IanML

It doesn't have to. I spent less than half that, using a QUBEV charger. It has become more sophisticated and a bit more expensive now, but you should still be able to keep under £500, as it now incorporates PEN protection (for which I had to buy a separate unit elsewhere). The support I received from the manufacturer when I had a bit of an accident installing it was superb, and they sent me replacement parts without charge, so I strongly recommend them. Link to QUBEV

x2

Common causes: Spider setting off internal sensor. Moisture ingress (leaking sunroof?)

I have yet to see any statistics on whether the ULEZ scheme has resulted in lower numbers of ICE vehicles in the affected areas. If there is not much reduction, that could be the reason that the pollution data has not shown much improvement. If the daily receipts from ULEZ begin to drop, that will show the scheme is beginning to work.

EVs are in their infancy, and further developments are addressing most of those downsides. New battery technologies are coming on stream, which will eclipse Li-ion in due course. Battery recycling plants are being commissioned, but many retired batteries are being re-used as stationary storage, and the number available for scrap is still quite low. In energy production, renewables are beginning to predominate over fossil fuels, and carbon capture is getting off the ground. There's a way to go yet, but its moving ever faster in the right direction. Irrespective of the above, the role of EV's in removing harmful emissions from densely populated environments is valuable. if you doubt that, consider respiratory problems in urban-dwelling children.

One possibility is that the power steering is powered electrically (rather than belt drive from the ICE on an ICE car), and the extra demand when you steer left prior to reversing onto the drive, takes the 12V system load into the region that requires "charge" to resume.

There are two ways to address this. One is to play "parts-roulette", i.e. guess what might cause it, change that and see if it happens again. If it does, spin the wheel again. If you want to do this, two probable causes are the starter solenoid (so changing the starter is logical), and the key operated ignition switch (if that's what your car has). The other is to actually have the defect occurring while you do various electrical checks to try to find the problem, as the dealer said. I've assumed that the problem is that the starter is failing to turn the engine over. If it does turn the engine, but the engine does not fire. there are other possible causes.

Yes, very odd, but workable once you know. It looks like the long charge has brought the baseline up to a good level (about 12.6V) and it's holding, which suggests that there is no appreciable parasite drain. The see-saws were perhaps cured by the update. What is revealing is that a voltage reading after a charge is only representative after about a day and a half, which I didn't know. What are you using to monitor the voltage - I'm tempted 😉

What is the vertical scale in terms of Volts?

The battery terminal volts depend heavily on the load presented at any time. If you unlock the car and measure it immediately, it will be lower than when the car has been left open with nothing on for (say) 30 minutes. That is because various items are woken-up when the car is unlocked, and they go back to sleep after a period if nothing happens. Try opening the bonnet and leaving the car with nothing on for half an hour, and then measure. If it's still low, disconnect the earth terminal and measure again. If that's still low, charge the battery with a modern charger (eg CTEK or NOCO), and repeat the checks a day or two later. In your case, after the weekend would be ideal. If the problem has persisted, the battery may have a partial internal short-circuit, which is slowly discharging it. Alternatively, there may be an excessive current draw from a defect in the car wiring. This can be checked with a sensitive ammeter connected between the battery negative terminal (when disconnected from the car) and the earth connector, observing the half hour wait from when the ammeter was placed in circuit. It should be less than about 20 mA, but on a new car I would expect better then 10 mA.

It is probably a short due to water ingress. Unfortunately, they do not include alarm wiring in the circuit diagrams (for security), so that's no help.

If you are having to charge it frequently, either, as suggested above, your alternator is not giving sufficient output (easily checked with a voltmeter), or there is some part of the electrical system discharging the battery excessively when the engine is off (can be checked with an ammeter).

I've recently discovered my sunroof was admitting water to the cabin, and, on investigation, found the guttering around the roof frame was pretty well filled with fine mud, which I assume was from decayed vegetation (I park under a tree). My own fault for not keeping it clean. The rubber seal around the sunroof panel and the mating metal frame surface was also fouled, which could not have helped. The main problem, once I had cleaned out all the gunk, was that the drain tubes in the front corners of the guttering, which extend down the windscreen pillars, were clogged, so the nice clean guttering was not draining. I have heard that this can be fixed by blowing with a high pressure air line, but, not having one handy, I decided to try rodding with a very narrow flexible length of steel, stripped from an old windscreen wiper blade (I don't throw things away as often as I should). It needed a bit of manipulation (largely twisting the rod), to get it past some obstructing discontinuity in the drain pipe, but suddenly, when the rod was about 2/3 in the drain, the water commenced flowing, and was gone in a couple of seconds. And the rod came back out past the obstruction without too much difficulty, so, success. Hope this helps someone else.

I'm with Strangely re the Jimny. I have driven awesomely steep ups and downs in very slippery mud with the Suzuki part-time 4WD in low range first gear, and it just works. Also rutted stony wet slopes at an angle, and pulled bogged-down 2WD cars and vans off soft beaches. The Jimny is light, so probably better than a Landy in some situations, but an old (part-time 4WD) Landy is probably tougher. Only reservation - you must remember to revert to 2wd when back on the firm stuff, or you wind-up the transmission when turning and can break something. The AWD vehicles with traction control are better than nothing, but the Jimny is much more capable. Oh, and I've seen an old part-time 4WD Vitara going up an icy, snowy hill, passing a Range Rover on low-profile tyres which couldn't make it. 'Nuff said.

Well, those seem unlikely to be wanted for export to the Middle East. Probably "joy riders", and there are so many of them, they are almost bound to be in the majority. I suppose my main point is that the list will not reflect ease of theft so much as demand and availability.