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Post by Humph on Jun 1, 2021 15:01:34 GMT
If only there was a unique vehicle identification number that could be used instead of a licence plate that can be bought from any Tom, Dick or Harry (for show purposes only hohoho) on the internet. I struggle more than a bit to see the appeal of "private" number plates. My wife bought one for me about 25 years ago as a surprise Christmas present. Of course I had to pretend to be delighted. She's from Cheshire, and for reasons I've yet to fathom, they regard that sort of thing as classy here. Kept it on my cars for about ten years, but eventually managed to lose it by "forgetting" to transfer it off a car I was selling. Again, I had to pretend to be disappointed, but not disappointed enough to risk her buying a replacement. I suppose that they are harmless enough in truth, in much the same way as debadging the boot lid is, but in my opinion, both of those things somehow devalue the appearance of a car. Not the worst thing you could do in life of course, eating peas off your knife or something would cause the eyebrows to raise further I suppose. |
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WDB
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Post by WDB on Jun 1, 2021 15:21:25 GMT
If only there was a unique vehicle identification number that could be used instead of a licence plate... There is, of course, and they have it from my V5C. Presumably also have the means to check it directly with the DVLA database. I imagine they’ll get there eventually. |
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WDB
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Post by WDB on Jun 1, 2021 15:29:54 GMT
I struggle more than a bit to see the appeal of "private" number plates. Not something I’d ever done before. We have a complementary pair that mean nothing to anyone but us and reveal nothing more personal than that I’m a bit geeky. They’re kind of anti-personalised, in that they give away less information than the regular plates would have done. But they’re both composed entirely of characters with a vertical axis of symmetry so, although they’re not palindromic (MrsB1 forbade me to buy AH08 OHA for the Aygo) they do read normally in a mirror. There’s another thing too, but you’ll have to for that. 🤓 |
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Post by Humph on Jun 1, 2021 16:50:57 GMT
Have to what?
🤔
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WDB
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Post by WDB on Jun 1, 2021 17:15:59 GMT
Oops! Insert verb of your choice.
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Post by Humph on Jun 1, 2021 17:45:05 GMT
By and large, whatever the owners of them think they say or not, private plates all pretty much spell the same thing don't they?
😉
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WDB
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Post by WDB on Jun 2, 2021 8:20:32 GMT
Yeah, if you like. But if you think that enough to avoid having one yourself, does that mean you do actually care what other people think of you and your car? 😛
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Post by Humph on Jun 2, 2021 15:36:00 GMT
Couldn't really care less what anyone else thinks about my car, but I do care a lot about what I think about my car. Anyway, each to their own and so on. Harmless enough thing, and if it gives people some pleasure then good luck to them. I'm old enough to remember when it was a thing for "certain types" to have a sunstrip at the top of their windscreen with their name, and the name of their current squeeze printed on it. Similar sort of thing really, that and long bendy aerials, furry dice etc...
😉
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WDB
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Post by WDB on Jun 2, 2021 15:44:39 GMT
The i3 has a short bendy aerial if that counts. And the sunstrip, of course.
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WDB
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Post by WDB on Jul 15, 2021 6:26:55 GMT
Working the i3 hard this week. This morning MrsB1 and I are in Brighton, which is a convenient jumping-off point for some places of interest she wants to visit today. We came here yesterday via Dulwich, for an exhibition at the Picture Gallery and a nice Italian lunch.
It’ll be quite a long trip by the time we get home this evening. It’s required a bit of planning to get the charging we needed, and some replanning when the two CCS chargers at one Gatwick hotel turned out to support only one car at a time, which was already attached. Second choice worked fine and got us from 53 to 98 percent in 40 minutes, while we had tea inside and made our dinner reservation.
I’d hoped for a final fill-up at the public car park in Brighton when we arrived, but, annoyingly, couldn’t get the car to accept it, although the charge point seemed willing. Shouldn’t matter, as I think 79% will get us home, but I’m wondering whether our Type 2 cable may have a problem, as it now has a zero-from-two record at public chargers.
Before this, I went solo to London on Tuesday. Fine day out, and had a cracking lunch and chat with a friend I’d not seen all year. But first I had to park. Reservation in an under-the-arches car park near Blackfriars? No problem. Find it on Streetview, know what to look for? Easy.
Persuade Fräulein Navi to get me there? Bloody hell! The back streets round there have been reconfigured to favour cyclists, which is fair enough, but my two-month-old car didn’t know, and kept directing me into roads that were one-way to motor traffic, or blocked off to anything wider than a bike. It took me four laps of the neighbourhood to get at it from the right direction, and even then I had to pretend to be a bike for the last hundred metres. From arriving with time in hand, I was half an hour late for our coffee shop rendezvous and a bit cross.
Final irony: as I was negotiating Trafalgar Square on the way home, Fräulein Navi popped up a message saying that new navigation data was available, and would I like to install it now or wait till I got home? Of course, I have no idea whether she’d now make a better fist of getting me to that car park!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 15, 2021 7:31:00 GMT
Uh ho. Humph incoming with "EVs are a load of rubbish" in 3...2...1...
I'm thinking of taking the Leaf to Scotland in August. Hmm. Hmmmmmmm.....
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Post by dixinormus on Jul 15, 2021 7:31:40 GMT
The best satnav options still seem to be phone apps I find. That said, I have just paid $35 for Mitsubishi to update the in-built satnav in SWMBO’s Outlander, which seemed a good offer to me. Will try it out tomorrow on my monthly car journey...
Don’t really need satnav in NZ outside of the bigger cities anyway, there aren’t many roads..!
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bpg
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Post by bpg on Jul 15, 2021 8:10:30 GMT
Volvo made a change a few years back, you paid a one off fee for an update to the car software then, every couple of years, you download the map update at home, transfer it to a specifically formatted USB stick and do the update yourself or the dealer could do it while the car was in for service.
OTA update are more common now but the move to SaaS I'm less happy about. Everything is going to be subscription based. Imagine your credit card has expired and you have not updated the details. Up pops a message on the dash, 'It looks like you are having an accident, would you like to re-enable the crash protection module ? Press OK to enter your card details and the token will be downloaded in the next 30 minutes during business hours. Outside normal business hours we will endeavour to update the system within the first two hours of the next working day.'
T&C's apply.
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Post by EspadaIII on Jul 15, 2021 14:00:10 GMT
Road pricing starts here.........
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Post by Humph on Jul 15, 2021 14:02:51 GMT
Uh ho. Humph incoming with "EVs are a load of rubbish" in 3...2...1... I'm thinking of taking the Leaf to Scotland in August. Hmm. Hmmmmmmm..... Oh come now, I don't really need to say anything further do I ? 😉 |
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