Fuck off, new page.

Bob wrote:

Unfortunately it’s what people want

Bob are the people who want this? I dont want touchscreen in my cars. HVAC, volume etc should always be physical buttons. Surely older people dont want this (those with disposable incomes). So who is the actual audience?

Also how long are these screens gonna last? In 10 years they will have dated really really badly and will probably not work properly. How much will that cost to replace?

I think i would struggle with a tesla for example. Seeing as i drive a 16 year old diesel golf, having to go through a tablet for everything and everything would drive me nuts.

Touchscreens aren’t all bad Dino, they just need to have limited uses. For example, entering sat nav info the old way with a dial was a nightmare compared to a touchscreen.

b0r1s wrote:

Touchscreens aren’t all bad Dino, they just need to have limited uses. For example, entering sat nav info the old way with a dial was a nightmare compared to a touchscreen.

I do it all on my iPhone, which instantly transfers the information to my BMW's satnav system.

Caveat, we’re also getting solar installed as we can make approx 30% more electricity than we currently use, so in my head at least, this equate to free car fuel.

Frosty wrote:

Anyone here got an electric car? We're looking at them and I'm not entirely sure how long journeys work

Essentially they don’t

g.man wrote:

*old man shouts at cloud*

Launches 4OD....

My dad has got elbow deep in the electric car research recently.
He is trying to crunch the numbers so that the savings on fuel offset the extra outlay for the car over the time he owns it. Its not quite close enough yet for him to take the plunge. A big difficulty being he really isn't doing the miles anymore since retiring, however does need something that can do Milton Keynes to the south of Scotland a few times a year.

Anyway it meant he was waffling on about it the other day and he mentioned this article from the I which is about the costs of using public chargers. The long and short is that the public chargers provide little to no saving over filling up a petrol or diesel car.
https://inews.co.uk/news/environment/expensive-public-chargers-drive-up-cost-electric-car-ownership-901346

Another thing he mentioned was when looking into home charging assessing how long a charge takes vs when your tariff is cheapest.
On the right tariff something like a Tesla could end up cheaper to charge than the little Renault number. The logic being the Tesla can rapid charge and do it all during the cheap tariff hours while a smaller battery capacity without rapid charge will take longer spilling over into prime hours.

So much to consider.

Ergonomics innit

Oh definitely I’m all for real switches. But I think there can be edge cases, when I’m parked obviously, where a touchscreen can help. Luckily I have both options.

b0r1s wrote:

Touchscreens aren’t all bad Dino, they just need to have limited uses. For example, entering sat nav info the old way with a dial was a nightmare compared to a touchscreen.

The current BMW setup is alright, touchscreen if you want or if not use the MMI controller or as g.man said an app on your phone.

Credit to BMW for keeping the MMI controller for idrive 8, Audi got rid of theres and the cars are worse off without it. Sometimes it feels car manufacturers are putting in tech just to show off. Launch control for example. Other than journalist who the hell uses that? The new M3/M4 have a drift recorder. Thats right your car will record the angle and duration of your drift and give you a rating out of 5 stars. Who other than journalists would ruin their very very expensive tyres on drift mode?

Drive modes is another. Nice sports cars and executive cars i can understand, SUVs and other generic cars i cant. Why does the golf need drive modes? Worse still unlike some of the more of the more upmarket cars which have a drive mode rotary nob on the steering wheel, the golfs is buried inside the touchscreen menu. Yep, your driving your golf, come to a nice b road and decide to stick your car in sports mode. So you take you eye off the road fiddle around in the menu to find sports mode and your..dead. Didnt see that tree. Or by the time you get to sports mode the your halfway down the road.

The new Golf R has a nurburgring ring mode? Why? When is your average punter in UK gonna take their golf R to germany to the nurburgring to try that mode? Never. If your gonna do that then make it country specific (after all its engine maps and damper/suspension changes done electronically), so have a Silverstone or thruxton mode for UK or something.

Anyway, im getting old and moaning so im gonna go outside shout at the moon and watch 4OD.

I feel like I'm living the good life with my cig lighter powered BT adapter and phone cradle.

yourfavouriteuncle wrote:

Anyone here got an electric car? We're looking at them and I'm not entirely sure how long journeys work. It's probably not as impractical as it is in my head but the charge times being so much longer than just filling up some petrol I'm curious how people plan their trips. The main trip I'm thinking about the practicality of is the 250km up to Belfast, ferry over to Stranraer, then the 250km up to Perth. Charge before the ferry is easy I guess and then when I get to Perth go park somewhere for 40 minutes to charge again before going to my dad's? The final part of that seems like a pain in the butt. And what do you do mid-drive when it needs a charge? Stop at a service station and play time crisis for an hour?

We’re looking at one but are in a waiting list rn.  Charging isn’t so much of an issue on the newer stuff coming out with supercharging etc.  I’m no expert though but can talk you through my thinking with it if you’d like? Think someone here has a Tesla too?

Yeah, I have a used Model S. If you route to a destination using the Tesla navigation it will include suggested stops at Superchargers on the route to optimise the journey time. It will warn you to keep your speed, hence efficiency, below a certain limit if there are long gaps/cold weather or that you will have to charge elsewhere if the network can't support part of the trip, but mainland UK is quite well covered other than Wales. Northern Ireland is due to have a Supercharger installed in Belfast this year which should work nicely doing your trip... I have had no issues using the Superchargers so far (aside from price increases) despite having relatively low range (230 miles) compared to new cars.

Things will be more complicated with a non-Tesla, but this will depend wildly on the maximum charging speed of the vehicle, and its range and efficiency. It might be worth looking at the free app/website 'A Better Route Planner', or maybe 'Zap-Map', and experimenting with different models to see what kind of journey times look doable. The charging network should improve substantially over the next few years given recent reports of Ecotricity's 'monopoly' on UK motorway charging being broken up so other brands can install rapid chargers, followed by an Ecotricity and Gridserve partnership announcement to improve the 'Electric Highway' as they call their charging network...

I would have recommended looking at CPO Teslas, but since I bought mine last summer Tesla reduced their CPO warranty from a potential of 4 years/50,000 miles to merely an additional 1 year/10,000 miles on any warranty that the vehicle has remaining at that point, which seems somewhat risky (electric vehicles tend to require less servicing than non-electric, but can be quite expensive (especially Teslas) when they do need it).

Thanks for the input. Most of the time I think we'd be charging at home so the network should be less of an issue. Long trips greater than a couple hours will be fairly rare (Ireland is small) so we could probably make do with planning extra time in those long trips around charge points. We'd probably be doing extra and longer stops anyway as we've a new baby so maybe it won't be that different.