy and renewables simply can't deliver it, or they can't deliver it reliably, or we simply don't have anywhere to store energy to even out the supply.

The last good quality and global figures I have seen Transport sector was 15% (2021), least figures outside of covid I have seen were 10% (2016). Personal/light vehicles varies between 25-35% within that. So would be ~2.5-5% total, globally. The most comprehensive long term study for BEVs conducted by European Council concluded that BEVs reduce pollution by 30%, EPC figure within US is 35%. So good guess would be that replacing personal/light vehicles with BEV equivalent would reduce global emissions by 0.75-2.25%. That is if we replace EVERY single vehicle worldwide with new BEV... and assuming that worldwide energy mix is something comparable to that of EU, which it isn't. Realistically all this farting and diarrheal coming from UK, EU and US about ICEV bans will have total effect of maybe 0.1%, because we neither replacing ALL vehicles, nor energy mix most of the globe is like in EU... so this whole hysteria is really for nothing as far as environment change is considered globally. City air quality is different matter, different percentages, different impact and I think as Pete put it - zero-tailpipe emissions may be somewhat achievable, but net-zero is fallacy. We won't achieve by 2030s, nor 2050s, nor I reckon by 2100s... and if we do, then BEVs will not be the they way we do it, nor even major contributor.

As far as I was able to gather - tidal is similar to wind in terms of generating capacity, but much more complex and costly. So as usual it is not about whenever it would work, but whenever it is profitable... and it seems it is not profitable for the time being. The positives of tidal is that it is more consistent than wind, so it would be one of very few renewables which could somewhat be predictable. In either case I am not against tidal, I just I don't believe tidal would answer all our needs, we need like whole different level of power generation if we were to use energy to capture carbon. Tidal would provide maybe 15% boost, we need 1500% boost to stop/reverse the global warming. My thoughts - why bother with tidal if we can get fusion. Whenever we can or can't get fusion that is kind of unknown at the moment.

All 4 points debatable... Let's say we don't have right to live comfortably? Why? And if that is the case then who has right to decide who will live comfortably and who don't? Let's face it - the people deciding to impose Paris Agreement and similar agreements are all flying private jets and have motorcade waiting for them with engines on, and they have police following them and making sure they can cut trough traffic by pushing other out of their way at our expense. Are they the ones who will decide that we should not live comfortably so that they can continue flying private? I would say that we have god given right to build our lives our selves and if we can afford the car and the petrol to put into it (and I mean just the cost of the petrol, not some stupid duties, "air taxes" etc.), then we should have right to enjoy the "fruits" of our hard work without being shamed, vilified and banned from doing it. I don't want to be the guy saying "enough of the experts", but it is important to understand how they came up with "7 million premature deaths". That is not the number of people who literally die, the way it is calculated is based on theoretical age people could live to and then calculated in theory how much longer they could have lived if they haven't died. Link between pollution and deaths is really really weak, like who is exactly to say it was pollution, but it was not junk food, lack of exercising and so on? And by the way people today live longer than ever before in human history. So apply same methodology, then I think as result we will come to conclusion that pollution may be "killing 7 million people" a year, but medication and modern methods "saves 20 million lives" each year. And again because this is NOT literal deaths, then we can say - without using fossil fuels our lives would have been on average 55 years long, due to fossil fuels this is reduced to 52 years, but due to modern medicine is it increased to 65 years... End result - we living 10 years longer than we lived in the past... And to be fair it is questionable if anyone truly wants to live to be 100 years old? If I had a choice between getting my personal transportation at the age of 16, travel the world, travel every inch of my country with friend and good company and die at 65... compared to having to use public transport, losing all that freedom, loosing all the good moments with friends, lose all the good moments driving, but living up-to very sad 100 years old... then it is quite clear what I would choose. Point is - it is not so simple. I am not saying you wrong, but here is counter argument... why should we pick-up the bill and not generation later? For example I could argue that generation before me had comparably good time, they were able to drive from 17, they could insure cars from 17, fuel was cheap, there were no speed limits, no congestion charges, parking was relatively cheap, the housing was cheap, many got their homes before they turned 30... and now they telling me that I should be "generation rent", I should be "generation public transport" and I should pick-up the bill for future generations? It is kind of easy to speak from comfortable position in life, when one has home, when one has driven million miles and spent their life enjoying freedoms... but now it is the current generation which somebody decided will be the generation to answer for all of this?! And by the way I am talking 100% hypothetically, I am not attacking anyone in particular, but the point is - who has decided that it is this generation and now that we have to stop consuming? Why not generation before us or generation after us? Most importantly it seems that most people making decisions are those from the generation before us, who already have benefited from the freedoms... so why don't they start with themselves? Give away their juicy pension funds, give away their 5 bedroom houses, give away their 4 cars, go-live their remaining lives in seclusion and using only public means and only then lecturing current generation of what they can and can't do? In short this idea sounds little bit hypocritical coming from some people. One viable alternative based on my limited knowledge and for all we know I may be stupid... is fusion energy, nearly free, endless and clean energy which just by itself would cut pollution by 60% and combined with carbon capture and other technologies could achieve not only net-zero, but net-negative. Whatever it may be - I think it is important to look at the pollution problem as a whole and globally... it does not matter than we can cut 3% here and 10% in this country, the pollution is 100% and it is global issue... so it should be tackled as such. There is something that contributes 40% of pollution, something else that contributes 20%, 16% etc. we need to find the way to reduce pollution across the board and by significant margin to make a difference. Hence something like fusion energy would cut across main pollution sources and it makes sense doing. Taking cars away from people achieves very little, even at the most optimistic outcome is few %, maybe 3%, maybe 5%... So the question here is - what about 95%? How exactly it helps the climate change if we not addressing 95%. If cars would be 80% of pollution, then I would understand and appreciate why we starting with the cars, but transportation is just 10%, private cars even less... so why we starting with something that is most minor contributor of pollution and we implementing solutions in such way that will hurt society the most? Again I don't want to go into conspiracies, but one needs to ask this question - why we starting here and not somewhere else? Surely starting from cars seems illogical if environment is what we traying to fix?

