Ferrari Driving Experience

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Riversimple the Open Source Hydrogen car

With the worlds motoring manufacturers all feeling the pinch it may be unrealistic in these hard times to expect them to come up with new technologies to wean us off oil. Development costs for new vehicles are huge and no doubt the petrochemical companies would prefer it if every drop of oil was pumped from beneath the earths crust before mankind looks towards a cleaner, greener solution. So the launch on the 16th June at Somerset House in London of the Riversimple hydrogen car may just be the kick start this burgeoning technology needs.

On the face of it, this could be seen as just another prototype. A prototype launched with a huge fanfare that will, as many others have in the past, fade into oblivion after the party has ended. The major difference with the Riversimple however, is that the engineering designs will be given to the 40 Fires foundation, a non-profit organisation that will make the designs "open source". Meaning that anyone with the wherewithal will be able to build and possibly improve on the designs, feeding the information gleaned back to the 40 Fires foundation, which in turn will update the designs. Dramatically cutting back on development costs for individual companies and as a result moving the car from prototype to localised production.

The other problem facing the Riversimple is the hydrogen refuelling infrastructure, as obviously at the moment it just doesn’t exist. Their approach to this dilemma will be to hopefully get a forward thinking small UK city to install a hydrogen hub that will service around fifty vehicles – vehicles that will be leased to individuals with both fuel and repair costs included for around £200 per month. Further towns around the city could then be joined to the hub, allowing a gradual growth of filling stations to spread. A partnership with BOC gases has already been agreed to install the hydrogen stations in the chosen city where the prototype launch will be made.

The car itself was developed in Oxfordshire by the entrepreneur Hugo Spowers with the help of Oxford and Cranfield universities. Weighing only 350 kgs, the Riversimple is powered by a fuel cell rated at a measly six kilowatts, however, because it weighs so little, the Riversimple can travel at speeds of up to fifty miles per hour and has a range of around two hundred miles, fuel efficiency equivalent to three hundred miles per gallon. All achieved because the Riversimple has been designed from scratch, rather than taking an existing design and then trying to shoehorn the technology into it. The result, well to wheel emissions of around 30 g/km as compared to the lowest oil powered cars of around 121 g/km, which will be seen by many as a massive leap forward.

Although the company needs to line up further funding to continue testing the car, Spowers believes the concept could be available as early as 2013 and was quoted on CNN as saying "I’m absolutely convinced that we’re offering a better solution for a segment of the transport problem and we’d be crazy not to pursue it."

Will the Riversimple become a familiar sight on our highways and byways? Only time will tell. One thing is for sure though, motor manufacturers worldwide will be keeping a close eye on their success, or failure.

Scrappage – The Best Time Ever to Buy a New Car

With the government Scrappage scheme now in full swing, has there ever been a better time to buy a new car? So long as your old banger qualifies, you can get £2,000 off your next new car when you trade in your old one. Hold on though, dig a little deeper and you may find that you can save a lot more than the governments offering.

Leading up to the announcement of the scheme many manufacturers were already suffering in this economic downturn and as a result it was possible to achieve discounts on new cars well in excess of the two thousand pounds now being offered. The result? Not all manufacturers are treating the Scrappage scheme exactly the same. Some are topping up existing bonuses, some are offering the straight two thousand off list price, but others are offering existing bonuses and the £2,000 on top and that is where the bargains are to be had.

As with other Scrappage schemes that have been running in other countries for a while now, the majority of interest seems to have been generated around small cars. Cars such as the Citron C1, small, economical and cheap, with a list price of £7,945, the C1 looks a great deal when you knock off the £2,000, do your research though and you may be able to knock off a further four hundred pounds or so. Then it really is a bargain.

For those who need something a little larger, both Vauxhall and Renault are also participating in the Scrappage scheme and both manufacturers are offering well in excess of the two thousand pounds just about across the range of their vehicles. In fact on some of their larger family cars it is not uncommon to find savings well above five thousand pounds.

It doesn’t stop at the lower or medium ends of the market either. Even some of the luxury manufacturers have signed up to the scheme. Forget two thousand pounds off an Audi A3, with a little homework you should be able to get a lot closer to three thousand off even their most basic model and as the list prices rise, so do the savings.

