Archive for April, 2009

Plan to increase popularity of electric cars stalls over subsidy snag

No electric car that is available now, or for at least the next two years, will qualify for government grants of up to £5,000 announced yesterday.

Even the handful of concept cars currently being tested may be ineligible because ministers insist that they will only subsidise cars with “mass market appeal”, in terms of range and speed.

The RAC Foundation questioned the effectiveness of the grants and said there could be greater environmental benefits from encouraging more efficient petrol and diesel engines. A spokesman said: “Green initiatives should not be introduced for the sake of grabbing headlines.”excited when it arrived but the first time I tried it out it would not go up a hill’

The electric car strategy is the latest in a number of green pledges that critics say are more spin than substance. Ministers promised to improve the energy efficiency of a million homes this year but many will only be getting low-energy light bulbs. The Government has also set a target of 35 per cent of electricity to be generated from renewable sources by 2020, but the current level is only 4 per cent and investment in wind farms has fallen sharply.

The Department for Transport said it was still debating the minimum standards for electric cars, including range, speed and safety, which vehicles would have to meet to qualify for grants. Retailers of existing electric cars, such as the G-Wiz, fear the announcement could cause a collapse in sales, as drivers planning to switch to an electric car delay buying in the hope of getting a grant in the future.

Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, said that the Government wanted to put electric cars “into the reach of ordinary motorists by providing help worth £2,000 to £5,000”.

However, it emerged later that the Government did not know when the first eligible car would go on sale. The DfT said it was assuming that the first ones would be available from “2011 onwards” but it would be up to manufacturers to decide precisely when.

Lord Mandelson and Geoff Hoon, the Transport Secretary, marked the announcement of the strategy by test-driving an electric Mini at a racing circuit in Fife. However, BMW, which makes the Mini E’s electrical system in Munich, said that it had no plans to sell the car in Britain.

The company intends to start a trial this year involving no more than 40 Mini Es in London and the Thames Valley. Participants will have to pay about £550 a month to lease a Mini E, three times the lease rate of a petrol-powered Mini Cooper. They will be unable to carry more than one passenger because a huge battery occupies the back seat and it has a range of only 150 miles before it needs recharging.

The Vauxhall Ampera, based on the Astra, may be the first electric car eligible for a grant but it is not due to go on sale in Britain until 2012 and is likely to cost more than £20,000. Even with a £5,000 grant, drivers would still be paying a substantial premium on the £12,000 cost of a conventional Astra.

The Government declined to set a target for the number of electric cars it wants to see on the roads, unlike Germany which wants a million by 2020.

The strategy says it expects numbers “to rise to the thousands in the early part of the next decade”. To put this in context, more than two million cars are sold in Britain each year and there are 27 million on the road. Sales of electric cars halved last year to 179, down from 397 in 2007.

Nigel Wonnacott, a green-car analyst, said: “This strategy could be the final nail in the coffin for the current crop of electric city cars as buyers hold out for models from mainstream car makers. But there’s no guarantee that any will be on sale come 2011.”

The DfT said £230 million would be available over several years for electric car grants and another £20 million for roadside charging points. A Nissan spokesman said the investment in charging points could be inadequate. “The Government have been very woolly in what they have said. People are not going to buy electric cars if they can’t plug in and recharge at their destination,” he said.

A DfT spokeswoman said the G-Wiz and Mega City were not eligible because they were classified technically as quadricycles, not cars. “We will be discussing the details of the scheme and eligibility rules with the car industry over the coming months.”

Sourced via business.timesonline.co.uk

£2,000 off your new car: How a ‘scrappage’ scheme would work

The idea is that buyers will be entitled to a discount on a new car if they scrap their old one.

The scheme, which is billed as an environmental measure because new cars are more fuel-efficient, is intended to throw a lifeline to Britain’s ailing motor industry. Whatever the reason, consumers stand to benefit from lower prices on new cars.

But how could such a scheme work in practice?

We can get a an idea from the experience of other countries, many of which have introduced “scrappage” schemes as Britain and Poland are the only major European countries that have yet to introduce a scheme, according to the AA.

There are plenty of existing programmes on which the Government could base Britain’s, although it seems to be most interested in the German version.

“I have been involved with ministers in trying to get them to introduce a scrappage scheme,” said Edmund King, the AA’s president. “It appears that the Government has looked closely at the German scheme, even though there are other schemes in Austria, France, Italy, Portugal and other countries.”

Buyers would need their old car to be at least nine or 10 years old (Germany and France specify nine years, France 10) and to have owned it for a minium period, which Mr King predicted to be six months.

They would qualify for the incentive if they could prove that they were the owner and that the car had been taxed over the previous six or 12 months.

As Mr King explained: “The original French scheme some years ago led to some farmers cashing in 30-year-old 2CVs that had been rotting away in barns for years. Hence, it is likely that a British scheme would require the car to have been on the road – taxed – in the previous six or 12 months.”

