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By the way, I sent the link of this thread to my GF. She was furious at first but then understood the situation. Totally worth it. P.S She is now determined to be a better driver. Playing NFS most wanted these days to improve the space time awareness. Dunno if that will help or not, but lets see how well this goes....

B'cos the steering was being turned may be the system assumed that there will not be a crash so the auto brake did not get activated. That's how my car behaves

Thanks for the video brother. @Hyaenidae, yeah bro. Feeling a bit pissed off with myself now. Should have known it before. Unfortunately it did not. I have no idea why, it get activated for all the unnecessary things, but for this it didnt. Maybe its because my GF was trying to overtake the bus. She almost made it and crashed in to the right corner of the bus from the left side of the car. The system might have thought the car was going to make it.

Vitz

Totally wong You need the sticker in the windscreen, that is the purpose that it is issued. I do not know whether there are any legal provision to charge you if it is not there, but you could get harassed by cops when they stop you and notice it is not there. Supposing your windscreen is replaced you are suppose to take the glass piece with the sticker to RMV and get a new one.

This is probably OT but I actually blame the system. Any monkey can get a licence in Sri Lanka. The exam is useless and the trial doesn't give a good picture of how good you are as a driver. In other countries, the trial takes about one hour and the examiner takes the applicant through a series of various road conditions and traffic situations. Unless you are an attentive and disciplined driver, you won't pass the trial. My wife failed twice before she got her licence in Australia. And this is someone who has a full manual driver's licence in Sri Lanka. I have so many friends who failed because they were driving 5km/h over the speed limit got more than 10 seconds or because they didn't fully stop the car at a "stop" sign. My wife failed because she didn't "maintain a safe distance with the vehicle in front". So yeah, it has to start at the source and I think our roads will improve a lot if the bad drivers are eliminated at the source. 75% of the three wheeler drivers and the scooty akkas won't make it through the test if it's done properly. Just my two cents.

Lol! I was telling @Klord's story to my wife who has a license but is a horrible driver and can't get behind the wheel to save her soul. She epitomizes everything that is wrong with this system and the way driving licenses are issued in Sri Lanka. She's been talking about wanting to drive more often now that the kids are about to start school and this story freaked her out! Not going to happen for a while.

I do not know why you need to give the car to your GF when you are there. I never give my car to my wife, unless she has to go without me

I heard from few guys that some axio non hybrid cars has less market value because of their color. Is this true and if so what are the colors that i need to look out for.

Sorry, I captured this in last week, but could not post it here. 1957 Austin Cambridge (62 years old)..... Captured at Expressway Exit at Kadawatha. Hats off to the owner!!!??? (According to toll gate officer, they mistakenly exit at Kadawatha and re-entered to expressway to leave for Kurundugahahathapma . Even there were free toll gates, I wanted to stay behind this old beauty ?.)

She is still a rookie driver. She lacks space time awareness which is common for most of the womenfolk. Anyhow, I also have the same question in my head, which will never get a proper answer. I have a dash-camera installed in the car, unfortunately, I disconnected it the day before when cleaning the car and forgot to plug it back, or could have checked it to understand what actually happened. P.S Women does not understand how much men treasure their metallic pets. To date, Im still saddened about what happened but I dont see it in her.

Yes. Everyday it starts from Piliyandala and runs around Colombo. The driver employed is very keen to understand the Apps (He said he hasn't used a single app before. That lead me to send him to PickMe as they provide driver training too). Still his learning curve is progressing and it's not that much profitable to run a car for a taxi with a driver. But I can't say it directly because I lack at least 2 months data to analyze. I noticed, during the morning, evening and night are the times it has more hires. During lunch time, the car is idle. So if you are around piliyandala and need a taxi, do let me know. (LOL) I got to know that, PickMe register avarage 60 vehicles a day (All types) and 16000 active drivers are in operation. So you can imagine the possibility to get a hire during the day. However, driver has a major role to play here. He needs to understand the app first and then to see the busy areas and also he must concern the best driving practices to optimize fuel consumption. For past 4 days, The total milage per day to hiring milage ration is around 50%. (Which means if he runs 100Kms he gets 50kms as hiring.) Sometimes, during traffic, it takes too much time to reach to the passenger to pick up. Finally, when you get the loss, it's not entirely the driver's fault. You have to train him and provide him necessary equipments to learn and grow. (I hope younger drivers are better in this case.) These are the some facts I mentioned you to go for a vehicle that is cheap to buy and cheap to maintain. WagonR is good as long as it doesn't give problems. But once it does, the expenses are higher. Yesterday I called A*W to ask for another car to buy (Imagination ) and an area manager told me that they have stopped importing Alto car due to the price increased and last 60 cars in at the showroom and after that, no Altos. If you currently own a kei car, try Uber yourself and see. Go for 2-3 days full time and learn it. That will tell you how you do it. Look at some graphs below. Hope you get more idea about this. The only pleasure I have if I continue this way is if it does not improve is that, 1. I have created one job for a person and I feed 1 family. 2. The driver is helpful for the personal commitment that I will have from next year onward to come to Colombo every day in the morning. If I continue to loss, I will have to make a decision of course but I take these two facts into consideration. In your case, it's different. Hope this reply helps you and not bothering others to read a story.

