The end of railway signal failures? A digital plan points a way
Usually if a man turns up with an angle grinder and starts cutting down signals by a train track, it means disaster: cancelled trains and commuter misery.
Not on Saturday night. Men in steel toe-capped boots arrived and cut down the signals — the traffic lights that control our railway — on a crucial section of line under London.
On Monday the Northern City Line, which is operated by the brand Great Northern, becomes the UK's first railway to operate without signals at the side of the track, preparing for the end of signal failure.
The trains use ETCS, the European train control system, digital signalling that is shown on the dashboard of the cab and allows drivers to 'see around corners'. Unlike a rogue
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Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Children could be banned from spending more than two hours on any one phone app and blocked from social media after 10pm in new anti-doomscrolling measures
The government is considering measures to ban children from spending more than two hours on any one mobile phone app at a time. Technology Secretary Peter Kyle is mulling a move to cap the amount of time per app youngsters can spend on their phone as part of a swathe of measures designed to reduce 'doomscrolling'. The package could also include preventing children from accessing social media apps, such as TikTok or Snapchat, after 10pm and during school hours. 'My approach will nail down some of the safety challenges that people face online, but also start to embrace those measures that deliver a much healthier life for children online,' Mr Kyle told the Mirror. 'That's what I want young people to have, a developmental safe and nourishing childhood online, just as we strive to for young people offline.' He is focused on exploring how curfews and restrictions on accessibility to apps as a starting point and is aware such measures may not solve the problem entirely. The MP for Hove and Portslade has reportedly held discussions with former and current employees of social media sites, who are open to the idea of preventing access to apps at night or during school. They are also said to be willing to restrict how long children can use an app for, by blocking access once they have reached a certain time limit. There have been suggestions this could be up to two hours. However, Mr Kyle has not yet made a decision on what age bracket these changes could apply to, according to The Mirror. He is also reportedly exploring raising the age at which children consent for their personal data to be processed by online sites. This currently applies to youngsters aged 13 and above, although ministers could raise this to 16. Mr Kyle has previously said that he has taken a keen interest in TikTok's recent introduction of various tools to limit screen time. These include a 10pm curfew for under-16s, which features the device screen being taken over and calming music played, although the tool can be dismissed to continue using the app. Another tool, Time Away, allows parents to set specific times that TikTok is available on their teen's devices. Children can request extra time to remain on the app, but their parents must approve it. Mr Kyle said he wanted to see evidence of how these tools are helping young people before implementing anything, but said he was especially interested in anything that will 'empower parents' to control how long their children are spending on social media platforms. Experts have long cited social media as a factor that can disrupt young people's sleep, relationships and socialisation skills. Data from the Millennium Cohort study, published last January, revealed 48 per cent of 16 to 18-year-olds felt they had lost control over how much time they spent online. A team at the University of Cambridge examined data from the study which tracks the lives of 19,000 Britons born in 2000-2002. When those in the cohort were aged between 16 and 18, they were asked about their social media use. The survey revealed 48 per cent of the 7,000 respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement: 'I think I am addicted to social media.' Girls were most affected with 57 per cent agreeing, compared with 37 per cent of boys, according to the data reported by the Guardian.
Auto Express
3 hours ago
- Auto Express
Citroen is plotting a new 2CV – but the risks are huge
Citroen is agonising over whether to bring back the 2CV, the 1940s masterpiece of simplicity that put Europe back on the road after World War II. The recreation of the Renault 5 supermini and Renault 4 hatchback (reinterpreted as an SUV) has got French brand's executives questioning whether to delve into their brand's back catalogue and revive the iconic Citroen 2CV. It's one of the biggest decisions facing new CEO Xavier Chardon – and Auto Express has exclusively spoken to his predecessor Thierry Koskas and head of design Pierre Leclercq to get their views. Reviving the Citroen 2CV – a cheap four-seat car with a long canvas roof, a tiny engine to save fuel and comfortable suspension so it could carry a basket of eggs across a ploughed field – is the subject of intense debate inside Citroen's Paris HQ. And we've waded into the debate by having our illustrator dream up two new takes on the 2CV, one retro, one modern. Citroen's discussions centre on whether that concept of 'four wheels and an umbrella' – set out in the late 1930s – is still highly relevant to car buyers pampered by digital touchscreens, aspiring to premium, assailed by electrification and drowning in choice? And how transferable is the original design to a car that would come out 90 years after its progenitor? Advertisement - Article continues below Skip advert Advertisement - Article continues below 'We have a very, very strong heritage, one of the richest in the car industry,' then-Citroen boss Koskas told us. 