How do you treat a football team that has defeated all odds to claim the Premier League title? There was talk of Leicester City’s Thai owners buying players an electric Mercedes-Benz B-Class each – but instead, a fleet of 19 brand new BMW i8s has been delivered to the team’s King Power Stadium.
Posting the pictures on Facebook, Leicester City fan page first4LCFC said: “These are the gifts promised to the players following last season’s triumphs. Unbelievable scenes!”
With a list price of £104,540, this line-up of BMW i8s will have cost Leicester bosses nearly £2,000,000 if they were bought outright.
Fans were quick to respond, with Lynne Orridge commenting: “Well deserved I say, they made a lot of people happy with their win – and not just Leicester fans.”
But not everyone thinks treating footballers to a fleet of expensive supercars was the best way of spending the cash.
Cheryl Taylor commented: “[It] is nice the the club spent money on the players. They put the cost of the away coach up from £10 to £18 and the parking at home games up £10.”
The club’s Thai chairman, Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, is said to be worth around £1.15 billion.
The BMW i8 combines an electric motor with a 1.5-litre petrol engine. It can hit 62mph in 4.4 seconds and top speed is limited to 155mph.
Adding a driveway gives a bigger boost to house prices than a new fitted kitchen, adding an extra bedroom or building a conservatory.
And homeowners can make even more if they add a driveway and then rent it out: yourparkingspace.co.uk says annual income of £1,500 could be made from allowing pre-booked cars park on your driveway.
More car news on Motoring Research
The online parking marketplace turned to Virgin Money for the estimates: creating a driveway adds £19,000 to the value of the average home in the UK.
Fitting a new kitchen or adding an extra bathroom boosts house prices by £11,500, while building a conservatory will add £9,600 to the price of the average British house.
“Having a parking space close to your home is highly valued by potential property buyers and it’s one of the most profitable home improvements that you can make,” said MD at yourparkingspace.co.uk Harrison Woods.
He says it could be a good way for homeowners to move up the property ladder. “By renting out your parking space, you can generate extra income meaning that if you do decide to move up the property latter, you’ll have even more money to help you out.”
Despite the uncertainty caused by Brexit, the Centre for Economics and Business Research predicts house prices will rise by £40,000 on average over the next five years – and as values go up, so the gap between the second and the third runs of the property ladder widen.
But would you build a driveway and then rent it out to solve this problem?
The number of electric car charging points in the UK could exceed the amount of petrol stations within the next four years.
That’s according to research from Nissan, which revealed there were just 8,472 fuel stations in the UK at the end of 2015 – compared to 37,539 in 1970.
If that rate of decline continues, there’ll be fewer than 7,870 petrol stations in the UK by 2020.
Public electric car chargers, meanwhile, are multiplying – with 7,900 expected by 2020.
As electric cars increase in popularity, the number of chargers available for the public to use are increasing rapidly – from a few hundred as recently as five years ago, compared to more than 4,100 today.
Nissan’s EV manager, Edward Jones, said: “As electric vehicle sales take off, the charging infrastructure is keeping pace and paving the way for convenient all-electric driving. Combine that with constant improvements in our battery performance and we believe the tipping point for mass EV uptake is upon us.
“As with similar breakthrough technologies, the adoption of electric vehicles should follow an ‘S-curve’ of demand. A gradual uptake from early adopters accelerates to a groundswell of consumers buying electric vehicles just as they would any other powertrain.”
Last month, we reported that EV chargers were about to overtake petrol stations in Scotland – with more than 550 charging points across the country, compared to fewer than 700 independent petrol stations.
Opinion
I’ve spent a couple of months with the Motoring Research long-term Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, and using the charging network has been a real eye-opener.
While using a public charger (often enjoying free parking in a convenient location at the same time) is so much nicer than visiting a petrol station, it’s far from being perfect.
For a start, the Government really needs to step in and regulate public charge points. They’re operated by so many different companies in different areas, actually having the correct card to use is a lottery. I’ve got around this to some extent by using Chargemaster’s Polar Plus card, at a cost of £7.85 a month (after a six-month free trial). But there are still points out there that I can’t use – annoying in a PHEV, potentially day-ruining in a fully-electric car.
