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News watch November 2010: today's auto industry news

Welcome to CAR Magazine's news aggregator as we round up the daily stories in the auto industry. Top tip: news summaries are added from the top hour-by-hour Tuesday 30 November 2010• Fiat and Opel have signed an agreement whereby Fiat will supply vehicles comprising of several variants to Opel, commencing December 1 (Fiat)• Electric cars will make up 20 per cent of UK car sales by 2016, according to National Grid CEO Steve Holiday (Automotive News Europe)• Toyota has said it will repair 650,000 Prius models worldwide because of a fault with the coolant pump (BBC News)• Porsche look likely to succeed in persuading preferred shareholders to support a €5 billion stock sale becuase the deal may offer the chance to buy into Volkswagen at a discount rate (Bloomburg)• China will become Rolls Royce's biggest market, surpassing America as early as 2011 (Automotive News Europe)  Monday 29 November 2010• Bentley has appointd a new CEO to succeed Franz-Josef Paefgen, who's retiring. Porsche R&D director Wolfgang Dürheimer, 52, is now chairman and chief exec of Bentley Motors and Bugatti (Bentley)• In return, Porsche has replaced Dürheimer with Wolfgang Hatz, an internal appointment.

Mercedes launch new 9G-Tronic gearbox on E350 BlueTec

New Mercedes E350 BlueTec (pictured) gets 9-speed 9G-TRONIC auto It’s not exactly a million years ago that automatic gearboxes offered poorer performance and economy than manual gearboxes, and came as standard with just three gears. But now, automatic gearboxes are so good they can  change quicker than any driver and, with the proliferation of eight-speed auto ‘boxes, offer improved economy and performance too. The next logical step is even more ratios in an auto ‘box, and Land Rover has already revealed they’ll be fitting the Evoque with a 9-speed ZF ‘box from 2014, and the new Jeep Grand Cherokee gets a nine-speed auto ‘box too.

A greener Rolls-Royce?

Are Rolls-Royce customers ready for a hybrid? How about diesel? The company is looking at any and all possibilities, including using parent BMW's active hybrid systems.