Modern Vespa

For those who know they are, keep a very close eye on BYD during the next 6 months.

I'm up and riding my scooter. Stopped for coffee and a pastry. It's Monday morning and the traffic is light. Can it get any better?

Fort Mill, SC
Humble Cup Coffee Company

Looking out over the back yard last night after enjoying a beer whilst ripping apart a friend's perfectly awful little scooter.

We have a bumper crop of daisies this year. They are my favorite flower. They're pretty, show up unannounced, stay longer than you expect and don't take any crap from anyone.

I knew a girl like that once.

Good to see you getting out and about after all your medical problems. You might want to also try Olive's Mud Puddle on Main Street, Fort Mill. For a taco, try Phat's Taco on the end of Main. It's a cool little town, that unfortunately, is growing too fast. But the old part is alright.

I own shares in BYD. Not a ton. Doubled my money. Sold half. Now I have free stock.

I know these were taking off in the UK before I left (two years ago) for Porto. I see them absolutely everywhere now. I am pretty certain BYD are heading towards being the world's biggest car manufacturer.

Seems likely.

I saw a Tesla last week that was "rebranded" with BYD letters. Didn't get a picture unfortunately.

Atto, Dolphin, Seal or Sealion? Typing that cheered me up...

the basement swamp appears to have been caused by *YET ANOTHER* failed hot water heater hose.

so at least it's not the sump pump or a cracked foundation.

annoying as hell but i'd much rather a 30-dollar hose replacement than $15k in foundation repair

Thank you https://rufus.ie/ for letting me install win11 without using an ms account.

Great tip!

love how well my gts starts at 23 metres below sea level while I'm sitting at the petrol station

Two things are cheering me up today. This :



And the fact that with this new(er) Vespa, I will have to deal with less of THIS :

BYD are kind of interesting as they are around 45 Billion Dollars in Debt but they pay their contractors 270 days after parts for the vehicles arrive at the factory, so the longer they can hold onto the invoice payments, the better their balances look.

It's called Supply Chain Financing.

They also have been delivering more cars than many franchises can sell and so many dealerships in China have gone bankrupt as they are obliged to take the cars and pay for them.

They get a payment when the car is registered but not necessarily sold and so they have to do a trick where it will turn from a New Car into a Zero Miles Used Car where it's price and value will fall at the point of sale which gives the buyer no incentive to buy a new one. So the new ones just pile up.

It's looking like it's going to fall over which isn't great PR but my feeling is that it's too high profile to let it fail completely.

Even with large discounts to clear the shelves of the lower spec models they aren't selling enough and so BYD is in a bit of a pickle because it keeps on cranking them out.

Well, finally. If you followed my other thread, I'd gotten air into my brake lines on the BV last fall. It was getting too cold and I didn't plan on riding until spring....one thing led to another, priorities and all, but I've been messing with this for a few weeks, not getting anywhere.

Monday I finally got the front brake, last night got the rear. Finally putting everything back in place, another half hour and I'll have my scooter back!

Should be in the Pissing Me Off thread, but I wish I knew what solved my problem. I tried a variety of approaches, used a Mity Vac, pushed from below, nothing was amazingly successful, but wound up with fair resistance, strapped the lever overnight, and voila! pretty good! I was about to give up, called a local shop who refused to touch it (or anything Piaggio apparently) which roused enough resolve to have another go at it. Anyway, done!

Today's viewing was a really nice place that frankly i definitely want. But managed to find another to look at tomorrow early on then gonna pop up to the top of pikes peak.

Also posted a review of my rental on FB.

Maybe it'll cheer some of you up.

Just curious - why would you want the auto stop-start off?

Because it's annoying AF. My wife's car has it, and it has to be turned off every time you start the car.

There's a reason for that, actually: the manufacturers get a tax credit if they include the feature in the car, but only if it defaults to "on" every time you start the car.

On a hybrid car, the auto-start-stop is generally pretty seamless. On a regular ICE car, depending on how it is implemented, it can be a literal grind. Using a traditional starter motor to re-start the car when you take your foot off the brake is unpleasant, at best.

