Dez
Club Retro Rides Member
And I won't sit down. And I won't shut up. And most of all I will not grow up.
Posts: 11,712
Club RR Member Number: 34
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The other thing, before I forget, is has anyone actually looked at having a charger socket setup fitted to your house? I did, and it was going to cost about £1500-2k. The consumer unit is at the wrong end of the house, meaning a fairly long cable run. Also, even though the consumer unit we have is only about 8 years old, it was deemed unsuitable and would need replacing. Fair enough you say, I’ll view it as an investment, but given they’re already having to change the first electric charging docks as they’re now the ‘wrong type’, how long will it be before that happens again? Then they said the actual cables feeding the house were insufficient, and would also have to be upgraded, at great cost and disruption.
It also increases your house insurance due to increased fire risk. Also you have to keep the charge socket locked or otherwise secured to prevent theft of your electricity.
There was the option of rather than buying a s/h electric car and footing the costs yourself, buy a brand spanking new one and you get all your Necessary household electrical upgrades ‘free’ as part of the deal. Except the Monthly PCP payment would be higher than our mortgage....
It’s no wonder takeup of them is still pretty slow.
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Brownouts are different to blackouts. A brownout is when the voltage drops below a certain threshold, causing things like incandescent lights to dim. Power is not completely lost but it's not enough to run anything properly. A blackout is total loss. Not in the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos. They may call them different things but everything stops working.
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Last Edit: Oct 7, 2020 10:07:32 GMT by georgeb
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duncanmartin
Club Retro Rides Member
Out of retro ownership
Posts: 1,320
Club RR Member Number: 70
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EVs are cheaper to run than a good efficient ICE if you have somewhere to charge at home electricity prices. A fivers worth of electricity will comfortably do 100-150 miles. However, supply of secondhand ones is limited, demand is reasonably high, and there is a floor set by the value of the battery to do other things (like home storage), so depreciation is slow and there is a cut-off point at a few grand where it's worth more in parts. I don't see how the latter situation changes, so while you can run one on a shoestring, buying one on a shoestring is unlikely in the near future, and in 12 years time I can't see any iMievs or early Leafs sneaking into the Gathering as bona fide >20yo retro cars. That's an interesting spin off question - what will be the first genuine Retro original EV? Maybe a well preserved i3? That’s it really, The situation Where an electric car is ‘better’ is still a convoluted set of circumstances that only applies to relatively few people. I know various people who will drive a £500 Older ex-luxury car that does 25mpg, rather than a newer midrange or eco model that does 50mpg But costs 2-3 grand, as for the the amount of miles they do the former is still cheaper overall per year for a good number of years. Electric may have cheaper running costs on paper, if you have the privilege of being able to park and charge at home in a secure environment. But the elephant in the room is the huge initial purchase cost. People either don’t have that amount of cash sat around spare to dump on the purchase, or are unwilling (or unable) to get finance to pay for it. I’d like to see electric cars become cheap enough that they become a sensible Option and are worth having some fun with, but with my experiences of consumer electronics, they’ll all be knackered by then. Something like 40% of the households in the UK have off-street parking, so while a minority, it's not a tiny number. The huge purchase cost is true, and EVs are a few grand more than their equivalent ICE, but over 80% of new private cars are bought on PCP these days, so if the payments stack up, people will buy whatever they like. Fleet sales are driven by tax costs, so EV will take a chunk of that market too, given the latest tax breaks. I agree that it would be great if older EVs dropped to fun money, but the value of the battery means that this floor exists below which breaking it makes sense. Currently, that's about 4-5 grand, as battery production goes up and battery prices come down that will decay over time. This whole discussion has continually strayed away from retro content. Have a couple of retro EVs as penance:
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duncanmartin
Club Retro Rides Member
Out of retro ownership
Posts: 1,320
Club RR Member Number: 70
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The other thing, before I forget, is has anyone actually looked at having a charger socket setup fitted to your house? I did, and it was going to cost about £1500-2k. The consumer unit is at the wrong end of the house, meaning a fairly long cable run. Also, even though the consumer unit we have is only about 8 years old, it was deemed unsuitable and would need replacing. Fair enough you say, I’ll view it as an investment, but given they’re already having to change the first electric charging docks as they’re now the ‘wrong type’, how long will it be before that happens again? Then they said the actual cables feeding the house were insufficient, and would also have to be upgraded, at great cost and disruption. It also increases your house insurance due to increased fire risk. Also you have to keep the charge socket locked or otherwise secured to prevent theft of your electricity. There was the option of rather than buying a s/h electric car and footing the costs yourself, buy a brand spanking new one and you get all your Necessary household electrical upgrades ‘free’ as part of the deal. Except the Monthly PCP payment would be higher than our mortgage.... It’s no wonder takeup of them is still pretty slow. I have a charger socket. Fitted into my garage, next to my consumer unit. It cost Renault £399, and the only thing it needed doing was the main fuse into the house changing from 80Amp to 100Amp. The electricity supply company did that and I never got a bill. It has a lock on it, but I never use it (is someone really going to park on my driveway and steal electricity at £1 an hour?). Insurance know about it and don't care. Clearly every house is different, and some (typically old ones) have real issues with stuff like split supplies and 60A fuses that can't be changed, but that's not common. PCP on a Renault Zoe is around £250pm on the not infrequent deals. If your mortgage is less than that, you are a financial genius!
