To mark being part of Groupe PSA for one year – in which it has returned to profitability after years of posting losses – Vauxhall has given a first early tease of the forward-looking GT X Experimental concept car it’s going to uncover later in 2018.

Previewing the Vauxhall of 2025, it will be the first car to wear Vauxhall’s new ‘face’. This is, we’re told, based around the ‘Vauxhall Compass’, where two axes intersect the Griffin badge; that’s the centre crease of the bonnet, and the wing-shaped LED daytime running light signature.

But there’s more. The headlights and running lights, plus the various cameras and sensors needed for driver assistance systems, are all packed into a central frame that Vauxhall reckons looks like the eye slot of a motorcycle helmet.

It’s thus dubbed this styling cue the ‘Vizor’. Future new Vauxhalls will all get their own take on the ‘Vizor’, which the firm hopes will make them bolder, more pure and distinctive-looking.

Vauxhall: ‘inspired by Apple’

Vauxhall’s vice president of design is a Brit called Mark Adams. “Design will be at the heart of everything that we do in future,” he said.

“It will truly differentiate the Vauxhall brand, and make it sharper and more relevant to our core values. We are a proud British brand and design inspiration is all around us in the UK – from the bold ingenuity of James Dyson to the pure designs of [Apple chief designer] Jonathan Ive – and this concept will embody that.’

Adam has even drawn up a set of characteristics that all future Vauxhalls will showcase: British, Ingenious, Progressive and Approachable.

Whether this means Vauxhall designs will now deviate a little more from their European Opel counterparts, which presumably will have their own characteristics, remains to be seen.

Around 4,000 hotel and B&B owners are being offered the opportunity to have electric vehicle charging points for free as part of a strategic partnership between the AA and Chargemaster.

The UK’s leading provider of EV charging infrastructure will work with any AA-inspected establishments interested in taking up the offer to determine the best charging points for their location.

A rapid charger would be most suitable for hotels along busy routes, while destination chargers are ideal for electric car-owning visitors looking to charge overnight.

4,000 AA hotels and B&Bs offered EV charging points by Chargemasterhttps://t.co/gR3d40S8Qe pic.twitter.com/HA1Fs1nFM7

— bp pulse (@bppulseuk) July 31, 2018

The Sandford Springs Hotel in Hampshire is the first establishment to benefit from the offer, with guests and visitors able to call upon a 50kW rapid charger, which is available for any EV driver to use on the Polar network.

Edmund King OBE, president of the AA, said: “Alongside our automotive heritage, the AA has been involved in the hospitality industry since 1908. We know that when EV drivers are looking for hotels, they will actively seek out those with charging points.

“We have witnessed enormous changes in both the automotive and hotel sectors over the last 110 years, and we are delighted that our AA recognised hospitality businesses can benefit from this tremendous offer.”

‘Competitive advantage’

David Martell, chief executive of Chargemaster, added: “We believe that within the next five years, all hotels will offer EV charging, just like they provide wifi today.

“Our offer for AA hotels is a great opportunity for hotel owners and operators to get a competitive advantage with a facility that could attract hundreds of thousands of customers in the coming years.”

Chargemaster, which is now part of BP, operates Polar, the largest electric vehicle charging network in the UK, with more than 6,500 public charge points.

Oil giant BP bought Chargemaster in a deal described as “an important step to scaling up and deploying fast and ultra-fast charging on BP’s UK forecourts”. Luton-based Chargemaster will be renamed BP Chargemaster as part of the deal.

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Aston Martin will launch its first ever SUV in late 2019, but although it may use a range of Mercedes-Benz engines, a diesel will not be among them.

Speaking in Australia last week, Aston Martin’s chief creative officer Marek Reichman revealed the Mercedes-Benz six-cylinder engine could be part of the line-up, “because that would be a pretty good engine and combination”.

This could possibly include the 48-volt mild hybrid version of this engine, added motoring.com.au.

