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How can we have a half decent argument if you say stuff like this?

I have enough trouble trying to get my new Samsung phone to work properly with a screen swipe. It often fails to respond to a finger swipe. It's the most dubious activation of any operation you can devise - as compared to the accuracy and positivity of a switch. As regards voice commands - they are also on a par with screen swipes. I never use them, because I have poor hearing, and verbal communication is always a hassle for me. I don't use sat nav because I can't hear the womans instruction. I have great difficulty in understanding women speaking, due to the pitch of womens voices, which pitch is where I have greatest hearing loss. In addition, I do not trust any global corporation taking a record of my voice, and doing all sorts of things with it, in that they refuse to tell me what they are doing with it. Then there's the problem of several people talking, while you're trying to talk to a voice-activated screen, and the screen microphone picks up activation commands that weren't directed at it. I often hear SWMBO talking to our smart TV, trying to get it to carry out some action, and then she resorts to the remote control. AFAIC, touchscreens in cars are anathema to what driving is all about. It means distraction from the road, and other vehicles around you, and safety authorities have long treated screens inside vehicles as a major road safety problem.

In your example, Octave, the driver still has to focus on the screen popup temp. Certainly not something that a non BYD driver could accomplish easily. Unlike conventional controls, there is no tactile feedback to confirm the desired action has occurred.

The main problem with a screen is having to look over at it and move your finger to make something happen. It is very distracting. Not like knobs and buttons that can be found by feel.

Nev, my take is that LCD/LED screens are the manufacturers taking the cheap way out, as a screen and software would only be a fraction of the cost of the buttons and switches. Add in the fact that these screens have a vastly increased failure level and increased susceptibility to damage, as compared to switches and buttons, and I know what I'm going to buy in any future vehicle purchase. No, I haven't driven any EV yet and I'm not rushing into doing so. I consider current EV technology is still in the "further development required" category, and I'll wait a while yet before I try out the technology. I'm conservative by nature, and have always abided by a policy of never being an early purchaser of new technology or new models, until the bugs are sorted out.

You don't see too many modern Cars on the side of the road these days. The screens are not to distract you. They give you real time information relevant to where you are and where you are seeking to go. The alternative would be to use a road Map. I know which I would rather do.. Have you test driven an electric car Yet? Nev

The move to ensure new cars have familiar buttons and switches for the primary basic controls in a car is gathering pace, and it's being pursued by safety authorities. It's long overdue. Every car should have a similar familiar layout, to enable easy transition from one vehicle to another, without confusion or distraction. The safety authorities are becoming concerned that touch screens with many of the vehicles primary controls on it, are a safety and distraction hazard. Manufacturers are starting to agree that they went too far in trying to make cars into mobile phones on wheels. The comment from Aston Martin director of design is very relevant. He speaks of how touchscreens take away from the driver, the feel to be able to properly use the car. It's interesting to see that the ultra-conservative Toyota is still using the approach of retaining buttons and switches for the basic vehicle controls. Numerous Chinese and European and Korean vehicles have gone too far in making touchscreens the primary control device in cars, and now a number of them are admitting, they have to return to a Toyota-like, controls design. https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-news/big-touchscreens-to-give-way-to-physical-controls-as-car-brands-ditch-annoying-feature-and

For the first time ever an EV is the top selling vehicle in Australia for May and it isn't Chinese but the Tesla Model Y. https://www.drive.com.au/news/australian-new-car-sales-in-may-2026-tesla-model-y-is-first-ev-to-top-vfacts-charts/

Well, we're taking the jump. My wife and I test drove 3 EVs today - MG 4, MG 4 Urban and MG 5. Kate had already put down a deposit on the MG 4, but after driving all 3 we're tossing up between the Urban and the MG 5. In all 3 cars the acceleration is brilliant. Handling is great. We found the Urban and MG 5 more comfortable because we're both tall (and possibly a bit wider than we should be). Over the weekend we'll decide which way to go and switch the deposit on Monday.

I haven't looked into this however if true does not bother me. At this point I don't own an EV but the the more of these vehicles on the road the better for everyone. As a regular cyclist I can say that I would rather be waiting at the traffic lights behind an EV than a car spewing fumes in my face We know the kids who live near major highways have more respiratory issues. My son recently spent time in Beijing. He was expecting the air to be thick with car fumes however the air was surprisingly clear thanks to the uptake of EVs. Thus benefits all of society.