And that is why I keep saying that BEV promotion has less to do with global warming and more to do with something else. Transportation is 10% of global pollution... let's say 15% in UK as we have little of industry left. Still that means we have 85-90% of other pollution sources and by the way BEVs don't cut pollution to 0, they just reduce pollution by ~30%. So what they are saying is that we have to give-up on living the life just to cut 3%?! What about 97%? And as you mentioned building industry is large polluter, energy production is another huge one... have you heard UK just restarted coal plant last week to avoid black-outs? How did we got to that point?! And they believe we can charge 20 million BEVs in 7 years time? How? As for tourists - I have some time "staycating" in UK and it would be literally impossible. We wanted to go to Scotland with friends (4 people total) and after looking just at trains and transportation to basic points of interests it was something like £2500. Compare that to the car and £200 of fuel does it (£50 per person)... and my IS250 at the time wasn't even fuel efficient car. Ohhh and the time wasted on public transport is just unbelievable. With car we did "long" weekend and we seen most of the places... in public transport we would have spent at least 10 days, because you could only really visit single place a day when you consider all the schedules. In other countries you have something like "city pass", where you can use all public transport for a day or a week, and you buy that single pass for something like £70 (for a week) and that is all you need... it even includes some tickets to events and museums. I know in UK some cities have them as well, but I have never seen a deal that actually works... in London for example it does not include public transport, just attractions... in other cities price just doesn't make sense again. For example I remember in Edinburg we calculated the costs with day travel pass and it was something like £55 per day, so for 4 people that is £220... which means even if I need to spend £50 on parking, £25 on congestion charge and £50 on petrol, the car still comes at half of the cost. And even if I need to rent the car, that is still going to be cheaper with the car... I guess my point - British Public transport is not only insufficient for the need, but the cost is absurd as well and instead of making the public transport affordable, they instead try to price-out cars. The only reason public transport makes sense in London for example... is not because it is decent or good value, but only because they made it so that it will cost you £50+ to drive into the city, but making driving expensive doesn't make public transport better... And you are right on the last one - net-zero is fallacy. The only way I see it is possible could be carbon capture, but apart of that what they asking us to do is STOP LIVING... because any life from creates pollution, that is just inevitable and humans are in particular requires a lot of resources to live comfortably. So what are alternatives - dehumanise everyone and everyone goes back to live back in the stone age (arguably that would make more pollution not less), reduce population (how exactly?!). So basically - no net-zero will never happen outside of some BS spreadsheet and artificial carbon-credit trade. What is benefit of that to humanity? None... we will pollute as much as we do anyway, just somebody will collect fat pay check on our behalf. I am not even that old, but I remember like 20 years my parents joking about taxation "what is next they going to tax us for AIR"... and look what we have today - "clean AIR tax"!

