gangzoom

BMW drivers as a whole, you mean? I always thought they indicators were an optional extra on Beemers and people just went for a horn upgrade instead I thought these days they are just going for the extra bright day time fog lights and 'get out of my way, don't know you how important I am' head light flashing option

I think you mean undertake for cyclists passing vehicles Actually I mean 'overtake', my commuter bike it geared to hit about 25 mph. That's more than fast enough to overtake cars crawling around at 10-15 mph

Not sure why eveyone is getting worked up about overtaking cyclist, on my daily commute on my pedal bike during rush hour I overtake far more cars than have cars overtake me!! I find driving to work through city traffic the worst kind of driving you can do. On days when I have to take the car due to going to multiple meetings it takes me a good 35-40 minutes to crawl through 4-5 miles of basically stationary traffic. On my pedal bike I can do trip in 15 minutes and have no worries about parking. I also don't like cyclist who run red lights, if I see them run a red light they become my target to catch and pass As for riding on the pavement, I've personally never done it. But understand why people do, if your new to cycling having share a piece of tarmac with something as big as a double decker bus or lorry is quite intimidating....But UK roads are actually OK for cyclists, in 10 years + of cycling on the road I've been run over twice, second time was quite good fun going flying across the bonnet of a car

Thanks for the info, from what I've read it appears stock market investment are designed to be seen as 5-10 year+ products, I think the short term variability is very unpredictable. Certainly it's far too much risk for me to stomach with any decent amount cash (>£5k). Will be sticking to the old fashioned savings accounts

Apple is probably just wondering what to do with their $180 billion cash reserve. I'm surprised they haven't tried to buy Tesla, which at the moment is burning through cash as $300-400 million per quarter and only have a predicted $1.5 billion in the bank, and will carry on their cash burn for the next 18-24 months. But despite that Morgan and Stanley have just put a target share price of over $500 dollars per share on Tesla stock - double at its current rate. That puts Tesla's market value at bigger than Ford, despite producing less than 50,000 cars per year....Some might call that a 'bubble', the stock market is one crazy place!!! Infact Apple has enough cash to go and buy out BMW without too much hassle, and have change left to buy out half of Greece!!

Are you sure about that http://www.cultofmac.com/167806/steve-jobs-wanted-to-design-an-icar-before-he-died/

We have two nearly maxed out already. Need the money in about 18 months time, so no point sticking it into a long term fixed of any kind. Actually not looking for the money to make us any noticeable income, it's a short term savings pot thats going to be spent soon rather than a longterm investment pot... Was just considering all my options. Given its a savings pot I don't think I want to take on any risk, so will probably end up with another 1-2-3 account

What kind of returns do you aim for? Looking at what to do with £15K lump sum. I've looked at market based products, some have made stupid gains in 12 months (>30%) others have halved in value. Many seem to advise to lower risk long term products, like peer to peer, but the safest of these are giving 5-6%. That may be double what a Santander 1-2-3 account give but for the extra risk am not sure worth it.... I think I'm just too chicken to play the markets with my cash. The other option is to open x3 Lloyds accounts (me + wife + joint) that will return 5% on £2k x 3. Works out as the same interest as compared to £20K in a 1-2-3 account, but clearly for a lot less capital investment??

How much are you guys putting into stocks?? I've been looking at it recently, but haven't get the balls to commit any substantial amount.....

Been a BMW driver I'm surprised you don't know this already, BMW don't sell RWD or FWD cars, they sell either sDrive or xDrive machine Wait till you get the chance to hear a diesel one start up from cold.....The noise can be best described as 'agricultural'

i think 330 Mile range is more than acceptable its the charging time even 30 minutes from tesla super charger is to much My view is that a person that can afford a 90k car is probably doing quite well for themselves. So say they are a sales account manager at an IT firm. They need to drive to a customer site for a business meeting, if they live in Berkshire they cannot drive further North than Nottingham if they want to come back the same day. If I were going that far I would get the train? Actually all the people I know who can comfortably afford a Tesla are in such positions of power where I go to them, not the other way round

