So after filling up at Lichfield it gives me this, what would be the comparison be on a hybrid.
Hybrids are good, at least in theory and that charging up your battery whenever you brake sounds efficient. However, remember that without petrol your car wouldnât last for long on battery only so you are still obliged to pay for fuel.
In addition to that there is still the concern, as I mentioned earlier, about the lifetime of the battery. When it comes to resale value, the older the car the more likely the battery will need replacing and the cost of that would necessarily be deducted from what you might be expecting to get for selling your car.
I hear what youâre saying JBR but the amount of money I spend on petrol these days is considerably less than any of my petrol driven cars ever did. Plus I trade them in or sell them privately while they are still worth selling. The main thing is accelerate gently and keep within the speed limit. Boring way to drive? Of course it is but I feel I have nothing to prove anymore. Comes with age I guess.
Yes. I grew out of my speeding ways some years ago. Iâm no longer a hare; a tortoise now.
I know what you meanâŠboring innit! 
To be honest, I had a small âfitâ at home in January, which I put down to just a one-off, but then in July while we were out in Bakewell I collapsed in a faint and ended up on my back, unconscious for 30 seconds.
Since then, I have not driven at all and have no intention of doing so until the NHS can get to the bottom of what these two episodes were caused by. Can you imagine what would happen if I fainted at the wheel?
To be honest, I havenât told the driving licence people yet as Iâve learn from my mistakes. They send me a questionnaire every three years and last year, following my eye operation, I was honest enough to inform them what the eye surgeon told me: that he suspected the possibility of glaucoma. They withdrew my licence, immediately, but when a few weeks later I was told by the same hospital department that there is no sign of glaucoma, I tried to get my licence back. It took them three months and a visit to their own optician, Specsavers(!), before they relented.
So Iâm not telling them anything! Just being my usual sensible self and making my own decisions.
I donât blame you at all. This sort of decision making will eventually come to all of us at some time in our lives. Having been a driver for more than sixty years I canât imagine suddenly becoming " wheeless".
If your buying a diesel powered car make sure your mileage supports your decision, low mileage,frequent stop start and short journeys are not good for modern diesels, they will cause problems with the dpf
Depends on the type of hybrid, some are petrol/ electric that will run for a few miles on electric only ( usually 3 or 4 miles, maybe less)
then thereâs the plug in hybrid which can be charged and driven on electric for a greater distance, then thereâs the self charging hybrid, it still has a petrol engine but is solely used for charging the cars batteries which drive the wheels
Thatâs exactly why I mentioned that earlier:
âThey are more efficient, but unfortunately due to the more recent additions to the engine they become impractical unless you drive quite a high number of miles regularly.â
Marge and I donât drive regularly and far enough to avoid that.
I must say that carrying round a great chunk of metal thatâs only there to charge the battery seems far more inefficient than simply charging the battery at home or some other recharging station.
An Atkinson engine is used, they donât need a regular car engine you would find in a petrol car
So youâre burning petrol to charge up a battery to drive the car?
Most people would leave out âthe middlemanâ! 
Diesel Electric locomotives have been doing it for years JB, and they are the most powerful engines ever used⊠
Yes, I always admired the Deltics. Thereâs one in the York Railway Museum.
But they were superseded by electric trains taking power from overhead lines.
Presumably more efficient.
Yes JB, the totally electric trains are far more efficient than the diesel electrics. Perhaps they could invent a car that takes itâs power from either overhead cables or underground magnets.
Oh, they already have!
Wen ah wer a lad, I always preferred to use the trolleybuses in Bradford.
Riding on the motor buses made me feel travel sick.
Yes they had them in Doncaster when I was a lad too JBâŠThey even built an experimental tram system down near the racecourse back in the nineties. I donât understand why they scrapped itâŠI bet Donny council didnât realise at the time where the future of transport was goingâŠ
I agree. Quite apart from my own personal preferences, they must have been more efficient. After all, here in Manchester (on the wrong side of the Pennines) who now has trams, again using overhead cables just like the trolleybuses did.
The only problem with the trolleybuses, as I understand it, was that in some locations the conductor had to use a long pole to unhook the arms from the trolley cables either because the bus had to turn round, or perhaps one of the arms had come away from the power cable. As a kid, it always seemed exciting to me as I was sure that the conductor would get electrocuted!
1 Like
One of the thing that drove me up the wall when I last visited the UK was parking and having to pay for it just about anywhere.
Wollongong introduced parking meters in the CBD to stop workers taking up all the nearby spaces, the meters have just about killed the CBD, it is a ghost town. Why would you pay $2 for three or four hours parking when you can go to any shopping mall and park for free?
1 Like