What bother me the most is that in UK they not even pretending to do anything, in other countries they at least come to the crime scene, check the evidence and is there are some obvious leads they do absolute minimum to investigate it, but at least they do that... and surprise surprise 50% of the cases only needs absolute minimum. But in UK they are so blatantly not even pretending, I had several cases of burglary, one arson etc. they don't even come to look at CCTV... and sure CCTV may not show anything, but it may show something, it may show registration number of the car... pay them a visit and it turns out even thought you didn't find the biky stolen on this case, you find another 28 bikes reported on other cases... but in UK they absolutely do nothing. Make report online, they send you crime reference number and 2 hours later you get another e-mail - your case closed "no leads to investigate" or "not in public interest to investigate". This last one is so funny for me... how the hell they know what is in "public interest"? We are the public - NOT them? It is clearly in public interest for all cases to be investigated... sometimes I understand that it is not in public interest to prosecute all the cases, but I can't see any reason why it would not be in public interest to at least investigate. For police most of the time even that doesn't work, because they have unique ability to be useless. But I have used it for insurance several times with great results. Without dash cam it would have been 50/50%, not only that I wouldn't get anything out of it, but my insurance would have gone-up... with Dashcam I was able to prove in minutes that it was 100% non-fault accident and I had my case "pre-approved", meaning I get pay-out even before other party insurance agrees with it. Without dashcam it may take literal months of backwards and forwards to get even straight forward cases dealt with, talking with witnesses, waiting for other party to respond, negotiating the price and all that non-sense. With Dashcam - video sent, money in the bank account within 2 weeks. So definitely good investment and not even that expensive anyway!

Sadly it is kind of hard to find the threads, but if you look at the experience I had with Lexus Service, then it would be more or less similar to one you had. To be fair - it is still one of the best services you could get from any make and generally speaking they are not "pushy" for extra work they identify in my experience i.e. when they say that may 200k miles 14 years car needs £2690 worth of repairs and I say "no thank you", they never say anything more. Try that with other dealers and I am sure you will have to block their number to stop them bothering you, so I kind of appreciate that Lexus knows that "no means no". On the point of courtesy car - they have messed this up several times for me. Either I haven't asked for one and they have it, or they asked for one and they don't have it. One-time I even said - well if you don't have the car then could you change it to the "taxi appointment" (they used to have that option) and they said - "yeah sure". Imagine my surprise when taxi driver asked me for £58 at the end of the journey! As for repairs and service quality - you get exactly what you paid for, so if it says you got filter and oil, then you got filter and oil. They do visual inspection, but they don't check everything. For example - once I have broken down with A/C compressor exploding on the way home 11 miles after the Lexus service. So there is no magic that they can use to diagnose everything. As for upsell - the usual one I get is "lip on the brake disk", "corrosion" on the brake lines, uneven weak on the tyres... I ignore them all. This is normal, and to be fair as I said better then other dealers. In terms of what I do - exactly what you did, take their advises, reject everything and then replace things myself or with trusty independent. Paying whatever £1600 for shocks makes no sense. Although you should as well consider possibility that shocks were never replaced e.g. I got advisory once for "shock misting, but not severely damaged" in MOT. Then I went to Lexus service and they didn't mention it, as suck I asked "are the rear shocks alright" and they said they are all good. Turns out I was replacing brake pads before MOT and had to spray WD40 to loosen the slider pin, some WD40 misted onto the shock and that was the reason for advisory, shock wasn't misting at all. My point is - they may not be upselling you, but genuinely noticed some misting which may have been there as result of shock replacement and not necessary because shocks were leaking after 6 months. Mistakes happen, I rather them tell me something needs attention and finding out it was mistake, rather than not telling me it needs attention and having breakdown.