Their website is abit short on detail - 10amps 'reserve capacity'. A battery is a battery regardless of technology, there's no such thing as 'reserve capacity' unless they are talking about the rechargeable lithium iron phosphate battery bit. Supercapacitors can discharge/recharge alot of power very quickly compared to 'normal' batteries, but they cannot store alot of energy. It's a bit like a 100meter sprinter who can run 100 meters very quickly, but gets tired out after 200 meter, versus 800 meter runner who might not be as quick over a short distance but can run for much longer. If you can guarantee your only need X amount of power for a short period of time (ie: your car will start first time, every time), than 10amphrs is probably enough. Your ideal battery should be at the top right of the graph - which currently is totally empty!!! Infact per kg, Supercapacitors store less energy than Lead-Acid batteries. So I suspect the reason this battery is quoted at 10amps is because to make it 'lighter' than a lead acid battery the amount of energy it can store has to be less than any Lead-acid battery of the same weight.... So actually what is the point of it?? A 350Z has a 60amph+ battery, if you reduced it down to just 10amph (chuck away 80%+ the battery), it'll probably be lighter than this battery they are selling.

Problem with 'super capacitors' is they store not a lot of energy for their weight. The Ohmn website state only 10 amp hours - normal battery 30 amps+. So if your car starts up first time your fine....But if your asking for repeated runs on the starter motor your drain that battery pretty quickly. Bizarrely I think even ALL electric cars on the market still have lead-acid batteries to power the radio/lights etc. I'm not really sure why ??

Don't worry it's not 'my' Leaf it still belongs to Nissan (or what ever finance company owns it). I can appreciate some people wouldn't want to 'downgrade' but I wanted to see what this EV stuff was all about without committing the amount of funds a Tesla requires 'blind' - Tesla don't offer extended/weekend long test drives. Give me the option to 'get out' of my Leaf contract now for a Model S, I dare to say I would be very tempted. But as things stand 12 months isn't very long to wait before I can put an order in for a quicker EV. Equally I'll get much more for my money in 12 months time. But one thing is for sure, I'm not sending another £ on a petrol powered car again - Not unless its something that will appreciate in value and can be seen as an 'investment' item. As for driving something 'boring' 5 days a week, a traffic jam is a traffic jam regardless what your driving. Different people have different ideas on what they want. I actually rather do my daily commute on my pedal bike than any car, and why my old 335i did less than 5000 miles per year when I owned it - infact I'm sure for some period Mitz was driving it more than me due to the numerous visits to the garage!! I really I'm not bothered what I drive for my commute, cheapest most reliable options works for me, hence for 18 months when I was doing 70miles+ a day I used my wife's Civic and she used the 335i. To be honest I should have gone for the Leaf than, but I chickened out due to range anxiety, ironically I did my old commute in the Leaf last week and it managed it fine with 15 miles+ of range to spare..... The Leaf present me with an issue because its actually cheaper for me to drive the it, than to cycle, it costs more to 'fuel' me than the car

The cheapest £50K version is RWD with 315bhp, 5.5 second to 60, so hardly 'slow'. It comes with 12 point memory seats, free for life autoupdate via built in LTE, keyless entry, auto xenon headlights, lane departure warning, folding mirrors, parking sensors/reversing camera....Essentially everything you expect from a luxury saloon. The problems is options crep - for 'just' £13K more you get 417bhp, AWD, and 4.2 60 time.....and than 'just' another £17K gets you the crazy P85D. I mean if your going to spend £50K+ on a car, you might as well get the best version you can afford

The process of running a £250/month All-In cost ( I mean my total transport costs including everything you can think of ) electric car as my main commuter has had the side effect of leaving me rather alot more disposable income than before. Looking at the numbers last night I could easily afford to buy a S2 Exige right now and to keep it for the occasional use whilst using the Leaf as my day-day commuter car. Infact doing so work certainly work out much cheaper than buying a £50K+ Tesla which depreciates as you would expect any £50K+ car to do, whilst the Exige will hold its price much nicer. But my wife would rather see me spend £50K on a deprecating Tesla and the hassle of trying to hide a Exige in the garage just isn't worth it, the noise will most certainly give it away Excluding the luxury of been able to run one car for daily use and one for occasional use, than all electric is the only option I can see open to me (you guys have more understanding partners on the car front ). Some family friends are the process of moving house, and yesterday we started looking at our next house, the budget all of sudden was some 15% more than what we had planned on before....So actually if nothing else, I need to make sure the 'T-fund' gets spent on a car and doesn't end up been turned into a 'Granite worktop/central island/walk-in wardrobe' fund .

