A new app aims to take advantage of connected car technology to help drivers find parking spaces more quickly. Thanks to real-time knowledge of what’s happening on the road, the search for an empty space could soon be a thing of the past.
Called Wejo, the British app will use data processed from connected cars. In theory, if all cars are connected and everyone has the app, it can use data to ascertain everything from the best routes to avoid traffic, to where parking spaces are free.
Rip-off NEC car parking solved by Classic Motor Show
The potential is enormous, says Wejo, to ‘create new revenue streams, reduce costs or enhance safety and convenience for drivers’.
The Chester-based company has investors including US automotive giant General Motors, which paid £20 million for a 10 percent stake.
The company’s founder, entrepreneur Richard Barlow, will find other uses for the data as well. He intends to supply it to insurance firms, breakdown services and local authorities.
The question, of course, is whether drivers will want to sign up, given their data will be so widely available.
That said, the app apparently ‘obsesses about putting drivers and passengers first with built-in compliance and anonymisation frameworks, making sure that what’s private, stays private’.
Getting a speeding ticket can ruin your day, but you may be able to appeal. This depends on whether police have adhered to the rules in sending you the ticket.
If you’re caught speeding, a letter has to be sent that should arrive at your home within 14 days of the incident. If the date of the incident and the subsequent date the letter was sent don’t allow for that 14-day window, the ticket may not be enforceable.
It’s a rule that keeps the admin work of the police force tight. Yet it can also lead to speeders catching a lucky break.
To be clear, the date of the incident and the date the letter was sent must be within a decent likelihood of allowing the 14-day deadline. If the letter does arrive later than that, but should have come earlier due to delays in the post, it’s still enforceable. If it arrives four weeks after the incident, having been sent a week ago, clearly it isn’t enforceable.
“All the police need to do is show the ticket should have reached the vehicle’s registered owner under normal circumstances within 14 days,” says The Money Advice Service, which highlighted the rule.
“This means the letter could go to an old address if you’ve not updated your licence, it could go to a hire company or to your work address if the vehicle isn’t yours.”
Problems with the postal service, therefore, or the letter going to another address before it gets to you, won’t find you favour in court. If it was sent in a timely manner, it still stands.
Clearly, it goes without saying that the best way to avoid speeding tickets is not to speed…
The Ford Mustang started its journey as a breakout hit with one man and one car. Harry Phillips is the man behind the sale of the first Mustang to be sold. He did the deal at George G.R. Parsons Ford in St. John’s, Newfoundland, in 1964.
It was bought by an airline pilot by the name of Stanley Tucker, pictured above with Mustang #1.
Now, the Henry Ford Museum is set to host these old chums as they reunite, 55 years after the car was accidentally sold. The car was a pre-production convertible that wasn’t earmarked for sale, but it’s the one with the very first Mustang serial number. A very similar car is pictured here.
Despite its crooked panels and dodgy details befitting a ‘practice car’, Phillips reckons it was an easy sale. Given that Tucker exclaimed “it’s mine” as soon as he clapped eyes on it, we’re inclined to believe him.
As above, the car wasn’t really supposed to be sold. Tucker made his decision three days before the Mustang was officially supposed to go on sale. To secure his car, he made a deal with the dealer to allow the car to stay on display.
“We moved the car into the showroom that day,” Phillips said.
“He came in every day to check it out and make sure no one did anything to it.”
Though Harry Phillips enjoyed a long life of selling cars after his blunder sale in 1964, he’s never actually seen the car since. That’s because Ford got it back not long after.
Two years after buying the car, Tucker finally had his prized prototype Mustang taken from his grasp by Ford. The company swapped his, the very first Mustang sold, with 10,000 miles on the clock, for the one-millionth.
Finally, the prototype and the salesman will be reunited, 55 years after the unofficial start of one of the great car sales success stories in history.
Ford is moving with the times with its iconic Transit van. Businesses and organisations trialing the new PHEV (plug-in hybrid) model have given it the thumbs up.
Participants included Addison Lee Group, Autoglass, British Gas, DPD, Heathrow Airport, the Metropolitan Police, Royal Mail, Sky, Transport for London and Vodafone. Each organisation ran one of the 20 vans for 12 months.
