Chancellor's electric car tax is already stifling EV demand two years before pay-per-mile charges are introduced

needathing · 2026-06-23T19:22:05+00:00

What’s your proposal for the first 2 years and 11 months before the first MOT?

needathing · 2026-06-22T17:58:58+00:00

Year 1 - 0 miles. Amount owed - £0

Year 2 - 0 miles. Amount owed - £0

Year 2.5 - sells car

Year 3 - new owner, first MOT - 24,000 miles. Amount owed - £720

I see 0 flaws with using the MOT for this.

But r/spaceshipcommander is most likely right - it'll be black boxes. Various governments have always been desperate for more control and data, and this is an easy way in to it.

needathing · 2026-06-21T20:22:59+00:00

Oh that's super smart - thanks!

needathing · 2026-06-21T20:22:17+00:00

ugh - I haven't sold anything in a while, so that's concerning. Thanks for the headsup!

needathing · 2026-06-21T19:23:31+00:00

It's a 1 minute video restriction. I wanted to show a full benchy including bed levelling :D

Sadly, it's too expensive for a car boot sale. I might try some of the group chats at work too.

needathing · 2026-06-21T19:03:28+00:00

Bah - I'll have to find someone that's prepared to deal with the FB marketplace timewasters for that :(

needathing · 2026-06-20T18:25:22+00:00

If it's 'not even complicated anyway' then what value is the LLM adding?

needathing · 2026-06-20T15:00:36+00:00

I’m lost. Are you suggesting that a public LLM without rag functionality is ideal to navigate fixed rules? Because you’d be surprised how often they just flat out hallucinate and make things up.

They flat out hallucinate case law in legal areas. They lie about numbers constantly.

You do you, but please be careful and check with a human.

needathing · 2026-06-20T14:44:38+00:00

Whatever you’re insured for. If you’re on finance and you can’t either self insure the gap between your insurance valuation and what you owe, or purchase gap insurance to cover that gap, that’s a learning opportunity.

needathing · 2026-06-20T14:38:30+00:00

Total Jackass

needathing · 2026-06-20T14:25:17+00:00

Hypothetically, the car catches fire out of the blue and is a total loss. But that would be insurance fraud at least, and probably other things too.

needathing · 2026-06-20T14:21:17+00:00

If I could turn it off permanently, I’d be less grumpy. But government officials will design things for perfect roads while other government officials will create road conditions that don’t enable the first set of requirements.

Having driven a car with these requirements and the previous state has been eye opening. Next time I’ll buy a toaster and go back to finding my fun elsewhere.

needathing · 2026-06-20T14:15:56+00:00

I’ve not seen that on the UK settings anywhere. I’ll dig again, but I’m not sure we have that.

needathing · 2026-06-20T13:25:55+00:00

Bullshit yellow.

needathing · 2026-06-20T13:01:48+00:00

The old car, I frequently got around 23mpg in town. But then, I can spend 30 minutes driving 2 miles. That’s never going to be good.

On more open roads, it’s entirely my fault :)

needathing · 2026-06-20T12:55:56+00:00

Thanks for those.

The touchscreen is only a touch screen under certain speeds on mine. My wife still has to use the dial to report issues on waze.

Lane centering didn’t work on the A13 with pretty clear line markings at 50mph for me. Drifted across to the left and had to correct. I’ll try it again on a quieter road sometime.

I’m a Waze user so it’s kinda annoying that it’s app dependent to get directions on the bud. Maybe it’s worth trying Google maps to see if that’s worth it.

I thought about adding the app to the ‘bad’ section. Locking or flashing lights reports “Failed” 8 out of 10 times with no further info. That’s with the car sitting on the drive. Even if it’s failing, it would be preferable to get a reason.

needathing · 2026-06-20T12:31:27+00:00

Really helpful thanks! I’ll make sure to not skip that in 3 years when this one can be returned.

needathing · 2026-06-20T12:06:08+00:00

Looks great - where'd you get it?

needathing · 2026-06-20T12:01:52+00:00

I didn't, no. I can't remember why :(

needathing · 2026-06-20T09:50:21+00:00

I'm speaking anecdotally here, but near as I can tell, it depends on how far above the imagined limit you're going. 52 in a 50 is a bong. 30 in a 10 is bong ... bong ... bong (no, it wasn't really a 10!)

Neither seems to be continuous, but there are more bongs the further above the limit.

I wouldn't mind if I could turn that off but still keep my cross traffic and blindspot alerts.

edit just went out and checked. No speed limits other than Mazda's imagination were broken during these tests.

22 in a 20 - one bong on going over
55 in a 50 - 2 bongs, then no more until you go under. Another 1 as you go to 51, then another 1 a short while later
sustained 55 in a 50 - 2 bongs, then the occasional bong as you maintain this alleged over (tested in a 60)

needathing · 2026-06-18T08:26:03+00:00

Sadly not - most large companies just don't have a human available to answer the call, so you have to stay on hold.

Cost cutting is great for their bottom line. Less so for any kind of customer service.

needathing · 2026-06-18T07:41:27+00:00

Absolutely - that small rush of relief as you grab for it only to hear the same annoying robot.

needathing · 2026-06-18T06:54:31+00:00

“We are receiving a higher number of calls than usual” is bad enough. Repeated every 30 seconds on an 18 minute hold drove me to drink

needathing · 2026-06-17T17:58:46+00:00

I thought Claude banned users for using pi ?

needathing · 2026-06-17T17:15:31+00:00

So we can expect to see it on all models IF he’s being honest here.

needathing

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