News

Vince Cable and Nick Clegg this week visited Brompton, Britain’s largest bicycle manufacturer, to promote manufacturing in Britain and encourage more young people to consider careers in engineering and manufacturing. Managing Director William Butler-Adams said of the visit: “Many are all too quick to write off UK manufacturing as dead and...

This summer’s most desirable car is not a supercar, like the forthcoming McLaren 12-C or Ferrari FF, but rather a diminutive and fuel-efficient city car that has captured the hearts of motoring journalists around the world; Jeremy Clarkson may not be known for his environmental sympathies, but wrote this week that he would sooner have the...

London’s Olympic velodrome, which was completed and unveiled this week, looks set to be the jewel in the crown of the 2012 Games. Photographs and film footage do not do justice to the dramatic look and feel of the building, designed by Hopkins Architects, a firm best-known for the Mound Stand at Lord’s cricket ground. The £90m London...

Italian designer Moshen Saleh has come up with a canopy for bicycles that inflates when it rains. The idea is that for day-to-day the roof is stowed in a handlebar-mounted binnacle. When it rains the canopy is inflated; a framework of air-filled ribs ensuring it keeps its shape. Sometimes it rains Using a bicycle in the in the rain is an...

It may looks like something from the parts bin at the Segway factory, but the Solowheel is a revolutionary self-balancing electric unicycle the size of a laptop bag. The Solowheel manages to cram gyro-sensors, a 1000-Watt motor and rechargeable Lithium-ion battery within its diminutive 20-inch-diameter outer casing. Foldaway footplates, a...

Toyota has announced that at the Geneva Motor Show next month it will unveil a fully-electric version of its award-winning iQ city car. In comparison to the Nissan Leaf, the super-compact four-seater iQ will have a relatively a modest range of 65 miles, but a compact lithium-ion battery sandwiched beneath the floor will ensure that cabin...

A new type of scooter made from the front end of a BMX and the back end of a skateboard may prove a hit with kids and commuters alike. Unlike many other novelty bicycle/scooter hybrids, the Sbyke has been designed to cater to a specific market. Bart Wilson has a background in motor racing and built the Sbyke for drivers to get around pit...

German adventurers, Dirk Gion and Stefan Simmerer, this week completed a gruelling 18-day, 3,000-mile drive across Australia using a wind-powered car. The Wind Explorer was powered by an electric motor, which was able to recharge its battery overnight using a portable wind turbine, and when conditions allowed, a traction kite similar to...

Electric car buyers planning to reduce their motoring costs should not bank on long-term tax breaks, for while motorists in Britain are able to claim a grant of £5,000 against the retail price of an electric car, pay very little tax on the electricity they use to charge their vehicle and are exempt from VED and many parking and congestions,...

Only 0.1 per cent of prospective car buyers consider the environmental impact of CO2 emissions more important than other factors when choosing a new vehicle. According to a poll carried out by car comparison site, car buzz, of the 1% of respondents who claimed CO2 emissions would be the first thing they looked at, two thirds said this was...