What's made you grumpy today?

[portland_bill]

Having driven a lot of full electric cars, they all have delicate control available. However, more than a gentlye push gives fierce acceleration, which is intoxicating and addictive. As long as you're not going far, so no range anxiety.
With there being a few downsides to electric vehicles, manufacturers tend to push the acceleration as a selling point. It is of course only a minority of drivers who drive stupidly, but they are the ones we notice. The people who buy their own EVs tend to drive more conservatively.
This morning, leaving Swindon, approaching a set of traffic signals, they turned amber, so I stopped. The Tesla behind swerved to lane 2, then decided perhaps not, and stopped beside me. Of course, as the lights changed, he was off like a rocket, chased hard by a Transit van, actually keeping up quite well. 7 miles later, they were both still just in front of me. Perhaps Tesla man was miffed at the Transit keeping up and had forgotten about the Panda.

 

[bugsymike]

Having driven a lot of full electric cars, they all have delicate control available. However, more than a gentlye push gives fierce acceleration, which is intoxicating and addictive. As long as you're not going far, so no range anxiety.
With there being a few downsides to electric vehicles, manufacturers tend to push the acceleration as a selling point. It is of course only a minority of drivers who drive stupidly, but they are the ones we notice. The people who buy their own EVs tend to drive more conservatively.
This morning, leaving Swindon, approaching a set of traffic signals, they turned amber, so I stopped. The Tesla behind swerved to lane 2, then decided perhaps not, and stopped beside me. Of course, as the lights changed, he was off like a rocket, chased hard by a Transit van, actually keeping up quite well. 7 miles later, they were both still just in front of me. Perhaps Tesla man was miffed at the Transit keeping up and had forgotten about the Panda.

One of my concerns with EVs is much like the old days with powerful automatic cars, once the foot is jammed on the accelerator even in a short distance in a car park the impact can be colossal for the object it hits.
A friend of mine had a immaculate Triumph TR4, his wife came back to it in a a local car park only to find it bent almost in half after a man who had just left the local Con. Club somehow jammed his foot down whilst maneuvering, destroying their car.
I have seen photos in the local paper where a large Range Rover type vehicle had managed to mount another car flipping it on it's side underneath it in a Supermarket car park.
Maybe somewhere in all the electronics modern vehicle have they could install an "anti idiot device" that controls the rate of acceleration in tight spaces.

 

[StevenRB45]

I think the issue is probably around points of reference.

Even a hybrid has largely no points of reference in a traditional sense for speed unless you look at the dash. The engine can be roaring away at low speed and silent at high speed. Most people seem to drive on their level of comfort rather than say speed limits or road markings.

Remove any meaningful mechanical noise fit garden roller tyres and large amounts of sound proofing and other than the scenery whipping past then watch as people update their frame of reference to their current car.

For a month it feels fast...for 6 months nippy...after that it's just the car.

Of course those people still have the same regard for the speed limit and highway code as they always did.

 

[bugsymike]

I think the issue is probably around points of reference.

Even a hybrid has largely no points of reference in a traditional sense for speed unless you look at the dash. The engine can be roaring away at low speed and silent at high speed. Most people seem to drive on their level of comfort rather than say speed limits or road markings.

Remove any meaningful mechanical noise fit garden roller tyres and large amounts of sound proofing and other than the scenery whipping past then watch as people update their frame of reference to their current car.

For a month it feels fast...for 6 months nippy...after that it's just the car.

Of course those people still have the same regard for the speed limit and highway code as they always did.

Very true, my daughter finds it hard going from a noisy diesel to a petrol vehicle with regards to throttle control.

 

[portland_bill]

Most people seem to drive on their level of comfort rather than say speed limits or road markings.

Many years ago, my brother had a few minor collisions and a speeding fine, or two. At the time he was driving a Fiesta diesel van. One weekend, he and my father stripped the carpets out, and removed the insulation/soundproofing from the floor and bulkhead. His driving calmed down a lot.
Later, he just found different ways to get into trouble.

 

[The Panda Nut]

You make a very good point here, by which I refer to the torque of many battery powered cars.

