Life After Brexit: What Happens Now?

Britain says it doesn’t want to be part of the European Union anymore. Voters in the so-called Brexit referendum yesterday voted to say tootle-oo to the EU. What does that mean for the British automotive industry? Actually, there is no British automotive industry any more. All the major brands that used to define the English motorcar business are now owned by foreign companies.

Volkswagen owns Bentley. BMW owns Rolls Royce and MINI. Jaguar and Land Rover are owned by Tata Motors of India. The company that makes those iconic black taxis roaming the streets of London is Chinese. An investment firm from Kuwait is a major investor in Aston Martin. Even MG, the company that started the sports car revolution in the United States after World War II, is now under Chinese ownership.

Part of the reason for the Common Market idea that grew into the European Union was a desire to promote trade between the countries of Europe by eliminating import tariffs. What happens now is anyone’s guess, but the stock markets are not looking kindly on the future. The Dow is down over 500 points as I write this.

Many Asian car makers have built factories in England specifically for export. More than two thirds of the cars built by Nissan, Toyota, and Honda in England are exported to European countries. England is Germany’s largest trading partner. More than half of the new cars sold in England every year are made there.

With uncertainty now the dominant mood of the day, “We don’t have any choice but to be more cautious with our investment decisions, including moves like whether to produce a new or significantly redesigned vehicle model in the UK,” said one Asian automaker executive with manufacturing capacity in Britain, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Automakers are calling for tariff-free trade to be maintained between Britain and the EU.  But European nations may not be inclined to allow British-made goods to enter their markets duty free after England has given them all the proverbial finger. If you want out, that means you’re out, doesn’t it?  If you take your ball and go home, can you really expect the other kids to play with you?

Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche said he did not expect any impact the fortunes of Mercedes Benz. But he said in an e-mail, “This is not a good day for Europe and in my view, certainly not for the UK. Geographically, the country may be an island; politically and economically, it is not. It is now even more essential that Europe does not continue to drift further apart.”

England may have cut off its nose to spite its face, as my old Irish grandmother was fond of saying. Industry analyst Evercore now expects the British car industry to suffer a 7% contraction compared to the 3% growth it had been forecasting previously. That 10% swing will deprive the UK of billions of dollars worth of economic activity, something that British voters are apparently quite comfortable with.

Much of England’s displeasure with the EU stems from years of  having regulations crafted in Brussels crammed down its throat. Similar concerns are a factor in political discord around the globe as people begin to finally realize that all the lovely free trade agreements they entered into over the past decades come with a loss of sovereignty over their own affairs. That is certainly a factor in the widespread opposition to the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership.

There is a feeling that those treaties may have done wonders for the income of CEOs but little for ordinary people.  In the US, real wages have not kept pace with inflation for the past 30 years while executive compensation has exploded. British voters have said enough is enough. But have they carefully thought out the consequences of their decision? Free trade agreements may have undesirable side effects, yet unwinding the economic and social ties between England and its neighbors is going to be a long and painful process.

Perhaps today the people of England would be wise to consider the words of the Zen master: “Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.”

Source: Automotive News

England Lake District Rents Electric Cars Painted To Look Like Sheep

The tourism boffins in England’s Lake District want to make electric cars available to visitors so they can motor around in silence without creating carbon emissions. But these cars don’t look like just any electric cars. They are painted to look like the sheep that dot the countryside. If you have ever traveled to the hinterlands of Jollye Olde Englande, your strongest memory will probably involve being surrounded by sheep. Lots of sheep. Sheep as far as the eye can see.

There are about 10 sheep for every person in western England, out where the towns have names like Bowness-on-Windermere, Broughton Mills and High Newton. The County Council has selected the Renault Twizy for the job of making tourists feel comfortable doing what tourists do. The quirky little cars have a maximum speed of 50 mph. They can go up to 40 miles on a charge, which is enough to meander over to Ambleside, Penrith or Keswick for a pint and still get home without plugging in.

The council has arranged for 10 of the electric cars to be on hand for visitors. They rent for £10 an hour, £25 for a half day, or £45 for a full day. The pound is worth about $1.50 these days, so just multiply all of those amounts by 1.5 times. The hope is that people will leave their regular cars at home and take the train to the Lake District. That way, they won’t be spewing out carbon emissions all the way from Charring Cross.

“It damages the environment if there’s lots of cars on the road, it’s not a nice place to drive around if you’re sitting in queues of traffic,” says Nicola Parker of the Cumbria County Council. “The Twizy provides a low emissions, sustainable way of travelling around the area. They’re completely silent, it’s peaceful, you can explore the nooks and crannies of the Lake District in a fun and quirky way.”

How quirky? The shepherds in the area use an archaic system to count their sheep. Instead of one, two, three, they say yan, tyan, tethera. So the ten Twizies are named accordingly: yan, tyan, tethera, methera, pip, sethera, lethera, hovera, dovera and dec. Quirky you want? Quirky you got!

