Latest news with #motorindustry
Auto Express
28-05-2025
- Automotive
- Auto Express
Can't find someone to fix your car? It could be down to declining motor apprenticeships
Experts have warned that a decline in the number of young people applying for automotive-related apprenticeships and qualifications could lead to a 'perfect storm' in which drivers may be unable to find a skilled technician to work on their car as the UK's motorparc continues to grow. The latest Automotive Education Report from the Institute of the Motor Industry (IMI) reveals that in the final quarter of 2024, automotive qualifications dipped by four per cent year-on-year. This is at odds with a six per cent rise in the number of vocational technical certifications overall and reflects what the IMI describes as a 'longer-term slowdown' in talent filtering into the sector. Advertisement - Article continues below The slump in the number of qualifications issued has continued into 2025, and the first half of the 2024/25 academic year (September-March) has seen a three per cent overall drop year-on-year in automotive apprenticeship starts. All of this might seem trivial, but the IMI's head of research for careers and inclusion, Emma Carrigy, said: 'With the number of vehicles on UK roads rising, and the number of technicians training to repair and maintain them falling, UK motorists face an increasing risk of being unable to find someone qualified to properly look after their car'. Skip advert Advertisement - Article continues below Carrigy said such a scenario is 'creating a perfect storm for UK road safety'; fewer available technicians means owners are more likely to drive around in damaged and potentially dangerous cars. So what's going on? Well, the IMI says that the main drops in technical qualifications lie in the areas of mechanical, electrical and trim (MET), as well as accident repair. Conversely, the majority of focus now appears to be on EV training, with electric and hybrid car qualifications making up almost half (44 per cent) of certifications in the final three months of last year. That said, the total number of EV qualifications fell by six per cent in 2024 compared with 2023, which is far from ideal when you consider the significant number of new EVs hitting the roads. Garages are now also subject to the recent increase in National Insurance contributions, meaning fewer are able to find the funds to employ more technicians. Things are made even worse by sky-high energy and equipment prices, which ultimately places car maintenance firms under further strain and at the risk of closure. Things could be set to improve, however, because the Government recently announced a shake-up to its funding for training schemes; Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson MP said that there will soon be as many as 120,000 new apprenticeship and training opportunities across all sectors before the next general election – which is crucial, given that IMI figures suggest firms are currently focusing on upskilling existing staff, rather than employing and training new personnel. Our Car Tax Checker tool lets you check your tax status and renewal date in seconds. Check your VED car tax now... Find a car with the experts It's only a matter of time before Jaguar Land Rover builds a factory in the USA It's only a matter of time before Jaguar Land Rover builds a factory in the USA Mike Rutherford thinks Jaguar's 'Reimagine' strategy will result in the company exploring further opportunities in the USA Slow death of the manual car revealed in exclusive new data Slow death of the manual car revealed in exclusive new data There are now very few manual cars available to buy, a trend that's been exacerbated by the rise of EVs Car Deal of the Day: Nissan's X-Trail is a do-it-all seven-seat hybrid SUV for only £235 a month Car Deal of the Day: Nissan's X-Trail is a do-it-all seven-seat hybrid SUV for only £235 a month If the Qashqai is too small for you, then the larger X-Trail is a fine alternative. It's our Deal of the Day for 25 May
Telegraph
24-05-2025
- Automotive
- Telegraph
Electric car fires up 77pc in two years
Electric car fires have increased by 77 per cent over the past two years, new figures have revealed. There were 232 blazes attended by fire brigades last year, up from 131 three years ago, according to the data. Electric car fires are more dangerous than petrol or diesel car fires because they are extremely hard to extinguish. Whereas petrol and diesel fires can be smothered by water, foam or fireproof blankets, lithium-ion battery fires are self-sustaining – meaning they continue to burn until the entire battery is consumed. Such fires are normally the result of 'thermal runaway', where batteries start to irreversibly overheat, usually owing to impact damage, over-charging or over-heating. Despite the risks, the Government has pressed on with its zero emission vehicle mandate, which will see a total ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars by the year 2030. Jonathan Reynolds, the Business Secretary, refused pleas by the motor industry earlier this year to push back the deadline. Earlier this month CCTV footage caught the moment an electric vehicle fire spread to a family's home in Hampshire after bursting into flames at around 5am. While the family managed to escape unhurt, domestic fires involving electric vehicles, electric bike or e-scooter batteries are highly risky. It comes as the number of electric vehicles on British roads jumped from 664,000 to more than 1.3 million in 2024. Adrian Simmonds, the practice leader for property risk solutions at QBE Insurance, which compiled the figures, said: 'Lithium-ion battery fires continue increasing at a worrying pace. 