And to be fair I don't like industry lobbying (a.k.a - fraud/corruption) which is clearly behind this. However, as it happens the alternative of communists taking our cars away for purely ideological reasons under guise of "climate crisis" is even worse. So here I rather take lesser evil... Sure in ideal world our politicians should be smart, work for the people and make right decisions and when necessary difficult decisions. Sad reality is that we have bunch of woke monkeys there who can only be controlled by industry lobby and as it happens for once industry goals aligns with democracy and personal freedom (which is very rare, but kind of expected - capitalists are evil, but capitalists are as well anti-communists). This is only possible because BEVs are such a flawed option and because there is simply not enough lithium etc. Make no mistake - industry is happy to sell shaity cars and milk consumer for profit, however in this case even industry realised that "wait a second - have haven't subscribed to your stupid communist idea of taking cars away and along the way losing 70% of customers". You see political ideology is very dangerous, business may be evil, but they are rational, so one can predict what they will do... political ideology is not rational and it can act in a way of self-harm. BEV based on existing technology is exactly that - self-harm, they make no sense and they would result in massive society change which thinking rationally isn't even good. Not only they would have no meaningful benefit for environment, but as well they would have massive negative impact to our freedoms. And any reasonable person would say - but all things considered why are we doing it?! Exactly! Because environment was never really the reason behind it, communists simply hate idea of anything personal, they hate idea of individual freedom and sabotaging us to choose bad technology would have resulted in this freedom being restricted. I know this is conspiracy theory, but simply looking at the stats it is hard to explain it in any other way - there is saying "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Sure that could be the case here, but clearly by now it would be about time to cancel the 2030 deadline... if it is not cancelled then I think it is malicious and not mere stupidity. Finally, I hope this doesn't come out as anti-environment message... No I am not for pollution and in my personal life I take several severe steps to limit my own carbon footprint, I would even argue that my carbon footprint despite driving petrol car is lower than 80% of people in developed world (I know it means little when I say so myself, but that is my guess), and lets be real - BEVs aren't that helpful! So whereas I am happy to sacrifice to help the environment, I am not happy to give my freedoms, passion and quality of life away for 1% reduction of pollution. If they say - sure we get fusion power which is clean and which will save 60% of pollution, but you will have to pay 3 times as much for electricity... I would say fair enough. But to be banned from owning personal transportation and having to use disgusting public transport and be controlled by schedules and routes that government allows me to travel on for 1% of reduction - no thank you!

And that was my point above, no court, no fine, just simple verbal warning reminding that one has to behave like a human being achieves the most desired outcome - people respecting the law and feeling like they can't get away from responsibility. The current way police is working - let people do small crimes and ignore them, making it feel like there are no consequences and then putting then in jail when they commit something serious... and this is bad for everyone, because this basically "grows" criminals. I forgot who did this experiment, but in summary they found that most important thing for compliance is not severity of the punishment, but likelihood of being caught. If there would be death sentence for speeding (maybe bad example as I don't believe speeding is a crime), but no enforcement then people would still be speeding, however if the fine for 1MPH over the limit for every second you go over the limit would be 10p and enforcement would be 100%, then nobody would speed, because there would be no getting away from it. Imagine that - you go for overtaking and in the end of the month you get £6.70 bill... nobody would be like - "yeah sure overtaking this one car is worth £6.70". Well I guess some very rich people wouldn't mind, but 99% of drivers would stick to the limit. Again maybe speeding is wrong example, but we can use any literally anything as an example the point is the same - not severity of the punishment is what bring compliance, but likelihood of enforcement. For that reason apology letter was such a good idea, no lasting consequences for the person (no points, no increase in insurance etc.), but her world view has completely changed, now she feels like she can break even minor laws because somebody will knock on the door. I will go on the tangent here, but in my opinion the biggest problems in UK comes from parenting and protections for minors. Kids under 14 are untouchable, like literally... they can smash your car window in front of police and police will stand and do nothing, because they can't do anything... growing up like that can ruin anyone. I personally don't believe anyone is born evil, but growing-up without any responsibilities and without any consequences can ruin the best person. P.S. - consider installing dash cam. This time there was no damage, but next time you may lose mirror or something and without evidence don't expect police to do anything about it, even with evidence they still going to try to wiggle out of it. Although it works well for insurance and claims management companies.