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Tried to find a retro EV pic from here. Failed. However PHLPost use them, but, as they actually never deliver any mail, it won't make a huge difference. Oh, and I forgot, so busy was I over power generation and distribution... We can't put 'em out anyway!
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Luckily, I like old cars.
I've never been able to even consider buying a new car and am pretty certain that I never will be. I will not buy a car on finance, I don't see the point in paying £25k on a car that doesn't do anything better than my 20 year old daily, or than one of thousands of sub-£2k used stuff on the market. As for PCP, sod that. The modern trend toward 'renting' cars, music, games, TV and anything else companies can monetise to screw the public isn't something I'm willing to entertain. Renting a house has always been considered 'dead money' and in my opinion (subjective, naturally) none of these things are any better/different.
It's all well and good telling people they need to buy these new cars, made of loveliness and powered by fairy dust but millions of us couldn't afford a new car, no matter what the payment option, even if we wanted to. 60% of us don't have a driveway or guaranteed parking space and a good chunk of that 60% are poor buggers who live in some awful tower block where anything left plugged in outside would be vandalised or stolen if left unattended for more than 5 seconds.
Look at HS2 (I'd prefer it wasn't even a thing but the government seem insistent upon wasting money on this white elephant, even though it has been rendered irrelevant by the recent shift toward home working). Building anything in this country takes decades, even if all goes well and the idea that an even vaguely suitable/dependable/capable supply network and infrastructure will be beyond the design stage in 2040, let alone 2030 is utterly laughable. That's not me being defeatist, it's me accepting the realities of life, never mind the the parlous state of the public purse, which will take decades to recover.
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cb11acd
Part of things
Posts: 132
Club RR Member Number: 122
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There is A LOT of mis-information in this thread. Either because it is based on "old science" or because they are facebook rumours that eventually get portrayed as facts. I won't go into each comment and expand upon why some of the information is false, but I wouldn't take a lot of this thread at face value if you are reading about this for the first time. I would also like to point out those that use terms like "millenials" usually don't quite understand that age bracket. I am 28, a millenial and love older cars, and the first millenials are coming up the the age of 40. Generation Z are the age bracket below, Generation X the age bracket above. Generalisations don't help make a cohesive argument, same goes for "greens" or enviromentalists. I would consider myself as one and so would many other car enthusiasts.
Cool electric car below:
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Last Edit: Oct 7, 2020 10:36:34 GMT by cb11acd
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Dez
Club Retro Rides Member
And I won't sit down. And I won't shut up. And most of all I will not grow up.
