The Chocolate Fireguard as designed by Mercedes Benz

Another of those suspicious statistics that has been hallowed by repetition. I had a phone call from my electricity supplier a little while ago to try to persuade me to allow them to install a "smart meter." I was happy to discuss, but the list of supposed advantages did not include money-saving. I queried this, and was told that they do not make claims that this is likely to save you money as there is no reliable data available on this. Which seems highly probable to me.

Main advantage of a smart meter to me seems to be when they can help me turn on and off appropriate appliances and energy-consuming equipment (including, perhaps one day, an electric car charger) based on the instantaneous price of energy. At the moment, they aren't smart enough to tell me that I have left on a phone charger against the background consumption due to a single room light. How they are supposed to save me energy in that case is not clear. "Alert! Alert! Your washing machine is not running on the most economical setting for the load you have just put in!"

I would slightly disagree with the above about making special trips to get our fossil fuels, I'm making a wild guess here but I would suggest that most of us here are either getting close to or are retired and if they are like me buy fuel whilst shopping, visiting family etc I never drive to a petrol station just for fuel particularly as the nearest places are four miles in either direction, and I use an AA app which tells me the cheapest price on the day and because of that I wait until I'm at 1/4 tank to maximise the saving, using vouchers from Morrisons etc. My other mode of transport is my mobility scooter used to get to the local garden centre or village shop. I do my bit in a small way. I would suggest that your vehicle still needs an MOT and servicing to keep it fit for purpose and I would also assume that as its a specialist vehicle your bills would compare similarly to mine relatively speaking.

Martin P

No special trips if you can charge at home and only need to charge otherwise, on a longer journey. City dwellers likely use the vehicle mainly for short journeys in the city.

Depends on which dpf chemical is used in a diesel. Filling automatically adds a dose of additive on our 607, so only filling for a full tank of fuel is far more economical than keeping the tank topped up. Additive is not cheap and most don’t think about it when costing fuel for trips. It doesn’t dispense much (40ml?) but it adds up. It is safe to store diesel at home in a can - more-so than petrol.

Maintenance is a large money-maker for car dealerships. They are most certainly worried about reduced servicing requirements for BEVs. Brakes don’t get used very much, no engine/gearbox maintenance required, no fuel pumps, tanks, starter motors, alternators etc. Nissan increased, substantially, the cost of a new battery but this is while Tesla have reduced the battery costs by a huge amount. Go figure why Nissan did that!

Car salesmen would prefer you to buy an ICE vehicle from their range. Why? Because of the increased maintenance charges they can make during its lifetime. Because you will be more likely to change it for another in a couple years time. Because they make more commission on those models. Because ...

As BEVs become more prevalent, the ICE variants will be the ones needing the specialist maintenance. Dealerships charge £50 just to connect the fault code reader, whereas the BEV will self-diagnose most faults - if and when they occur.

I was wrong about your leccy costs for your Scotland trip in my earlier post. Sufficient power to get to the border and then no fuel costs in Scotland, or to get most of the way home! So about ten quids worth for the whole trip!

Is it my imagination or are threads on this forum getting longer?

It has taken me ages to read the 16 pages of this thread alone. It seems a life time ago people were slagging off any make of vehicle whose driver had upset them in a previous life!

However it does raise two questions in my mind.

On average how many posts does it take to change the subject under discussion to something unrelated to the opening post?

Secondly what is the longest thread with no mention of MODEL engineering?

Just asking.

John

As this thread is a tea room subject then model engineering may be tenuous if present at all, as I have followed most of this on a daily basis the extreme length is not an issue but if the title grabbed your interest after 16 pages then you will certainly notice the thread drift. I think of the tearoom as also being like the pub where drift is inevitable but everyone can chip in and even pull it back to the original subject. It’s only a bit of fun and can be ignored but sometimes the title seems interesting only to find that drift takes it away from the initial hook.

Mike

Maybe I can claim the record for longest non model engineering post for my "Aircraft General Discussion" thread at 1648 posts. (When I checked just now....)

John

.

Sorry, John

Finding either of those values would require the data to be parameterised ... so you will first need to define your terms and then analyse every thread on this forum, to determine at what point each thread has reached your 'threshold'.

This may take some time ... and you are the only one qualified to do it.

Meanwhile; the rest of us can just have a chat about things that happen to interest us.

MichaelG.

As an FYI if anyone is considering it you can now order the model 3 UK for delivery June (whch in Tesla time probably means July or August or...). Standard range (reality check probably 200 miles) for £40K or Long Range (reality check probably 300 miles summer) from £50K. The latter has a 75KWH battery with a peak charge rate (if they ever bring in the supercharger 3's) of 250KW. In practical terms 20-80% top-up should be around 20 mins at the moment, 15 mins in near future.

