Articles by Stephen Corby

If you’re a man - particularly a married one with kids and decades between you and your single days - hearing “bachelor pad” might be ever so slightly bittersweet, but there’s also every chance those words make you remember a time in your life when you were so footloose and fancy free you were basically Kevin Bacon.

Cadillac has created a hand-made luxury EV with proportions that it admitted “look impossible to achieve”, a price tag that can run well north of $1 million, and an Active Roll Control system it claims can deliver “zero degrees of roll, which is better than any sports car out there”.

It’s a chilling thought, but what if the tin-foil-hat wearing China conspiracy churners are right?

How long does a Tesla battery last? According to official Tesla-sourced data, Tesla batteries lose between 12 and 15 per cent of their capacity, on average, after approximately 321,868km (200,000 miles in American speak) of usage.If this data is correct, the average Australian driver won’t need to consider replacing their Tesla battery until 26 years into ownership, because the national average driver travels a touch over 12,000km a year.I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest people who buy Teslas, or electric vehicles in general, travel fewer kilometres than the average driver.Tesla battery lifespan is the kind of thing EV shoppers consider carefully, because they’ve all owned Apple iPhones, or Microsoft laptops, and noticed that battery life seems definitively finite. It’s important to realise, of course, that the batteries in an EV are vastly bigger.Elon Musk is aware, of course, that Tesla battery life is something buyers worry about, and it provides an eight-year/192,000km warranty with the purchase of all Australian-delivered vehicles, except the rear-wheel-drive Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, which come with a similar eight-year/160,000km warranty.The terms of these warranties are as follows; if the Tesla battery drops below 70 per cent capacity in less than the aforementioned time period or distance, Tesla covers the cost of a replacement battery.Replacement batteries for a Tesla can cost anywhere from $15,000 up to $20,000 across all models.A study in April 2024 by British motoring insurance company NimbleFins - which examined nine years of Tesla battery lifetime data - found the batteries should deteriorate by around one per cent of their range per year.In terms of how you can look after your battery, there are multiple factors that affect Tesla battery lifespan.For any electric vehicle, you want to avoid fully charging the battery to 100 pre cent regularly, to preserve maximum battery capacity.Canadian lithium-ion battery researcher Jeff Dahn claims that, treated properly and kept in the right “voltage window”, a Tesla battery can stay fully operational for 100 years, or 1.6 million kilometres.Dr Adam Best (just call him Dr Best), Principal Battery Researcher at our own CSIRO, claims that, if owners employ the appropriate maintenance techniques to prolong battery health, Tesla batteries can achieve a “pretty impressive life cycle”.But what are these maintenance techniques? Dr Best suggests you try to keep the charge level always between 20 per cent and 80 per cent, as opposed to running the battery from zero to 100 and back again, which will “help to extend the life of your EV”, regardless of battery chemistry and composition.Teslas predominantly run on lithium iron phosphate (LFP) or nickel cobalt aluminium (NCA) chemically composed batteries, while other brands like Polestar use nickel manganese cobalt (NMC).Both NCA and NMC batteries thrive in conditions where they aren’t being charged to maximum capacity and drained to empty.So if you are a responsible and battery-conscious EV driver, who can you know if your EV is responding well to your gentle treatment? What are the signs that your battery is dying, or that it’s functioning properly?Other than the most obvious indicator of declining battery capacity - getting less mileage out of each charge - other signs that your EV’s battery might be suffering are slower charging times, a change in the driving sensation (sluggishness, lack of responsiveness), strange smells or noises while charging or driving, and, of course, the Tesla multimedia system telling you that your battery may be in decline.In terms of real-world results, it’s also worth pointing to a test conducted by a Tesla Model S 70D owner, Branden Flasch. Branden's vehicle had reportedly travelled 234,964km when he put his Tesla battery to the test, and the results were very impressive.The Model S in question was purchased in 2015, and its owner charged it to 99 per cent before the test, and then drove it until the batteries were completely depleted, measuring its kWh usage to check the battery's depletion.The reported results have the Model S using 58.5kWh, roughly 83 per cent of their original 70kWh capacity.

The difference between Mercedes classes is methodical and distinctly German, devised to distinguish Mercedes car models by size and purpose.