'These fires burn differently, they take longer to tackle, typically need ten times more water to put out and are often more harmful to the surrounding environment. People need to understand the risks and how to deal with them. 'Raising awareness around safe charging, use and disposal of lithium-ion batteries is critical to keeping people and property safe.' Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service said damaged lithium-ion batteries were responsible for the majority of fires. A spokesman added: 'Fundamentally, electric vehicles are extremely safe, but the main danger occurs when the lithium-ion battery is damaged, which might happen if it is exposed to extreme heat or something penetrates the battery cell wall.' It is not just cars affected by the rise of electricity-powered devices. Fires involving e-bikes and their lithium-ion batteries, which are similar to those fitted to electric vehicles, doubled over the same period, rising from 181 to 362. Lesley Rudd, the chief executive of the Electrical Safety First charity, warned: 'Substandard e-bike batteries can cause ferocious fires if they fail, releasing toxic vapour into the home and decimating a room in minutes. 'Whilst reputable manufacturers produce high quality and safe devices, the market is being flooded with substandard versions of e-bike batteries that are destroying homes and putting people at risk.' Richard Field, the London Fire Brigade's deputy assistant commissioner for prevention and protection, added that e-bike fires 'have become one of London's fastest-growing fire risks.' Mr Field said: 'They have destroyed homes and families have sadly lost loved ones in these fires. From our investigations, we know many of the fires we've attended have involved the battery or charger of second-hand e-bikes or e-scooters or the bike has been modified using parts bought online.' A government spokesman said: 'There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that fires in EVs are more likely to occur than in petrol or diesel vehicles. EV fires make up a tiny minority of all vehicle fires, with all models going through rigorous fire and electrical safety testing before they are sold in the UK. 'Meanwhile we take the risk of fires caused by lithium-ion batteries very seriously, including those linked to e-bikes and e-scooters. That's why we are updating product safety law to keep the public safe, and cracking down on those trying to import unsafe products via our borders or ports.'
Daily Mail
22-05-2025
- Automotive
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Government to dump 'Tesla Tax' on new electric cars introduced in April as industry warns it's stifling EV demand
The Government is set to dump its controversial 'Tesla Tax' on new electric cars to help boost sluggish sales, a Labour minister has revealed in a leaked letter seen by MailOnline and This is Money. The present £40,000 price-threshold above which buyers must pay hundreds of pounds more in tax is set to be raised at the next Budget 'to make it easier to buy electric cars,' writes Roads Minister Lilian Greenwood. The controversial 'Expensive Car Supplement' - or ECS - has been levied on new petrol and diesel cars costing more than £40,000 since 2017. However, to make the 'tax system fairer', the ECS has been applied also to new EVs sold after 1 April as part of a broader tax sting on motorists in the latest Budget. This has been blamed for stifling sales and increasing the risk of manufacturers failing to shift battery models in sufficient quantities to meet binding green car sales targets - and potentially face billions of pounds in fines as a result. Motor industry figures have described the ECS and government's disjointed and unrealistic EV plans as 'bananas' and 'a fiasco'. The ECS is an additional premium tax on top of the standard rate of Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) levied on cars from the second year after they are registered. Any car with a recommended retail price above £40,000 is stung by it. The £40,000 threshold has remained unchanged for eight years, despite a dramatic increase in new model prices since. With EVs typically at a premium over their petrol and diesel counterparts, Auto Express recently estimated that it will impact seven in ten new electric cars sold in Britain in 2025. The ECS is applied for five years in addition to the £195 VED standard rate - taking the total annual payout to £620 per year, or £3,100 over the half-decade period. With electric vehicles also subject to the £195 standard rate under the 1 April changes, the cost of driving the greenest models will increase dramatically. But Lilian Greenwood suggests the threshold will be increased for electric cars in the coming months. In response to a letter from Ben Maguire, the Lib Dem MP for North Cornwall, she wrote: 'As announced at Autumn Budget 2024, the Government recognises the disproportionate impact of the current VED Expensive Car Supplement threshold for those purchasing zero emission cars from 1 April 2025. 