Electric cars amped up with £500 million boost

THE GOVERNMENT is to extend the £5,000 grant scheme open to anyone who buys a car with plug-in electric power. It is part of a £500 million move to encourage car owners – and city authorities – to take up the electric car baton and run with it. The initiative will give cities a chance to win government funding to further the sales of electric cars in their areas, for example by allowing them to use bus lanes or park for free.

BMW i8's design explained [w/video]

BMW has released a new YouTube video describing how the i8's design attempts to forge a new relationship between functionality and form. The video explains how the i8's design targets practicality – with aerodynamics and fuel efficiency in mind – while maintaining a sporty and dynamic look. A number of cues such as the long wheelbase, short overhangs and sweeping roofline are identified as features that make the i8 such a unique design.

Ellesmere Port's bid to build Ampera hits snags

By Rob Golding Motor Industry 09 October 2009 15:02 Prime minister Gordon Brown’s personal crusade to get Vauxhall's version of the Chevrolet Volt petrol-electric plug-in hybrid – the Ampera – built in Britain's Ellesmere Port factory in 2012 is a dream delayed, CAR can disclose today.News that the UK Astra plant is the best in Europe, that the Astra's Delta platform will underpin the Ampera, and that Volt will be on US sale from 2010 had been taken to mean that Vauxhall would be churning out the cars in the north west within three years.But the prospect of an electric car industry growing up around the run-down Merseyside manufacturing site is not imminent, CAR has learned.'No Ampera to be built in Europe before 2015'Vauxhall insiders have made it clear that the car to be known as the Vauxhall/Opel Ampera in Europe will be an import from the US for at least five years. One senior planner told us: 'The US will be the sole source of Amperas until at least 2015.'Bob Lutz, GM's former product supremo who recently came out of retirement as a PR, said that the low value of the dollar made the US an ideal site for the manufacturing of export cars. And with forecast sticker prices of the range-extender electric car standing at a scary £35,000+, every price saving is vital to its marketability.The European market also needs time to get its electricity recharge infrastructure in place before it is worth making cars onshore in volume, GM high-ups point out.