Nick Gibbs

Saw one of these 70s US wagons randomly on a Hertfordshire walk recently. Estates we Brits call them and it was definitely bigger than many London gardens

There aren’t going to be great herds of people in the US buying a 3.4m long passenger car. Ford isn’t going to invest in building one. They could still be selling a Festiva small car if they wanted to but they don’t because no-one buys them! Yet they all nod along.

Farley and Filosa being told by Trump he's going to modify regs to enable them to build kei cars in the US. Kei cars! Trump saw these tiny machines in Japan and thought hey, these'll work in the US. "You should start thinking about that”. “Thank you for the great news about the Kei cars”: Filosa.

There’s an unedifying picture of US automotive. CEOs Farley and Filosa (not Barra though) meekly standing behind Trump while he spouts racist garbage after rolling back climate change regulations to allow them to carry on selling $80k 15mpg petrol pickups

Not sure she had the lead role in her penultimate year primary nativity either, as claimed. Yes she was Mary but that year the narrator had more lines and thus was quite clearly the lead, not Reeves.

Abrupt departure of JLR's design boss is both shocking and long expected – but who will replace him? | Autocar The British manufacturer has let go of its chief creative officer after 21 years

Cropley on form here. “No one inside the business seemed to have the intestinal fortitude to take him on” www.autocar.co.uk/opinion/new-...

Yeah instead they let Autocar India control the story. Maybe they just really didn’t like him

This is HUGE news in UK automotive. ‘Prof’ McGovern was a totemic figure at JLR with influence well beyond design, by dint of being rather good at it. But probably more a blocker than facilitator for a new CEO

I tasked AI with mocking up a European-spec Bronco and Gemini did okay (after telling it about 15 times to get the spelling on the grille right. No, not a Bongo)

I know nothing. Im assuming from Tim’s post they’re being sold as some sort of performance enhancement when you’d hope they were working to increase long range efficiency.

To squeeze another 20 miles of range en route to the Cornwall pad then maybe. But not in sodding Sport Plus

The diamond shape strategy was an illusion made briefly real by supply shortages.

Oooh and the offset/ set off change. Painful!

This was literally a Farage talking point yesterday and now I’m suspicious of the post’s provenance

If you're wondering how relations are between the govt and the OBR after this morning's budget leak, a govt source has just sent this out about the EV tax.

Showing no understanding of the scheme!

PHEVs hit in new electric mileage charge from April 2029. 0.03ppm intially for EVs, 0.015ppm for PHEVs. 8500 miles per year is £255. BUT expensive car tax on EVs increased from £40k to £50k. Suspect that won't mollify the car industry

No human alarm clocking

Nothing wrong with a good regional show.

What low rent car show are you at and why aren’t you in Guangzhou?

Probably on 100g/wk week here. I make my own because shop-bought is meh so can’t do my bit to move the needle

Woah. Electric buses took a quarter of all bus sales in Europe to the end of Sept (ACEA figs). Biggest market by far was the UK (28% of sales), followed by Germany. Some countries eg Romania, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark EVs well over half of sales. ACEA has no figs on China share but probably big!

Even a simple factoid like this gets overlooked, but it was not long ago that *everyone* directly knew multiple examples of people taken away by this at something preposterous like age 22

The planned new EV tax as reported is so badly constructed that it’s going to alienate most electric car drivers.

www.autocar.co.uk/opinion/elec...

They’re fine. They have their place. The stats are real. Lumping in mild hybrids with HEVs is an annoyance but not a crime. SMMT dislike them for diluting their message that the industry is never going to hit the stated EV targets when NA just point out the real target is much lower

A month into EV ownership, including two long trips and the main feeling is what the hell was I worried about? Decent range on the Scenic helps as does home charging but v hard now to fathom the anti sentiment. Smoother! Cheaper! Geekier!

Don’t think anyone is questioning the New Automotive data are they? SMMT don’t like NA that much because they seem to have broken their stranglehold on sales data and also they estimate the real targets on ZEV mandate for carmakers, as opposed to the flat 28% (which isn’t really a target)

Hahahaha

Michael Leiters, ex of McLaren, to run Porsche. Was a former Porsche engineer but travels to Ferrari and McLaren gives him a broader worldview than the expected Porsche lifer

Jaguar kicking themselves they didn’t do quad headlights, a leaper and a bust of Maggie Thatcher