Writing on the wall for some manufacturers?

[Poweredbyhopealone]

43 minutes ago, castros_bro said:

Where do you get your data, could you give the sources?

 Hydrogen in a storage tank with no leaks tends to be an efficient way of storage.

Using solar energy to heat something then store in Dewer Flask thing as in the Morocco scheme below is more efficient the most Solar PV stuff as SolarPV max about 15% efficient re conversion of solar radiation to electric (it only uses part of the spectrum) but solar energy as heat is a lot higher then 15% so capturing the energy and storing it works.

My reading of the Govt stuff gives wind farms (UKbits) generally a contract where all the power produced is paid even if it gets wasted so they don't lose money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazate_Solar_Power_Station

 

I'm afraid not, it was only a passing comment in conversation. and I have no doubt their contract forbids them talking about it n any detail. I was thinking of the hydrogen conversion rates, which to my limited understand arent that efficient when using hydrolysis? I had forgotten about the facts companies get paid for down time I must admit.

[castros_bro]

54 minutes ago, stuboy said:

all this talk of ev cars, how would the goverment solve my issue of not living near the road..?

Pipistrel Velis Electro.

[castros_bro]

24 minutes ago, Poweredbyhopealone said:

I'm afraid not, it was only a passing comment in conversation. and I have no doubt their contract forbids them talking about it n any detail. I was thinking of the hydrogen conversion rates, which to my limited understand arent that efficient when using hydrolysis? I had forgotten about the facts companies get paid for down time I must admit.

Electrolysis is currently the most promising method of hydrogen production from water due to high efficiency of conversion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_oxide_electrolyzer_cell          (kein Kommentar von mir)

The addition of pumping and compression for storage can be inefficient.

 

[2flags]

On 1/26/2022 at 10:06 PM, GeordieInExile said:

Vauxhall/Opel is a good shout. Deeply underwhelming range with no USP which is competing in exactly the same space as Peugeot's own offerings.

I agree. They are in the same place as BMC were in the 1960's, lots of marques all competing for the same market place. Peugeot had no qualms about getting rid of the Hillman/Humber/Sunbeam/Talbot brand in the 80's. I can see Vauxhall going the same way.

[1duck]

11 hours ago, sierraman said:

I’m probably the archetypal ‘Mondeo Man’. Hell would freeze over before I’d be seen in a Golf/Leon/A3, it’s the chariot of choice for those driven by the Columbian marching powder. I’ll just move to a Focus/Kuga which are pretty much the same size in any case.

Nah mondeo men moved to  3 series BMWs years ago. I wouldn't expect you to move to an A3 or a golf, that's equivalent of a focus, you'd be wanting a Passat or an A4 but realistically you'd be in a 3 series 😉 

 Honestly the die hard ford blue oval brigade is aging and dying out. Which frankly can only be a good thing.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/business-dealership%2C-sales-and-marketing/stock-take-what-caused-fords-2021-uk-sales-slip

Looks like their future is going to be rebadging Volkswagens for the euro market anyway, so may as well just cut the middle man out. Unless you plan to just get a transit, although I'd still get that with a VW badge at least then it'd have a nicer interior.

The comments section on the article is very telling, it's one thing for ford to compete with British Leyland but another altogether to try take on the Germans. I can see it going the way of GM where they wound up selling off their euro brand to their European partners, which for ford looks to be VW.

The Americans will go back to the states and target their home market id imagine, why bother scrapping for Europe, when American lawmakers will give you such a monopoly at home.

 

[1duck]

10 hours ago, Barry Cade said:

The ford f150 lightning, and the ranger look like they'll keep ford at no1 in the US for a good few years.  The tech from those will filter down I think, so there might just be another Sierra/ mk1 Focus moment coming..

Last Friday, Ford Chief Operating Officer Lisa Drake held a conference call with members of Goldman Sachs, where she detailed that the all-electric F-150 Lightning, the electric version of the United States’ best-selling pickup truck, was nearing 200,000 reservations ahead of initial production, which is scheduled for Spring 2022.

TBH the f150 might trickle down to the transit, but I can't see a Sierra/focus moment happening. I think with the Koreans etc arriving in Europe, it's becoming a less and less attractive market for the budget brand cars that ford builds. It sounds like they want to continue targeting the van markets which makes sense given the transits popularity.

