car buying these days...

[VJ]

And Belgium in 2025...
... while forbidding gas in new buildings (mandatory heat pumps) and removing tax incentives on fuel-powered company cars...

[dZeus]

A much bigger problem than electricity prices will be the powerline infrastructure, that is already at or near capacity. All this future growth requires investments, planning and work taking at least 10-15 years to be materialized. Until then it will severely limit the speed of electrification (ie heatpumps and EVs).
So... I guess we will get 15 years of extremely high electricity prices to finance it all?

[VJ]

In Belgium they will close the nuclear powerplants in 2025 (fixed date). They plan to build 6 gas powerplants to compensate, but they don't even have locations/permissons for any of them. No way they can be planned/approved/built in 3-4 years. Combined with the changes regarding mandatory heat pumps in new houses and removal of tax incentives on fuel cars, and the fact that electricity import is maxed out, and it is a disaster in the making.

So... I guess we will get 15 years of extremely high electricity prices to finance it all?

If we are lucky, it will just mean high prices. We may also be looking at frequent blackouts...

It is one of the reasons we are not considering electric: for sure fuel will get more expensive, but then you are not likely to loose mobility (if you are willing to pay, you can drive ). With electric, it will also get more expensive and/or you may not be able to charge when you want to (e.g. no capacity for fast charging or so, so even if you are willing to pay, you may not be able to drive).
Maybe I'm too pessimistic with that.... I hope so...

[UtwigMU]

We're in talks to build a new block to our existing nuclear plant.

[VJ]

On the car thing... Which car would you get rid off?

1. VW Polo 2003 Comfortline (airco, comfort seats, ...) with automatic gear box, 178000 km, fully serviced at VW, mobility warranty still working
2. Hyunday i10 from 2011, in its most basic version, approx. 60000km (estimated)

Neither car has mechanical or electrical problems. There is a bit of oil usage on the Polo, but it was checked and according to the dealer, thicker oil should solve it. We are thinking of selling the Hyundai... The main reasons for us to change cars are not related to the reliability of the Polo but rather comfort on long highway drives and prospects or the car-market. It is more comfortable, bigger and more highway capable than the i10.... It adds navigation, radio and handsfree but it is 8 years older... The i10 is used by my mother-in-law, and she does not drive much but prefers driving Polo...

[UtwigMU]

I nearly cried when I sold my Polo but I was looking at 3x car's value engine rebuild. If I had a garage I'd keep it but it made no financial sense to do so.

Your Polo is on the side of curve where value of car will start to go up and you can get oldtimer (don't know how it's in Poland, here it's 25 years) status and then very cheap TCO. If you won't drive it too much, it should be still OK for local drives. Also if you did all the big maintenance, which I think comes at around that mileage, you're good to go for several more km, at least 250k. Parts are not that expensive, many people in Poland know how to fix it and repairs are not that expensive there.

So TCO should be at around 250-300 EUR a month. Definitely keep the Polo.

[VJ]

TCO for a car in Poland is quite low, as there is no annual tax (it is included in the fuel price). So apart from insurance and annual technical check, the only costs are the costs to the car (service, fixing). As a result, we are not selling any car immediately. My father-in-law would be more tempted to keep the Hyundai because it is newer, but he never drove Polo.. and he never had a car for longer than 7 years (he tends to buy quite low end cheap cars and does not expect them to last long), so a 19 year old car to him must be tragic. My mother in-law is the main user of the Hyundai and she prefers to drive Polo.

And... we ordered the Subaru... It is at the dealer's, and with a bit of luck we should be able to manage the administration before the end of next week. Christmas time visit to Belgium by car seems very possible again.

[VJ]

We managed to drive to Belgium on the 25th, and are just back in Poland.
The car is very comfortable, we managed to do the 1400km in one day without feeling exhausted (both going and coming back). The active cruise-control (one of the functions of the Subaru Eyesight system) is great. It anticipates and reacts as a driver would. If you approach a slower vehicle, it notifies that it sees it and then a bit later decreases the gas to slow down. If you move to the next lane to overtake, it starts accelerating during the move. If the car in front leaves the lane, it waits to accelerate until the lane is clear. And if a car cuts in front of you and has speed, it does not brake but just slightly decreases the gas if the car does not move away fast enough. All very natural - I read it is one of the best systems on the market, and having used it extensively on this trip, it never behaved in an unpredictable way and never caught me by surprise. At one point traffic suddenly packed up (car cut in front of us and suddenly everyone in front started braking) and the car nicely braked right before my wife wanted to. The lane detector nicely shows when it cannot recognize the lanes. It sometimes failed to see the yellow lines (during road works), but once you cross the white line (ignoring the warning) it won't notify again until you are back in a lane (and shows you it is not checking lanes for now). As a driver, you are very well informed about which systems are active and which not.