Since I know how people here love to ‘debate’ certain topics I thought I share this extract written by @Ted, the creator of PistonHeads, take one guess at what car he had just driven?? The rest you can read for yourselves “One sedate lap of the paddock at Castle Combe had delivered a thunderbolt. Mind blown, views altered. The gulf between new and old is bigger than I appreciated. A chasm will open up shortly between the silent raiders and the noisy old boys. Our current rides are automotive steam trains. Whilst beautiful, clever and at the top of their game - it's now the wrong game.†http://www.blatters.com/mag/the-end-is-nigh/55c9cb540d4369a64a8b464b

LMP is not F1; you are aware of this, no? So why the hell did you bring F1 into this discussion to make any sort of point at all? You don't know what I'm on about? You don't seem to know what you're on about either! Not quite sure what I've written to make you so upset. F1 and LMP mirror each other interms of technology and both ultimately aim to develop things that will eventually trickle down to road cars. Cars like the GTR will mostly likely get this technology before others, but clearly the technology is not ready yet. Though electronic assisted turbos are 100% coming to road cars, and they try to mimic some of the benefits of the MGU-H units. Your right though about me having no idea what I'm on about, because I have no idea how anyone can make all these crazy systems work together!! I can see why the likes of Renault and even Honda are struggling to get their hybrid powertrains competitive. Frankly I'm amazed these machine work at all, let alone run for 24hrs at Le Mans. Again sorry for what ever I've said that seem to have annoyed you so much

What you've just done there is explain that you jumped to F1 as an example of why this can't possibly happen for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Nissan don't do F1. F1 is an irrelevant comparison here. So no, the new GT-R absolutely will not be adapted from F1 tech. Well done you for working that one out. I have no idea what your on about, but the Nissan LMP1 is apparently shooting for 1250bhp from a 550bhp 3.0 V6 ICE lump. That's the kind of technology which will have massive impacts on performance road cars at some point. It's a case of working out the technology on the track and than transferring it to the road.....Why on earth anyone needs a 1000bhp+ road car is a separate issue

F1 cars run with TWO separate energy recapture systems. 1: One is a kinetic energy recovery system that can only capture a pre-defined amount of energy per lap - This is the KERS 'boost' drivers use to give them selves a few seconds of extra power. 2: The second system is re-capturing lost heat generated by the ICE unit. This is functioning all the time, so if it goes down the car losses significant amount of power. - This is what happened to Kimi at the last race and Vettel in qualifying the race before. Without the MGU-H system working the electric motor becomes just dead weight hence the car becomes utterly un-compeitive. It's a stupidly complex system that is mirrored to large degree by the all the top le-mans teams, the aim is essentially to find engineering solutions to the meet the demands of track driving, which is to capture, store, release as much energy as possible for as little weight as possible. These systems are nothing like the conventional 'hybrid' setups in road cars like the P1/918, which rely solely on batteries as the energy store/discharge - with brake-regen that isn't all that efficient. The current battery technology isn't really good enough for concerted track use, better technology is coming but still more than a few years away from hitting the road. If Nissan was able to truly put a reliable thermal energy capture system into the next GTR, it would make the P1/918 look like shopping carts. This is simply because the GTR will than be able to use any electric motor much more often, where as a P1/918 has to ration how much electric boost is available due to the very limited electric power supplied by the battery. Infact Nissan could than remove all mechanical parts needed in a conventional 4 WD setup, and simply use the electric motors to drive the front wheels without having to worry about the batteries running flat due to having a ultra efficient thermal energy capture system. The GTR has always pushed the technological barriers, a hybrid GTR will be the next logical step, it's simply a case of just how much complex/reliable energy system Nissan can come up with.....Judging by LMP1 car, it might take quite a while for any of this tech to make it onto road cars

Because someone (not me) mentioned the link between the Nissan Le-mans development cars and technology tricking down to road cars like the GTR. The lemans machines are just as complex as the F1 setups, though I don't think Audi/Porsche have implemented the thermal regen systems like F1 have. The Nissan proposal actually isn't electric hybrid, it's purely a mechanical flywheel, and working out how to transfer mechanical energy from the flywheel to the wheels, where as the Audi/Porsche systems uses a electric/magnetic mechanical flywheel similar to the KERS systems in F1. Either way all these systems are FAR more complicated than anything seen on road cars at any price point. If any of them will ever make into road cars remains to be seen. BUT if your want better performance form with improved fuel consumption this is the way things are heading. http://www.topgear.com/car-news/motorsport/nissan’s-1250bhp-le-mans-racer-explained