The monopoly of motorway service station chargers is owned by Ecotricity. The green energy company has shown its true colours recently by hitting EV drivers with an excessive £6 fee for 30 minutes charging. Moves like that makes running electric cars almost as expensive as petrol cars – take away the incentives, and that ‘tipping point’ Nissan talks about is a long way off.
Andrew Brady
Nissan points out that the electric car charger to petrol station ratio is particularly high in London, where only four conventional fuel stations remain within the congestion charge zone. One of the country’s oldest petrol stations, the Bloomsbury Service Station, opened in 1926 and was closed in 2008.
The joint Government and car industry campaign for alternatively-fuelled vehicles, Go Ultra Low, reports that more than 115 electric cars were registered every day in the first quarter of 2016, equivalent to one every 13 minutes.
It claims electric power could be the dominant form of propulsion for all new cars sold in the UK as early as 2027 – with more than 1.3m electric cars registered each year.
If you think Britain’s roads are littered with more potholes these days, RAC breakdown data suggests you may be right: vehicle breakdowns caused by bad roads have risen a whopping 125% between 2006-2016.
The sort of things that are damaged when you hit a pothole – components such as dampers, suspension springs and bent wheels – made up 0.4% of RAC callouts in 2006. By 2016, this had risen to almost 1% of callouts.
“Our analysis… unequivocably confirms what most road users already know, which is that the condition of our local roads has deteriorated drastically in the last decade,” said RAC chief engineer David Bizley.
“This analysis suggests that the quality of the UK’s roads suffered a steady decline from the start of 2007 through to the end of 2009, presumably due to lack of investment in maintenance and resurfacing during worsening economic times.”
Since then, there has not been sufficient funding to fix the backlog.
“Although 0.9% (of call-outs) seems low, the growth in this type of call-out is indisputable. With few exceptions, it’s the vehicle owner who picks up the bill, adding up to millions of pounds each year.”
And motorists are fed up. The RAC Report on Motoring shows the state of Britain’s local roads is their number one gripe and 50% feel the condition of roads in their area has declined over the past year.
One in three thus want the government to prioritise fixing Britain’s roads above everything else and a further half rate extra investment here as a top-5 priority.
Not something that’s going to happen soon though, says the RAC: “The effect of insufficient investment over much of the last decade care going to take some considerable time to rectify,” warns Bizley.
Cars fitted with ADAS Advanced Driver Assistance Systems rely on cameras mounted onto the windscreen – and if you need to replace your screen, you also need to have these safety systems recalibrated or they won’t work correctly, says vehicle safety expert Thatcham.
That’s why it has led a new working group called the ADAS Repair Group, which has just published a new code of practice for those fitting replacement safety windscreens.
More advice on Motoring Research
The guide helps technicians identify the various ADAS systems that may be fitted, show how to remove them from the old screen and fit them to the new one, and offer full guidance on how to recalibrate them.
This, says Thatcham, is a crucial safety measure: as they become more commonplace, customers are becoming increasingly reliant on them – any miscalibration can adversely affect performance and safety.
The guide also includes notes on how to explain this to customers so they have full confidence in a car with a new windscreen. Replacing the windscreen on a car with ADAS? Expect to have all this explained to you by the person doing the job.
Euro NCAP research shows ADAS systems such as autonomous emergency braking (AEB) have helped reduce real-world rear-end collisions by 38%. Currently fitted to 6% of vehicles on the road, ADAS may feature in 40% of cars by 2020.
Hence the need to make sure the safety process for fitting new windscreens is robust; cracked screens are an inevitability and it is vital to ensure ultra-safe modern cars don’t become less safe because their advanced safety systems are compromised…
Tesla will launch a truck, a bus, a “beautiful” solar roof battery storage product, autonomous vehicles that are 10 times safer than normal cars and an app that will let you share your Tesla with others (and get paid for it).