It announced a strategic tie-up with VW in 2020 that will see VW using the Ranger and Transit platforms, while Ford will use VW’s MEB platform for at least one passenger car. Ford USA no longer makes any car smaller than the Edge and Mustang Mach-E, so internal platform sharing looks difficult. Stuart Rowley was quoted in Autocar in May 2021 saying, “The mid-sized vehicle segment in Europe is very important, and there Volkswagen has a lot more scale than Ford, so it makes sense [to use MEB]

[1duck]

9 hours ago, wuvvum said:

The thing you have to remember when comparing with Sweden was that at the time they changed over from driving on the left to driving on the right, there were about 12 cars in the entire country.  If we'd wanted to do the same thing here with the same mininal disruption we would have had to do it in about 1913, and I doubt it was on anyone's radar back then.

I mean, Sweden changed over in the late 60s not the 1900s they had quite a lot of traffic to deal with.

Interestingly their road crash stats plummeted for a year or two after the swap, because people were all driving super cautiously due to the change.

I think I read something about the reason we don't change being down to our motorway junctions being asymmetrical. So basically crap motorway design means we have to pay more for new cars than europeans.

However it also makes our second hand cars cheaper as no one exports them, so the chod floats about longer.

[sierraman]

49 minutes ago, 1duck said:

Nah mondeo men moved to  3 series BMWs years ago. I wouldn't expect you to move to an A3 or a golf, that's equivalent of a focus, you'd be wanting a Passat or an A4 but realistically you'd be in a 3 series 😉 

 Honestly the die hard ford blue oval brigade is aging and dying out. Which frankly can only be a good thing.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/business-dealership%2C-sales-and-marketing/stock-take-what-caused-fords-2021-uk-sales-slip

Looks like their future is going to be rebadging Volkswagens for the euro market anyway, so may as well just cut the middle man out. Unless you plan to just get a transit, although I'd still get that with a VW badge at least then it'd have a nicer interior.

The comments section on the article is very telling, it's one thing for ford to compete with British Leyland but another altogether to try take on the Germans. I can see it going the way of GM where they wound up selling off their euro brand to their European partners, which for ford looks to be VW.

The Americans will go back to the states and target their home market id imagine, why bother scrapping for Europe, when American lawmakers will give you such a monopoly at home.

 

I’m not driving an Audi or a Volkswagen badged car. 

[Crackers]

On 29/01/2022 at 14:08, castros_bro said:

There is the added pain/cost of Ford selling in Europe that they need to have design/build/sell a RHD version for a relatively small market - obs the Japanese, Neplese, Botswanians and Indian use RHD but going for a mass car market in Europe LHD would be a better choice.

See also: every other car manufacturer in the UK market. 

I don't think you can apply the problem to individual manufacturers. It all depends on how cleverly they engineer their cars to make LHD/RHD options easier to build. 

[lesapandre]

Ironically when we had the big chance to switch over in 1946-47 a very large proportion of British cars were lhd or easily lhd convertible because of the export market that was given priority over uk sales by government at the time.

[catsinthewelder]

3 hours ago, 1duck said:

 

 Honestly the die hard ford blue oval brigade is aging and dying out. Which frankly can only be a good thing.

I'm not die hard blue oval brigade but I'd take almost any Ford car over a German brand.

I generally buy French cars with my own money though (or broken British ones).

[castros_bro]

55 minutes ago, Crackers said:

See also: every other car manufacturer in the UK market. 

I don't think you can apply the problem to individual manufacturers. It all depends on how cleverly they engineer their cars to make LHD/RHD options easier to build. 

There is the Japanese whose home market is LHD (as is India) so maybe original Japanese  designs are LHD but their export market is mainly RHD so this is also designed in. Though there are home market Japanese vehicles which were never in LHD.  

Whereas Dacia original home market design is RHD and main export is also RHD so, for instance,  their offerings of first generation Logan MCV (sold export to the EU but not available in UK) were only RHD so none of the parts, steering rack, lights, speedo etc for LHD were ever designed/made/sourced. Hence the 1st gen Logan MCV sitting in my driveway with little chance of getting UK MOT.

[Poweredbyhopealone]

12 hours ago, castros_bro said:

Electrolysis is currently the most promising method of hydrogen production from water due to high efficiency of conversion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_oxide_electrolyzer_cell          (kein Kommentar von mir)

The addition of pumping and compression for storage can be inefficient.