Telegraph calls is disappointing, but for me it sounds common sense. I know auto manufacturers are having field day selling BEVs, but I think even they realise that if the ICEVs bans are to happen by 2030 (or more realistic 2035-40 days in EU/US respectively) then it would effectively mean 70% of motorists would be wiped out... and that means 70% of their sales. Sure BEVs are higher margin products and potentially will become even more expensive in the future, but still some manufacturers like VW needs volume to survive. Porsche, BMW or MB may be fine, but BEV still means a lot less sales. Most importantly I just want to emphasise how idiotic is this target. They want to reach net-zero CO2 by 2050 and part of achieving it is ban on ICEVs by 2030-40... how exactly cutting 2-10% of emissions by ~30% helps them to become "net-zero". What about the rest of like 97-99% of pollution?! Industry are not as short sighted as governments are and industry does not care about politics and woke non-sense. They were happy to take short term profits from BEV craze, but they can see that with non-existent infrastructure and shortages of lithium they can't make as many cars at the price which would be affordable for as many clients as they currently doing. My point is - industry can see trough this BS, the new rules has little to do with "net-zero" and everything to do with woke, communist idea of taking people cars and freedoms away. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/03/03/ftse-100-markets-live-news-jeremy-hunt-bill-support/#:~:text=5%3A22PM-,Germany and Italy block Brussels from banning petrol and diesel,mounted a last-minute revolt. Obviously, this is not the end and they may still agree something, but if Germany/Italy refuses to sign-off, then I can see how UK can keep 2030 deadline either.

You can bet I didn't let them get away with it... my response to that was - "you investigate or I sue YOU". They did investigate in the end, but as I said managed to lose in the court somehow... I have no idea how, but they managed.

They kind of are and they aren't - and this is huge problem. Because the law and order is based on premise of everyone being equal against the law, but lack of actual enforcement and lottery like odds is what undermines the whole system. As you said the sentencing could be joke, I would argue 90% of the time case would be lost, but if certain police officer takes it personally, then it could be "driving without due care and attention" - 6 Points, £1000... not small... or it could even be "dangerous driving", which is 6-12points, driving ban for a year and in some cases even prison sentence. And again that is huge issue, because police officer have NO RIGHT to treat it personally, but they do and if one would have done this for officer in plane clothes who has a bad day, it could be "dangerous driving" charge. In my view - sending a warning for 98% of offenders without fine achieves more than putting 2% in the jail and specifically UK police is horrible at it.... they let people go because of ignorance, laziness, maybe lack of resources, but at the same time they let many people to develop very bad habits which one day end-up killing somebody. And it is not very good for offenders either, instead of getting petty punishment for petty crime, they get nothing nothing nothing jail. So I wish the burned of evidence would be lower, that police could warn people without going to the court, sort of adding 0.5 point on the license which does not mean anything, but second warming will take it into consideration... sort of create atmosphere of responsibility. Because now what we have - burden of evidence is so high that only most egregious crimes are prosecuted, so as it happens police basically ignores the issue until it becomes big.

Cheaper and easier to replace it with Android after market unit, which will be plug and play and will be better than Lexus one as well. I can give you schematic, but it doesn't make sense doing, way to complicated (potentially impossible, because original Lexus unit expect connection to MPX network - sort of "can-bus" for multimedia functions) and Lexus Sat-Nav unit is still junk compared to after market systems. That is just snapshot of what you getting into:

Sorry but in my experience police do not pursue such matters. Guy literally crashed into me going trough the red and did not stop. I had dashcam, I called police to report hit and run and they advised me to call the insurance. There was actual damage to the car, I had dashcam footage - responded after 2 weeks - "not in public interest to investigate". Hit and run is not in public interest to investigate! If there is no damage what exactly you expecting? Whatever they could do would need do go to the court, because private dashcam footage does not automatically count as evidence, they can't issue fine based on it, that means they need to go trough entire process of suing him and even then only assuming you can very clearly make out the person in the speeding car from dashcam footage it will go nowhere, will not be proven beyond reasonable doubt it was even him... Yes I understand you want to do right thing and I commend you, but from practice I know police does not give a shait, all they care is collecting £100 for from stationary camera when somebody was doing 60MPH on the empty motorway at night on 70MPH road, because there was temporary roadworks limit of 50MPH and obviously nobody working. That is sort of thing they like - 0 investment, 0 time spent, 1 automated letter for £0.10 and £100 in the pocket. Spending actual time, calling the person into police station to give statement, filing everything to court, just to be laughed out in the court is not their cuppa. Just found an old e-mail exchange - note the investigate only "where death, physical injury and major damage is a factor." How about that?! 😄

To be fair quite difficult to replace them because they seems to be glued together with window seals (if I imagine the part correctly). Because I was able to polish them (meaning they are actually metal), then I assume they could be straightened with PDR. The cost will be similar to new peace, but won't require messing around with epoxy and on top of that just fitting it itself caul cause dents. I assume in factory they use some sort of purpose made jigs to fit it in one go and straight, doing it by hand would probably make it look worse then it already is.