In days gone by cars with this sort of performance potential were bought by people who were, mostly (there's always the exception to the rule) interested in driving and their cars and, arguably, could exercise some degree of control over them. Now vehicles with these performance characteristics are being supplied as family SUV runabouts and being driven by people who are far less "savvy" about performance vehicles. I've seen a number of very near collisions at traffic lights because folk don't realize how fast the car is going to get off it's mark when they press the "go" pedal and they set off on the orange, as they probably have been doing for years in their old, small petrol engined, family runabout, and get a hell of a shock when they find themselves well into the junction before cross traffic has cleared it. I also noticed on the M6/M5 this year, on our annual Devon "adventure", that when you were exiting a speed controlled area, so all lanes were going 50mph often, that electric vehicles in the inside lanes were spectacularly out accelerating petrol engined vehicles in the outer lanes and a considerable amount of dangerous undertaking was the result. I saw, more than once, a large prestige vehicle in the outside lane, who was obviously intending to accelerate hard and pull into the middle lane, being dangerously surprised by a very ordinary looking SUV type vehicle with electric power out dragging him in the middle lane and resulting in a very near side swipe - saw this more than once and it nearly happened to me. There needs to be some specialist instruction given to folk buying electric vehicles or, perhaps, restricting their ability to accelerate so violently.

Maybe regulation of this insane and ridiculous level of performance is nearer the required mark. What is the point of electric vehicles that consume even more resources than the ICE ones they are replacing. Producing insane performance when what we need is efficiency and economy to reduce power consumption is grossly irresponsible. What is going on is worse environmentally than buring oil directly. Its is truly sick. Manufacturers who cannot see this need regulating hard and none of this change in 5 years rubbish. Now is when we need change. How they put together an environmental statement and policy for their shareholders and for regulatory purposes I cannot imagine. These things need to be seen as the pariahs they are. Family transport needs to economical and fit for purpose. patently clear that not everyone is capable of controlling vehicles that would outpace a formula 1 car of a few years agoand for use on our congested roads its plain wrong. Buy from these producers? NO WAY I would sooner walk.

 

[bugsymike]

Maybe regulation of this insane and ridiculous level of performance is nearer the required mark. What is the point of electric vehicles that consume even more resources than the ICE ones they are replacing. Producing insane performance when what we need is efficiency and economy to reduce power consumption is grossly irresponsible. What is going on is worse environmentally thany buring oil directly. Its is truly sick. Manufacturers who cannot see this need regulating hard and none of this change in 5 years rubbish. Now is when we need change. How they put together an environmental statement and policy for their shareholders and for regulatory purposes I cannot imagine. These things need to be seen as the pariahs they are. Family transport needs to economical and fit for purpose. Its patently clear that not everyone is capable of controlling vehicles that would outpace a formula 1 car of a few years agoand for use on our congested roads its plain wrong. Buy from these producers? NO WAY I would sooner walk.

I suspect the car manufacturers go for ever more size and performance to justify the price, selling a small economical car it would be harder to justify £40,000-£80,000 prices for a family saloon.
I suspect very few are fully laden and driving at 145 mph very often, so a pointless investment apart from showing off to your neighbours about how rich you are, assuming they don't realise it is on the "drip", Hire Purchase/rental, etc.
All my vehicles cost less to buy and run than many owners pay just for a service these days! I gave up trying to impress years ago.
What my mum used to call "all fur coat and no knickers", food on the table is more important.

 

[AnthonyH]

Global warming has shoved two major events on us, combustion engines are being banned in cars, and coal and gas electricty generation are being shut down to be replaced by wind and solar power.

I was watching a youtube video about the "Great Dying", it was the biggest global extinction event ever. 250 million years ago a giant gash the size of Siberia opened up. Spewing out lava, magma and carbon dioxide for 200,000 years, doubling the temperature of the planet. It was 70 degrees C at the equator and most of all life on the planet died.

I agree that global warming should be tackled, but the consequence isn't so great. Expensive, crappy electric cars that are politically engineered to produce artificial profits for brand name car manufacturers. I'd be perfectly happy to see BMW, Nissan, GM, all go bust, replaced with new EV car manufacturers that are cheap and reliable. Tesla should go bust too lol.

 

[The Panda Nut]

I suspect the car manufacturers go for ever more size and performance to justify the price, selling a small economical car it would be harder to justify £40,000-£80,000 prices for a family saloon.
I suspect very few are fully laden and driving at 145 mph very often, so a pointless investment apart from showing off to your neighbours about how rich you are, assuming they don't realise it is on the "drip", Hire Purchase/rental, etc.
All my vehicles cost less to buy and run than many owners pay just for a service these days! I gave up trying to impress years ago.
What my mum used to call "all fur coat and no knickers", food on the table is more important.

Love it your mum had it just about summed up!

As I said to Mrs PN yesterday. What would you rather have, that car or this house for the money. As a pensioner I cannot afford to pay £40K for a car, and a half sensible human being I wouldn't condone continuing the excesses of the worst of empires, and of the over-rich. The thought of this excess very much disgusts me when half the world is still starving.
More even than these though, the level of utter stupidity required to pay for a family car with this level of power, when law enforcement guys are happy to remove your license. and insurance guys are happy to give you a 1000% loading for being high risk is, I hope, something I'm old enough to avoid. One has to add, let alone the fact that you simply cannot use, and really dont need that level of performance to get briskly from A to B.