'We will consider raising the threshold for zero emission cars only at a future fiscal event to make it easier to buy electric cars.' Leading motor dealers said the proposed changes set out in the leaked document would be 'a move in the right direction' to help improve consumer confidence towards buying an EV, but that much more needed to be done to stimulate a sluggish electric car market. Current government policy could lead to 'rationing' of petrol car availability to inflate EV registrations to meet current 'unrealistic' sales targets. Robert Forrester, chief executive of leading top-six UK car dealer group Vertu, which has 200 showrooms covering 34 major car brands, told us: 'It's a start. But it only takes us part of the way.' He agreed the direction of travel towards increased electric car usage was correct, but that the 'unrealistic imposed targets' and timetable and 'pernicious penalties' for failing to meet them risked doing more harm than good. 'Retail customers were failing to buy EVs in the numbers needed to make a difference,' he said. 'This is down to a variety of factors, including cost, lack of incentives, lack of a public charging infrastructure which was 'a mess'. 'People living in cities without their own driveway and being charged 85p per Kilowatt for public charging will not make the switch,' he said. Vauxhall recently responded to the luxury tax by updating its price lists to ensure every one of its electric cars sits below he £40,000 threshold. Both the Grandland Ultimate and Astra ST Ultimate EVs have had their RRPs adjusted to £39,995 EV sales targets 'unrealistic' and 'won't ever be met' Forrester explained the Government would need to totally revise its Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate setting out strict and ever-increasing targets for what proportion of cars sold each year must be electric. Under the mandate, 22 per cent of new car sales last year had to be EVs. A target every mainstream maker reportedly achieved. However, this year, the target has been ratcheted up to 28 per cent and then on to 33 per cent in 2026, until hitting 80 per cent in 2030 and 100 per cent by 2035. Mr Forrester said that even with the recent tweaks the mandate is 'an absolute fiasco'. He added: 'The targets will never be met. There's no chance of hitting 28 per cent this year. 'There's no doubt we will all be driving electric vehicles in the future. But the pace of change – the timetable - is unrealistic. This is just bananas. These targets are never going to be hit.' He said that only 10 per cent of cars sold to retail customers were EVs. That compares to 30 per cent for company fleets. The current strategy risked hurting both the Government's green ambitions and the UK car market, he said. Following a review, the Government recently relaxed some of the rules around its electric car policy. Although the 2030 ban on pure petrol and diesel cars remains in place, self-charging hybrid and plug-in hybrid cars will continue to be allowed until 2035. Manufacturers have also been give some 'flexibility' on hitting controversial ZEV Mandate targets, with penalties for failing to hit them reduced from £15,000 to £12,000. Vertu noted bluntly: 'The appetite for electric cars is not yet sufficient to deliver the government's targets.' Last year, of the 1.9million new cars were delivered, 382,000 were electric. Based on a similar total volume of registrations, to meet this year's target would require 532,000 EVs to be sold. 'If last year's mix was repeated this year, the shortfall of 150,000 EVs would result in fines of £1.8billion,' the Vertu boss said. The Society of Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) has already revealed car firms selling EVs at a discounted loss – just to avoid fines – cost the industry more than £4.2billion. In the leaked letter, Greenwood said: 'We are confident that our decisions [to retain the ZEV manfdate] will protect jobs and give certainty for future investment. In areas such as charging infrastructure. 'There is no reduction in the government's ambition to decarbonise cars and vans.' Thousands of EV owners cheated April car tax rules According to new figures released by the DVLA this week, EV owners in the UK saved a potential £37.7million by renewing their VED before the Government's new car tax regulations came into effect on 1 April 2025. As we suggested to existing electric car drivers, by renewing their car tax for free before the end of March, they could delay the £195 standard rate of VED due to be levied on their EVs for an entire year. And thousands did just that. In response to a Freedom of Information request submitted by online car sales platform Cinch, the DVLA said tax was renewed for 244,598 electric cars across the UK in March. This was a 1,467 per cent increase compared to the 15,614 renewals in the same month a year earlier. Sam Sheehan, motoring editor at Cinch, said: 'Such a big increase in renewals shows just how many EV drivers might have got themselves another year of tax-free motoring, and who wouldn't want to save £195 if they had the chance?'