Back to EV's - the original subject of this thread. Ford are going all-out to try and beat the Chinese EV onslaught with a new EV pickup. It means starting a whole new style of assembly line from scratch. The Wall St Journal has the original full story, this part below is merely an excerpt. You need to pay a subscription to the WSJ to read the full article, but the excerpt provides the "guts" of the story. QUOTE: "Crews are preparing Ford's Louisville factory to make a planned line of EVs. Photo Credit: Houston Cofield for WSJ The secret is now out as Ford races toward building its first model, a new truck it says will be nearly as fast as a Mustang, travel around 300 miles on a single charge and feature in-car technology to compete with Tesla and China. It’s aiming for a 2027 launch and a price tag of around $30,000, the cost of a Toyota Camry. Getting there means tearing up a century of manufacturing practices in a notoriously hidebound industry. At stake for Ford is securing a future beyond the gas-guzzling pickups and SUVs that have long defined its bottom line. The project had been kept quiet from its 2022 start, led by veterans from Tesla and Apple who worked on designs out of a California office. Ford eventually brought in some of its own employees to help execute the vision. The process was filled with misunderstandings and distrust as the techie outsiders worked to win over the risk-averse industry veterans. To build these new EVs, the company must use fewer people and simpler parts, and dismantle decades of engineering inertia. Chief Executive Jim Farley is calling it Ford’s new “Model T moment.” Rival automakers say overcoming China on EVs can’t be done, given their advantages: extensive government backing, low-cost labor and a massive head start. With its new truck, Ford says it has eliminated thousands of feet of heavy copper wiring, cut out hundreds of parts, and made it 15% more aerodynamic than its other pickups. The process included rethinking the assembly line, which Ford helped to pioneer. That process is traditionally iterative, slow and depends on scores of outside partners. On Ford’s new “assembly tree,” a modular system stamps out two massive, aluminum castings and a battery that get merged at the end of the process—closer to how Tesla and China’s automakers build EVs. “We’ve never blown the whole thing up before and just started over,” Coffey said. “If and when we build this, we will rewire Ford.” For a year, a team of 17—tiny by Ford standards—worked out a design for the first new EV. Their vision collided with Farley’s. He nixed the first vehicle the California team was developing, an SUV-type model. Build a midsize pickup instead, he told them. It fills a void in the EV market and will be a bigger hit with car buyers, he said. Then they attacked Ford procedures and mandates the team deemed obsolete, or even nonsensical. Field described one such rule. All Ford vehicles must be built with a slight lip above the opening to prevent rain from spilling in the window when a driver or passenger cracks it to smoke a cigarette. Nicknamed “smokers window,” it added aerodynamic drag, costing battery range. The new truck won’t have it. Managers were fanatical about keeping Ford’s ranks away from the project. “There were so many times that I protected the team,” Clarke said, fearing that outsiders could slow the building momentum. Dreaming up a design was one thing. Building it was another. That’s when Clarke and Field started recruiting company veterans to join its ranks. They sought out the misfits and malcontents within Ford—the type of people, Clarke said, chafing under Ford’s often-rigid structure. The freewheeling phase is over now. At a sprawling factory in Louisville, Ky., where Ford used to build gas-powered SUVs, crews are working to set up tooling and the new trio of assembly lines to build the EV. The company tested about 30 hand-built prototypes to try to root out problems earlier in the process. Later this year, they plan to start building—then road-testing—the first factory-built models. Ford says the truck’s interior will be roomier than a compact crossover SUV’s. Hyundai Motor CEO José Muñoz, asked recently whether it’s possible for an automaker to build a vehicle in the U.S. that competes with the Chinese, was unequivocal: “It is impossible,” he said." The future of Ford will likely hinge on how effectively it can counter the Chinese car onslaught. I guess Ford is hoping this EV will pull a rabbit out of the hat for them. IMO, they have left their run too late, the Chinese have a massive head start, and have virtually unlimited financing from Xi and the CCP. Only time will tell.

A coal power plant may last 50 years, but during that time, it would undergo maintenance and upgrades. Private banks and investors are unwilling to finance new coal. The long payback means that even if it were viable now, the risk is that somewhere down the line it may become unviable due to advancing technologies. There is no law in Australia that prevents building new coal; there is simply no good business case. You keep talking about "intermittent power" without considering energy storage. Battery efficiency and cost fall every year. A builder of a coal plant that is burning coal whether it is generating at all, is competing with ever cheaper and more efficient battery storage. It is not just chemical energy storage. Underground Air Batteries — The Energy Storage You’ve Never Heard Of Generating electricity with renewables is extremely cheap; this is undeniable. However, the challenge is both long and short-duration storage. Batteries are being built at an astonishing rate, and there are other promising methods in the pipeline. An investor in coal would need to know that they could never be undercut during the payback time of the plant.

Can you name a country where building new coal or nuclear power plants recently has kept retail electricity prices flat or below inflation? You’re asking renewables to reduce total electricity bills while we’re simultaneously replacing an entire ageing system and building new infrastructure.

You’re assuming prices are high because we’re adding renewables, but that skips the key comparison—what would be cheaper instead? New coal isn’t being built anywhere in Australia because it’s not economically competitive. If it were cheaper, companies would be investing in it—but they’re not. Nuclear might be reliable, but in Australia it would take 10–15+ years and cost significantly more than renewables. That doesn’t solve current prices. A big driver of recent price spikes has actually been coal plant outages and high fossil fuel prices, not renewables. That’s been highlighted repeatedly by Australian Energy Market Operator. The idea that coal is still reliably holding the system together is outdated. Plants like Eraring Power Station are ageing, breaking down more often, and becoming expensive to maintain—that’s not ideology, it’s physics and economics. You’re right that redundancy is needed—but that applies to any system. The difference is that renewables + storage are currently the cheapest way to build that redundancy at scale. So the issue isn’t that renewables are making power expensive—it’s that we’re replacing an ageing, increasingly unreliable system, and that was always going to come with costs no matter what technology we chose.

There's nothing LESS reliable that an old obsolete Coal fired Power station. They FAILon Hot days without warning and take ages to repair which can be Impossible for Many technical reasons. Having steam in the equation means danger and inefficiency. Coal combustion is a a polluter on a grand scale. You continue to Ignore STORAGE. You are the one flogging dead horses and using the Worn out slogans of the Deniers. It doesn't CUT. Why is Dutton Not around anymore? Nev.