'We have the 2CV, the Traction Avant, the DS: amazing cars known all over the world. I absolutely agree that one of the big strengths of European brands is their heritage. 'On the product side, we are not taking it as a general direction to do retro design. But I do not exclude that maybe we study and [have] some exploration, we are open to look at that. But at Citroen you will not see all the future cars reminding you of previous models.' Steeped in his brand's history, the Citroen leader for more than two years is well aware of the 2CV's philosophy, arguing 'something super simple that takes you from A to B, with the necessary room – these ideas can feed us in a great way, because it's very much the DNA of the brand.' But will Citroen go beyond philosophy and recreate the 2CV's look? 'You will have people that value a design that is close to a car they used to love in the past. This is the debate,' explains Koskas. 'But there have been successes and failures in [automotive] revivals. Some fail because [companies] don't position the car properly, they seem retro but aren't really, or customers don't really like the car or recognise their love story. So if we were to do it, we would have to be very, very careful and cautious about how we did it.' Advertisement - Article continues below Skip advert Advertisement - Article continues below The challenge of bringing back the Citroen 2CV poses more problems than Renault faced with the 5. Its chic supermini concept, launched in 1972 and lasting until 1996, remains deeply relevant and its form is still recognisably contemporary – unlike the 2CV's. Up front, those articulated fenders are distinctively pre-World War II, grafted onto a relatively thin, long nose that followed the form of the inline flat-twin engine. It's a form that makes no sense today – especially if the new Citroen 2CV is electric with no engine to package – and would have to meet crash regulations and place round headlamps at the car's extremities. And slavishly following that horseshoe cockpit's silhouette could mean some difficult trade-offs between occupant and boot space: one reason why VW's 1990s Beetle failed was compromised practicality, particularly rear headroom. Big alloy wheels are critical to muscular modern car design so could Citroen return to the 2CV's faired-in rear wheels? We asked the brand's design director Pierre Leclercq, who pointed out historic cars' narrow tracks and inboard wheels ('great car but look at an E-type's!' he urged) are a far cry from contemporary precisely stuffed arches. 'We have them as flush as possible in today's cars and that's much better. It's super important because this gives a stance on the road,' Leclercq told us. 'Let's say we have to do CX or a GS again, we'd have to make a piece of plastic [over the rear wheel] with an offset of maybe 50mm to do [it].' Advertisement - Article continues below Skip advert Advertisement - Article continues below And what's head of design Leclercq's take on the retro design trend? '[Customers like it for] reassurance. I'd like to go back to the past for some projects, it's interesting,' he explained. 'They've done a great job with the Renault 5. Do we want to do it – and as much as they do? It's a good question: why not? Why yes? There's nothing planned, really. But we don't forbid ourselves to try.' Given the Citroen 2CV's design is so of its time and would need dragging into a new millennium, do the risks outweigh the rewards? 'It's a very difficult exercise,' concedes Leclercq. 'You could do a 2CV, you could do an H-type, a CX, we could easily bring back cars from the past. But obviously, the first one coming to everyone's mind is the 2CV, asking 'when do you bring it back?' Mmmm. Let's see.' There's no doubt a team as creative as Leclercq and his designers will have sketches and probably scale models of a reborn Citroen 2CV. Renault's future 5 had already been designed and rejected by a previous management team before the current CEO Luca de Meo arrived in 2020 and green-lit the proposal. Advertisement - Article continues below Skip advert Advertisement - Article continues below But the critical question is whether a new 2CV is retro or a reimagining? Citroen's product planners will be trying to estimate demand for different approaches: could a concept car be a way to test the water, we asked Koskas? 'It could be this is what we want to do,' replied the then-CEO. 