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Lame ducks | Tamarind seed art | Punishment haircuts | On further reflection | Car parking experience I couldn’t help seeing a strong parallel last week between two demoralised sets of lame ducks. There’s the England cricket team, facing near certain elimination from the World Cup, bereft of ideas and positivity, and wishing they could just get on a return flight ( England’s inflexible tactics meant they went hard and now they will go home, 27 October ). Then there is the Tory party, facing almost certain banishment from power, and wishing they didn’t have to go through the motions of pretending to be a government for the next 14 months, and that it could all just end now. Robin Spencer Reigate, Surrey • Re your article ( Seeds of potential: the Caribbean women reviving a dying art, 28 October ), I saw some of these beautiful works, created from seeds, for sale in the shop at the Garden Museum, just by Lambeth Palace in London. Maybe if more people bought them, this would not be a ...

Motorway services provider Moto tells of serious concern about government’s management of the problem Toilets are big business on the motorway: using them is the number one reason people stop at services. But the electric car era is going to change that. The need for fast charging will soon be the key reason for visits to motorway services, says Ken McMeikan, chief executive of Moto, which operates them. There is a problem: many of the sites lack the power needed for ultra-rapid charging. That could hold back the transition to electric cars as more and more drivers are forced to wait longer to recharge on longer journeys. Continue reading...

Motorists locked inside their cars, while an NHS doctor said her BMW iX accelerated to 65mph and then crashed An electric car owner has claimed her vehicle’s autopilot engaged without warning and accelerated to 65mph, zigzagged across the road and caused a serious crash, the Guardian can reveal. The alleged incident involved a doctor, Ravpreet Kaur, who was travelling in Buckinghamshire with her son in the family’s £80,000 BMW iX. Her husband said they were lucky to escape unhurt. Continue reading...

Sean Hanley says hybrid vehicles are ‘better fit’ in Australia but Electric Vehicle Council says brand’s comments could undermine lithium industry Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our morning and afternoon news emails , free app or daily news podcast Australia’s most popular car brand, Toyota, has launched a stinging attack on electric vehicles claiming they are not ready for our roads, not as green as they seem and remain “impractical for the vast majority of Australian motorists”. But Australia’s most popular electric car brand and industry groups claim the argument is a “cynical” attack by a company “too slow off the mark” and at risk of losing the future automotive race. Continue reading...

German company points to ‘intense price competition’, which it sees as unsustainable Mercedes-Benz has said the electric car market is “brutal” for carmakers as heavy competition forces them to cut prices. Sales of electric cars are soaring in Europe and China, with the US further behind, but the rush of new launches is putting pressure on European manufacturers in particular, who are struggling to compete with cheap models coming from China. Continue reading...

Bosses warn European Commission president that ‘rules of origin’, which come into force in January, will harm EV production in Europe The bosses of Europe’s largest carmakers have urged the president of the European Commission to postpone the “cliff-edge” introduction of post-Brexit tariffs they say will harm EU electric vehicle production. Renault, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo and Ferrari were among the 13 large manufacturers who wrote on Tuesday to Ursula von der Leyen asking for a delay to “rules of origin” that are scheduled to come into force on 1 January. Continue reading...

DMV cites ‘unreasonable risk to public safety’ from General Motors’ subsidiary amid multiple investigations California suspended Cruise’s permits to operate self-driving cars on the state’s public roads, effective immediately, the state’s department of motor vehicles said in a statement on Tuesday. The agency said Cruise’s vehicles pose a danger to the public and that the company had misrepresented key facts when dealing with safety regulators. “When there is an unreasonable risk to public safety, the DMV can immediately suspend or revoke permits,” the regulator said. Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, can still operate its vehicles with safety drivers, per the DMV’s statement. Google’s Waymo, Cruise’s main rival, maintains its permit to test its autonomous vehicles sans drivers on the streets of San Francisco. Continue reading...