Posts: 11,712
Club RR Member Number: 34
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The other thing, before I forget, is has anyone actually looked at having a charger socket setup fitted to your house? I did, and it was going to cost about £1500-2k. The consumer unit is at the wrong end of the house, meaning a fairly long cable run. Also, even though the consumer unit we have is only about 8 years old, it was deemed unsuitable and would need replacing. Fair enough you say, I’ll view it as an investment, but given they’re already having to change the first electric charging docks as they’re now the ‘wrong type’, how long will it be before that happens again? Then they said the actual cables feeding the house were insufficient, and would also have to be upgraded, at great cost and disruption. It also increases your house insurance due to increased fire risk. Also you have to keep the charge socket locked or otherwise secured to prevent theft of your electricity. There was the option of rather than buying a s/h electric car and footing the costs yourself, buy a brand spanking new one and you get all your Necessary household electrical upgrades ‘free’ as part of the deal. Except the Monthly PCP payment would be higher than our mortgage.... It’s no wonder takeup of them is still pretty slow. I have a charger socket. Fitted into my garage, next to my consumer unit. It cost Renault £399, and the only thing it needed doing was the main fuse into the house changing from 80Amp to 100Amp. The electricity supply company did that and I never got a bill. It has a lock on it, but I never use it (is someone really going to park on my driveway and steal electricity at £1 an hour?). Insurance know about it and don't care. Clearly every house is different, and some (typically old ones) have real issues with stuff like split supplies and 60A fuses that can't be changed, but that's not common. PCP on a Renault Zoe is around £250pm on the not infrequent deals. If your mortgage is less than that, you are a financial genius! Yes it’s steering away from retros, but if you’re using the drivetrain from a modern in your retro, you will have this obstacles to overcome, so it’s all relevant really. I guess cost becomes doubly relevant when it’s a toy and not a necessity. Are we really gunna see people dropping 5k just on the (S/h, potentially not any good) batteries to power an EV conversion become a regular thing? As you say I think prices will need to drop a lot before more than a select view view it as viable. I believe split supply was our issue. The guy said less than half the houses he goes to assess are suitable for direct connection, the majority need some form of upgrade or the consumer unit replaced to be signed off as safe. About a quarter require major works like restringing poles or digging up the street. Unless someone else is paying for it, few consumers are going to agree to that as well. Our mortgage is more than that but not by loads. The PCP price quoted was much higher than that though, but it wasn’t a Renault we were looking at. I'm not the sort of person who would entertain spending £400 a month every month forever just to have transport though. The mrs thought she was as she has a reasonably well salaried job and fancied a ‘new’ car, but having been with me her entire driving career she has literally no idea of what anything car related costs except fuel, as I do it all. She was rather shocked when she found out what ‘normal people’ like her colleagues actually pay for their cars.
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as soon as electricity becomes the main fuel source they'll tax it like petrol...
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duncanmartin
Club Retro Rides Member
Out of retro ownership
Posts: 1,320
Club RR Member Number: 70
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Yes it’s steering away from retros, but if you’re using the drivetrain from a modern in your retro, you will have this obstacles to overcome, so it’s all relevant really. I guess cost becomes doubly relevant when it’s a toy and not a necessity. Are we really gunna see people dropping 5k just on the (S/h, potentially not any good) batteries to power an EV conversion become a regular thing? As you say I think prices will need to drop a lot before more than a select view view it as viable. For 5k you can get a damaged Leaf that will have the batteries, motor, controller, charger etc. How much of that you can use will depend on your ingenuity - there's a youtube channel with someone putting Leaf power gubbins into an RX8. As to whether it's viable, that depends on what you are trying to create - people are prepared to spend fortunes on building the car that they want to build. Batteries are still very expensive - a Tesla powerwall is 7k +VAT, and that's only a 13.5kWh battery - the earliest Leaf had a 24kWh one. Clearly there's a load of electronics to manage it and hook into the house, but as a point of comparison it shows how far they have to fall before they will be available for simple fun projects. I'm on a couple of EV forums, and only occasionally do people post asking about supply issues. It's much more common to hear people asking if they can just use a 3 pin plug charger, or public charging only. I'm surprised it even goes through the consumer unit - they basically ran a separate feed out of the main system to a tiny consumer unit for the EV charger on it's own. There was some fuss about pulling the main fuse to wire this up, because the installer wasn't allowed to do that, and the DNV guy was supposed to have installed a kill switch so he didn't have to. I agree that very few people going to want to drop a few grand on electrical improvements to their house just to they can choose a specific car (there will be some, just go look at the Garage threads. ). Excluding the Zoe (£17k), I've never spent more than 4,300 buying a car (I've only had about 14, so not many for RR). I would never buy a new ICE car, but the EV market is odd, and the rate of improvement has been significant over the last decade (though it seems to have slowed now). That meant that unlike ICE cars, new EVs were so much more capable than the previous model it was worth going as new as you could. When this goes (hopefully not for many more years), I'll be back on the secondhand market with whatever cash I have. Like you I don't find the idea of perpetually throwing money at some sort of contract an ideal way to run a car (or anything, I don't even do that with my phone). Then again, I've owned this book for ages, so I'm clearly just a bit odd! Anyone who wants to borrow it should PM me, though it's from 2009, so probably pretty out of date (does that make it a retro ride book? )!