The plans are detailed in Tesla founder Elon Musk’s second ‘master plan’, which he rolled out overnight to focus the company’s next decade.
More car news on Motoring Research
It’s part of his ambition to accelerate the viability of sustainable energy “so that we can imagine far into the future and life is still good.
“It’s not some silly, hippy thing – it matters for everyone.” Because if we don’t achieve a sustainable energy economy, “we will run out of fossil fuels to burn and civilisation will collapse.”
Musk therefore has four far-reaching goals over and above the volume development of Tesla’s passenger cars (the mainstream Model 3 is still due in 2018).
On sustainability, Musk wants to develop a solar roof product that’s linked in with a battery storage system that will turn everyone into their own utility company. It will be simple to order, simple to install, have a simple utility contract and be linked to a simple smartphone app: a fully integrated energy generation and storage solution.
That is why, says Musk, Tesla has been joined up to one of his other companies, SolarCity.
But Musk also has big plans for Tesla motors.
More Tesla models
Tesla wants to make more vehicles. Musk reckons he has the passenger car segment covered – “a lower cost vehicle than the Model 3 is unlikely to be necessary” – and will broaden the lower end of the range with a better, smarter Tesla bus.
A Tesla bus would be smaller, smarter, comfier and autonomous: it would match acceleration and braking to other vehicles. It would take wheelchairs, strollers and bikes. There would be no centre aisle. It would take people all the way to their destination.
A big Tesla semi-trailer truck, promises Musk, would be cheaper to use, safer and “really fun to operate”. Both will be unveiled in 2017 (they’re under development now, confirmed Musk).
Autonomy
The controversial Tesla Autopilot function is being deployed now despite some arguing it’s not ready and thus not safe. Musk says Tesla is doing it now because “when used correctly, it is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves.”
Boldly, he claims it would be “morally reprehensible to delay release simply for fear of bad press or some mercantile calculation of legal liability.”
At the moment, Tesla Autopilot is officially in the beta stage. As part of Musk’s master plan, that beta tag will one day be removed – that will be when it is “approximately 10 times safer than the US vehicle average”.
So there you go: Tesla wants to make cars 10 times safer than normal cars, and fully roll them out in the next 10 years.
Sharing
Musk wants to “enable your car to make money for you when you aren’t using it”. This will be dependent on true self-driving being approved by regulators: then, Tesla will let you add your car to a Tesla shared fleet via the smartphone app and have it make money for you.
“Since most cars are only in use by their owner for 5% to 10% of the day, the fundamental economic utility of a true self-driving car is likely to be several times that of a car which is not.”
What’s more, Tesla will also take on cab operators and Uber: where there’s lots of demand for self-driving taxis, “Tesla will operate its own fleet enduring you can always hail a ride from us no matter where you are”.
Musk revealed his new master plan as part of a fascinating blog post on the company’s website (which is now under tesla.com rather than teslamotors.com…). The scope and ambition of it is enormous. Read it in full and let us know what else you think Musk may be planning to do…
Tesla Master Plan part 1
Musk reminded us of his first master plan, devised a decade ago. He said it “wasn’t all that complicated” and consisted of:
Create a low volume car, which would necessarily be expensive
Use that money to develop a medium volume car at a lower price
Use that money to create an affordable, high volume car
Provide solar power
The last point he stressed: “no kidding, this has literally been on our website for 10 years”.
Explaining the first master plan, he said he started off with point 1 because “it was all I could afford to do with what I made from Paypal”. He admitted he thought the chances of success were low, hence starting with his cash rather than someone else’s.
“Starting a car company is idiotic and an electric car company is idiocy squared.”
From Christmas baubles to polo saddles, carmakers will do anything to lighten your wallet. Check out our handpicked range of exclusive items you can buy if you want to show the world what fine taste you have. Here are some of the weird and wonderful things can brands also make.
Toyota Energy Observer
A fresh update to this list comes with Toyota’s sponsorship entanglement with the Energy Observer hydrogen research vessel. A curiously amusing means to a noble end. Toyota is known for its endeavours in alternative energies with the Toyboata being the latest.
