2008 Honda Cr250r/crf250r Oem Fork Springs (2) Showa Low Hours on 2040-parts.com

2014 Volvo XC90 on track as part of £3.5 billion investment in Sweden

Volvo are investing £7 billion in their future – half of that in Sweden – and the first model to benefit will be the long overdue 2014 Volvo XC90. Just like all of Ford’s premium automotive adventures - Land Rover, Jaguar and Aston Martin included – Volvo has suffered from a long period of under investment but now – with China’s Geely in charge – they’re forging ahead with big investment and big plans to try and emulate the turnaround Tata has accomplished at JLR. That means an investment of £7 billion over the next three years – £3.5 billion of that in Sweden – in a new scalable architecture (SPA) platform and new Volvo engine architecture (VEA) to underpin most of Volvo’s future models.

Better Place EV Battery Swap business goes bust

It seemed like a good idea: take the cost of batteries out of the cost of buying an electric car and instead charge EV owners to use ‘Battery Swap’ stations where depleted batteries could be swapped for fully charged ones in the time it takes to fill an ICE car with petrol. But it’s all gone a bit Pete Tong. Better Place – which partnered with Renault in 2009 to make the battery swap technology viable – has failed to find anyone to add to the $750 million already involved in the project and has filed for bankruptcy.

Jaguar XJ 4WD tackles the coldest town on earth (video)

Jaguar XJ 4WD (pictured) tackles the coldest town on earth If you’ve ever driven a Jaguar XJ in any amount of snow, you’ll know it’s pretty useless. You need a handy supply of snow socks and winter tyres too if you’re going to make any length of journey in seriously cold and snowy conditions without stopping to dig yourself out at regular intervals. But Jaguar now has an XJ that can tackle poor and snowy conditions in the AWD XJ (although, sadly, it’s not on sale in the UK) so they’ve headed out on a 2,000 mile round trip in temperatures down to -50 degrees to show that the 4WD XJ just keeps on going.