Some of the figures from the trial are interesting. The vans covered 150,000 miles over the course of the year, with 75 percent of the driving in Central London completed in EV mode. Likewise, 49 percent of the driving in Greater London was done in full EV mode.
Cleaning up London’s commercial vehicles
If PHEV and EV vans like the Transit proliferate, it will go some way to cleaning up the eight million miles of driving covered by commercial vehicles in London every day. It’s thought around 7,000 vans are driving every hour during peak times in Central London. If three-quarters of that driving can be electric-only modes like the Transit PHEV can achieve, London’s air quality should improve.
A production version of the plug-in hybrid Transit will appear towards the end of the year. Ford’s learnings from the 12-month trial run are being used to refine the production model right now.
“We also know that businesses still have legitimate concerns about the range of fully-electric vehicles, as well as their cost-effectiveness and reliability,” said Mark Harvey, director of the urban electrified van programme.
“These trials have helped Ford and its customers to investigate the extent to which PHEVs can help to achieve urban air quality goals, whilst not compromising on productivity.”
Ford Transit PHEV, and a Transit EV on the way
The PHEV has a target zero-emission range of 31 miles. The electric motor is helped by a 1.0-litre EcoBoost petrol engine, with a total system range exceeding 310 miles. Ford says the battery under the floor doesn’t compromise load space.
The PHEV is just the beginning for electrified Transit vans. An all-electric version is due to join the lineup in 2021.
“This trial is the first time Ford has given such early prototype vehicles to customers, and we’ve been able to incorporate their feedback directly into the production van,” Harvey continued.
“The response has been overwhelmingly positive – operators don’t want to give them back.”
A new feature that the iOS 13 update brings to Apple CarPlay won’t work in any car. At least, not yet.
The ability for your iPhone to project CarPlay onto two different screens simultaneously was one of the major updates for the facility, but can’t yet be adopted by any current production cars.
Apple CarPlay dual screen: explained
Don’t get confused with a split-screen display. The new feature allows different apps to work on separate dashboard screens, as fitted to some modern cars.
Thus you could have Spotify on the central screen while your digital dashboard handles Waze or Google Maps. ‘Virtual Cockpit’ has been fitted to Audis for four years now, so one would hope for an instant level of compatibility.
“Automakers can develop CarPlay systems that show information in a second screen, such as in a cluster or HUD,” Apple explains.
The Verge questioned 11 major car manufacturers that offer CarPlay about the updated version, to see if it would work. But while compatibility and the ability to make full use of the new feature will come eventually, it’s not happening yet.
Fiat-Chrysler and General Motors replied, saying: “More info on that at a later date” and “Stay tuned…” respectively. The rest either dodged the question, or said outright it wouldn’t work.
Cars generally lag behind handheld devices and computers in terms of technology. Now, with the release of iOS 13, the same is again true.
This sticking point is perhaps best exemplified by Tesla: a startup electric car company that’s clawed much of its market ground from existing manufacturers thanks to bleeding-edge tech.
To tech-savvy car buyers, that’s the battle already won. Over-the-air updates and infotainment systems that are up to the standards of the tech industry have put Tesla on the map.
Hopefully, new cars like the Porsche Taycan and Volkswagen ID.3 are the first moves by older manufacturers in a long-overdue game of automotive industry catch-up.
The maker of London’s New Routemaster ‘Boris Bus’ has gone into administration, report unions, after a downturn in the market caused losses to spiral.
Wrightbus, based in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, is one of the region’s largest employers, with 1,400 staff. It is the last UK-owned bus manufacturer.
The firm is well known as the producer of the New Routemaster, which was launched in 2012 after being championed by Boris Johnson, who was then London Mayor. This earned the machine its ‘Boris Bus’ nickname.
Johnson’s successor as London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, cancelled further orders of the New Routemaster in 2016.
Wrightbus was founded in 1946, initially producing trucks. Recently, it has innovated in future fuel and, in May 2019, received an order from Transport for London (TfL) for 20 hydrogen fuel-cell double-decker buses. Each cost £500,000.
So-called ‘range anxiety’ remains foremost in the minds of many electric car buyers. To help, engineering and testing consultancy Horiba Mira reckons an overhaul of how range is calculated is urgently needed, with more realistic figures the intended goal.