Yeah, I've had a couple of BMWs with the auto stop-start. The first turned it off permanently if you selected sport mode. The second had mild hybrid technology (a 48v battery IIRC) and did not have a button for deselecting. However this used a starter/alternator or something similar and the transition between engine running or not at a standstill was almost imperceptible. Likewise a Honda hybrid.

This morning I heard the glorious clatter of a Kawasaki KH750H2 with expansion pipes on it.

This cheered me up today.

Not the fact that it's on a Transporter. The fact that it is going to be for sale soon.

Some cars will stop the engine on a compression stroke and when they are ready to go they just throw a spark there and away you go. The starting process couldn't be easier. My 2017 MB E400 seems to have this and starts very seamlessly. It still pisses me off so I select against the on/off operation every time i get in the car.

Fair enough. I may have been lucky with the ones I've had.

I haven't really thought about it, but yeah, with a hybrid it does work without even noticing it exists. I may be wrong, but I believe that our latest cars don't even have any off setting for it, all hybrids of some kind.

Thinking back, the only annoyance I've had was with my old ICE Audi some years back. The original and fairly old car battery had its last breath at a traffic light stop. Stop-start automatic switched the car off...and once the lights changed, off it stayed

Mild Hybrids are a really good idea as the equivalent weight of a Hybrid Battery is about 3 and a 1/2 adults.

So in Engine Mode you're dragging around the entire family.

That sounds more like the weight of a battery for BEVs. For reference the weights of used battery packs are listed here:

https://evshop.eu/en/41-battery-pack

Hybrid cars like the EU Jazz are great, they only have something like a 1kwh battery yet get around 80-90 UK mpg in town. Not so good on a motorway run.

Plug-in hybrids are not a good idea. Inefficient in both engine and battery only modes. For example the BMW 330e only get 2 miles per kwh in electric mode, the i4 about twice that.

A hybrid car battery typically weighs between 100 and 300 pounds (45 to 136 kg). This is significantly more than a standard car battery, which usually weighs around 20 kilograms or less. A hybrid battery's weight can vary depending on the vehicle's design and the battery's capacity. For example, plug-in hybrid vehicles have larger batteries than self-charging hybrids. The weight of a hybrid battery can be compared to the weight of multiple average people, as it can be equivalent to the weight of 3.5 people or more, depending on the battery and the average person's weight.

Hmm. Wherever you got that from, it contradicts itself. Firstly it says that the typical hybrid battery weighs 136kg which is perhaps two adults. Then it says 3.5 people or more. Which is it?

(I just looked for the weight of the battery in a BMW 330e, which has a reported range of around 30 miles. It weighs about 300lbs plus another 100lbs for the motor. That is why it is not very efficient.)

Ask Google. They wrote it

Wild, chaotic machines. I started with a 350, then moved to a 500. Nothing on the street - 2 or 4 wheels - could touch it. It's a wonder I'm still alive

Yeah, they had a tendency to go into unrecoverable stank slappers.

Worse than a TL 1000.

I'm starting to think that Automotive Manufacturers who load their cars with Driver Aids such as Lane Assist, Park Assist, Radar Assisted Cruise Control and whatever Autopilot is called these days are actually make us worse drivers as we come to rely on them too much, so when things do go wrong we don't know what to do.

All that shit's going to break in 5 years anyway.

Just sayin.

Finally hung up that helmet rack I bought. Also turned a blank garage wall into vertical storage.

Now the trucks have a special place, too.

And the starter motor wears out far faster, and startup is when you cause the most damage to the engine because oil isn't circulating yet.

Side note, picked a good day to ascend.

Oh I miss that place.

3 times up.

First modification to my wife's Subaru Outback Wilderness was I little plug-in electronic module that allows the Auto Stop feature to stay in whatever state you set it across ignition cycles. Absolutely the most annoying feature you find in new cars. Best $100 I've spent on a mod for that car.

https://www.autostopeliminator.com

I don't really have experience from other than German and Japanese cars here, but at least those have a different kind of starter motor than non start-stop cars. Never heard of any issues with these, not even in the older generation cars.

I don't by the oil circulation issue either, more like an urban myth? With the cars I've had, the start-stop feature does not work if the engine is cold or if the outdoor temperature is too cold - as it often is around here. Then the car just idles.