In the days of mega expensive super cars when you paid for the best of the best, I could get it, but this all came with exclusivity and excellence and elegance. For people to transport their children, and fetch shopping its absurd.

If the morons who design such things could get their heads around producing great range, reliable and long lived batteries that didnt rape the planet at a price we could all consider, things would be taking a turn for the better.

Apologies for the rant, but it really makes me angry when I see the environment around me dying while the madness goes on.

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

In the days of mega expensive super cars when you paid for the best of the best, I could get it, but this all came with exclusivity and excellence and elegance. For people to transport their children, and fetch shopping its absurd.

If the morons who design such things could get their heads around producing great range, reliable and long lived batteries that didnt rape the planet at a price we could all consider, things would be taking a turn for the better.

Apologies for the rant, but it really makes me angry when I see the environment around me dying while the madness goes on.

I just couldn't have put it better! I'd only add that I despair at all the folk who think it's their inviolate right to fly off all over the place for a couple of weeks holiday at great expense to the environment. Yes, I've done it and been on cruises - cruise ships are another great polluter I'm told - but that was before we knew better. Now we know how damaging it is can't we all just get behind cutting down on our polluting excesses?

I'm not particularly impressed with electric cars because of their cost, range anxiety, difficulty of charging away from home and the expense of having a home charging point installed - look into that if you're thinking of one. Because our house has an old fuse type electrical installation it's much more expensive to do than they claim! Then I saw the Dacia Spring and thought that might be a replacement for Becky when the time comes? However there's quite a lot of compromises with these cheaper options. Very limited range, slow charging, no thermal management of the battery, etc, etc. Now there's the Hyundai Inster, which seems to address many of these issues. I'm going to take a look into the dealer - not intending to buy one anytime soon though.

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

I just couldn't have put it better! I'd only add that I despair at all the folk who think it's their inviolate right to fly off all over the place for a couple of weeks holiday at great expense to the environment. Yes, I've done it and been on cruises - cruise ships are another great polluter I'm told - but that was before we knew better. Now we know how damaging it is can't we all just get behind cutting down on our polluting excesses?

I'm not particularly impressed with electric cars because of their cost, range anxiety, difficulty of charging away from home and the expense of having a home charging point installed - look into that if you're thinking of one. Because our house has an old fuse type electrical installation it's much more expensive to do than they claim! Then I saw the Dacia Spring and thought that might be a replacement for Becky when the time comes? However there's quite a lot of compromises with these cheaper options. Very limited range, slow charging, no thermal management of the battery, etc, etc. Now there's the Hyundai Inster, which seems to address many of these issues. I'm going to take a look into the dealer - not intending to buy one anytime soon though.

Further to the above. I was out on one of my walks the other day when I came across a chap who was trying to get his car to charge at one of our two recently installed public charging stations. He seemed to be in some difficulty so I stopped to talk to him. Turns out he was trying to get it to work by downloading an app to his mobile phone and use it. Unfortunately every time he went through the procedure and tapped the "go" button it failed. What I didn't know, and he explained to me, is that every time you initiate the process the app blocks out a charge on your bank account - like when you buy petrol with your credit card at an unmanned pump - and it takes several days before that block is taken off so that is money in your bank, that you can't use until the block is cancelled. He'd attempted payment 3 times before he got it to work so he had 4 lots of this money blocked - he thought each time it was blocking £50. I must ask my son in law about this - He has a Skoda Enyaq and uses on street chargers from time to time paying with his phone, mind you, wouldn't work for me as I don't have a "smart" phone - am I alone in detesting how things are called "smart" these days?

 

[AnthonyH]

Further to the above. I was out on one of my walks the other day when I came across a chap who was trying to get his car to charge at one of our two recently installed public charging stations. He seemed to be in some difficulty so I stopped to talk to him. Turns out he was trying to get it to work by downloading an app to his mobile phone and use it. Unfortunately every time he went through the procedure and tapped the "go" button it failed. What I didn't know, and he explained to me, is that every time you initiate the process the app blocks out a charge on your bank account - like when you buy petrol with your credit card at an unmanned pump - and it takes several days before that block is taken off so that is money in your bank, that you can't use until the block is cancelled. He'd attempted payment 3 times before he got it to work so he had 4 lots of this money blocked - he thought each time it was blocking £50. I must ask my son in law about this - He has a Skoda Enyaq and uses on street chargers from time to time paying with his phone, mind you, wouldn't work for me as I don't have a "smart" phone - am I alone in detesting how things are called "smart" these days?