“Increasing the number of people willing to switch to EVs will largely depend on a positive change in customer perceptions; particularly in tackling ‘range anxiety’,” said Ben Gale of Horiba Mira.
“It is therefore imperative that government and EV manufacturers respond accordingly, to accelerate EV adoption.”
A report by the company says conventional ways of testing how far a charged EV will travel need to be reviewed. At the moment, a car that is claimed to have a 300-mile range might manage 250 miles in the ‘real world’.
Horiba Mira considers current testing conditions to be unrealistic. Temperature, driving style, the type of journey and other factors all have a dramatic effect on range. Jaguar has recognised this with its online tool for I-Pace owners, which helps estimate range in varying conditions.
“At present, the use of insufficient range data in real-world conditions is playing a part in fuelling range anxiety, putting many motorists off making the switch to EVs,” Ben added.
“Globally, vehicles are tested at just one temperature – one that is considered the ‘optimum’ for vehicle comfort and lithium-ion batteries – but when you add in air conditioning or heating requirements, additional battery power is required, depleting the published range of an EV at an alarming rate.”
A new penalty system for drivers will be introduced at Heathrow Airport to coincide with the opening of the third runway in 2026. This, to an end of getting its third runway operating at capacity, without adding any cars to the road.
The charge is expected to yield around £1.2 billion a year. That’s if the expected 65,000 vehicles a day pay the predicted £50 daily charge (accounting for inflation) by 2040.
The charge is to be levied on all cars, from hulking gas guzzlers to whisper-quiet electric cars – Heathrow’s congestion charge will not discriminate. The aim is to incentivise the use of public transport by those wanting to fly from Heathrow.
Thus the amount of Heathrow-related traffic will remain the same at the very least, or decrease. It expects 55 percent of passengers will use public transport to get to the airport by 2050. This, by comparison to the 40 percent that did so in 2015.
Can Heathrow’s public transport links cope?
There are worries, however, that public transport links would not be able to cope as drivers try to escape charges. Even without the extra 756,000 flights per year that the new runway will allow. A new east-west Crossrail line is planned, along with an upgrade of the Tube’s Piccadilly Line and improved bus services, to handle to extra passenger volume.
In addition, Heathrow Southern Railway is pitching to build an eight-mile link from Waterloo. There are also plans to increase train infrastructure between Reading and Heathrow.
More than 360,000 driving licences withdrawn on medical grounds
Given that the two lines are to be confirmed, with a decision ‘yet to be made’ by the Heathrow consultation, speculation is rife on whether the current infrastructure will cope.
For the moment, then, travellers could be faced with little choice than to drive and swallow the charges. Heathrow Southern Railway warns that “this will cause resentment as there will be no practicable way for people in this area of the country to avoid the charge”.
A freedom of information (FOI) request has revealed exactly what local authorities make out of parking tickets, as well as how many fines are issued.
Here, we reveal the councils that are making the most money from your parking tickets.
The £5 million parking profit club
The FOI data found that Leeds, Edinburgh, Manchester, Glasgow and Birmingham lead the country in terms of parking ticket revenue for the most recent financial year, outside of London at least.
Each earns over £5 million in the process of fining those parking where they shouldn’t, or for longer than they should.
Leeds leads, with a £6.17 million take, while Edinburgh isn’t far behind on £5.9 million. Manchester and Glasgow make £5.3 million and £5 million respectively. Birmingham just misses out on membership, taking £4.915 million, to be exact.
Overall, 24 of the listed areas earned comfortably over £1 million in parking fines. The top 10 earned a minimum of £2.5 million, each.
Which city makes the least from parking fines? It’s lowly Derby, making ‘just’ £844,907 in the most recent financial year.
Dishing out the fines
1 in 5 motorists find parking a struggle
In terms of the number of fines, it stands to reason that those in the top five for revenue would have to work for their take. All but leader Leeds feature, with Manchester in the lead having given out 545,314 fines. Leeds actually made its £6.1 million dishing out one fourth of the fines in Manchester.
Nottingham joins at the bottom of the top five, with 137,623 fines dished out. Bottom overall is Bolton, issuing just 27,787 parking fines. That’s around 5,000 fewer fines than the loser in terms of profit, Derby. In spite of this, Bolton made £1.2 million in the last financial year from parking fines. A ticket must be expensive in Bolton…
Manchester – 545,314 fines
Edinburgh – 191,563 fines
Glasgow – 147,945 fines
Birmingham – 141,687 fines
Nottingham – 137,623 fines
The freedom of information request was submitted by CompareTheMarket.