Lamborghini Tauri 88 Smartphone
At around £4,000, the Lamborghini Tauri 88 smartphone it’s a bit pricey, but it does have a 5-inch HD touchscreen, more memory than most laptops and a 20-megapixel camera. You can choose from four colours, too, but only 1,947 will be made. So you’ll have to act fast.
Bristol Cars merchandise
Carmakers like to cash in on their brand’s heritage by making weird and wacky items designed to appeal to the discerning enthusiast. Take British luxury car manufacturer Bristol, which launched a range of luxury merchandise. You’ll be able to buy branded clothing, scale models and even leather bags and wallets designed by Paul Smith.
Alfa MiTo by Marshall concept car
Carmakers will do anything to breathe new life into a car nearing the end of its product lifecycle – and Alfa Romeo turned the MiTo into a four-wheeled amplifier. It’s called the Alfa MiTo by Marshall concept car and it “draws inspiration from the look and feel of Marshall’s iconic amplifier equipment”, featuring a 50w amp head and two 12-inch 75w speakers in the boot. It’s even powered by its own battery system.
Maserati and La Martina luxury polo saddle
We’re tempted to ask the horse, why the long face? It’s clearly not impressed with the one-off La Martina and Maserati polo saddle on its back. In a statement, the horse, which received only a couple of sugar lumps and a polo mint for its troubles, said, “Happy 100th birthday, Maserati, but I still can’t forgive you for putting a diesel engine in the Ghibli”.
Maserati aluminium dice
Now we don’t know about you, but after a hard day in the office, we like nothing more than getting dressed up and heading to our local multi-storey car park. Whilst some may be tempted to take advantage of the empty car park in their expensive Italian four-door saloon, we like to chuck dice about for a few hours. Maserati aluminium ones, obviously. The fun never stops.
Lamborghini ceramic baubles
These aren’t just Christmas baubles… These are Lamborghini ceramic Christmas baubles, finished in a special orange glaze and available as a set of three. Proof that you can take the bull out of the Lamborghini logo…
Peugeot pepper mill
The Peugeot brand dates back to 1810, when it made its first tool: a saw blade, using high quality laminated steel. The brand also developed a reputation for delivering the very best salt and pepper mills, something it continues to this very day. Peugeot estimates that it has made tens of millions of mills for grinding salt, pepper and coffee, which includes over 900 different variants. Next time you’re in a restaurant, turn the salt and pepper mills upside down to see if they’re Peugeot-branded.
Porsche ice cube tray
It’s impossible not to love this Porsche ice cube tray. We’re tempted to say it’s the coolest piece of car-branded nonsense we’ve ever seen…
Ferrari golf collection
The Ferrari Golf Collection could be the name given to Ian Poulter’s own private collection of Ferrari cars. But no, the Ferrari Golf Collection is a range of official licensed products, from clubs, to footwear and from clothing to accessories. You can even buy a Ferrari-branded driver with improved aerodynamics and a reduced drag coefficient.
Lotus 108 bicycle
The Lotus Type 108 bicycle could never fall into the nonsense category. In fact, the Lotus 108 was a trailblazer – the bike that helped Chris Boardman achieve greatness and lay the foundations for years of British cycling success. And to this day, it’s arguably the best looking bicycle ever created.
Bentley Home Collection
The press release for Bentley’s Home Collection at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile di Milano includes terms such as “rigorous aesthetic sensibility”, “sophisticated velvets”, “pastel nuances” and “exquisite taste”. Which all sounds rather lovely. Yes. It is basically a range of Bentley furniture.
Bugatti hookah
Well if you were going to drop another million pounds on yet another “final edition” Bugatti Veyron, you were probably smoking something. Allegedly. Which may go some way to explaining the $100,000 (£76,000) Bugatti by Desvali luxury shisha pipe. Personally, we’d rather spend the money on a Porsche 911 Carrera and use the leftover cash for a second set of tyres. Smoking!