Having said that as far as I'm aware european 3's get CCS charge sockets rather than the olderstyle tesla socket UK so the supercharger network needs upgrading (or use an adapter?). Can use other CCS chargers - most are 50KW although 100 and 150 kW CCS chargers are being introduced by other vendors.

In reality what that means is that on long trips starting with a full home charge (long range) you'ld drive about 250miles then start making 15-20 min pitstops every 200 miles using superchargers or 40 min pitstops using 50KW CCS (of which there are plenty)

Hello John

In this case 2 pages!

The rest has been a version of "chinese whispers"

The number of views and posts is of personal interest. It indicates to me that the design features that are apparently built into the system to cut off the supply of data to the driver may not be as common as Mercedes imply. (?)

Still looking for another A Class with similar design features.

Thanks all.

Keith

I kind of assumed that it meant something like that as well, maybe not on a dark cold winter evening when power demand is very high either!

I think it means that if your neigbours have got home and plugged in before you you may well have to wait your turn alternatively they will load share and you may not get as much juice at the rate you expected. Broadband style.

Edited By Doubletop on 20/05/2019 11:00:29

The link V8Eng provided led to this governemet strategy document. It may well be what I've been asking for

road-to-zero

It looks like it is worth reading and right at the back 218 endnotes with links to other papers......

Edited By Doubletop on 20/05/2019 11:17:46

Ok. If you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em. I apologise in advance that this post has nothing to do with model engineering!

Firstly Michael G I would happily carry out the analysis you suggest but fear I will not live long enough to publish the results.

If I may drift back to the original post I drive a 2018 Kia Sportage which has not one but two visual indications of the current speed limit, one is derived I understand from the GPS/SatNav and is displayed on the touch screen, the second is read from the road signs by one of five cameras on my vehicle (not including my dash cam) and displayed in the instrument cluster. It has many other safety(?) aids and so far, in nearly 5k miles they have behaved faultlessly.

Of course I have the ability to switch all these aids off, including the speedometer, if I so choose. It’s called a brain and it is very easy to slip into ignore mode! I am not alone in this. Tootling down the motorway at a steady 80 I am usually overtaken by a string of vehicles, mostly of Germanic origin, desperately trying to catch the white van at the head of the procession. They clearly have the ability to engage ignore mode as well.

Now back to advances in engineering which I think if my memory is correct was briefly mentioned on page two or three of this thread.

You may guess from my stage name that I am of a certain age! I can remember when most make and model of cars had round headlights, probably Lucas, with replaceable filament bulbs, unless you had gone upmarket and fitted sealed beams. Break a headlight and the local scrappy would be able to offer a range of replacements and providing it was the right diameter it would probably fit. It probably cost little more than the price of a gallon of four star (4s 6d plus 1d for a shot of Redex I recall).

Fast forward to the present day. Many cars now have what the industry call “signature headlights”. You know the type, sculpted to blend in with the flowing lines of the bodywork and with LED displays (the signature) which are usually unique to a make, sometimes unique to a model and even unique to a trim level within a model range. Scrappy’s no longer exist but try getting the specific replacement signature headlamp from your local vehicle dismantler. No chance. You have no choice but to go to a main dealer. Most modern headlights slot into a fixing on the body and are secured by a single screw, presumably engineered to make fitting swift and easy on the production line.

It only takes a minor front end shunt to break the fixing on one of these lights which are of course sealed units. Forget the cost of the cracked grill or rippled bumper the cost of the headlight alone will I am sure far exceed the combined personal and compulsory excess on your insurance. Do you drive a car with a signature headlight? Any idea how much a replacement costs? Go on check I dare you and report back here.

I’ll start the ball rolling. A headlamp for a Range Rover Velar will set you back a little over £2000! That is for one not a pair!!

As for advances in engineering the same vehicle has, like many cars, a puddle light in the door mirror. The Velar doesn’t just illuminate the puddle it throws a silhouette of the vehicle onto the puddle as well. Sorry but shadow art on a car is taking engineering too far!

This discussion would be so much better in a pub but it’s not my round and I’m off to the workshop. Drive safely.

John

The point I was trying to make. Or at least 41 similar points

41-inconvenient-truths-on-the-new-energy-economy

Pete

Edited By Doubletop on 16/07/2019 21:24:08

Well Doubletop that certainly makes interesting and thought provoking reading!

I see that the Building Regs (England) are being reviewed and one thing apparently proposed is that ‘all new homes with a dedicated Parking space should be fitted with an electric vehicle charging point’.