Labour has announced plans for a ‘green industrial revolution’ with an enormous focus on automotive.
If elected, Labour will introduce interest-free loans for prospective electric car buyers and billions of pounds worth of charging points to support them.
On top of that, it wants to team up with car manufacturers to build battery ‘gigafactories’. Finally, to power it all, it wants to commit a massive investment for a fleet of wind turbines at sea.
The long and the short? More electric cars, more places to charge them, cheaper batteries and renewable power to keep them going. From the top…
Labour’s £60bn interest-free loans on electric cars
Labour wants two thirds of cars on sale to be electric by 2030. To support the necessary growth in popularity, it wants to offer 2.5 million prospective buyers of electric cars interest-free loans of up to £33,000. That’s a total investment of up to £60 billion during its first parliamentary term.
These loans would be for low-income households, small businesses and sole traders specifically. In theory, they would get the last people that would ordinarily have the capacity to make the change, to the front of the queue.
The scheme would come with a caveat for those taking advantage of the scheme. They’re to take a more active part in Britain’s ‘green industrial revolution’ beyond buying the car – owners will be required to take part in a mass trial of Vehicle-2-Grid technology.
Britain is one of the CHEAPEST places in Europe to own an electric car
It allows electric cars to effectively be a part of the grid, when they’re plugged in, storing excess energy. This, to an end of smoothing supply from renewable sources. It would ease the mass requirement for power banks, at least in the short term.
Roughly £3.5 billion would be lost in interest profits. However, a would-be Labour government reckons it will save, at least in part, on easing a steep immediate requirement for behind-the-scenes infrastructure. Funding for the loans would come from a £250 billion ‘national transformation fund’.
£3.6billion on charging points
With 2.5 million electric cars set to hit the road, Labour will need a charging infrastructure that can support them. It plans to invest £3.6 billion in the rollout of rapid-charging stations, with the ability to support the anticipated 21 million electrified car population on the road by the end of the next decade.
The investment would create 3,000 skilled jobs for electricians and engineers, and the result would be an answer to the question of infrastructure that’s supposedly stopping so many from making the change.
£5.8billion investment in electric cars and ‘gigafactories’
The shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey revealed Labour’s intention to invest £5.8 billion in the motor industry to assist an acceleration in the development and production of electric cars. How? State-controlled ‘gigafactories’ and metal reprocessing plants, and a stake in the manufacturers of electric cars.
Around £3 billion of the above figure would go toward assisting the development of new models and technology. In return, Labour wants shares in the business.
“If we want our automotive sector to flourish, we need a government that is not afraid to intervene,” and intervene it plans to. Long-Bailey cites France as an example with its 13 percent stake in the home-based Peugeot Citroen PSA group.
Around £2.3 billion is to go towards the so-called ‘gigafactories’, with the government owning a 51 percent stake in each one. They would create 3,000 jobs, with sites planned in Swindon (think the to-be ditched Honda plant), Stoke and South Wales.
“We need to accelerate the shift away from fossil-powered cars if we are to tackle the climate emergency. Labour’s support package will offer a lifeline for a new clean era of manufacturing.”
The elephant in the electric car room is batteries. The production of them is addressed above, but the disposal of them is a point of contention. Labour wants the remaining £500 million to go towards four plants for the reprocessing of batteries for their rare metals and minerals.
Labour’s renewable power for an EV-driving Britain
So we’ve got the electric cars, the capacity to produce the batteries within them, the incentive to buy them and the infrastructure to charge them. Now we need to power it all.
To that end, Labour wants to build 37 new offshore wind farms via a new public-private venture, in which it would have a 51 percent stake, generating power for 57 million homes. It wants to shake our reliance on foreign firms for wind power. Labour says the venture would create 67,000 jobs in East Anglia, Scotland, Yorkshire and the North East.
The ‘people’s power fund’ will be the result of profits taken from the energy harnessed and sold with the new facilities. This would allow £1 billion every year to be invested in struggling seaside communities.
So-called ‘r
