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Electric cars get a £500 million government cash boost – but will it get spent?

The new BMW i3 EV (pictured) will be subsidised until 2017. The subsidy of up to £5000 paid to buyers of electric cars has been with us for three years, but it hasn’t had much impact on EV sales and it did look like the government had decided to scrap it all together. But it looks like the coalition has allowed Nick Clegg to have his way with EV subsides in a move that will see £500 million injected in to promoting and supporting electric cars in the UK in the next few years.

Jaguar Mille Miglia 2013 – & the F-Type came too (video)

But the original Mille Miglia ended in 1957 after a series of fatal crashes made the event untenable on public roads, but it returned in 1977 as the Mille Miglia Storica, a wonderful race/parade around Italy of classic cars – which must have taken part in the original 1927-1957 race – and now the 2013 Mille Miglia is ready to start on 16th May. Now the Mille Miglia is more a parade than a real race, Jaguar has enlisted some well-known faces to take the wheel of their C-Type and XK120 entries, including David Gandy (the world’s only male supermodel and a man who grew up round the corner from Cars UK Towers), Sir Chris Hoy (the cycling knight), Andy Wallace (Le Mans winner), Jim Gianopulos (boss at 20th century Fox), Hannah Herzsprung (German actress), Salvatore Ferragamo Jr. (heir to a luxury brand fortune), Yasmin Le Bon (the supermodel with a picture in her attic) and Michael Quinn (grandson of Jaguar founder Sir William Lyons).

Chevrolet UK has its best ever year

Now admittedly, Chevrolet UK is not starting from a point of market dominance in the UK, but any manufacturer who has managed to increase sales in 2008 is obviously doing something right. Chevrolet UK has announced that in 2008 it managed to increase its market share in the UK by 12.5%, from 0.76% to 0.86%, with total sales for the year of 18,372 cars (which is only a smidge higher than 2007, but the lower total sales for the UK Car market in 2008 meant a significant increase in market share for Chevrolet). Chevrolet Cruze - Launches in the UK in 2009 These are not figures that are going to frighten the pants off Ford and Vauxhall, but they are an indication that a certain part of the car buying public in the UK are looking at price as a major factor, and are prepared to sacrifice a degree of driving joy to get in to a new car at a lower price.