“A lot of people, they might just use it as a form of transport because we get a lot of motor homes that don’t bring vehicles and they kind of feel like they’re stuck here but if they have these to hire they can kind of get out and about,” Sarah Lightburn of Watermillock tells ITV News. “They’ve basically just been couples because they’re two seaters and they’ve just been kind of travelling around Glenridding and other places, which are tourist attractions really.”

If you’re in Cumbria County any time soon, be sure to rent one of these adorable electric cars. What better way to see sheep than from a sheep car, especially if you only have yan, tyan, or tethera hours available?

London Getting 50 More Electric Buses, Bringing Total To 51

In China, some cities have ordered thousands of electric buses. Unfortunately, most cities around the world haven’t even tested out one yet. But the ones that have been piloting them have generally found out that they work well and can cut air and noise pollution while costing the same as a diesel bus on a lifetime basis.

London has run a pilot project with a BYD electric bus, and things turned out well enough that it just decided to order 50 more. The 50 electric buses will be the only buses running on two Transport for London (TfL) lines — the 507 and 521. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the buses won’t start running until fall of 2016.

Go Ahead won the contract and will decide in the end which electric buses to use (top contenders are certainly BYD and Proterra).

Of course, this is just the beginning. “By 2020 all 300 single deck buses operating in central London will be zero emission (either electric or hydrogen) and all 3,000 double deck buses will be hybrid,” TfL writes.

“Today’s announcement follows the introduction of the first of two new electric buses, manufactured by Spanish company Irizar, into passenger service earlier this week. At a Global Clean Bus Summit hosted by City Hall in June, Mayor of London Boris Johnson also announced a world-first trial of a purpose built pure electric double deck bus that will begin in October.” So I guess Irizar is a contender, too.

“The Ultra Low Emission Zone that will be introduced in 2020 is the most ambitious measure of its kind taken to tackle air pollution anywhere in the world, and it will transform our bus fleet into a cleaner, greener and more pleasant way of travelling for Londoners,” Deputy Mayor of London for Environment and Energy, Matthew Pencharz, said.

Kudos to London.

2015 Zenos E10 S review

No other country on earth props up a national car-building cottage industry with the enthusiasm of England. Beneath the larger firms you’ve definitely heard of - Caterham, Ariel, Lotus - there are dozens more tinkering and imagining and kit-creating in an oil-stained niche of splendidness. Few, though, threaten to break the big time.

Zenos is different. Its story we’ve told elsewhere, but the bare bones are that it was started by old hands and known faces, both well weathered from years of toil in Surrey and Norfolk. Crucially, they began with a clear vision and concrete bottom line. The E10, in its more powerful S guise here, is what has popped out 24 months down the line.

Built around an innovative ‘backbone’ of aluminum - with a carbon-composite tub and an extruded rear subframe to house the engine - the car is a mid-engined, rear-driven and track-enabled but also road-focused two-seater. There are no doors and there is no roof. So we’re talking strictly second car, summer fun adventure here. But we’re talking a lot of it, with power coming from Ford’s 250bhp 2.0-litre Ecoboost unit.

We’ve already had an introduction to the E10 on circuit, in prototype format. Now, with the model moving into the manufacturing stage, we get a chance to try it out on the road for the first time - which is where Zenos expects the majority of its customers to spend most of their time. Served up without race dampers but with the optional six-speed manual gearbox (over the standard five-speed), uprated brakes and heated windscreen, the car is very much as the initial 100 or so buyers have reportedly chosen to spec it, too. 

What's it like?: 

Important to characterise the car’s innards first, because - rather pointedly - they’re quite unlike anything else currently on offer at this price bracket. Where the Elise is all extruded aluminum and sharp edges, an Atom scaffolding and a Caterham the 1950s, Zenos has moulded a thermoplastic tub of clever angles and miniature TV screens. Not only does it feel like something born in this decade but it also fits together with the kind of harmony that suggests it was considered integral to the car’s appeal from the outset rather than merely somewhere to sit and steer. 

No, it’s not put together with a McLaren’s tolerances, and there’s a bathtub flex to some of the panels, but that’s to be expected. Likewise the parts-bin gear lever and indicator stalks. But the driving position is near perfect. The readout in front shows revs, speed and gear - so all you’ll ever need, then. Crucially, the right arm - cramped in an Elise; virtually the crumple zone in a Seven - slots onto the windowless sill with an at-homeness normally the preserve of a Range Rover. 

The ergonomic finesse is no coincidence. Despite an obvious lack of shelter overhead, Zenos has sought a tremendous degree of usability from the E10. As standard, the car comes with an aeroscreen, but the full windscreen seen here was conceived very early in the design stage and therefore tallies perfectly with the styling. It also affords a decent amount of protection: there is wind in your hair, but not of the teeth-shattering potential you’d equate with a doorless Caterham. 

