PG Carz World

Kristy Holmes always knew she could use her electric car for ‘good things’, but when storms caused a blackout, it proved life-saving An electric vehicle owner has used her car’s emergency power system to run her 11-year-old son’s lifesaving dialysis machine and another has ridden to the rescue of his neighbours after devastating storms cut power in south-east Queensland. When the power went down following storms and flash flooding on Christmas Day, many residents immediately felt the consequences: electric gates did not work, septic tanks began to fill, air conditioners could not run and fridges began to warm as a heatwave followed. Continue reading...

The infamous A30 summer holiday bottleneck will go when eight miles of dual carriageway opens in March. But for some, the cost is too high As cars and lorries snail interminably along the A30 in Cornwall – the county’s notorious trunk road – the words of the furious driver in John Betjeman’s poem, Meditation On The A30, seem befitting: “I can’t go on crawling like this!” Such frustrations are especially acute in summertime when tourists compete with hauliers, tractors and local residents for space on the asphalt, many of them en route to the coastal hotspots of Perranporth and St Ives. But those days could soon be gone. Continue reading...

More than 33,500 videos sent to police in England and Wales in year to November, up 30% on 2022 Dangerous drivers are being caught on camera and shopped to the police in increasing numbers, with other drivers and the general public having sent more than 100,000 video reports to UK police forces. The number of reports filed in 2023 increased by 30% compared with the previous year, with more than 33,500 videos submitted to police via the National Dash Cam Safety Portal until the end of November. Continue reading...

A battery-powered Mustang and Volkswagen’s electric take on the Kombi van are some of the vehicles to arrive in 2024 Major brands are preparing to launch electric cars in Australia for the first time, in a move experts say will cause some motorists to question their brand loyalty. Near-silent sports cars, a battery-powered Mustang, Toyota’s first electric SUV and a modern take on the Kombi van are expected to launch in Australia in what is said to be a breakthrough year for electric vehicles. Continue reading...

Mark Harper says vehicles can improve road safety and personal freedom, as autonomous cars face increased scrutiny Autonomous vehicles could be on UK roads as soon as 2026, the transport secretary has said, as ministers seeks to capture as much as £42bn of the international self-driving market within the coming decade. “This technology exists, it works, and what we’re doing is putting in place the proper legislation so that people can have full confidence in the safety of this technology,” Mark Harper told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Toyota subsidiary has admitted falsifying data on some models for more than 30 years Production was suspended at the last operating domestic factory of Japanese automaker Daihatsu on Tuesday, as the Toyota subsidiary grapples with a safety testing scandal affecting 64 models going back more than three decades. Issues with falsified crash tests first came to light in April, when the firm admitted it had manipulated data on four models manufactured in Thailand and Malaysia from 2022 until this year. Continue reading...

Annual increase of 43% takes total number above 53,000, of which more than 4,600 are ‘ultra-rapid’ The UK installed a record number of public electric car chargers in 2023 as the size of network of ultra-rapid chargers for longer journeys doubled. Almost 16,000 public chargers were installed in the year to 12 December, pushing the total above 53,200, according to the data company ZapMap. That represented a 43% increase on 2022, significantly faster than the last three years . Continue reading...