Although the value of the incentive has been widely quoted as £2,000, we don’t know if this would apply to all cars or if there would instead be a sliding scale based on cost, fuel efficiency or other criteria. “We have been arguing on the ground of simplicity for one amount to fit all,” said Mr King. “A figure of £2,000 has been mentioned.”

There would also be restrictions on the car being bought.

“It’s likely that the car you buy will need to be new or up to a year old,” Mr King said. “In France the new car must emit a maximum of 160g/km of carbon dioxide. However, this complicates the scheme. All new cars are cleaner, greener and safer than the equivalent old car and therefore any restrictions would add [unnecessary] complexity and bureaucracy.”

In Germany, where the incentive is worth €2,500, the car being bought (which can be new or a used vehicle up to one-year old) should fit the minimum Euro 4 emissions standards. All new or nearly near cars in the UK conform to Euro 4.

If you wanted to take part in the scheme, you would need to move quickly, as there is likely to be a time limit or a set amount of money to fund the incentive.

Mr King added: “There is likely to be a limit on time or on the total cost to the Treasury. It could be 12 months with a financial cap – in Germany it is 12 months or a €1.5bn, which corresponds to about 600,000 cars. A British scheme is likely to be smaller, worth perhaps £560m, of which £400m would be eliminated by VAT returns.”

Motorists who take advantage of the scheme will be spared the inconvenience of taking their old car to be crushed, according to industry experts. Instead, the dealer will arrange disposal, so from the buyer’s point of view the process will feel like part exchange for a fixed, guaranteed amount.

“We don’t want car owners to have to deal with disposal,” said Paul Everitt, the chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders.

“The buyer should just need to take his documents to the dealership when placing an order for the new car. Once the dealer has verified that the old car qualifies for the scheme and the buyer has placed an order, the incentive money should be ringfenced in case the fund is about to be used up. Then when you take delivery, you hand over your old car and the dealer arranges its disposal.”

If the Chancellor does announce a scrappage scheme in the Budget, it will need to come into force quickly or risk depressing sales still further as buyers delay their purchases until they can claim the incentive.

Mr Everitt said: “There is always a balance to be struck between a quick solution and a perfect solution.”

Sourced via telegraph.co.uk

The Fast And The Furious 4 – Car Casting

The Ultimate Play Date: Maserati GranTurismo, Audi R8, Ferrari F430, Lamborghini LP560-4, Mercedes McLaren SLR

We Toss Five Awesome Toys Around On Our Favorite Asphalt Playground

This is kids-in-candy-store stuff, plain and simple. You can quit looking at the cars on this page and struggling to imagine a narrative hook that logically connects such disparate players as an out-of-production Mercedes-Benz McLaren SLR coupe and a Maserati GranTurismo-both front-engine, rear-drivers, with mid-engine superstars like a spanking new Lambo LP560-4, last year’s Audi R8 4.2 quattro, and a 2007 Ferrari F430. There isn’t one. This is like a rich collector’s dream garage with all the doors open and all the keys in the ignition. We’re playing with five cool cars that all gasoline-blooded MT readers would give their eye teeth (or $1695, if that’s more convenient) to drive.

No, these stallions aren’t freshly minted, factory-fettled, buffed-to-perfection press cars: They work for a living, touring the country in the service of World Class Driving. WCD gives enthusiasts an opportunity to take five of the world’s hottest new exotic cars out for a spin-usually on twisty public backroads, occasionally on closed tracks. The $1695 price buys about a half hour of seat time in each of the five cars (for three extra Franklins, you can impress a passenger with your wheeling skills). Longer sessions and optional extras are offered. As WCD’s 18-wheeler toy box is passing through SoCal en route to Hawaii, we’ve persuaded it to stop and disgorge its $1.1-million contents onto the tarmac at El Toro Marine Air Base so several of us can take a long enough stint in each car to decide which is the coolest, the best driving, the one we’d most like to own, or the one we’d soonest snap a picture of ourselves in to dress up our Facebook page-that is, you know, if we were civilian WCD customers. Since these cars don’t compete with each other, we’ll tell you how each compares with its closest natural rival, so you can talk like a high-roller during your World Class Driving experience.

This occasion serves as our first chance to get hard numbers on a Lamborghini LP560-4 (with only 5600 miles on the odometer, it’s nearly press-car new), so we’re bringing out all our latest test gear and putting all five cars through our regular battery of tests. We’ll walk you through the ins and outs of our current test procedures, and we’ll tell you how exotic cars perform and feel after 20,000 (Audi/Maserati), 33,000 (Ferrari), or 42,000 (Mercedes) hard miles. We’ll drive them in the order we recommend you do: in ascending sticker price. Buckle up for a grand day.

Sourced via motortrend.com