The noise levels in the car are very low, so that also is comfortable. While it is a CVT, it appears to jump to some points if it is beneficial (I guess to faster reach a more optimal rpm for power under acceleration). I haven't noticed the droning noise often associated with CVTs. It is weird to see how the RPM varies smooth without the speed changing (e.g. uphill or downhill, or small speed adjustments). We are at 3000 km now and will have the first oil change (not mandatory, but recommended). It switches to electric mode when driving slow, and the switch is barely noticeable. You cannot accelerate much in EV mode or it will restart the engine, but for constant driving it does maintain it for some time. In EV mode it makes a noise for pedestrians (EU regulation), which you can just about hear as some metallic whirr. The suspension smooths out cobblestones, seams in bridge surfaces and things like that.

The ventilation works very well and scales from lowest setting where you don't feel anything to a highest setting that really works fast. Defrosting the wipers, wind-shield and mirrors works very efficiently.

I would not call it very sporty, but it is something I do not care about; it has enough power reserve to be safe e.g. when overtaking. We did not fully check the fuel consumption, the first leg was quite bad (-11C, cold start, cold and new car, winter tires) but it improved and now I think we are well below 7l/100 km for highway driving (120 kph) with some headwind (wind turbines along the road were an indicator for this).

The built-in gps is quite simple but effective. The spoken commands are minimal yet clear, the information (lanes, junction view, exit names) seems accurate, as does the time estimate. My previous Kenwood DNX-8220 did have a few more tricks up its sleeve (show turn list, show traffic information, possibility for paid RDS-TMC traffic information sources), but was missing some other features the new navigation has. We haven't yet tried Android Auto. USB playback is fine, although I think the sound quality of my Kenwood was slightly better (but not really a noticeable difference while driving). We still have to check some playlist options (it plays the files alphabetically). Voice control works well, as long as you are using English words. A bit of an issue with Polish street names in the navigation or Belgian and Polish peoples' names for dialling - as with all such systems.

All in all very happy with the car so far.

As a hint: driving on Christmas day in Europe is a dream: empty roads everywhere. The return on 8th of January also was very calm (6/1 is a holiday in Poland, so a Saturday in the middle of this long weekend is also calm).

[TransformX]

Still driving a 1997 Lancia Kappa 2.4 20v.
TCO is very high, especially with my driving profile.

Love the car, jealous of the European ones where the climate is much more forgiving.
I'm actually buying replacement parts from Poland.

[UtwigMU]

Still driving a 1997 Lancia Kappa 2.4 20v.
TCO is very high, especially with my driving profile.

Love the car, jealous of the European ones where the climate is much more forgiving.
I'm actually buying replacement parts from Poland.

I rode with TransformX in his Lancia 2.4. It has great acceleration and I can confirm his driving style is not eco.

[TransformX]

Up for grabs, 500 Euro:

[MultimediaMan]

Blast from the past:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DQjEF53Gao

Nissan USA actually bought the car from this guy and restored it (almost) perfectly to showroom new...

[VJ]

This weekend we went on a driving skill course, provided Subaru Poland (you get it when you buy a new car).

It was great fun, and I highly recommend it to anyone. We had icy conditions, which really made the course more interesting. Breaking during evasive manoeuvres on ice, deliberately taking turns too fast to feel how/when grip goes, emergency braking and evasive manoeuvres at speed are not only great fun but very educational.

(interesting also to see the difference between the AWD cars and other cars when it came to accelerating and braking - all were on winter tyres)

[Umfriend]

As we hardly have winters anymore it may not be a big thing but in certain climates, it should be required to do such a course as part of the exam. If only just to feel how easy it can be to lose control.

[UtwigMU]

Does the VX have a proper handbrake you can operate or one of those electronic ones?