I think that is the key issue I have here - imagine this attitude in WW2... Yeah nazis may end-us if they get nukes first, but maybe some "private company" can come-up with some novel weapon which may help us... maybe Lockheed or General Dynamics or somebody would privately fund the research and make atom bomb faster than government... That would be absurd! I guess that goes to show that it is nowhere near the right priority. Likewise I agree, it seems like it was 30 years away for last 50 years - it isn't even new concept, as well we know it works (that is how all stars work in the galaxy). And I agree that anything in terms of long term infrastructure project our government touches turns into pile of shaite. But that is why I said - if this is such a major global issue, then perhaps it should be international super-governmental organisation working on it, not some private companies... But I guess what I am trying to say we can't treat climate change as both LOW priority and at the same time HIGH priority. When it comes to the cars, for some reason we have this ridiculous ban coming in 2030s despite clear shortcomings of BEV and our electrical infrastructure... so it seem the "climate catastrophe" is very HIGH priority when it comes to taking our cars, our rights and our freedoms away. Yet when it comes to solution which could basically resolve it by alone, and I kind of mean it, even thought energy production is like 60% of pollution, the abundant clear energy allows us to do thinks like carbon capture, make carbon neutral steel, concrete, plastics, synthetic fuels... burn coal is we wanted to... It all basically does not matter, because we would have abundant source of clean energy and it no longer has any cost to do whatever we like, it can not only stop climate change it can revert it. It is "civilization level achievement", and we saying "maybe some private company get us there"?! So when it comes to fusion - it seems suddenly it is LOW priority. Now I guess we can argue climate change is LOW priority, we need to be mindful of it but it isn't the key thing... but then why we go so far to restrict ourselves when it comes to private transportation? Or we can say it is HIGH priority, but then why don't we do more about it, why we focusing on few % from private transportation and leaving like 90%+ of the issue on the size. I don't wan t to go into conspiracy theories, but I just can't explain why there is such focus on such minor issue and almost complete ignorance towards possibly large achievements which could help us to solve the issue? Just seems suspicious...

I have no doubt of that, but you need to realise that Bridgestone's are all "horrible" tyres (regardless if they are Turanza T005 or Potenza S001 or RE050a), so almost any decent premium UHP tyre would "wallop" them anyway. The only semi-decent tyre they have is the "Sports", but that one is as well UUHP ~PS4S level. Horrible maybe unfair, but they are all mediocre at best, and particularly not great touring tyres i.e. where comfort and noise is priority. F-Type is not RC300h, so whereas I would definitely fit PS5 on F-Type, I would not fit them on RC300h. Again - if the sole goal is to fit something better than Bridgestone, then PS5 will blow them out of this universe, but if the goal is to fit best tyre for the car, then I think they are just not the best choice. I would not be so sure about it... Bridgestones are uncomfortable, but at least RE050a (that is what I had on my RC) were very grippy, horrible on fuel, horrible on noise, but grip really wasn't an issue. I never had PS4 of the same size, nor necessary PS4 are comparable to PS5, but I had PS4 on 18" IS wheels and they were outright dicey. Mechanical grip was amazing in the dry and generally on hot summer days, but in wet they were really not exceptional and on colder morning they were outright dangerous... and I don't mean -5C... I mean 10C autumn or spring mornings, I drive out and I feel like I can't put enough heat into the tyres to grip, they almost felt like track tyres which requires warming-up. And to be fair Brigestone RE050a are the same just at lower temp, where PS4 would feel sketchy below 10C, RE050a would feel sketchy maybe below 3C. Sure summer tyres are recommended for temps above 6C, but in contrast I had Dunlop RT2 before PS4 and those were good all the way to 0C and right from the cold, and they were better on fuel, more quiet and more comfortable. Dunlop RT2s were one of my favourite tyres, sadly legacy product now and they had very nice sort of sub-UHP performance, they were not touring tyres, but by modern standard they were not really UHP either. If I were to put tyres on RC300h I would chose something like Michelin Primacy 4 or Goodyer Efficient Grip 2, or Continental Premium or even Eco Contact 6. Like distinctively level below UHP. Now sadly none of them are available in rear sizes... and the only tyre which to my knowledge does the right sizes is Uniroyal Rainsport 5, they would be still miles better than Brigestones in the wet, more comfortable and would not break the bank. Are they as good in dry handling as PS5 - definitely no, but they are made by Michelin as well, so they are not exactly inferior tyres.