The Herald
10-05-2025
- Automotive
- The Herald
City with a rich motor industry history
Legend has it that the birth of the nation's motor industry — and mainstay of the Eastern Cape economy for close to 90 years — took place in a boardroom at the world's automotive powerhouse of the time, the US city of Detroit. Henry Ford a nd his board were considering expansion of their industrial empire. Ford a utomobiles were already being exported to and sold in SA. 'Ford wanted to increase sales in the wealthy nation at the tip of Africa, so called for a map of Africa,' motor industry old-timers often recalled. The way to do this, Ford decided, was to start building cars in the south of the massive continent. He stuck the map on the wall, studied it and pointed to a tiny southern spot next to the Indian Ocean,' ex-Ford employee and late motoring journalist Bob Kernohan said. Ford was then known to have said: 'This place called Port Elizabeth [Gqeberha] looks pretty good. 'It's a port and it's sort of halfway between Cape Town and Durban and we can send the cars upcountry to the goldfields of Johannesburg.' And so the decision was made. Ford es tablished its first local plant in the heart of Port Elizabeth in 1923. In fact, the city's rich motor industry history goes way back to 1896 when the first car was imported to SA, a two-seater Benz Velo. The car was shipped to Port Elizabeth and then transported to Pretoria to John Percy Hess, who became the sole agent for Benz Motors in SA. The cars which rolled off the GM production lines included Holden Cadillac, La Salle, Oldsmobile, Buick, Chevrolet cars and trucks, GMC and Bedford trucks, Opel, Vauxhall and Isuzu bakkies and trucks. Also in later years GMSA produced Suzuki ST 90 and SJ 410 vehicles and the iconic Hummer. Volkswagen started operations in April 1951, when the first fully-assembled Volkswagen was sent from the company's Wolfsburg factory to SA Motor Assemblers and Distributors (Samad). The first locally assembled Volkswagen was driven off the production line in Uitenhage (Kariega) in August 1951. But before that, a franchise agreement was signed in 1946 between the SA company Industrial and Commercial Holdings and the Studebaker Export Corporation for the local assembly of Studebaker cars and commercial vehicles. Samad was launched as a public company with an initial authorised share capital of R1m. In November 1948, the first Studebaker (a commercial vehicle) rolled off the production line. And a year later, in June 1949, Samad entered into an agreement with Austin Motors of England to assemble Austin vehicles in Uitenhage. In February 1950, the first Austin left the production line. Troubled times in the eighties saw Ford close plants and General Motors US selling to local directors. The Delta Motor Corporation was formed and traded till GM returned in 2004. At various times, the city was home to the manufacture of Citroëns from France and Land Rovers from the UK. As pointed out by the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber, Volkswagen Group Africa and Isuzu Motors South Africa today serve as the anchor original equipment manufacturers in the metro, coupled with a number of semi-knocked-down assemblers. Apart from the assembly of motor vehicles, the Bay is home to other industries which provide parts to vehicle manufacturers. * The above excerpts are from an article published in The Herald in July 2020. The Herald