But it most certainly will not include a diesel. “Never, ever, ever, ever, never, ever, ever, Never. Never! No diesels!,” said Reichman.

Other engine options for the St Athan, Wales-built DBX crossover SUV could include the Mercedes-AMG V8 and Aston’s own V12, but although the DBX was revealed in concept guise as a full EV, Aston Martin is not yet ready to confirm an electric production version of the new SUV.

However, Aston Martin’s new Lagonda luxury brand will be an all-EV firm, “and Lagondas will be built in the same factory as DBX, so you can put two and two together there and figure out how and where DBX will go in the future,” said Reichman.

Aston Martin is believed to have now chosen a name for the DBX: Varekai, which continues the firm’s ‘V’ naming convention also used by Vantage, Vanquish and the Valkyrie hypercar.

The firm’s Lamborghini Urus and Bentley Bentayga rival will begin production in late 2019, Aston Martin has confirmed. The three St Athan super-hangers are already being trimmed out with car production equipment, with 150 people already employed in full-time production at the ex-MOD site.

Aston Martin has even held its first board meeting at St Athan.

New car sales across Europe recorded their highest running total of the century during the first half of 2018, new data from JATO has revealed. 8.66 million new cars hit the road in the first six months, a rise of 2.7 percent.

This is despite a stiff 6.3 percent decline in the UK, Europe’s second-biggest market for new car sales. Strong growth in Germany, France and Spain helped offset this, particularly the former: Germany is by far the biggest new car market in Europe, with over three million sales a year.

And what type of car are Europeans clamouring to buy? Why, SUVs, of course – they are the region’s favourite type of vehicle by a large and growing majority.

SUV sales now comprise a third of new car sales in Europe, with the next-best sector, superminis, way behind on 20.4 percent. SUV sales have grown by 24 percent so far in 2018… and in June, they were up 30 percent.

Of the 2.92 million SUVs sold so far in 2018, the fastest growing sub-sector is small SUVs. 1.08 million of them found new homes. 1.24 million compact and 455,200 midsize SUVs were sold, although the luxury SUV sector did actually fall 9 percent, with sales down to 141,000.

As SUVs go up, car sales go down, by 4 percent overall – but in the case of MPVs, an eye-watering 23 percent…

Europe’s top cars of 2018 so far

Volkswagen Group, which includes Audi, Skoda and Seat, is Europe’s biggest brand for SUVs – but with the Volkswagen Golf, it is also the firm building Europe’s best-selling car. Despite essentially being seven years old the Golf sits at the top of the EU sales charts, with registrations up 8 percent to 257,550 cars.

JATO figures reveal there’s been a dash away from Golf diesels, with registrations down 26 percent… but a rise in petrol registrations of 29 percent more than compensates. Volkswagen also currently sells a 6 percent alternative fuel vehicle (AFV) mix with the Golf.

The Renault Clio was second, with meagre growth of 1 percent, and sales of 185,234 cars (note, this is way behind the quarter-million total of the Golf). The Volkswagen Polo fell 4 percent, to 166,924 cars, with Britain’s favourite car, the Ford Fiesta, 1 percent up on 157,286 cars.

Nissan’s Qashqai is Europe’s fifth favourite car, with registrations of 134,547 cars, placing it ahead of the Peugeot 208 and its fast-rising Volkswagen Tiguan arch-rival. The Skoda Octavia, Renault Captur and Vauxhall Corsa rounded out the top 10 – the latter suffering its own worrisome decline of 15 percent.

The Vauxhall Astra fared even worse, with a massive sales drop of 33 percent seeing it plummet to 22^nd in the 2018 European sales chart. Opel Vauxhall itself is down 6 percent – luckily, the weakness of its core cars is being offset by the arrival of new models such as the Crossland X and Grandland X.

The best-performing new arrival, however, was again from Volkswagen: 71,000 T-Roc were registered, placing it 32^nd in the European sales chart for the first half of 2018.