Just to be clear - glue has never worked for anyone, I don't even know they they include it with the car, because it never works. I guess for slow puncture maybe, but for slow puncture just get the tyre plugged for £5, no need to put the glue and ruin the tyre as once the foam is used tyre needs replacing. In UK I believe only RC200t, GS250 had spare wheel of correct size, so you can try sourcing one from these 2 as they would be right size for RC300h. This how it should look: https://www.ebay.com/itm/265907341797 Other alternative is getting full size wheel, not ideal, but better than no spare: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/255638561288 Worst case scenario - you can use any normal Lexus spare wheel, RC300h has tiny callipers so there should be no clearance issues, any spare is better than no spare, but obviously the size may not be right for 19", I think normal spares are ~17".

I am sure they will be better than Bridgestone, but I believe PS5 are overkill for RC300h (same as PS4 were overkill for cars I owned in the past). I am not saying they are bad tyres, but all the tyres are compromise and PS5 compromises are just wrong for car like RC300h, they will be harder, louder and less comfortable than the tyres needs to be car like this and they will cost more than one needs to pay. I know it is annoying that most tyres are not available in RC sizes, but UHP tyres only makes sense on sports cars which can be thrown around and has power and speed to take advantage of UHP tyres. RC300h is more of GT car and Touring tyres would be better fit for it. For free I would probably fit PS5s, but I would not be paying premium for them on RC300h.

Yes I am aware of the timelines, but do you think that with correct priorities this can be done quicker? And by correct priority, assuming there is this "massive climate emergency" is true, I mean - putting ALL possible means... I have compared it with nuclear weapons programme in WW2 or Moon Landing before, do you think if we put as much money and attention it would still take until 2040s? Sure that is "just 17 years", but we need to consider various international and national programmes were running for at least 10 years, Apollo mission only took 8 years from the start to first moon landing with 60s technology, Manhattan project took only 3 years from the start until the bombs were dropped with 40s technology, so why does Fusion reactors is taking 30 years with 21st century technology? We are trying to tackle cars which are few % of pollution, yet not much is done about energy production which could see pollution reduction of 60%? Doesn't that look a little bit suspicious? What if BEV push is not about environment? So perhaps we starting it wrong way around - let's forget about the cars for the time being, let's put the priorities right first, let's focus on clean energy first and this actually solves all the other issues. That would enable carbon capture, it would enable synthetic fuels, it would enable hydrogen even BEVs would go from 30% more efficient to potentially 60-70% more efficient than ICEV... and then perhaps it would make sense to transition. And if we starting wrong way around - then WHY? Now if you say with best scientists in the world and with unlimited amount of money this still cannot be done before 2040s... okey I guess we can wait 17 years, but is it really true? Is it really the case that we really have all hands on fusion? Doesn't look to me like we do... and if we don't then WHY?

There is no simple way of answering the question... if you had at least a link to the car I believe people could point out the areas which could be used to negotiate the price down. A lot will depend on overall condition, service history, year (I guess it could be assumed 2014?) etc. # Dealers will always list the cars at least £2k more than they would sell privately, so no surprise that they have it at £18k, where PX would probably be £14k and market in the middle of that. 40k in grand scheme of things is low mileage car, so that obviously will increase the price. Luxury kind of counterintuitively is one of the worst trims that Lexus offered (sure they still had SE and "no-trim", but those are very rare), so from common trims of Premier, F-Sport and Luxury - the Luxury is the lowest and least desirable trim. I personally would go for higher miles older F-Sport or Premier, buy that is just personal preference. It being just a weekend car perhaps IS300h isn't even the best choice, I consider it good for commuting and decent MPG in city, that the pros... but you saying you don't do either - so maybe get something more "fancy" and rewarding to drive?