Why are MG cars so cheap? Obviously if you asked someone at MG they’d answer with “they’re not cheap, they’re affordable, and amazing value”, but the most obvious answer is - because they’re made in China.This may come as a shock to many readers, who might assume MG is still the same storied old brand from England that used to make sexy, sporty little roadsters and not much else (it was founded in Oxford, UK, in 1924).MG is the same 'brand', in a literal sense, and you’ll often see Union Jacks and words like 'heritage' associated with its vehicles, but the fact is it’s very much a Chinese concern these days.Back in 2005, Chinese manufacturer Nanjing Automobile Group bought the rights to the MG badge, along with the rest of MG Rover Group (Rover was another UK marque that did not survive and if you'd driven its cars, you'd be grateful), and then, in 2007, Nanjing was swallowed whole by SAIC Motor - a Shanghai-based car manufacturer that is, in turn, owned by the Chinese state, and which owns MG to this day.Just pause on that for a moment. Imagine if the Australian government was in charge of building cars locally, if it had bought Ford and Holden for example. Motor vehicles built by committee, car companies run by governments that can change their priorities - between EV and burning oil for example - every few years. Just, wow.Fortunately, China’s communist government does not change and the almost limitless financial backing the Chinese state can give to the companies it owns and runs - often with the stated goal of competing with and beating the western world - is a significant advantage for a brand like MG/SAIC.To be clear, when the Chinese bought MG it wasn’t exactly a going concern, but they obviously saw value in the badge, as opposed to selling cars called things like “Yangwang” or “Build Your Dreams”.In 2011, the first new MG model in more than 15 years was launched; the MG 6, and it was notionally built, or partly built, in the UK at MG’s Longbridge plant, but also partly in China.This allowed the brand to continue proclaiming its British-ness but in 2016 the company shut down its operation in England and all MGs since then have been designed and built in China.Cars built in China are cheaper partly due to the effect of economies of scale and SAIC is quite huge; indeed it is the largest single-marque exporter in China.In 2024, it sold 707,000 vehicles in total. For comparison, the entire new car market in Australia in a typical year is around 1.2 million.It’s also a lot cheaper to build cars in China because the wages for the people that do it are amongst the lowest in the world (although not as low as Mexico and India).Workers in an SAIC factory are reportedly paid as little as $3.60 to $6.60 an hour, which means the labour costs of building an MG are going to be far, far lower than those going into a vehicle built in the US, Europe or Japan.When it comes to EVs, which MG, like most Chinese car companies, has a heavy focus on, Chinese manufacturers also have a huge price advantage because China controls so much of the global EV battery market (and batteries are the most expensive part of an EV), so it can access them at lower rates.According to the International Energy Agency, China is projected to hold more than half of the global EV battery market by 2030. More than 70 per cent of all the EV batteries that have ever been made were produced in China.It should thus come as no surprise that China dominates the global EV market in general, with a 62 per cent market share.According to Nikkei Asia, China also holds a significant share in the production of key battery components, such as cathodes, anodes, electrolytes and separators.In Australia, MG has taken advantage of its ability to produce and import cars that are cheaper, in a wholesale sense, than competitors from established brands in this country by adopting an aggressive pricing strategy.It has promoted a lot of 'dynamic pricing' or drive-away pricing and you will often see or hear advertising suggesting it is offering the cheapest vehicle in a particular segment.At the time of publishing, the cheapest new MG car you can buy is an MG ZST 1.5 CVT Vibe, with a drive-away price of just $23,888.MG offers sharply-priced vehicles across many segments from hatches to small and mid-sized SUVs, and even a new electric roadster, the $115,000 Cyberster, which is clearly designed to bring to mind the MG sports cars of old. It’s also clearly not a cheap MG car.MG also offers hybrid and EV power plants. According to Compare the Market, “MG cars in Australia generally have a lower resale value compared to more established brands like Toyota or Mazda”.This is an important factor to keep in mind when considering how cheap they might seem in terms of upfront costs.In terms of safety, MG is not an entirely maximum five-star rated brand. The MG HS (petrol) and MG 4 Electric have five-star ANCAP ratings, but the MG ZS hybrid only gets four stars, the MG 3 has three stars and the MG 5 has zero stars (safety system upgrades are expected “early in 2025”).So, in summary, MG cars are cheap because they are made in China, one of the cheapest places to build cars, and EVs in particular, in the world, and they are thus able to be aggressively priced in Australia.

