Industry News | Motoring News Ireland

POWERING OFF

Base government policy arguably exposed in prominent relief

A few weeks ago, here at CBG HQ, we wondered aloud about motor taxation, the diesel engine and the government incentives of the future. Unfortunately there are so, so many areas where they (the irish govt) are simply reactive – and so, so fail us: everything long-fingered or buried within tribunals, a series of bottom line decisions versus lowest common denominators. Meh: just deleted an entire paragraph on the HSE, Leo V, homeless

GOLD LEAF IS NEW STANDARD

They electrified us once before (with the 280ZX!); but this new e-Leaf is shockingly “i-smart”:

One could be forgiven for looking down at the old Nissan Leaf – slightly dowdy with a possibly frumpy owner, off to walk the dog or lose the ‘’vehicle’’ in the local shopping mall car park. This new electric Nissan Leaf, though, is an entirely diffident proposition to its predecessors: it would even lend Germaine Greer some street cred (as if she needs it)! Som

FLY ME TO THE MOON

This major Tesla shareholder is getting restless:

Sometimes-maligned electric car manufacturer Tesla have announced immediate plans to lay off 9% of their workforce – just over 4000 units, then. For some stock marketeers, it is a sign of what they have been saying all along – Elon Musk’s endeavours are pie in the sky. Indeed there was a brief tumble in the share price; although it stabilised not least because of Musk’s announcement 24hrs later that he was buying a further

IRISH SOLUTIONS TO IRISH PROBLEMS

Our NTA are in the news, having announced plans for 16 "quality’’ bus corridors in the capital city.

The National Transport Authority’s (NTA) ‘Bus Connects’ revealed the SCHEME last month – which include the removal of footpaths and front gardens for almost 1300 homes across Dublin. No doubt certain legal beagles will be looking forward to years of battling compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) and the respective fees garnered, given their respective experiences in

KLIPPITY KL-OPEL

Jurgen Klopp with his twin brother Klippety (pictured, left) 

The new owners of Opel (and Vauxhall) PSA, have announced several key decisions in an attempt to move the company back into profitability. One bold step is the intention to have electric or plug in hybrid options for all of their range by 2024, all to be built on two highly adaptable platforms. A new engine range is also being developed at their Russelheim HQ – all of the aforementioned in conjunction with last year’s

GERMAN MONOPOLY?

(pictured: maintaining Dublin Bus diesel engines was always a headache)

We are all familiar with the ‘’Volkswagen diesel emission scandal’’ and the huge multimillion pound, euro and dollar fines that put such a dent in the company’s fortunes, in the EU, the UK and the United States. At the time several shrewdies made the simple point that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Now it seems they were right: last month the German government ordered Mercedes to recall alm

DIM DIESEL

Cities across Europe have banned certain diesel engines, including Copenhagen and Paris (pictured)

Ireland’s government-incentivised love affair with the turbo diesel engine continues. While the motoring public are beginning to look at the alternatives, the tendency to resist change persists even if the writing is on the wall. Take ‘The TRUE initiative’, recently launched by The International Council on Clean Transportation in conjunction with an FIA (the motorsport body!) lobby

TRUMPETWEET, MAY-HEM

Car-nage? With this bust up (left) the answer is probably YES!

IMPOTUS Trump tweeted (on the longest day of the year!) that he was going to slap a 20% tariff on European car imports to the US market – in retaliation to Brussel’s announcing of their intention to tax – amongst other things – US goods such as bourbon (in turn, because of US sanctions against the international steel industry!!). Because of this twit twittering, shares in several European auto manufactures such

New Car Registrations down 9% as Industry turns its focus to 2018

Official statistics released today by the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI) show that new car registrations for the month of November were down -9% (687) when compared to (754) November 2016, with new cars registrations year to date down -10% (131,200) on the same period last year (146,215). Registrations in the new Commercial vehicle sector seen a decrease in the Light Commercial Vehicles (LCV) sector with registrations down -12% (580) on November 2016 (656) and year to date are down

The Average Age of Cars on Irish Roads Falls

Cartell.ie recently put some figures together showing the average age of both original Irish and imported vehicles to Ireland.

The report shows us that between January and November 2017, that the age of privately owned, original Irish vehicles fell by 75 days. The age of vehicles between 1999 and 2017 fell by 112 due to buyers importing newer vehicles. New car registrations 2016 vs. 2017. The average age of original Irish vehicles is 8.62 years with imported vehicles averaging 9.02 years. The ove