Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

Glad it wasn't a dream/hallucination.

Assuming there are charging points not too far away I wouldn't think all of that matters too much although dedicated parking outside that you can nab the majority of the time to run a cable to if you want.

is it just a simple matter of running a line out your window from your mains? seems a bit implausible. i'm presently labouring under the impression that it requires all manner of specialised electric wizardry to be installed in your doublewide garage.

I think it depends if you want fast charging or not - but you may want to research it.

When I lived at a friend's place at the top of Finsbury P. Someone had a Golf GTE and regularly used to run the bright orange cable from their place to the car directly outside.

That said it was a quiet street in the outside of computer hours and had a gated pathway.

I walked by a house where they had gaffer taped a bit of cable duct across the pavement (appeared semi permanent arrangement) on the end of which was their electric car.

In time, no doubt someone will trip over it and sue them, but until then, appeared to be a shit but workable arrangement.

I'd add that there was fast charging technology out there almost 2yrs ago that would fully charge a Tesla in under 10mins.

I don't know to what extent it, or similar tech is rolled out, but it will be eventually.

maybe i'll wait until they have under-street magno-charging. it's totally gonna be a thing!

Had my car in winter storage, picked it up today. It was in rather good company. There are another 2 more sheds like this. In the righthand top corner is a Shelby Mustang. A world championship winning WRX along side just out of shot. Mine is the SC430

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The project I looked at was based on mobile hyper batteries (for want of a better phrase) .

So in cities you would have charging points with a big battery that people could rock up to and charge their cars super fast. Then when they got low a van would come along and swap it for a fresh one. At motorway petrol stations you'd have points that would take 8mins to fully charge most EVs.

It was a while ago so I can't remember the details, but from the numbers I was shown, generally the population massively over estimate their distance requirements. Also the polution caused by "the last mile" driving was nuts.

Why would a battery charge from another battery more rapidly than from mains/grid power?

You can get a huge amount of current out of a battery (only limit is cooling). Mains power providing the same current probably involves infrastructure a lot more expensive than a man with a van (ie building a sub station with feed from the grid at every charging point). Plus you can charge the battery slowly which smooths out the power demand spikes.

Edit: it’s why car jumpstarters are lithium battery packs - you can’t get enough current from domestic mains.

Ok, interesting. So flywheel UPS type batteries would be an idea- spin it up at periods of low demand. The Navy are investigating these for powering ship mounted lasers as they can discharge very rapidly and be charged up very rapidly.

Shitola.

Anyone interested in coming over and helping me troubleshoot a wiring loom next weekend?
I will pay for help in whatever recompense you desire. Can come to you, potentially.
Its a Mini- a classic mini, and I can't make heads nor tails of the previous owner's wiring work.
I'd also quite like to move the bolted in bucket seats at some point.

Toyota MR2 gen3 roadster, mid engine fun machine 2+ tooth brush :)

They're not that bad with the frunk plus the storage behind the seats. Plus you can move the alarm out of the frunk to generate a bit more space, it's a popular mod. That's what I keep telling the other half anyway ;)

I've been lurking on MR2 owner's forums a lot recently and I've been surprised how much you can do yourself. Plus they're cheap, parts are generally cheap and aside from the lack of storage space they're pretty practical - Toyota reliability plus 40-ish mpg. I'd get a 2005 or 2006 though, apart from the engine and pre-cat issues being sorted 2005 onwards has extra bracing and a few other improvements.

On the minus side, a silly old bat hit the Z4 in a car park, full liability accepted but a gigantic pain.

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On the plus side, this is the insurance company's loaner of choice, I have been forced to take a lot of drives on twisty country B roads....

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Anyone ever used this place to buy parts?

Most of the German carpart companies are actually the same one in my experience, pretending to battle prices. Postage can be really slow. Other than that, fine.
Disclaimer- that might just be the cheaper product places.

That's my conclusion as well, it's very odd. I bought a fair bit of stuff for our merc though and it was between 30-80% cheaper than getting parts in Sweden + I could get proper brands as well.

840 Euro for four discs is, frankly, astonishing - buying those from Mercedes in the UK would be £1,647, so a saving of ~£900.

Similar difference to what I had. Got some suspension parts that were 20-30% of the the mercedes price, and that was for Lemförder who manufactures the parts for mercedes

What about comparing with euro carparts or similar?

If you can be bothered to do the research, my mechanic reckons that you can buy parts from the part manufacturer without the car branding. Same part - maybe half the price. He specifically works on Audi. An example, Bosch part in Audi box is £200. In a Bosch box, same part, £100.

Anyone interested in buying an mx5?
Mk2.5, silver, low mileage, fresh mot, tidy, hardtop, two new tyres.

Yes, use them almost constantly, only place that I find has decent quality parts and at good pricing.
Locally I can't get anything decent without a lot of ballache, price isn't the the problem, whats left of the trade parts suppliers only seem to stock junk, I would pay the full price if they could get it, but most can't, or don't want to.
Worth buying all the bits you need and paying the £4 return charge upfront, so if you've got an option on a component, just buy both them return what doesn't fit.
Have had two parts (MAF sensors, new genuine bosch) go bad, one was DOA the other lasted a few months, both times they replaced the part quickly, paid return postage and paid a contribution towards labour to swap.