'The C5 Aircross concept was a show car, which means you are very close to the series model: it's a good marketing strategy. But our next concept car will show ideas, clues, intentions, directions that will inspire the future cars, but probably means you'll never see a Citroen car like that on the road. As we did with the Citroen Oli concept in 2022.' There are many more considerations than the design. Does Citroen have the budget, design and engineering capacity, or does it need to shelve other projects to accommodate a 2CV? Where would the production car be built? And which car platform and drivetrains would it use? The original Citroen 2CV measured 3.82-metres long and stood 1.6m tall, thanks to its jacked-up height for tackling rough terrain. The new C3 hatch isn't much longer, measuring 4m and 1.57m. That suggests the C3's front-wheel-drive 'smart car' platform could provide a usable base, especially given its clever engineering would help keep costs low, as per the 2CV philosophy. Advertisement - Article continues below Skip advert Advertisement - Article continues below The Stellantis Group underpinnings unlock a choice of pure electric or three-cylinder hybrid petrol power, which would be mounted transversely and drive the front wheels, like the original car. The extra cylinder and packaging a modern car's ancillaries and crash structure would make matching the Citroen 2CV's nose impossible. So could Citroen find inspiration in the reborn Renault 4, a hatchback originally launched in 1961 to steal 2CV customers with its extra speed and sophistication? Although it was 'not a very nice-looking car,' according to Renault Group design director Laurens van den Acker, who was tasked with updating it. What his team has done so effectively is take a few design cues – the rearmost trapezoidal glass panel, tail-light motif, low-set boot and the graphic of the second-generation's grille – and turn them into a cute SUV. It's a stretch, literally: the reborn 4 is almost 50cm longer than the sixties hatch. But the original 4's two-box shape lends itself to an SUV. Could Citroen do the same and reinvent the 2CV as an SUV? Maybe. But at that point is it actually a 2CV at all? The naysayers within Citroen will argue it's a moot point anyway. Because a 21st century 2CV already exists – it's the Citroen C3, Auto Express's Car of the Year 2024. Advertisement - Article continues below Skip advert Advertisement - Article continues below Philosophically it meets the 2CV's brief and remains true to its forebears' values. It's affordable – with the newly announced 34kWh battery, the e-C3 will cost less than £20,000 when it comes on stream in late 2025. It's comfortable: the hydraulic bump stops give it a pillowy ride, although it will struggle to carry a basket of eggs across a ploughed field. And there's clever simplicity, such as the digital driver's binnacle situated at the top of the dash rather than an expensive head-up display projected onto the windscreen. The decision to proceed with a reborn Citroen 2CV is still to be taken. 'When you develop a car, it takes four years,' says Citroen's boss. 'You start the studies and so on, then in the middle you sign a contract when the car is decided, and this is when you can probably start to communicate about the car. We are not at that stage yet.' He agrees the 2CV and new C3 share a philosophy. 'When we talk about daring, comfort, simplicity, affordability, [the C3] is very much in line with what Citroen was in the past,' says Thierry Koskas. But he'll be the first to tell you that today's Citroens are also built on sustainability and daring. The MINI, Fiat 500 and Renault 5 have paved the way. Nothing would be more daring than bringing back the 2CV. Does Citroen dare? And can it possibly win? Over to you, new CEO Xavier Chardon. Are there any classic cars you would like to see receive a modern-day remake? Let us know in the comments section below... View C3 View C3 View C3 Find a car with the experts New Kia Sportage breaks cover and it's sleeker than ever New Kia Sportage breaks cover and it's sleeker than ever Full specification and details have been announced for the UK version of Kia's big-selling mid-size SUV Car Deal of the Day: get a big Nissan Qashqai for less than a little Nissan Juke Car Deal of the Day: get a big Nissan Qashqai for less than a little Nissan Juke The Nissan Qashqai is a top choice among Brits, and it's easy to see why with offers like this. It's our Deal of the Day for 4 June Nissan Qashqai alternatives: cars you could buy instead of Nissan's big-selling SUV Nissan Qashqai alternatives: cars you could buy instead of Nissan's big-selling SUV The Nissan Qashqai has been a hit since the first generation launched in 2006, but if it's not quite your cup of tea, we've rounded up the best of the… Best cars & vans 3 Jun 2025
The Sun
3 hours ago
- The Sun
Nine cars confirmed for discontinuation in 2025 – including two iconic sports cars & beloved hot hatchback
WE'RE almost at the halfway point of 2025 in what's been a whirlwind six months or so in the motoring world. The UK is in the midst of a transition to electric vehicles which comes with new regulations and economic pressures, while the industry continues to adapt to changing consumer behaviour. Elsewhere, the Ford Puma remains the nation's favourite motor while Tesla's favouritism begins to dip, and Nissan's problems are going from bad to worse. We've also had some exciting car releases, from the Alpine A290 hot hatchback and Dacia Bigster SUV, through to the outrageous Aston Martin Valhalla. We've also learned of the demise of some of our favourite models - ready to drive off into the sunset. Here are some of the biggest nameplates reaching the end of their production runs that have been announced this year. Lexus LS 7 After some 35 years on sale, the ultra-luxury Lexus LS saloon has finally reached the end of the road after a sustained period of poor sales. Once described as a game-changer when it hit dealerships in 1990, the LS helped establish Toyota's plush sub-brand as a challenger to the elite carmakers of Europe and America. Marketed with a cheaper starting price, four further generations followed, with