 

Ah! Thank you for clearing that up for me

[catsinthewelder]

4 minutes ago, castros_bro said:

There is the Japanese whose home market is RHD (as is India) so maybe original Japanese  designs are RHD but their export market is mainly LHD so this is also designed in. Though there are home market Japanese vehicles which were never in LHD.  

Whereas Dacia original home market design is LHD and main export is also LHD so, for instance,  their offerings of first generation Logan MCV (sold export to the EU but not available in UK) were only LHD so none of the parts, steering rack, lights, speedo etc for RHD were ever designed/made/sourced. Hence the 1st gen Logan MCV sitting in my driveway with little chance of getting UK MOT.

I believe you can MOT a LHD car in the UK by just putting beam correctors on the lights, a fog light on the back and Mph stickers on the Speedo. 

I didn't on my Dacia because the dipped beam was awful and it didn't look too hard to convert the round headlights to RHD (and wouldn't have been for a more competent person).

 

[castros_bro]

1 minute ago, catsinthewelder said:

I believe you can MOT a LHD car in the UK by just putting beam correctors on the lights, a fog light on the back and Mph stickers on the Speedo. 

I didn't on my Dacia because the dipped beam was awful and it didn't look too hard to convert the round headlights to RHD (and wouldn't have been for a more competent person).

 

Off topic but

I have set of German (ie LHD to RHD )beam correctors for MOT place to fit so I can then remove them and drive to Portugal - also the option of removing the headlights as if not fitted they are not tested for MOT -  but it's more about getting parts like the long overdue cam belt, tensioner, filters etc as Dacia UK and motor factors have no listings or part numbers. Dacia part shopping in EU flight was booked then cancelled due to covids so now trying for daytrip to Dacia garage.    https://www.youdriver.com/en/renault-dacia-calais-59053/

[catsinthewelder]

I know it's a PITA that we've left the EU but surely it can't be that bad to get a load of old Clio bits?  Could someone on the continent @TataBobu? get you the part numbers?

[martc]

14 hours ago, 2flags said:

I agree. They are in the same place as BMC were in the 1960's, lots of marques all competing for the same market place. Peugeot had no qualms about getting rid of the Hillman/Humber/Sunbeam/Talbot brand in the 80's. I can see Vauxhall going the same way.

It was Chrysler that got rid of the old Rootes names a few years into their ownership of the group.

Chrysler also bought SIMCA at about the same time, but they maintained the SIMCA name to the bitter end so there was a similar Vauxhall Opel conflict where for example , the Alpine was sold as a Chrysler Alpine in the UK but as a Chrysler-SIMCA 1307 on the continent. And later the Talbot Alpine in the UK and Talbot 1307 on the continent. Actually, to complicate matters further, there were other model names for the continental varieties -1308 and 1510, so in the UK there was one model, over the water three models. 

When Peugeot bought out Chrysler Europe the old Chrysler products were re-branded using the old Talbot name (which was originally an Anglo-French manufacturer which split into UK and French Talbots in the 30's, so quite a clever choice of name). When the Talbot branded vehicles came to the end of their life the successor was called a Peugeot. 

Ironically, Chrysler USA are now part of the Stellantis group, along with Peugeot.

[TataBobu]

8 hours ago, castros_bro said:

getting parts like the long overdue cam belt, tensioner, filters etc

 

6 hours ago, catsinthewelder said:

Could someone on the continent @TataBobu? get you the part numbers?

Try this: https://www.epiesa.ro/piese-auto-dacia:logan?gclid=Cj0KCQiArt6PBhCoARIsAMF5wajuCRHLIENBv8dX5cY5ll5eyBjsdYJbH53eRrvf8IUQYwH6zhNfSYIaAmZ7EALw_wcB

 

Logan and MCV are mechanically identical, so all "front" parts should be the same. If the site is not easy to navigate, PM me with vehicle's details and shopping list, and I'll provide a series of links.

[catsinthewelder]

As ever you are an absolute legend.

[1duck]

23 hours ago, catsinthewelder said:

I'm not die hard blue oval brigade but I'd take almost any Ford car over a German brand.

I generally buy French cars with my own money though (or broken British ones).

I'm not a diehard German car fan, but I'd take almost any German car over a ford. 

