The legal episode - 14 May 2024

Motoring Podcast - News Show

FOLLOW UP: CAZOO TO ENTER ADMINISTRATION

The online car retailer has taken the step to announce that it will appoint administrators for its subsidiaries to help protect them from creditor’s debt enforcement. Cazoo also stated, to investors, unless it found urgent investment it would fold. You can read more, by clicking this AMOnline article link here.

FOLLOW UP: TESLA AUTOPILOT UPDATE INVESTIGATED

The National Highways Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has written to Tesla seeking answers as to why their cars still keep crashing after the update to their driver monitoring system. Tesla has until 1 July 2024 to respond or face potential fines up to $135 million. If you wish to learn more about that, click this article link from The Register.

That is not all the news for Tesla though, US prosecutors are investigating the company over potential securities and wire fraud, over the capabilities of its driver assistance technology. This is purely an investigation and does not show any guilt, to be clear. On top of which, any prosecution would have to show a company deliberately inflating the capabilities rather than being optimistic about the future and failing to achieve that. Click this Reuters article for more.

FOLLOW UP: JLR OFFERS CONTRIBUTION FOR OWN INSURANCE

As part of the continuing battle to counter the issue of high costs of or even refusal for insurance coverage JLR has now added a £150 per month contribution, if they take out their bespoke version. This will last for three years. To learn more about this story, click this AMOnline article link here.

FOLLOW UP: DAIHATSU RESTARTS PRODUCTION

Daihatsu has finally restarted production in all four of its Japanese plants, following the safety test fraud scandal. Changes have been made to production, development the numbers of safety testing staff. If you want to learn more, click this article link from The Japan Times.

APRIL 2024 NEW CAR REGISTRATION FIGURES

New car registration figures for April 2024 has shown a 1% year on year. Fleet is doing all the lifting as Private registrations drop 17.7% year on year. BEV is up again, but only 15.7%, as petrol declines slightly and diesel drops further. Plug-in hybrid and hybrid share increases. SMMT are calling, once again, for help from the Government in a variety of ways that would encourage private buyers to purchase an electric car. Click here to read more, from the SMMT article.

Manufacturers are becoming increasingly vocal on the Zero Emission Vehicle mandate and how unworkable it is currently. With some suggesting they will pull out of the market, throttle combustion engine sales and more. Fleet customers are also being threatened, told they must purchase a certain percentage of EV in their order. To read more on this, click here for an article from The Guardian. If you wish to learn more about fleet issues, click this Fleet News article.

JLR PROFITS THE BEST SINCE 2015

JLR generated a revenue of £29 billion in 2023. Which has helped them reduce their debt from £3 billion to £700 million. There is still a backlog on their order books, but they are increasing production rates. If you wish to read more, click this Autocar article link.

INSURANCE COSTS QUERIED BY CUSTOMERS

The Guardian has an article about the cost insurance companies are charged when a vehicle is in an accident. This echoes Andrew’s experience when his car was hit and the insurers decided to charge £13,000 to hire a SUV for four weeks. Hopefully soon, a regulator will step in and start investigating if the rocketing insurance costs are justifiable or not. Click this link to read more.

GOVERNMENT CONSULTATION FOR CLASSIC CARS

The UK Government has launched an consultation into modernising the DVLA treatment of classic cars, their modifications and more. The rules have not been updated since the 1980s and technology has changed a lot. We’ve seen some EV conversions be rejected because of how much it modified the car, is that right? Well, we all have a chance to make our voices heard. Click here to read more on this from Top Gear.

Click here to access the consultation directly.

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NEW NEW CAR NEWS -

Mandatory speed limiters for UK cars

From 7 July 2024 cars sold in the UK must come with a number of “safety” features that the EU General Safety Regulations 2 demand. One of which is a speed limiter. The claims are it uses GPS and/or sign recognition systems to understand what speed the car can legally do. Long time listeners will have heard both the chaps discuss how bad these are at doing that. Click this link to an EVO article to learn more.

Bentley replaces W12 engine

Bentley is replacing the W12 engine with a V8 plug-in hybrid, offering up to 740bhp and a 50 mile electric only capability, when fully charged. If you wish to learn more, click this Autocar article link.

JLR replaces engines

JLR is undertaking a mid life refresh of the Defender, including trim and engines. The engines are changing to come in line with Euro 6e requirements, which means other models in their range will be altered likewise. To read more, click this Autocar article link here.

Hyundai considering subscription for options

Hyundai is openly talking about adding subscriptions to its offerings. Becoming aware that exponential growth of cars is not sustainable, they are looking at other ways to generate income. They are not alone, as we have covered on this show. However, they also talk about adding stuff to older cars, without any detail as to what or how. Click this Autocar link to read more.

VW to ditch GTX badge

Volkswagen are going to introduce GTI and R badged versions of their electric vehicles, meaning that the GTX badge will be retired. If you wish to read more about this, click the link here to an Autocar story.

LUNCHTIME READ: FERRARI’S THROWBACK 12CILINDRI

Last week the chaps were rather underwhelmed by the Ferrari 12Cilindri. However, for Hagerty, friend of the show Matteo Licata has written about how good it is and how impressive the design is. As we like to share opinions, even ones that don’t agree with us, we are sharing this article with you. Click here to read a more positive take.

LIST OF THE WEEK: STAT CARS OF TOP GEAR’S TUNNEL RUN

Top Gear decided to thrash a number of really loud cars in the Catesby Tunnel to see which was the most impressive, in terms of noise. First we have a link to the idea and cars behind the mad plan, which you can read by clicking here. Then to see the TopGear Top Trumps for each, click this link. Do you agree with the selection? Let us know.

AND FINALLY: THE FIRST RENAULT SAFRANE

The Joy of Specs sight tells us where the Renault Safrane first came from. Wonderful bit of history, from Keith WR Jones, which you can read by clicking this link here.