What is the cheapest car to insure? Putting aside the hundreds of factors your insurance company will consider before giving you a price, the cheapest car to insure in Australia is the compact city car, the Kia Picanto. Overall, for cheap insurance, Kia seems to be the brand with the most offerings.Other cheap new cars to insure in Australia, according to financial comparison site Canstar, include the Fiat 500, Suzuki Ignis, Toyota Yaris, Mazda 2 and another Kia, the Rio.If you think that list means you can make a direct correlation between the cost of the car and the cost of insuring it, give yourself a gold star, because that is certainly one of the most important factors - how much it will cost to replace your new vehicle if it’s stolen or written off.The less expensive the car, the less it costs the insurer to replace, and thus the lower your premiums.Other contenders for the cars with the cheapest insurance include the similarly small, and affordable, Toyota Corolla, Kia Stonic and Suzuki Swift, as well as the small city SUV Hyundai Venue.When it comes to working out what the cheapest cars on insurance are it’s worth keeping in mind there are many, many factors an insurer will assess before deciding on the premium it is willing to offer to you.The average cost of car insurance in Australia is $929 per policy, according to financial services regulator, APRA. This is based on 18.13 million "active risks" covered and $16.8 billion in gross written premiums from September 2023 to September 2024.While we can talk about average insurance prices, they will vary wildly depending on these factors, which are used to determine the risk of insuring a particular car, and its particular owner.These include the cost of repairs and replacement; and not just the obvious one, like the sticker price of the car, but how hard or easy it is to get parts for that vehicle, and how much those parts will cost. Cars with higher repair costs will have higher insurance premiums.How likely it is that a particular car will be stolen is another important fact, and insurers have lists of data and statistics on this, going right down to the granular detail of which coloured cars are most stolen.Yes, even the colour of paint you choose can effect our insurance premium, based on past data about the behaviour of car thieves. White and yellow coloured cars can attract lower premiums than black or darker coloured ones because they are less prone to being stolen.As a bonus, brighter coloured cars are also less likely to be involved in accidents, because they’re easier to see, adding another factor to the colour of money when it comes to car insurance.Where you live will also effect your premiums, for obvious reasons. If you’re in a crime-prone suburb the danger of your vehicle being stolen is higher. Similarly, where you park the car will effect your premiums; if it’s kept in a locked garage it’s going to be harder to steal, and thus cheaper to insure.As anyone who has a teenager on P plates can tell you, the age and experience of the person who will be driving the car can have an enormous effect on insurance costs, doubling or even tripling them in some cases if you want to insure a car for a young, inexperience driver, also known as “an accident waiting to happen”.Even if you are older and more experienced, car companies will look at your insurance history when considering your quote, and the size of your excess. The longer you have gone with no accidents or claims of any kind, the cheaper your insurance will be.Sadly, even the gender of the nominated driver or drivers is also a factor. Actuaries and insurance companies deal in raw numbers and those numbers show that men are more likely to be involved in car accidents than women. Young men in particular.The people you list on your policy are going to effect the price.Speaking of accidents, the safety rating of your car is also a factor, according to Canstar. If it’s fixed with the modern systems that might help you avoid having a crash, that can lower your premiums, too.According to Canstar, these were the Top 10 cheapest new cars to insure in 2024 in Australia (they sourced their figures from Youi Insurance’s own make/model/insurance data).

There are some states where the very existence of unmarked police cars seems almost as illogical as it is cruel, while in others, like Victoria, it’s a surprise that every second vehicle isn’t a cop car in disguise.

