London 'most costly' for car cover

MOTORISTS living in London faces paying almost four times the amount that a driver in the Isle of Man would spend on their car insurance, a study has revealed. AA Insurance, which compiles an index of the typical cost of car insurance for someone who shops around, named London as the most expensive place in Britain to insure a car, followed by the postcode area of IG, which includes Ilford, Chigwell, Woodford Green, Buckhurst Hill, Loughton and Barking, with Greater Manchester in third place. The IM (Isle of Man) postcode was found to be the cheapest place to insure a car, with the average quote for someone there who shops around standing at £231.

Publisher KC Crain promoted to vice president/group publisher

AutoWeek publisher KC Crain, 30, has been named vice president/group publisher at Crain Communications Inc. with responsibility for Plastics News, Rubber & Plastics News, Tire Business and Waste & Recycling News, based in Akron, Ohio. He will also supervise the European-based titles of European Plastics News, European Rubber Journal, Plastics and Rubber Weekly and Urethanes Technology International.

MIT researchers rethink electric-car batteries

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say a new battery design for electric vehicles could be a lightweight and inexpensive alternative. The goal for the team's three-year project, launched in September 2010, is to have a functioning prototype ready to be engineered as a replacement for existing electric-car batteries. At this point in the project, the prototype uses a “semi-solid flow” to separate the two functions of a battery--storing energy and discharging it when needed--into separate physical structures.