There is noise, however. A huge amount of it. While Zenos may have (sensibly) left the engine tune alone, the Ecoboost’s turbocharger has been rendered a gulping, hissing, Group B-emulating monster. And because Ford has it come online so early, even gentle throttle inputs will have it sucking the oxygen from beneath your eardrums. In a helmet, it’s a phenomenal soundtrack. Without a buffer, it’s just phenomenal - although your drowned-out significant other may conjure up a different adjective. 

The noise, of course, signals the E10's defining party trick: an almost lag-free industrial bungee rope of torque. The S has a torque-to-weight ratio well in excess of that of a Porsche 911 Turbo. However, the thing to get all incredulous and giddy about is the way that this manifests at the back axle. The mechanical grip and traction levels summoned up by the chassis (and some sticky Avons) is startling. In the good weather we were afforded, on the public road, the quality of adhesion makes full throttle exploits endlessly manageable. 

That confidence is crucial because, with speed limits restricting the amount of pace you can legitimately carry, fierce acceleration is second only to handling on a featherweight wish list. Happily, the E10 has the latter covered, too. The steering, a massive wrist-straining effort at low speeds, is more Caterham than Lotus - and although not quite as quick as the former, I’d take the Zenos's communicative and very direct brand of heft over the latter. 

Conceivably, the unassisted connection to such a surfeit of grip may have rendered the car a little too benign on the road, but the sense of supreme balance - the mass at the midriff, you rotating around it - is unmistakable in something 150kg lighter than an Elise. It’s a more elemental experience, too, that early whiff of understeer and subsequent straightener tweak of oversteer being more pronounced - if short of the kind of kart-like adjustability you get from an Atom. 

Comfort-wise, it doesn’t quite manage the counter-intuitive, magic carpet ride you’d get from the Lotus. But on its more congenial street dampers, the E10 S manages to be something engagingly in between its mid-engined rivals. And you rather feel that’s the point. Attached to the supreme tractability of the engine, and the mass-produced simplicity of its six-speed gearbox, the car’s resistance to intrusive bumps and wayward tracking makes it equally capable of something approaching mellow. With ear plugs, that is.

Should I buy one?: 

Zenos, in just two years of fettling from clean piece of paper to production model, has landed its first go with laser-guided accuracy. At the one end this is the Lotus rival we imagined; born of Norfolk, by people imbibed in the same culture, meaning it rides well enough for its owner to consume mile after mile, and steers well enough to remain totally engaging while doing so. 

But, equally, it feels as though those same people have been free to express themselves in the wider experience. Ideas that have clearly been percolating for years have been brought to bear. It therefore aims slightly away from the Elise, at a patch of open market space begging to be filled with something supremely fast, usable, exploitable and, crucially, affordable. It may very well be the English sports car hundreds of us have been waiting for. 

Zenos E10 S 

Location Bedford; On sale Now; Price £29,995; Engine 4 cyls, 1999cc, turbocharged, petrol; Power 250bhp at 7000rpm;Torque 295lb ft at 2500rpm; Gearbox 6-spd manual; Kerb weight725kg; Top speed 145mph; 0 60mph 4.0sec; Economy na; CO2 and tax band rating na

British Politicians Aim To Ban Non-Hybrid Cars By 2040

While some American politicians may take issue with the government’s investment in green automobiles, it pales in comparison to the debates taking place in England. There, the Liberal Democrats have proposed a bill that would outlaw all non-hybrid cars from English roads by 2040. It sounds insane, but stranger things have happened.

The Liberal Democrats are the third largest of the three ruling parties in the English parliament, though they hold just 55 out of 650 seats in the House of Commons. They’ve never run the country, though not for a lack of trying, and they are really, really big into the “green” economy. Unfortunately, their ideas usually seem to lack important details, including their recent white paper, “Green Growth and Green Jobs – Transition To A Zero Carbon Britain.”

Ambitious but left with a lot of blanks to fill, one of the key components of the Liberal Dems Britain of the future is eliminating all but ultra-low emissions non-freight vehicles from British roads. That would mean only hybrids, electric cars, or super-efficient diesels would be allowed to drive British streets.

While 2040 is a long way away, this is not the law an industry can adapt to without serious government support. Such a plan would also all but eliminate high-end automobile sales, which would struggle to deliver Prius-like emissions from a Ferrari-esque car. And what of all the classic cars, or older models still on the road? Will these people be banned from driving?

Then again, this is the country that brought us the much-maligned London congestion charge, a costly-but-effective way of reducing traffic and pollution in heavily-trafficked areas. Beijing and Paris are among the other cities working to ban or limit car use in urban areas as concerns about air pollution and quality-of-life supercede the need for automobiles.

The world needs decisive action and creative solutions to combat climate change, don’t get me wrong. But such a policy seems exclusive and poorly considered, and would probably do more to hinder Britain’s economy growth than to aid it. Some automakers could pull out of the English market altogether, and the market for new cars would probably tank.

The Liberal Dems will have to do better than that.

Source: Green Car Reports