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Jaguar hybrid cars due in 2013-14

Jaguar will launch its own hybrid vehicles soon after Land Rover, CAR can confirm. Parent company Jaguar Land Rover is developing battery-assisted hybrid versions for both brands but its strategy puts part-electric Land Rovers first on the launchpad in 2013.Hybrid Jaguars – set to include the XJ and XF, but eventually every model – are therefore likely to be on the market by 2013-2014, using a similar eight-speed ZF hybrid transmission to petrol-electric BMWs.The staggered roll-out of battery Jags and Land Rovers makes sense: heavy 4x4s have come in the firing line from green protestors who label them Chelsea Tractors. Hybrid Land Rovers will trim emissions and – in plug-in hybrid mode – enable even big bulky Range Rovers to drive in zero-emissions mode into central urban areas emitting nothing more unsaintly than an electric whir.So which Jaguars will go hybrid first?It's likely that the largest models such as the XJ will receive the hybrid power packs first; large cars reap the greater benefit and can more easily swallow the additional cost, put at around £10,000 in today's money.JLR's Midlands engineering bases in Whitley and Gaydon now employ 100 engineers in the expanding hybrid powertrain business unit launched 18 months ago.

Saudi women stage driving protest

MORE THAN 60 WOMEN across Saudi Arabia have driven cars in defiance of a ban which keeps them from getting behind the wheel. The women met little protest from police in their push for less restrictions on women in the kingdom. The campaign's message is that driving should be a woman's choice.

Koenigsegg planning an entry-level car – but it’ll still cost £500k

Koenigsegg are planning an entry-level car at half the price of the Agera R (pictured) Think of the cars that Christian von Koenigsegg has made since he started with the CC8S in 2002 and you think of them as extremes of the supercar genre; the Swedish engineering take on the bloated and massively complex Bugatti Veyron. Christian’s men in a shed in Sweden have gone on to make a series of progressively quicker and more impressive supercars, through the CCR, CCX and the Agera and on to the current most extreme iteration – the Koenigsegg One:1. But it looks like Christian has decided that his ambition to create the world’s greatest hypercar leaves room for a ‘Lesser’ Koenigsegg, a car that still has innovative engineering and extreme performance but comes at a lower price.