Porsche bobsleigh
And speaking of Porsche, how about this – a Porsche bobsleigh. Apparently its designed for children. Which can be used as justification for buying one next Christmas.
Jeep strollers
Carmakers will often speak about customer lifetime value. In short, a 20-year-old has the potential to buy more cars in their lifetime than a 70-year-old. But surely the Jeep stroller is taking things too far? What next, Audi-branded four-wheel drive cots? Quick, get the head of product planning on the phone – untapped niche alert.
Peugeot Design Lab piano
If we were to review this Peugeot and Pleyel piano, we’d probably complain about the pedal arrangement, the lack of seat support and the limited amount of boot space. On the plus side, the soundtrack is pretty spectacular.
Audi R18 Ultra Chair
This is the Audi R18 Ultra Chair. For best results at dinner parties, position it really close the person sat next to you and shine a torch into their eyes until they move aside. Works every time.
Bentley aftershave
In fairness to Bentley, we could have picked on any number of car manufacturers for this one, including Ferrari, Lamborghini, Jaguar or even Hummer. The question is, why would you want to smell like a car? Most interiors smell like Magic Tree air fresheners and old socks.
Audi Q3 camping tent
The Audi Q3 Camping Tent has a wind load rating of 43 mph. But even so, we’d recommend dismantling it before you make your way out of the camp site.
Bentley barbers’ chairs for Pankhurst
The Pankhurst men’s grooming store is apparently the finest barbershop in London. Which is why Bentley was keen to supply six barbers’ chairs.
Jaguar Concept Speedboat
The Concept Speedboat was designed to demonstrate the diverse and active lifestyle enjoyed by owners of the Jaguar XF Sportbrake. Check out the fin on the teak decking. It’s offset in a nod to the Jaguar D-Type. Something that will impress your boating chums down at the marina.
Vauxhall has been summoned to Westminster by ministers on the Transport Select Committee so they can quiz the firm about the spate of Zafira B vehicle fires.
Peter Hope, customer experience director at Vauxhall, will face ministers this morning (Tuesday 19 July) at Portcullis House to answer questions about the firm’s response to the Zafira B fires.
> More car news on Motoring Research
The Vauxhall Zafira B, pictured above, was built between 2005-2015.
A senior GM chief, Charles J Klein, will face ministers as well: he is engineering executive director of global CO2 strategy and energy centre at GM – but he’s also recently been vice president of vehicle engineering in Europe, the GM division that engineered the Zafira B compact MPV.
The Transport Select Committee is particularly interested in the Zafira B vehicle recalls issued on December 2015 and May 2016.
The meeting starts at 11.05am and also giving evidence will be representatives from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, the government body that handles vehicle recalls in the UK.
Gareth Llewellyn, chief executive at the DVSA, will give evidence, along with acting operations director Peter Hearn and head of customer and business operations Andy King.
The Transport Select Committee has previously grilled Volkswagen executives about the dieselgate emissions scandal where chair Louise Ellman MP and her colleagues have proven to be particularly combative questioners.
Vauxhall has set up a special customer information page for those concerned about the risk of Zafira B fires, with the latest recall action occurring in May 2016.
Reports of Vauxhall Zafira fires first emerged in October 2015 and the issue has spiralled since: it’s even led a concerned London Fire Brigade to comment on the issue via Twitter.
Jim Ratcliffe — the billionaire owner of chemical giant INEOS — is a man with a thought. A thought that the Land Rover Defender “can be upgraded to be the world’s best and most rugged off roader”.
Does this mean the iconic Defender could rise again? One thing’s for certain, INEOS doesn’t lack the financial clout required for such an ambitious project. Its website boasts of sales totalling $40 billion, with over 17,000 employees and activities across 65 sites and 16 countries. Make no mistake: Ratcliffe is a man who knows how to make friends and influence people.
Or rather, influence organisations. Today, INEOS has issued a press release saying it “has commissioned a full feasibility study into resurrecting the Land Rover Defender and held exploratory talks with Jaguar Land Rover”.