I generally buy Japanese cars with my own money. (Or anything else if it's cheap enough)

But really polling autoshite is a shit idea, because lets face it we're not representative of the majority of new car buyers. For the record the last brand new car I bought was a Kia, the next will probably be a Dacia or perhaps another Kia.

 

[Metal Guru]

1 hour ago, 1duck said:

I'm not a diehard German car fan, but I'd take almost any German car over a ford. 

I generally buy Japanese cars with my own money. (Or anything else if it's cheap enough)

But really polling autoshite is a shit idea, because lets face it we're not representative of the majority of new car buyers. For the record the last brand new car I bought was a Kia, the next will probably be a Dacia or perhaps another Kia.

 

From my experience over 40 years of owning cars , this is the order of best quality/ reliability from trouble they have given me personally, not hearsay or repeating press reports.

 Japanese,  “British” Fords , German (incl Bini),  French, American 

[carburettor]

On 1/28/2022 at 9:52 PM, AnthonyG said:

I’m not sure why Honda bother with F1, the Americans - their biggest market - don’t give a shit about it, or even really know what it is.

Maybe it’s the coming thing in China? It’s so long since I’ve followed it, I assume there must be a Beijing/Shanghai GP by now? 

There is a Chinese gp now, the Owners are American now, the chairman (or something equally cu*tish)  is some guy called Chase, I don’t think it’s the one from PawPatrol as this one has a huge and extremely pretentious moustache too.

 

Mazda as much as I like some of them I think they will cease to exist in Europe at least in less than 10 years.

[carburettor]

On 1/31/2022 at 6:59 AM, sierraman said:

I’m not driving an Audi or a Volkswagen badged car. 

Can I ask why not?

A newer one or any?

[sierraman]

29 minutes ago, carburettor said:

Can I ask why not?

A newer one or any?

Any post 2000. Had the old type ones with jobs before but the newer ones, just not for me. But then I’m probably not their target market so I doubt they or I will lose much sleep over this. 

[AnthonyG]

1 hour ago, carburettor said:

Mazda as much as I like some of them I think they will cease to exist in Europe at least in less than 10 years.

It really wouldn’t surprise if there is a bit more consolidation in the Japanese car industry.

Given that Nissan and Mitsubishi are linked via Renault, and Toyota owns/controls Daihatsu and Subaru, I guess that leaves Honda, Mazda and Suzuki that might do more co-operation with each other or Toyota/Nissan. 

Mazda is probably the most vulnerable as it has no other business areas like motorcycles, and no individual geographical  market that they dominate - Suzuki, due to a really well-timed deal in the late 1970s, absolutely rule the Indian market under the Maruti brand. 

I also fear that the current Mx5 won’t get replaced, as I think global sales are down to about 40,000 annually.

[sierraman]

Turnover of new cars is geared much higher than here in Japan. Not many cars over 5 years old, the craze for latest car, good prices for export to New Zealand plus the Shaken sees off most of them. 

[carburettor]

12 hours ago, AnthonyG said:

It really wouldn’t surprise if there is a bit more consolidation in the Japanese car industry.

Given that Nissan and Mitsubishi are linked via Renault, and Toyota owns/controls Daihatsu and Subaru, I guess that leaves Honda, Mazda and Suzuki that might do more co-operation with each other or Toyota/Nissan. 

Mazda is probably the most vulnerable as it has no other business areas like motorcycles, and no individual geographical  market that they dominate - Suzuki, due to a really well-timed deal in the late 1970s, absolutely rule the Indian market under the Maruti brand. 

I also fear that the current Mx5 won’t get replaced, as I think global sales are down to about 40,000 annually.

Suzuki make this, we’ll actually they don’t my son and daughter work for Toyota and actually make them in Burnaston. Absolutely shite name but hey 👴 https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/suzuki-swace-toyota-corolla-based-estate-priced-£27499

 

For what it’s worth (nowt) after Mazda and Ford seem to have gone their separate ways I think Mazda will be in the brown and smelly very soon. They don’t seem to have much in their locker now.

[face]

14 hours ago, AnthonyG said:

I also fear that the current Mx5 won’t get replaced, as I think global sales are down to about 40,000 annually.

That will be a real shame. I got a new one last spring time and it is utterly joyous. It is the only affordable 'proper' sports car you can buy new in the UK.

Honda are even pulling the S660 in March - I wish they had sold it here.