UK car sales hit a record high in 2016 – but industry boss says we’ve reached peak car January 5, 2017 UK car sales hit a record high in 2016, new figures have shown – but the boss of the industry's largest body said the UK may have reached "peak car". The figures, by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), showed 2.69m new cars were registered in 2016, up 2.3 per cent on the [...]
Meet the Faraday Future, an electric car to rival Tesla that goes from 0 – 60mph in 2.39 seconds January 4, 2017 It wowed us last year with a Batmobile-style concept car, and now Faraday Future has unveiled its first full production vehicle with all the fanfare one might expect of Apple's latest iPhone. Understated is not on the horizon for the startup, which showed off its FF 91 electric car that boasts a not too shabby [...]
Oof: Tesla didn’t quite deliver on its promise of 80,000 cars in 2016 January 4, 2017 Tesla may be the darling of Silicon Valley, but if you were awaiting a shiny new Model S in 2016, you may have been disappointed. The company said last night it had made 76,230 deliveries in 2016 – not quite the 80,000 to 90,000 it had promised. In the fourth quarter it delivered 22,200 vehicles, [...]
Top secret Tesla rival Faraday Future is about to reveal its much-hyped “Batmobile” electric car January 3, 2017 It's time for car lovers to get excited. A year since its Batmobile-style concept car hit the headlines, top secret startup Faraday Future will finally unveil its electric car in a bid to rival the likes of Tesla. The lid will be lifted on its first production car at the massive Las Vegas tech event [...]
Volvo V40 Cross Country T5 review: A car that defies categorisation for motorists that defy categorisation December 19, 2016 We love to label things. “The tendency to classify and categorise objects is a deeply ingrained aspect of human nature,” Dr Scott Barry Kaufman once wrote in Psychology Today. Maybe you were the kind of person who took pleasure in arranging your CD collection in alphabetical order, or perhaps labelling people is the sort of [...]
Oracle chief executive Safra Catz to take lead role in Donald Trump’s transition team December 15, 2016 US President-elect Donald Trump has added another business executive to his circle of advisers, with Oracle chief executive Safra Catz joining the executive committee of his transition team. Catz will remain at the California-based software giant, according to Reuters. She had been present at a meeting of technology business leaders earlier in the week at [...]
California regulator wants Uber to put the brakes on its self-driving cars as it doesn’t have a permit December 15, 2016 Uber's self-driving car service might be driven off-track, after the California highways regulator ordered it to pull the service hours after it was launched. Uber had started giving passengers the option of a self-driving car with a safety driver when booking a journey. Regulators said the ride-hailing app firm had to stop immediately and get [...]
These two top tech bosses have been named advisers to Trump December 14, 2016 Donald Trump has added top tech firepower to a group of business leaders who will advise him on economic matters. Uber boss Travis Kalanick and the entrepreneur behind Tesla and Space X, Elon Musk, have joined the President-elect's Strategic and Policy Forum which will involve meeting with the President frequently. Read more: Move over Trump and [...]
Waymo: Full speed ahead as Google spins off self-driving car business December 13, 2016 Google is stepping up a gear with its self-driving car project, spinning it out into a separate business it will call Waymo. It will now come out of the shadows at what is known as Google X's "moonshiots" and under the umbrella of parent company Alphabet. "It's an indication of the maturity of our technology. We can [...]
BMW 530D XDrive SE review: When a car is this good to drive, why let it drive itself? December 12, 2016 B MW flew me out to Portugal to drive the new 5 Series and made such a song and dance about its Autonomous Drive technology, you’d think it had reinvented the self-steering wheel. Frankly, I hated it. Yes, the 5 Series will drive itself for 30 seconds at a time on straight roads, and will [...]