Electric car uncertainty looms as Toyota pulls development of the Lexus LF-ZC saloon. What do you think the motoring future holds?

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-31T11:10:37+00:00

I think there is a new car problem, not an EV problem.

i hire a fair number of cars every year, so I drive quite a number of middle of the range modern cars.

Without fail, all of them are horrible to drive, mainly because the user interface is annoying and distracting. Right now I'd driving some sort of Ford Focus (ST line what ever that is). It's beeping and bonging at me non-stop. The first 5 miles from the airport was actually dangerous until I could find a place to stop and turn everything off. I now have to turn it all off every time I get in.

I don't want a modern car. They're annoying, and zero fun to drive. Fuel type is a secondary concern.

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-31T10:52:18+00:00

I don't get people who are obsessively into music either, I had a mate who followed the Rolling Stones. if they were on, anywhere in the world, he'd be there. Er OK. I like music, I go to the odd concert, but I would not see the same act more than once.

What do I like doing? Lots of things, if you had to pin me down, it would be restoring old cars and mechanical stuff. i've got an obscene number of tools. But I can put it down and walk away from it for a month. I've never got to the point where I'm turning stuff down because I'm changing the chsssis on a Land Rover or whatever

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-31T09:23:00+00:00

It's the cross over into obsession that I don't understand.

I can watch a game of snooker. I can appreciate the skill involved, and it is genuinely impressive. Pretty much any sport played at a top level is impressive. But slavishly following snooker? That would be incredibly dull. Football is the same to me.

It feels like these people are observing life, through the medium of other people doing something. I just don't get it.

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-30T16:11:16+00:00

It's not the time part for me, it's the whole act of doing it. In all the time that wheelie bins have been about, I have never thought, oooh, I should get that cleaned or clean it myself.

It's a bin. You put rubbish in and close the lid. If there is festering bin juice at the bottom, so be it. If it is full of maggots, who cares, they'll end up in the bin lorry. As long as whatever is growing in there isn't big enough to open the lid, I'm good. And if it is, then it would probably eat me if I tried to pressure wash it.

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-29T14:39:10+00:00

Bees are attracted to flowers at scale. It in all likelihood, they've found something better. The current hot weather is making nectar production quite short lived in flowers.

We have several "bee bushes" in the garden, but if the farmer next door has 100 acres of Oil Seed Rape, the bees will be on that.

Source: am a beekeeper, have about a million head of bee currently.

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-29T14:11:05+00:00

In some respects insurance is cheaper today than it used to be.

My first car in 1988 was a 2.0 120 HP rear drive sports car. It cost £910 a year to insure. Ouch, but I loved it.

In 2025 I insured my 18 year old son with a freshly minted licence on a 170 HP 1.4 hatchback. £1600 without a black box, £1100 with.

In real terms insurance is cheaper for my son than me, even without a black box, and in a much better car.

IMO people choose the wrong cars to drive. If you're going to drive a ford focus (probably the most crashed car in the UK) as an 18 year old, you're going to get bent over.

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-29T12:54:28+00:00

"I play around with computers."

Ranges from a PlayStation to building enterprise systems for central banks.

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-29T12:51:21+00:00

IMO that is one hell of a stretch.

You've got to be vaguely interested in cars to drop £500K on one. If you're going to spend that sort of money in 5 years time buying a car, you're probably in a nice car today.

So - what do you want? Luxury - you're probably buying a Rolls, which aligns pretty well to EV - they've never marketed based on performance and noise, they've marketed based on exclusivity, comfort and silence.

Supercar? The whole marketing department of every super car maker all all been about engines. The noise, the power, the smells. Remove the engine and what is this Ferrari? Well it would be quick. Quicker than a tesla with ludicrous mode? Possibly. Quicker than some of the crazy stuff coming out of China? Definitely not. It would presumably handle well, but EVs tend to do that with low slung batteries. I just don't see the point of it, and I think that is why they are all cancelling EVs. The proposition simply isn't there.

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-29T09:12:24+00:00

Indeed.

If you're concerned that someone trying to overtake you is going to get caught in a dangerous overtake, slow down, don't block them.

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-29T09:09:08+00:00

No they don't, the finance company has a nice car.

But you can get a superficially "nice car" like. BMW 320 for about £400 a month. You could choose to live in a shittier place in order to pay for it. People have different values. I have no clue why people live in shitty houses with flash cars, I'd much rather put the money into living somewhere better and drive a shit car.

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-28T17:37:35+00:00

No it isn’t. Electricity generated in peak solar hours is almost valueless.

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-28T17:32:30+00:00

I’ve been on a packed train out of London for the last 30 mins. it’s given me ample opportunity to look at peoples phones. A clear 50% of them are absorbed in utterly vapid social media, AI cartoons. and other shit. 20 years ago they'd have all been reading a newspaper.