> More car news on Motoring Research
Is the Defender a national treasure – a car that should be left alone and consigned to the history books? INEOS believes not, claiming that while the exterior shape should be treated “like a listed building”, it can be made better, referencing the Toyota Land Cruiser’s reliability and Defender’s “superior off-road qualities”.
Could this signal an end for the gag about driving into the jungle in a Defender and driving out again in a Land Cruiser? Time will tell.
“I am a great admirer of the Land Rover Defender”, claims Jim Ratcliffe, who goes on to say: “Whilst it is early days, our plan has already attracted a huge amount of support from third parties across the globe.” With one eye on the export opportunity, INEOS hopes to build the new model in the north of the UK, preferably near a port.
Ratcliffe adds: “I am a passionate advocate of UK manufacturing and the Land Rover Defender has been a part of the British motoring scene for over sixty years. We want to breathe new life into it and make it even better than before.”
Last week, a Land Rover spokesperson told Autocar: “There is no way this is happening. We’re not going to let anyone build our Defender.”
Anyone except billionaire Jim Ratcliffe? A spokesperson told Motoring Research: “Defender will always be Land Rover’s icon. Jaguar Land Rover have stated our intention to continue the Defender lineage with an all-new model. There is nothing further to add at this time.
“It is too early to start talking about the new Defender at this time. The Defender remains a key part of our future product strategy, and with a growing portfolio of models Jaguar Land Rover is confident we have the breadth of models to meet the demands of our global customer base.”
We suspect there will be a few twists, turns, ruts and fords in this tale. One to watch.
Jaguar Land Rover will this year begin public road trials of ‘driverless’ autonomous vehicles as part of a four-year real-world test.
The news means JLR will beat premium rival Volvo in commencing a public-road UK driverless car trial – the Swedish brand confirmed earlier this year it’s beginning an autonomous car test in London from 2017.
> More car news on Motoring Research
The first JLR research cars will drive on a 41-mile autonomous car test route around Coventry and Solihull, with a fleet of more than 100 research vehicles eventually taking to public roads.
The test route will include both motorways and urban roads, initially involving trials of vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications tech that’s going to help make autonomous cars viable.
Future test vehicles will become progressively more autonomous, even allowing driverless operation through challenging sequences such as roadworks.
JLR will also develop more comprehensive connected car tech that it says will allow streams of traffic to talk with one another, improving traffic flow and safety.
But the firm famous for its engaging-to-drive cars isn’t planning to let the machines take over entirely, stresses head of research Tony Harper. Drivers are “able to choose how much support and assistance they need”.
They may, he says, pick full autonomy in boring motorway runs or stressful traffic, but still take over to enjoy twisty backroads – even though “the new technology we are creating will still be working in the background to help keep them safe”.
JLR autonomous innovations
Jaguar Land Rover engineers have today revealed some key technology innovations they’re working on, that they say will not only help make autonomous cars safer, they’ll also be safer and more reassuring to live with.
Roadwork Assist: a 3D camera uses image processing software to decipher the road ahead. It can plot a route through fiddly sequences of cones, helping centralise the vehicle safely through narrow sections
Safe Pullaway: if the driver goes to accelerate but the car ahead hasn’t moved, brakes are auto-applied. Good for roundabouts where the car behind goes for a gap the one in front does not…
Over the Horizon Warning: uses radio communications to alert drivers about incidents over the brow of a hill; a stopped car beams a ‘Hazard Ahead’ warning to nearby vehicles
Emergency Vehicle Warning: reduces the stress of hearing sirens but not seeing the emergency vehicle by telling drivers which direction the vehicle is coming from and how far away it is
“Our connected car and automated technology could help improve traffic flow, cut congestion and reduce the potential for accidents,” said Harper.
“Proving the right information at the right time will enable better and safer decision-making, whether the car is driven by a human or is autonomous.”
From Christmas baubles to polo saddles, carmakers will do anything to lighten your wallet. Check out our handpicked range of exclusive items you can buy if you want to show the world what fine taste you have. Here are some of the weird and wonderful things can brands also make.