It would be amazing if Nissan could find a way to shrink the MGH-H/K systems in proper race cars to work in road cars. But given they are struggling to get the system working in a race car that seems like many moons away In my view the current lot of 'hybrid' performance cars are simply conventional petrol cars using electric motors to help eliminate inherent weakness of the ICE units. Electric driven turbo chargers will be next, but the more systems you add, the more complicated things get. As much I love EVs for road cars, battery technology needs to make a serious jump before they can be used properly on a track, Aluminium air batteries seem as much of a pipe dream as hydrogen fuel cells, but Lithium - Silicon technology is getting there. With potentially x10 the storage capacity of Lithium - Graphite and cheaper cost, less weight they could make a full battery GTR viable, both interms of cost and function. The boss of Nissan has been boosting about the next Leaf having double the range of the current, so unless Nissan plans on making the Leaf twice as big, its probably the a change in battery chemistry which is going to deliver the range.....But we'll have to see what Nissan can actually put into production.

What do you think happens to the performance of the P1/918 when their respective battery packs become deplete and there is no charge left to power the electric motor?? A P1/918 on track will be able to re-generate 'some' of the energy used up through brake-regen, but battery based brake regen only recaptures at best 30% of the kinetic energy, it's not very efficient. Just had a look the P1 has a 4.7 kWh battery, which is a very small amount of charge. Unless McLaern have found a way to defy the laws of physics, the battery will only supply the electric motor with power for a very short period of time. Ofcourse clever electronics can be used to use the motor very sparingly to help 'boost' the 700bhp+ ICE motor at certain rev point etc...BUT essentially it's a very very quick petrol powered hyper car. The F1 systems are very different and the electric motor provides significant power ALL the time. The MGU-H system in F1 cars have alot of potential, because that system can potentially supply a unlimited amount of power based on heat generation, which any ICE unit will always be doing. Ultra-capcitors could work but they are too heavy at present. The fly wheel based KERS system in F1 cars is very clever way to extract and use kinetic braking energy quickly, but hard to engineer into road cars. You can charge the battery through the ICE unit, but that will loss you efficiency interms of less power to the driven wheels due to having to divert some power to driving an inverter. Electric motors are constrained by the same laws of physics as everything else. You can put motors into the car but you still need power to supply the motors. Batteries works, but you need alot of them - A Tesla has about 500kg worth. Even than it only stores 85kWh which is just about enough to run the electric motor in the Leaf (80KW) for a 1 hour before been empty. A P85D is rated at 515 KW, so will able to deplete it's 85kWh battery in about 10 minutes at peak power delivery. Hybrid systems will exist for track/race cars for a while yet before the battery technology in the labs make it into production, and than your be able to store enough electric charge without relying on an ICE unit for motion. But that's about 5-10 years away yet....So as I've said, you guys have no fear of the ICE dying out in track focused cars for a while....yet

I'm not sure how Nissan will be able to translate hybrid power trains from a racing car into a road machine. The KERS - MGU-H/MGU-K systems in the current F1 cars are horrifically complicated, when ever I read about them they sound like trying to build a turbo charger out of computer chips...and I'm still not sure how the MGH-H unit actually works The role of 'batteries' found in F1 cars are not utilised in anything like the way they are used in current road going battery EVs or PEHVs. From what I understand the hybrid systems in racing cars are there to improve efficiency of the internal combustion unit - by recapturing wasted heat/kinetic energy through magnetic fly wheels (basically a mechanical battery). These systems work on the track because your pushing the internal combustion unit to it's limit nearly all the time, so have plenty of 'wasted' energy to recapture. On a normal road car these systems will simply add weight with a moderate improvement in efficiency - these things are still essentially internal combustion machines. So I don't think you guys need to worry about the GTR going all 'green/hybrid' (yet), because fundamentally it's still an old fashioned 'manly' oil burner ....Though I have to say I wouldn't want to try to fix one when it goes wrong

I presume the goal would be to sell it those who are too lazy to park the car in their garage (electric door of-course), so that they can just pull outside the house, step out of the car, and the forget about the rest. In morning, they can walk out of the door with the car waiting for them at the door and fully charged... Now all we need is for Tesla to find a way to move the massive iPad screen directly in front of the driver....Than the American dream can finally become reality