Did you buy the iPhone you were considering some time ago?

 

[porta]

Further to the above. I was out on one of my walks the other day when I came across a chap who was trying to get his car to charge at one of our two recently installed public charging stations. He seemed to be in some difficulty so I stopped to talk to him. Turns out he was trying to get it to work by downloading an app to his mobile phone and use it. Unfortunately every time he went through the procedure and tapped the "go" button it failed. What I didn't know, and he explained to me, is that every time you initiate the process the app blocks out a charge on your bank account - like when you buy petrol with your credit card at an unmanned pump - and it takes several days before that block is taken off so that is money in your bank, that you can't use until the block is cancelled. He'd attempted payment 3 times before he got it to work so he had 4 lots of this money blocked - he thought each time it was blocking £50. I must ask my son in law about this - He has a Skoda Enyaq and uses on street chargers from time to time paying with his phone, mind you, wouldn't work for me as I don't have a "smart" phone - am I alone in detesting how things are called "smart" these days?

Yes, the wife tried in Skipton to charge her new hybrid, it took £35 out of her account, on the app, then refused to ‘initiate’ the charge, (bearing in mind it’s a PHEV so only costs £3.50 normally) took a week to get refunded…yet, if you have a contract app with one of the networks, it only charges the standard rate and what you’ve used

 

[There all puntos]

Just had to replace my gov.so-helpmaboabphotoidentitycard.gov.yuk

Admittedly I did make mistakes, I'm not a bot nor drone.

Cost me £14.

All because I have had a photo licence, that's due to expire (ten years since applying for one after surrendering my auld pink foldering one), and my recent photo still makes me look like one of Crimewatch Yuk's most wanted!!!!

I even tried to smile a bit, still look like a boxer. Such is life, one thing is I can't get any balder.


Unless you include nose and ear hair. Still got plenty of that though.

 

[The Panda Nut]

Just had to replace my gov.so-helpmaboabphotoidentitycard.gov.yuk

Admittedly I did make mistakes, I'm not a bot nor drone.

Cost me £14.

All because I have had a photo licence, that's due to expire (ten years since applying for one after surrendering my auld pink foldering one), and my recent photo still makes me look like one of Crimewatch Yuk's most wanted!!!!

I even tried to smile a bit, still look like a boxer. Such is life, one thing is I can't get any balder.


Unless you include nose and ear hair. Still got plenty of that though.

Ive got two years more photo free zone and then I too will be caught. I cant tell you how many times people have (wrongly) told me I must have a photo licnese. But, I have written out 500 times. I dont want a photo license. So Im never going to willingly relent.

 

[The Panda Nut]

Yes, the wife tried in Skipton to charge her new hybrid, it took £35 out of her account, on the app, then refused to ‘initiate’ the charge, (bearing in mind it’s a PHEV so only costs £3.50 normally) took a week to get refunded…yet, if you have a contract app with one of the networks, it only charges the standard rate and what you’ve used

Ha that'l learn you, No good these electric tings, no good IO say and here is the proof! LOL

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

Did you buy the iPhone you were considering some time ago?

Mrs J is now the proud owner of an iphone 6e but is finding it very difficult to master. I haven't yet bought one but am swayed towards a google pixel, probably an 8. This is because I have absolutely no Apple experience and find Mrs' J's ipad a complete mystery when coming from my windows laptop. I've been told that being even a little bit conversant with windows means I'll find it somewhat easier to work the google phone which uses android - my TV has an android screen for on demand etc too. I'm still unconvinced it's worth all the money it costs though.

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

Yes, the wife tried in Skipton to charge her new hybrid, it took £35 out of her account, on the app, then refused to ‘initiate’ the charge, (bearing in mind it’s a PHEV so only costs £3.50 normally) took a week to get refunded…yet, if you have a contract app with one of the networks, it only charges the standard rate and what you’ve used

So I suppose they've got your money tucked away earning then interest for that period of time. Do this to thousands of customers and you'r really making money?

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

Just had to replace my gov.so-helpmaboabphotoidentitycard.gov.yuk

Admittedly I did make mistakes, I'm not a bot nor drone.

Cost me £14.

All because I have had a photo licence, that's due to expire (ten years since applying for one after surrendering my auld pink foldering one), and my recent photo still makes me look like one of Crimewatch Yuk's most wanted!!!!

I even tried to smile a bit, still look like a boxer. Such is life, one thing is I can't get any balder.


Unless you include nose and ear hair. Still got plenty of that though.

Being the age we are, we're now doing this every 3 years and both of ours are due in a few months - I worry about making a mistake on the forms and maybe they'll take my licence away altogether!

 

[AnthonyH]

Edited because of sad content.

I love you Snow.