I read about it in the i paper today: link. inews

I would have put this in the electric cars thread but that has been closed and this thread is near enough.

Edited By V8Eng on 16/07/2019 22:44:53

The problem with any change in policies and new technologies is the special interest groups that lobby for and against, the failure of governments to look far enough ahead and the usual business of giving the job of analysis to assorted overpaid committees who ill drag it out for their own benefit.
Any serious discussion of the deeper involvements of energy policies gets into politics and is inappropriate on this forum.
Doubletop's link has validity but also some obvious manipulation to sway the casual reader.

maximum theoretical energy in a pound of oil is 1,500 percent greater than max theoretical energy in the best pound of battery chemicals.

That sounds dramatic but it's 15x the energy yet made to look like 1500 and ignores the fact that the battery can be recharged and when the oil is burned it's burned and you don't get all the energy out from it either.

To make enough batteries to store two day's worth of U.S. electricity demand would require 1,000 years of production by the Gigafactory (world’s biggest battery factory).

So you don't store it that way - there's already a technique for storing energy as liquid salt for instance or simply pulling a mass uphill (inefficient but doable when there's plenty spare)

In the same vein the article promotes fracking and since it's based on figures from the worse country for energy use and pollution then the cynic in me is inclined to believe that a picture of a scandinavian schoolgirl is there to obfuscate lobbying by US oil and coal.

V8Eng notes the gov proposal re electric charge points. Again I'm cynical. It would make more sense to build those houses with a simple, cheap 32A commando socket or even a blanked off 32A point so that future changes are easy. Putting in a charging system as such has to be a back-hander to some pal who makes or installs them and the lessons of smart meters that don't work properly isn't being learned.

Today we're told that gov is slow to roll-out 10% ethanol petrol and risks our biofuel companies going down. If the stuff is that good then note Brazil has 27% ethanol. Apparently we can grow our own sugar beet or wheat to make it but conveniently forgets to remind readers that we currently have to import 70% of our food, we are supposed to be planting lots more woodland and I can't help wondering where all the land for this is suddenly going to come from and how we're going to keep it all fertile.

Simply put no-one really analyses these things to full depth - just band-aid stuff.

The reality is that we are far too wasteful and need to learn to manage with less and need to control population, stop travelling all over the place (particularly by air) and become more self-sufficient to reduce international transport. Look at almost any manuactured food or domestic product and it contains palm oil; the production of which has devastating environmental consequences.

I've forced myself to stop ranting on now but on a lighter note I once wrote an article called 'mince up your granny and spray her on the meadow'. It wasn't popular.

pgk

Lets be practical, in a few years the majority of us will not have personal transport as we have today.

For one thing, most of us couldn't afford to buy an all electric vehicle, andd wouldn't have any way of charging it easily if we could.

then of course there is always this **LINK**

Regards

Edited By FMES on 17/07/2019 08:14:41

Soylent Green?

Funny(?) that there is no mention of the stark facts of continued fossil fuel usage.

That of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (and the likely consequences) and that fossil fuels will (relatively soon) be all used up - and in much less time, than predicted, if all the third world populations were to instal fossil-fuelled central heating systems or air conditioning.

So this sort of tripe has to be considered as lobbying by the rich vendors of fossil fuels. A shame that it is clear (even from the mention of this ‘report’ on the forum ) that there are so many out there who are unable to sort the real truth from the carp they hare presented with and read. For a considerable proportion of society, it might have been better had they been illiterate?

Over forty years ago, I had cavity wall insulation installed. I wonder how much house heating costs that has saved over that time? Cost was £174, IIRC. Since then, I have added a huge amount of loft insulation (relative to the measly 25mm installed before my occupancy). Double glazing has been added, but not only for energy saving, but also for ease of maintenance and sound reduction. The triple glazing was the extra ‘icing on the cake’.

The internet has a lot to answer for. Fake news only fools the lower quartiles of the population. Do remember that half the population is below average intelligence levels.

I agree with most of the above with exception of "we have to import 70% of our food". We don't have to! Unfortunately we have got used to seeing so many options of basically the same product on the supermarket shelf. Most of it imported. During the war and for several year's after, we were self sufficient in food production, and yes it was basic foodstuff and seasonal, but it fed the nation. Why on earth do we need all this stuff from around the world, too much choice in my opinion.

A classic example of this is the building of a huge 41m high storage and distribution block in my village. Owned by an Italian company to store and distribute imported Pasta. This is not just a blot on the landscape, but when operational will have a constant stream of trucks in and out 24/7, on inadequate roads I might add. On the emoji thread, someone asked if the world has gone mad........in my opinion YES.

Edited By RMA on 17/07/2019 09:20:18