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Anyone fitting an EV powertrain to a 959 should be shot on principle
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duncanmartin
Club Retro Rides Member
Out of retro ownership
Posts: 1,320
Club RR Member Number: 70
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It is magic in the flesh. Guy who built it also has a proper fire breathing twin turbo 935. They are probably both just 911s in frocks underneath rather than actual 935s, but who is counting
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These Tesla swaps provide amazing power, but I imagine this build has a huge budget
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I find it difficult to understand why we are being forced to jump on the EV bandwagon when the technology is emerging to capture CO2 and convert it into synthetic petrol and diesel which we could use in existing ICE vehicles. I know that doesn’t solve the problem of local emissions, but if we were to shift to a mix of electric vehicles and from petro fuels to synthetic fuels for ICE vehicles would it not be better to have the choice of both - the best of both worlds? After all having a mix of both on the roads would still make a good dent in local emissions whilst meeting goals for low or zero carbon fuels.
Instead of banning the sale of ICE vehicles would it be better to set targets, say for 50% of vehicles sold to be EV and for petrol and diesel to be replaced with synthetic petrol and diesel made from recycled CO2 for the other 50% of ICEs sold, not to mention the remaining ICEs that will be running around for a good while yet?
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cb11acd
Part of things
Posts: 132
Club RR Member Number: 122
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I find it difficult to understand why we are being forced to jump on the EV bandwagon when the technology is emerging to capture CO2 and convert it into synthetic petrol and diesel which we could use in existing ICE vehicles. I know that doesn’t solve the problem of local emissions, but if we were to shift to a mix of electric vehicles and from petro fuels to synthetic fuels for ICE vehicles would it not be better to have the choice of both - the best of both worlds? After all having a mix of both on the roads would still make a good dent in local emissions whilst meeting goals for low or zero carbon fuels. Instead of banning the sale of ICE vehicles would it be better to set targets, say for 50% of vehicles sold to be EV and for petrol and diesel to be replaced with synthetic petrol and diesel made from recycled CO2 for the other 50% of ICEs sold, not to mention the remaining ICEs that will be running around for a good while yet?
If that was the case, what car company will bother investing in expensive new tech like EV? and if they don't get developed, price will remain high due to demand and therefore it won't be 50% of cars on the road EV.
I get the argument, but ICE are terrible for local polution especially on highstreets and cities.
Although EV I don't think is the solution for that. As much as I enjoy driving we need more and wider cycle lanes (that actually join together and go places) and more micro-mobility options like E-scooters and E-bikes to encourage use. If 50% of road users used micro-mobility instead the additional space required to build additional lanes wouldn't matter as there would be less cars on the road. We would also be healthier and happier as a nation.
Cool EV car tax:
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alx
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 367
Club RR Member Number: 21
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For me the EV I've ordered works because this year it attracts 0% Benefit In Kind (BIK) so I can lease it through my business and I'm not taxed at all for using it. Next year it goes to 1% and the year after 2%. As a Ltd Company (Contractor) I have had zero assistance during the pandemic so this is one way I can reduce my fuel outgoings whilst also being able to get to work, wherever that may be. I also think it may also give me time to play with my 'real' cars as I won't be doing anything other than charging my commuter vehicle. Running a V8 Merc for 12,000 miles a year has been awesome, but it means a petrol fill up every 6 to 7 days at £80 a pop. Soooooo......I've tried to navigate the oh-so-boring offerings in electric cars and not gone for the standard fare leaf or Tesla and gone slightly more interesting. I did have a thread about it but it replacing the CL500 but it was a 'Too Modern' thread and was locked. I'm hoping I will be pleasantly surprised by EV's and am going into it with an open mind whilst still able to burn petrol and 2-stroke in my RX7. EV car tax below from Speedhunters link
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As much as I enjoy driving we need more and wider cycle lanes (that actually join together and go places) and more micro-mobility options like E-scooters and E-bikes to encourage use. If 50% of road users used micro-mobility instead the additional space required to build additional lanes wouldn't matter as there would be less cars on the road. We would also be healthier and happier as a nation. Bicycles, bikes and scooters aren't the answer. Never will be. They have tried, and failed, to get people onto two wheels for decades and the total lack of uptake anywhere (outside of London) demonstrates very clearly that people just don't want them as a vehicle for commuting. They are great for when you are just out recreationally (over relatively short distances), in love my bicycle for fun use but for anything else, which makes up the vast majority of road use, they are utterly awful. Getting anywhere takes an age, you get soaked in the wet, sweaty in sun and if you are cycling to work you need to take a change of clothes, unless you want to amble and take hours to get there, which again renders them utterly useless unless you live a mile or two from work, in which case you may as well walk. There is a 'COVID pop-up cycle lane' here (I'm not