Lithium-ion battery safety is mad science

Get a great deal on home solar (or add a quality battery to your existing setup): https://autoexpert.com.au/solarSave thousands on a new car: https://autoexpert.com.au/contactIn this video I answer the following viewer question on heavy towing:Forgive me if I've contacted you the wrong way about this, but I watched your YouTube vid on the Ford Ranger Super Duty and really appreciated your honest approach and obvious expertise. I thought the Super Duty was going to be the answer to my Towing Weight dreams, :) but that is the context of my question really..... I just want a solid answer to the below (rather than dubious answers (ie opinons) from Facebook warriors who don't really KNOW what they're talking about.My question - If the manufacturer confirms a van towball weight of 170kg at a TARE of 2600kg, could it be considered generally safe to tow the vehicle loaded to its ATM of 3300kg, with the towball weight still at 170kg (ie the extra weight evenly distributed across the vans axles)I just want to be clear as Ive seen so many people say Towball mass rule of thumb is 10% of ATM, but of course that (330kg) starts eating into our Disco 4 payload Big Time.......My guess is the answer to the questions is "Yes". But as I said, I really appreciated your honest view and use of the actual physics that determine towing characteristics.Thanks in advance for your help and keep up the good work!

Chinese battery manufacturer, Sungrow, has never had a thermal runaway of an operationally deployed battery. I went to China to find out why.

My mate Adam Morris from ReDriven - https://www.youtube.com/@ReDriven - is a self-confessed kei truck fan-boy. He gushes. (It's that dignified...) So, he recently got jammed into the 400kW RAM 1500 Limited for some reorientation therapy. I'm not sure it was entirely consensual, but hey...ReDriven's excellent kei truck review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFOUOFIda5QAnd the earlier S-Class takedown/reality check: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrU9fD7-m7Q Adam's co-conspirator, Jim, over at ReDriven is a fully qualified professional mechanic with years of experience - so you typically get two perspectives in every video.Make sure you check out ReDriven and give the boys a sub. I love their work.

This is a technical deep-dive with Toyo about EV tyre replacement

This video is a technical deep-dive into modern engine oils and filters, aimed at the home car maintenance DIY-er.

My mate Brett from Driving Enthusiast - https://www.youtube.com/@drivingenthusiastaustralia - dropped by the Fat Cave today, and since we both recently tested the same RAM 1500 Laramie Sport, we went for a spin and rolled a GoPro while we talked about it. This car is one of the most under-rated utes in the market - it tows heavy, it accelerates fast, and it's abundantly luxurious, as well as packed with clever features. Predictably, lefty/greenie types hate it.Make sure you check out Brett's channel and give him a sub - he's doing good work over there.Save thousands on any new car (Australia-only): https://autoexpert.com.au/contactGet a great deal on home solar (or add a quality battery to your existing setup): https://autoexpert.com.au/solar

Save thousands on any new car (Australia-only): https://autoexpert.com.au/contactGet a great deal on home solar (or add a quality battery to your existing setup): https://autoexpert.com.au/solarIn this video:Polestar has just started offering battery state of health certificates on select used Polestar 2s being resold in its dealer network. Companies don’t get up in the morning and randomly decide this kind of thing is a good idea. It has to be for a reason.According to them: "As part of the Polestar Pre-owned programme, in which select used cars re-enter the partner network, the certificate transparently shows customers the battery health and capacity of a used Polestar 2. Certifying the useable battery as a percentage, customers can purchase a pre-owned Polestar 2 with peace-of-mind that the car’s battery is in optimal condition."The battery in a Polestar 2 is actually one of the few things that’s proven quite robust so far, with very few owners complaining about range falling into the Marianas Trench. There have been plenty of other faults, but not the battery.Doing this is most probably because the rest of the car has proven to be such an unreliable, abject lemon. Like, don’t mind the lemon - look at how healthy the battery is, dude. Again, according to them: "Since its launch in 2020, Polestar 2 has received over 20 over-the-air (OTA) software updates, allowing the car to continuously improve over time. For Polestar 2, OTA updates have led to efficiency gains, extending the car’s range through battery management, new functionality with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, as well as many loved apps including Waze and YouTube. With regularly scheduled software updates, Pre-owned customers can be assured they have the latest software features in their car."This is a very interesting way to put it. It’s a totally true statement - as far as it goes - but not exactly a complete picture of the OTA reality. I'd argue that many - maybe most - of these OTAs are (often unsuccessful) attempts to fix something that should have been sorted in R&D, before deploying the vehicle publicly.So, battery health certificate or not, Polestar 2 is set to go down in the history books as one of the first enduring EV lemons. Cybertruck is on the podium, certainly, but Polestar 2 is up there, in the Lemon-Scented EV Sweepstakes.

My mate Brett from Driving Enthusiast - https://www.youtube.com/@drivingenthusiastaustralia - dropped by the Fat Cave with a Ranger Sport Loaner, so we went for a spin and rolled a GoPro while we talked about it. It's pretty impressive from a platform, dynamics, ergonomics and powertrain perspective. But it is quite expensive, and my reservations about Ford's product support and long-term reliability linger.Make sure you check out Brett's channel and give him a sub - he's doing good work over there.Save thousands on any new car (Australia-only): https://autoexpert.com.au/contactGet a great deal on home solar (or add a quality battery to your existing setup): https://autoexpert.com.au/solar

Save thousands on any new car (Australia-only): https://autoexpert.com.au/contactGet a great deal on home solar (or add a quality battery to your existing setup): https://autoexpert.com.au/solar

Save thousands on any new car (Australia-only): https://autoexpert.com.au/contactGet a great deal on home solar (or add a quality battery to your existing setup): https://autoexpert.com.au/solarIN THIS VIDEOLast Friday morning, a truck operated by NJ Ashton Group inconveniently, and certainly unintentionally, sprayed 750 kilos of Satan’s fingernails, also known as ‘flock’, which is finely shredded steel fragments, all over a 30km stretch of the M1, which is the northern motorway out of Sydney. Flock has a variety of clever industro-fun uses - it goes into friction materials (like brake linings and clutches - things of that nature). It’s a reinforcer for composites, and rubbers (not those rubbers, dude - your mind doesn’t have to be in the fucking gutter 24/7 - nobody wants flock in those rubbers - maybe Satan - he’d want that. I’m talking about flock in general products made of rubber, and plastic. They even stick flock in anti-static flooring (for electronics factories, or pyro-type manufacturing). And (this is very sexy, to me) they use flock in powder metallurgy as a binder in sintered components. ‘Flock’ is therefore miraculous. But not when you spray it all over 30km of freeway. That sucks. 300 vehicles had their tyres punctured, southbound, between Palmdale and Mount White. This main transport link to Sydney was closed for 10 hours.Nothing screams ‘no response plan’ louder than that. And I would say that we in the electorate deserve more than this entirely fucked-up response.This incident, which was purely accidental and in no way malicious, highlights two serious, interconnected lapses by regulatory Muppets to whom we pay healthy six-figure salaries - mainly, it would seem, to use their arses as little more than an over-priced executive chair polishing system.Problem one: It’s pretty easy, potentially, to disrupt the entire city. When you think about it. And problem two: Since there’s clearly no plan to deal with even one isolated incident such as this, imagine the unfettered chaos potentially caused by a properly coordinated attack. That’s pretty clear, given the ‘Keystone Cops’ response painted across everyone’s newsfeeds Friday night and Saturday morning.