If I may share my genuine experience with you guys. (This is my personal experiences and opinions and I may be wrong. Point out that straight away :) ) As I have a family commitment from next year onward to travel to Colombo early morning which I kind of hate driving in city traffic and have no cost effective vehicle specifically for that, I analyzed both WagonR and Alto (Indian). Wagon R are not bad vehicles for city traffic but compared to Alto LXI it supposed to be higher in maintenance costs. (Too many electronics and hybrid and so and so) But Alto LXI is very basic unit and has lower maintenance and cheaper to maintain. (But again, Alto is Manual)Finally I bought an Alto from A*W and it costs 1 million lower than WagonR. My main concern was to travel in city traffic and even for that I employ a driver. Before going to pay someone straight away, I get registered with Uber (Because it's free) and worked 2 days to see how it goes. I noticed people use Uber are different segment than those who use PickMe. (Some says classy - not my idea though) This is because all the foreigners and those who travel overseas are already using Uber and they have their payment plans merged with the app too. But Uber takes 25% from each trip you make and they charge that amount from the credit hires you get. If you start about 5.30AM and works until 10-11PM, you might go for a daily income of Rs.7000-8000 if the day is good. Uber has more hires than PickeMe because it's relatively cheap for the customer. But for the driver, he gets only Rs.30 per 1km which is worse even tuk tuk charges Rs.40 per 1Km. With 2 Days experience, I employed a driver and went to PickMe for registration because I wanted to earn at least for the amount that I pay for the car and for the drivers salary. (Not basically to operate on profit basis because I have a different agenda which I mentioned above) PickMe charges about Rs.24000 for registration and their daily commission is 10%. Other than this a daily fix pay of Rs.100 is also included. Now the driver is on PickMe and still he is under the period of studying. Once fueled, a little amount is saved but that would be enough to pay for the driver's salary. (Still few days in operation, so can't come to a conclusion. At least 2 months data is needed to make a conclusion) I maintain the car at agents to avoid makabaases ( I believe A*W does a good job) and by the time I bought the car, I didn't think the resale value. There is a depreciation and by the time I sell it, I have to bare that. Also, with current SL Auto market conditions, you can't predict what will happen next. May be I have to give the car for nothing. May be I can sell it again in few years with a profit. Who knows? And I don't care as far as I get my works done. But I know, I can sell it more reasonable price than a WagonR. (You know the reason already I guess) My very basic conclusion is, if you plan to hire the vehicle in taxi service, the vehicle you buy should be easily maintainable with minimum cost and should not have fancy electronics. (Security concern is different thing and if it is city driving, I think both of these cars have enough security already because having additional air bag won't help to avoid major crash). Hope this reply helps you.

Hi All , specially @iRage @Crosswind @Hyaenidae @Davy first of all I would like to apologize from all of you. As you mentioned I'm not the one from Unimo. Im the one who planning to buy this DFSK 580 vehicle. before buy I want to find the market of this vehicle as well I want to make popular this vehicle. so I have post so many posts in favor for this vehicle even driving it one time as a test. I have argued with you lot and try to prove this vehicle is value for money and provide so many facts and figures to prove my point. But i'm wrong, this vehicle is a failure , luckily I didn't trap it and didn't buy it but i'm very sorry if anyone convinced to buy it because of my posts. It has huge power to weight issue and I got to know that they have sold nearly 120 vehicles at the moment and all of has this issues. some of already know it and return the vehicle and some of still don't know they have issue in their vehicle. When you drive the vehicle in hills you will get this first issue. if you stop the vehicle in mid way in the hill road which has rapid inclination (not big hills even 20 inclination ) it will not be able to move further even how hard you press the accelerator , try with Manual and 1st gear is same. you be able to go straight without stop but if you stop the middle and then you are lost. no point of reversing up. this will only happen with Rapid inclination. now Unimo planning to provide solution for their new vehicles , got to know that they are trying to change the gear box, god knows what other issues it will get. so some of vehicles which already sold has this issues and some of new ones will get their solution. Then question is how is second hand byers identify which is the good one and which is the bad. Second hand market will be a dream for the owners..Also there is corrosion issue in this vehicle, some of vehicles has under corrosion and heard Unimo planning to provide under corrosion protection for those. Can you imagine brand new vehicles not even older than 2-3 month has corrosion in body. it seems it not well treated metal. Now I can see that every letter of post of our senior members in this forum are 100% true. May be there are good Chinese vehicles but this locally assemble one is cheaper and not like those. This is not value for money , 6 MIL is not a small amount to sacrifice for Chinese experiments. may be they will provide good one in another 10 years time, but not now. for 6MIL you can buy second hand KIA , Honda, SUV's even 5-6 years old one are far far better than this one. Finally apologize for all ? !