Sold, a few minutes ago: our trusty old Corolla which served us really well for about 13 years. It was 7 years old when we bought it, so the real age is almost 20. Still runs like a charm, and purrs like a kitten:
My last photo of “Castle” as my girls called it, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022
So farewell “Castle” – I’ll miss you…
Oh, and meet “Castle”‘s younger cousin “Yuki”, which is about 15 years younger than its slightly bigger predecessor. This photo is from last Friday in Groß-Gerau:
One of the first photos of “Yuki” as my girls call it, Groß-Gerau 2022 (another nickname is “Tardis”, because it’s bigger on the inside – and yes it is blue) 😉
Yesterday I went to Cologne to visit my brother, and this was a premiere using the new used car with its hybrid gasoline / electric engine drivetrain.
First thing I noticed when trying to use the cruise control (and yes, ours has one) was that the car tried to keep to the set speed ‘at all costs’, so its energy-efficiency meter went almost all the way up into ‘power mode’ when going uphill, just to keep the car at whatever you had set it to.
If you don’t use cruise control and try to keep it in the green ‘eco’ friendly part, you’re definitely more oriented at lorry / truck speeds than at those on the left lane overtaking each other. So you’re going slow – this car somehow manages to teach you how to do that.
On the way back from my brother I didn’t care, and went those roundabout 200 kilometers more or less at lorry and truck speeds, only overtaking them uphill when they got really slow. So on flat roads I kept the speed at around 110km/h, trying to also spend most of the time in that green area, only entering mid of ‘power’ mode on some uphill places. This was the result after arriving back home:
Fuel consumption average after going slow from Cologne back to our place (some 200km)
On the way to Cologne I had an average of about 90km/h until arriving at the big city where you had to go slow, on the way back I didn’t look at that, but here it shows 74km/h overall, so including city traffic (mostly 50 or even 30km/h). As I said, lorry and truck speeds, they mostly go around 90km/h.
Real fuel consumption on average (at the gas station) was slightly under 5l/100km last time, but that included many short-distance drives in winter, so instead of going electric the car often used the petrol engine just to fill up its battery, and to keep us warm.
Have to get used to this. It’s definitely a different way of driving, but it’s good that a car like this makes you at least think about these things.
As always, thanks for reading.
P.S.: this time when fuelling up the car I had an average fuel consumption of about 4.7l/100km which is about 50 US or 60 British mpg. Cool.
Oh my – like his daughters reported, Tom didn’t make it. I read it in Tagesschau Online first, and here is an obituary from Thomas Spickhofen from our ARD studios in London:
Thank you Tom, for everything you did – you won’t be forgotten. My thoughts are with your family, and with your friends.
A click on the cover here will lead you to Flickr, but a click on the text link or on the small cover in the right Widget area will lead you to Wikiloops where you can hear and/or download the album.
Looking forward to the next one already – and I asked Mélanie if she would take my photo for it again.
As always, thanks to my friends world-wide with whom I had the pleasure and the honour to make music. And thanks to you for reading and/or listening and/or downloading the album.
As I wrote already, the Hammersmith & City line had some service announcement for Saturday, so we had to take Jubilee to London Bridge, and the Northern line to Kings Cross / St Pancras. The guys at the hotel were nice enough to pack some breakfast for us, of which we had a bit while waiting at this place in the station:
Sun glasses on display at St Pancras International, London 2019
In the Eurostar, we had the “Standard Premier” tickets this time, so we got another breakfast in the train as well – nice. Plus, while knowing that it went way over 200km/h over land (not in the tunnel), this time I could actually see the monitor – and indeed it displayed 298 and 299km/h when I looked. Two hours from London to Brussels (or back), which is very cool.
Then, “S-Bahn” from Brussels to Leuven – with what felt 1/10th of the speed. For these 18kilometers it took us almost another hour.
Finally, some stations with a bus, and at the Toyota dealer we could pick up our car with a new generator and battery (which was also damaged according to the service/sales guy there).
And yes, thankfully our car brought us back home. But the display is still strange – when I now turn on the front lights of the car, the display automatically dims to almost unreadable. And the (step-trough) section of undimming that display is gone – simply not there anymore. They must either also have changed the programming box, or cabled something differently, or simply put in something else than what the car had before that service… so that means I either have to live with that dark display now, or to have it checked (and repaired) again at a local dealer. Because, honestly, what were the options? To complain on a late Saturday, with no mechanics in anymore?
Sigh… reality has me back…
At least, London was nice. As long as I didn’t have to walk too far.