the final one, the LS 500, launching in 2017 before it was updated in 2020. Before it was removed, the LS range's price tag began at £101,000, rising to £128,000 for the Takumi version. However, just 39 of the hybrid V6-powered saloons have been purchased since 2020, of which just three were sold last year, so it seems the writing was very much on the wall. Mazda2 7 After 10 years on sale, Mazda confirmed back in February that its Mazda2 supermini can no longer be ordered. A brief history of the Mazda MX-5 Often praised for being fun to drive, the petrol-powered and mild-hybrid versions of the hatchback have seemingly been replaced by the Mazda2 Hybrid - essentially a rebadged Toyota Yaris. Mazda did not explain why the vehicle was cancelled, but a spokesperson told Autocar: "As we move towards increased electrification of our cars, the Mazda 2 Hybrid meets consumer demand in the B-segment and is a step in our journey to ensure all our cars have some form of electrification by 2030." Mazda MX-30 7 Mazda also called time on the MX-30 - its first and only electric car - after just a four-year run. Criticised throughout its existence for its limited range and cramped cabin, the subcompact crossover SUV - offered as an EV or plug-in hybrid - was launched in the UK in 2021, with a view of taking on the likes of the Kia Soul EV and Peugeot e-2008. But it was never a popular choice among drivers, largely because of its modest range of just 124 miles. This was down to its smaller battery size, which was chosen to reduce the car's weight - and while this improved its handling and lowered its CO2 emissions during production, it also resulted in persistent range anxiety among drivers. While the fully electric MX-30 has been axed, the plug-in hybrid version remains on sale in the UK. Porsche Boxster/Cayman 7 Porsche has officially announced the long-anticipated news that production of the petrol-powered 718 Boxster and 718 Cayman will come to an end. While no replacement for the iconic models has been announced, it's assumed an electric counterpart will eventually be released - though details remain scarce and no release date has been confirmed. For now, production is scheduled to continue until October 2025, including for the UK market. Frank Wiesmann, product communications manager for Porsche Cars North America, recently told Road & Track: 'Production for all current 718 Boxster and 718 Cayman variants, including RS models, is scheduled to end in October of this year.' In Europe, sales of the 718 Boxster and Cayman stopped in summer 2024 due to new EU cybersecurity regulations - although the UK market remained unaffected by these EU rules post-Brexit. This led to Porsche's head of production, Albrecht Reimold, confirming in an interview with Automobilwoche that the petrol-powered 718 models will end production globally by October 2025, except in markets already affected by the EU regulations. Nissan GT-R We're cheating here a little, because in the UK, the mighty Nissan GT-R has been unavailable to buy for a little while now. The GT-R R35 was first unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show in 2007 before being updated and facelifted many times, most recently in 2023. However, in February, Nissan announced production of the iconic motor was to end in Japan - meaning it had lost its final market. Nissan had already discontinued deliveries of the R35 in Europe and the UK in March 2022, while Australia and New Zealand lost them even longer ago in October 2021. North America was the second-last to fall, with production wrapping up there in October last year. Furthermore, with Nissan facing financial difficulties recently, plans to have the GT-R's successor be a fully electric model could be derailed. Audi A1 & Q2 7 We were stunned back in March when Audi revealed they were axing the incredibly popular A1 and Q2 models next year. Both cars, which are big sellers for the German brand - especially the A1 hatchback - are also the two cheapest among their range, but they have now reached the end of the road with Audi ready to launch a new entry-level electric car as an indirect replacement. Claimed to sit beneath the top selling Audi Q4 e-tron, the upcoming EV will serve as an alternative to the A3 hatchback and Q3 crossover. Gernot Dollner, Audi's CEO, revealed they "will end production of the A1 and Q2" in 2026 and that "there definitely will be no successor for the A1." He added the brand 'will have models in the lower A-segment" and that 'we will also see the car that will enter production next year in Ingolstadt, which will be our entry BEV in the A-segment". Ford Focus ST After 23 years, the Ford Focus ST has been taken off sale in the UK - with production of the hot hatchback set to officially end in November. The Focus ST had been open for orders as recently as April, but has seemingly disappeared from dealer price lists in an update issued on May 26. Many of the other variants of the Focus are still available to order, but the ST is no longer one of those - as clicking on the Ford UK's configurer leads to a dead end. Later confirmed by Ford UK to Autocar, there is - at the time of writing - still stock parked up in dealerships across the country. In a statement, the Blue Oval said: 'There are no new factory orders available for the Focus ST at the moment, but there are around 170 built and unsold currently available within the UK dealer network. 'This includes 30 of the special ST Edition variant in Azura Blue.' Better get in fast.