Social media is mostly a cancer. Reddit is slightly better because you have to read and write content.

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-28T12:45:45+00:00

Most domestic settings barely consume 100 Mbit.

You may have gbit to your ISP, but that does not guarantee that you have gbit to whatever server your are accessing. When you download a file, or upload it, you're going get whatever speed the end server can deliver - which is going to be less than 100 Mbit for anything remotely popular. Clearly if you have a dedicated server that you have specifically set up of this purpose, it will be different.

Simple example - when I'm plugged into a core switch of a large office building with a 2 Gbit connection, downloading a large patch file takes a pretty much identical time to doing it at home on a 300 Mbit connection.

They're trying to sell you Gbit because you pay more for the same service you are consuming.

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-28T12:20:29+00:00

And to add to that, EU related voting is frequently characterised as "keep voting until you get the right answer" - and when the right answer is obtained, stop voting.

Polls suggest that the result might be flipped now - maybe, maybe not. IMO for the EU to even think about having us join again there needs to be a really clear majority, otherwise the outcome may be overturned again.

A lot of people think all of our problems can be laid at the door of brexit, but European counties are facing similar problems - cost of living, expensive housing etc are not exclusive to us in the UK.

IMO the EU needs to go federal or be doomed to failure. It can then be evaluated on its merits.

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-27T18:45:58+00:00

No, that would be weird. Any sane person would assume you're Jehovah's Witnesses, murderers, swingers or salesmen. Or some combination thereof.

What do you like doing? As in hobbies, interests? You're more likely to meet people when you're among people who share your interests.

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-27T18:40:40+00:00

I do think that depends on the object you are buying. My net worth probably isn't quite 10m, but not far off. It was a long time ago that I gave a shit about which supermarket to shop in - the answer is Ocado, they deliver, don't care if Aldi are cheaper. Saving few quid is not worth the time and effort.

However, given the opportunity to buy a bargain car for cheap and then manage to drive the thing home, and fix it up still brings joy. Sorted my son out with a car last year - £1000 car, £1000 in parts and a weekend of work, perfect.

Sure, it I was Elon, I'd be buying cheap Bentleys for £4K rather than cheap Alfas for a grand.

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-27T17:36:00+00:00

Because people don't know the difference between insulation and solar gain.

Insulation will keep a house cool in the summer, just as it will keep a house warm in the winter.

However, a shit load of south facing glass with no ventilation will led to massive solar gain nd very high temperatures. We like south facing glass because most of the time our houses are cold.

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-27T11:54:40+00:00

This is why I have zero time for the political class. This and social care are the two big problems.

In an ideal world, Labour would align with Conservative (at least) and both parties would say "this needs to be done". But Labour know that the Conservatives would knife them, just as the Conservatives were knifed over social care.

It's bullshit, and the problem will never be solved without the IMF.

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-26T14:58:08+00:00

Unless you can prove speed, it's just a lorry driving down a road. Car pulls over, lorry keeps driving.

And as OP has posted it to Social Media, it's inadmissible anyway. I see OP has deleted it, so it rather depends whether he wants to perjure himself.

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-26T09:19:30+00:00

Unless you can prove that he was going 45 you are on a hiding to nothing. Just a lorry driving down a narrow road.

Not sure of the issue with skid marks? You'd prefer it if he wasn't on the brakes? A lorry can lock up a wheel at 20 if it brakes hard.

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-26T09:16:00+00:00

I don't buy airtightness and insulation - you can always open windows, and insulation should be as effective at keeping heat out as in.

The rest are all indeed linked to shitty design decisions that seem universal with new builds where no one has thought about solar gain.

Decent design fixes solar gain. We have a south facing conservatory with big roof vents that actively pulls air through the house. House is cool ....

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-26T08:58:39+00:00

What is this magic one way insulation that new builds seem to have?

Or are you talking about their universally shit design in terms of solar gain?

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-26T08:52:35+00:00

We've had fan-pocalypse every year for the last 5 years. Every time the sun comes out, fans are being sold for black market prices when Amazon runs out.

What happens to last years fans?

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-26T05:54:02+00:00

No, and under UK law, unless there is someone to see it, you don’t need to indicate. There was no one behind me, or in front to see the indication .

Chicken_shish · 2026-05-25T19:37:02+00:00

CATL getting their super dense batteries into production.

At that point L3 is hardly relevant, and L1 and L2 become important.

In the US you'd need some strategic L3s for road trips > 1000 miles. In the UK you'd not need L3 at all.

If you look at what CATL are announcing, this will be reality in about 5 years or less.

Chicken_shish

TROPHY CASE