You’ve seen them on the road, billowing black smoke and belching foul fumes - the old dungers and banged-up utes with their couldn’t care less drivers. At a time when driving an EV makes you a net-zero hero, the polluters driving those vehicles are the bargain-basement equivalent of flying by private jet, so why do we do so little to get them off the roads?In the US, they conduct “smog testing” on old vehicles and if they fail, they’re taken off the road. In Australia, we focus on setting emissions standards for new vehicles and turn a largely blind eye to high-emitting old ones. Currently, our “vehicle emissions intensity” remains notably higher than Europe (107g/km for them vs 150g/km for us) and “remains closer to – but still higher than – levels in the United States and Canada”, according to the National Transport Commission.So how much difference would it make if we got those polluting dirt boxes off the road? Prepare to have your mind blown. In one study, a group of Italian researchers calculated how much Rome’s air quality would improve if 10 per cent of its city’s many, many cars  became EVs overnight, and - spoiler alert - it was significant.But then they did a second calculation: what would happen if the city required just the top 1 per cent of polluters to go electric? Pollution would drop by the same amount as the 10 per cent shift.Now, let me introduce you to the work of genuine genius and inventor Donald Stedman (he died in 2016, but I learned of him thanks to Malcolm Gladwell’s brilliant new book, Revenge of the Tipping Point), who was a chemist at the University of Denver.Back in the 1990s, Stedman came up with a machine that used infrared light to instantly measure and analyse the emissions of cars driving past. Gladwell spent a day by the side of a highway in Denver watching the machine at work and quickly realised that very few vehicles set it off.Stedman explained that those few cars were the primary cause of the state’s air-pollution problem. A small number of vehicles were producing carbon-monoxide levels as much as 100 times higher than the average.Indeed, in 2006, Stedman discovered that just 5 per cent of the vehicles on the road were producing 55 per cent of automobile pollution. “Obviously, the older a car is, the more likely it is to become broken - it’s the same as human beings,” Stedman explained.“It’s not unusual that these failures result in higher emissions. We have at  least one vehicle in our database which was emitting 70 grams of hydrocarbon per mile, which means you could almost drive a Honda Civic on the exhaust fumes from that car.”Stedman’s seemingly intelligent suggestion was that someone should set up his devices on major roads around Denver, and police could then pull over and smog test anyone who failed. He predicted that just half a dozen of his roadside smog checkers could check 30,000 to 40,000 vehicles a day, resulting in a reduction of emissions for the state of 35 to 40 per cent.Gladwell reports that other studies around the world have found similar results: “somewhere around 10 per cent of vehicles are, at any given time, responsible for over half the automobile-based air pollution.”So how likely is it that the situation is the same in Australia? Well, remember what Stedman said about older cars and consider that the National Transport Commission says data from 2024 suggests the average age of cars in Australia is 11.2 years. “This figure is a significant factor in Australia's emissions intensity, with a large portion of the fleet having emissions above 250 g/km, a statistic that remains a concern,” the NTC’s report adds.Furthermore, seven years after local manufacturing ended, Holden Commodores and Ford Falcons are still in the top 10 of vehicle models on our roads. “These models, with a high average emissions intensity of around 260 g/km, are emblematic of a broader trend: 77 per cent of all vehicles on our roads today with an emissions intensity above 250 g/km first entered the fleet between 2003 and 2013.“By contrast, 93 per cent of registered vehicles with an emissions intensity of up to 120 g/km entered the fleet in the years since 2014.”And what do we do, in Australia, about getting the more broken, higher-emitting old cars off our roads? Well, in Queensland for example, there are no periodic emissions inspections once a vehicle is registered, but mobile road teams do conduct random emissions tests through a program called OVERT (On-Road Vehicle Emissions Random Testing), and drivers may be pulled over if their vehicles emit visible smoke.This sounds promising, as does the fact that OVERT uses “a four-gas analyser to measure carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon levels in the exhaust”. What is remarkable, however, is that even if your car fails utterly and is clearly a threat to public health, let alone the environment, “Regardless of the test result, no legal action is taken.”Instead, “vehicles graded ‘Fair' or ‘Poor' receive a recommendation to have the car serviced”.Smog checks in the US, by comparison, involve punishment for vehicles that fail: “You may lose your vehicle registration stickers and be unable to drive the vehicle legally. You will need to have the necessary repairs made and repeat the test.”But let’s not rush to give the US too many plaudits. Four decades after Donald Stedman invented his theoretically game-changing smog-detector, the state of Colorado is yet to enact his plan in Denver and the city’s air quality, which was apparently not so bad in the early 2000s, has gotten worse over the past decade. Here in Australia, though, it seems like a few small but seemingly obvious changes to our rules, and the way enforce them, could make a huge change to our emissions, and to the levels of harmful gases on our roadways. And most of us wouldn’t even be forced to buy an EV. So my question is, as yet another black-smoke-chugging old banger coughs past you on the road today, why isn’t anyone - not even the Greens - talking about this as an election issue?

Human beings are fascinating creatures, endlessly individualistic, creative, adventurous. Indeed, it’s the things that make us so different that make us so interesting, except when it comes to choosing the colour of our cars. Because then, we tend to be about as exciting as a cup of tea with no tea in it.