Believe it or not, battery-powered vehicles have been around since Victorian times – everything from private automobiles to taxis, ambulances and tricycles. We’ve got the photos to prove it The history of the electric car is surprisingly enraging. If you imagine early electric vehicles at all (full disclosure: I didn’t until recently), it will probably be as the quixotic and possibly dangerous dream of a few eccentrics, maybe in the 1920s or 1930s, when domestic electrification became widespread. It’s easy to imagine some stiff-collared proto-Musk getting bored of hunting and affairs, eyeing his newly installed electric lights speculatively, then wreaking untold havoc and mass electrocutions. The reality is entirely different. By 1900, a third of all cars on the road in the US were electric ; we’re looking at the history of a cruelly missed opportunity, and it started astonishingly early. The Scottish engineer Robert Anderson had a go at an electric car of sorts way back in the 1830s...

Rishi Sunak unveiled funding pot for expanding charging facilities at motorway services in 2020 but it is not yet accepting bids Almost £1bn meant to help build Britain’s electric vehicle charging network remains unallocated more than three years after it was first announced by Rishi Sunak. Promised in March 2020 before the first Covid lockdown in Sunak’s early weeks as Boris Johnson’s chancellor, the “ rapid charging fund ” was meant to support electrical capacity at motorway service stations. It was intended to help fund upgrades to the grid so that more electric cars can be rapidly charged at the same time. Continue reading...

Thousands of fines sent to EU drivers by TfL debt collection agent may be unlawful, Belgian transport ministry claims Thousands of fines for breaches of London’s ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez) rules may have been sent unlawfully to drivers of EU-registered vehicles, Belgian authorities claim. The Belgian ministry for transport has ordered an investigation into alleged criminal breaches of data rules after motorists received penalty charge notices from a collections agent acting for Transport for London (TfL). Continue reading...

Data shows proportion of new cars sold in Ireland that are sport utility vehicles is higher than EU average Ireland’s Green party has called for measures to reduce the sale of sport utility vehicles after figures showed that two out of three cars sold in the country in 2022 were SUVs, 13 percentage points higher than the EU average. Data provided to the Financial Times by the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association showed that SUV sales as a percentage of all new cars sold were much higher in Ireland than in Spain, France, Italy and Germany. Continue reading...

From deals on electric cars to investment in solar panels, there is room for all sides in the global green industrial revolution Our polarised world is failing to tackle the climate crisis at the required speed. The only way to reverse this catastrophic situation is to get the three largest historical emitters – the US, Europe and China – to join forces, directly or indirectly, to accelerate the global shift to green energy. After months of rising tensions, the possible visit to Washington of the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, later this month could pave the way for a highly anticipated but still unscheduled summit between presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, and kickstart a reset. Simone Tagliapietra is a senior fellow at the Brussels-based thinktank Bruegel Continue reading...

Brexit trade deal gave UK and EU carmakers until 1 January 2024 to source batteries from within Europe or face 10% tariffs The UK car industry has said incoming tariffs between the UK and the EU could raise the price of imported electric cars by as much as £3,400 unless a solution is found by the end of the year. The Brexit trade deal between the UK and EU gave carmakers until 1 January 2024 to source batteries from within Europe or face 10% tariffs when exporting to each other. However, the supply of European-made batteries has failed to meet demand, meaning carmakers face the new tariffs from next year under these “rules of origin”. Continue reading...

Exclusive: UK climate campaign group Possible calls for ‘polluter pays’ tax based on vehicle size The increasing popularity of ultra-heavy SUVs in England means a conventional-engined car bought in 2013 will, on average, have lower carbon emissions than one bought new today, new research has found. The study by the climate campaign group Possible said there was a strong correlation between income and owning a large SUV, which meant there was a sound argument for “polluter pays” taxes for vehicle emissions based on size. Continue reading...

It’s hard to overstate just how exceptionally high global temperatures are now, but we have the technology to avert disaster “ Absolutely gobsmackingly bananas ” is not standard scientific language, but these are not standard times, scientifically. New data shows average global temperatures in September were not just the hottest ever recorded, but 0.5C above the previous record for the month. They were about 1.8C above temperatures in pre-industrial times , before humans started pumping vast amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads Continue reading...