sure what a virus has to do with cycling but there we go) and it has been a total, complete and abject failure. Nobody uses it and all it has succeeded in doing is taking up whole lanes of main arterial routes through the city, causing tailbacks, irritation, confusion and almost certainly increased pollution. Cyclists don't like it, the council would rather lose their left ball than accept it wasn't a good idea but it's still there because a very small number of cyclists (who clearly aren't using it) complain that to take it away would be a breach of someone's rights ... or something. The fact that even the council have now resorted to saying use it or lose it says it all. If you want to get people out of cars when commuting, make public transport cheap, clean, plentiful and not for bloody profit. Make tram routes, increase the number of buses and re-open closed train lines to extend the network. Stop spaffing money on the white elephant that is HS2 and invest the billions of inevitable overspend on local public transport solutions. As for non commuter use, accept that cars are here to stay, whatever they may be powered by. The great transport revolution isn't coming, certainly not in our lifetimes, hence why governments and manufacturers are piling money into any possible environmentally acceptable solution to ensure that cars remain in production and available to the public at large. Also, address why people don't want to use public transport. It's over-priced, dirty, slow, late and infrequent. It's full of typical Brits with foul mouths and an over willingness to start a fight. Car drivers aren't the 'problem' they are the inevitable end result of decades of p**s poor planning, archaic attitudes towards work that have failed to keep up with changes in technology, a relentless drive to save money and maximise profits for shareholders and successive governments continually enabling people who barely pass for human beings to continue foisting their neanderthal behaviour on the rest of us. Don't blame them, they didn't get <insert entitlement here>, so they're the victim ... etc, ad nauseum. Given the state of most cities, it's not a surprise that people lock themselves away in cars. Have an awesome soapbox racer ... #penance ...
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This is a very good topic with a broad array of views.
Ofcourse our lover for retro motoring was never intentional when the car manufacturers designed their cars for first use. They would probable prefer if their products are disposed after x years and that we get a new one from them.
A side impact is ofcourse that there are some ecologolical benefits of extending a product life beyond intent. The environmental impact of a handbuild car from the twenties (the one 100 years ago) with a wooden body is quite small calculated on a yearly basis.
But where it was common to do basic service in the sixties/ seventies, car have become more complex electronically and near impossible to reverse engineer.
High voltage batteries require complex battery management systems and car manufacturers don't have an appitite for their customers to fiddle with it. Not that there are much new car owners that want to do that anyway.
Also, from a business point of view they might be able to earn more money with a service/ subscription model and that would give manufactures more control over the product and product life. But that means that we can’t get a Lync&Co secondhand over 10 years. But most cars are sold in the USA and Asia so the car industry will follow what these markets require in the future.
Another development I’ve seen is the EV conversions/ restaurations of classic cars popping out everywhere, but they seemed to be aimed at an higher end of the market. MGBs for £90k, SL pagodes and E-types etc. I find this quite confusing, because the extra costs is mostly in the batteries, electric motor and the EV conversion engineering. But most of them don't really improve the performance of the orginal and the range is the bare minimum. They also tend to use off the shelf conversion components, but not of OE performance. They trim it in new leather stick in a satnav and put some LED lights in and claim it to be the next best thing since sliced bread. But a lot of classic cars are exempt for ULEZ in cities around the world anyway, and with the lack of mileage these cars do. It will be difficult to get your money out of it. I think it is more a gimmick than anything else, but a lot of people see a business case for it.
Micromobility is another development which is probable here to stay, but reading stories that scooter rent companies have to replace their inventory every 6 months which doesn’t sound to me as an environmental friendly solution.
On the other hand we don't really need a vehicle (SUV) that weight 1.5-2 tonnes and on average transport 1.2 person with an average speed of 35mph. So a clever solution might be possible, but with the existing infrastructure you also would like to want to join the motorway in a safely matter.
Something like a Renault Twizy could be fine for 80% of our travel, but when it can’t do the other 20% it is not a viable solution for people to own. So that is another argument to look in car sharing and on demand vehicle use.
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Click picture for more
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great points raised so far
my mate has a 6k Leaf and spent 1500 putting 2nd hand solar all over his garage, it feeds directly into the car and as a result his commute was about £10pm, if you subtract the set up costs from 10k miles of fuel in an old luxobarge it can all add up pretty fast and start to make sense.
I'm sure driving a leaf is as much fun as doing the washing up, but from a purely financial viewpoint they start to make sense....kind of.
But i'm still in the 22 year old luxobarge camp, bought for 1500 8 years ago and still going 100k high speed drifty miles later
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Last Edit: Oct 9, 2020 19:07:51 GMT by legend
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