So for the fortunate few who are looking to change their car in the next year and they have a vehicle that qualifies for the Scrappage scheme, do your homework and this may truly be the best time ever to buy a new car.

New Car Scrappage UK Website Launched

With the car scrappage scheme in the UK now in full swing, Broker4cars are pleased to announce the launch of www.car-scrappage-uk.com. This dedicated website aims to show the best deals on offer from UK franchised dealers when the customer wants to take advantage of the Scrappage Scheme.

The scheme announced by Alistair Darling in the budget is designed to stimulate new car sales, sales that have been declining over the past year. Cars over ten years old are eligible for the scheme although certain conditions do apply.

Sales Director Gary Bain said “Many dealerships are only offering two thousand pounds off the list price of a new car, at first glance this may seem like a good deal. Dig deeper however and you may well find much better deals out there, that’s why we decided to launch a new website that just deals with the scrappage scheme. In many cases you will find savings well in excess of the £2,000 being offered by the government. Savings that we are pleased to pass on to our customers.”

With monies allocated for only 300,000 new cars, the scrappage scheme will be implemented on a strictly first come, first served basis. So for a lucky few this may well be the best time to buy a new car.

£5000 off Your Next Nuclear Car in the UK

It’s the way forward – and we’re not talking about garlic bread here – it’s the electric car. Governments throughout the world have suddenly seen the light. Elastic trickery will whoosh us around the planet, silently, cleanly. The meadows will be greener, the polar bears will build new ice shelves and everyone will live happily ever after. But how will mankind achieve this? Well if the rumours in the UK and US are to be believed the first step will be to offer £5000 ($7500 in the US) off the price of a new electric car. On the strength of the huge sales that are made, technology will become cheaper and before we know it, everyone will be wondering why we ever had a dependence on oil. Happy days!

Electricity is great! We may not be able to see it but it’s there every time we want it, at the flick of a switch and it’s cheaper than oil. That is until demand outstrips supply. So what is needed is a plentiful source of electricity, a clean source of electricity. So it may come as no surprise to many, that whilst many of the world’s journalists were trying out the Chevy Volt mule and electric cars were all over the news channels, the British government announced the eleven proposed sites for the next generation of nuclear power stations. Cynical? Maybe, but we are going to need to get the power from somewhere.

Plentiful green electricity is unfortunately further away at this point than the electric car, as a result the power for our new beautiful clean rides won’t be that clean. So we have a choice, coal fired power stations, gas fired power stations or nuclear. If we choose coal or gas we negate many of the advantages of the electric car. If we choose nuclear we open a whole new can of worms, but if we are serious about electric cars it WILL be nuclear power that propels them along our highways and byways, unfortunately there are no other ready alternatives.

So are the British government using the “green” argument as a smokescreen to gain favour with the public when it comes to nuclear power stations? Probably, as with only £250,000,000 - enough for 50,000 vehicles - earmarked for the project, most of the subsidies will be taken by businesses and public bodies. The man on the street will no doubt be left just as dependent on oil as ever. Mandy, Darling and Gordon Brown may well hail the £5000 being offered off a new electric car as a “green” policy, but just how green it turns out to be may only be answered by our children and grandchildren and who knows what they will be driving, it may just be a nuclear powered car.

Scrappage scheme from Citroen

£2000 Cashbacks will apply to new cars (excluding C1, C2, C3, C3 Pluriel, C3 Picasso and Berlingo First – Car) where a qualifying Retail or Business order is declared 1st - 30th April and registered by 30th June 2009.

Citroen Announce Price Increases From 1st April

Citron have announced details of price increases that come into effect from the 1st of April. They are as follows:

C1 - £100
C2 - £50
C3 - £50
C3 Pluriel - £100
Berlingo Multispace petrol - £50
Berlingo Multispace diesel- £100
Berlingo First - £100
C4 Coupe & Hatchback petrol - £300
C4 Coupe & Hatchback diesel - £200
Xsara Picasso - £300
C4 Picasso (excl. 1.6 16V VTi 120hp LX) - £300
Grand C4 Picasso (excl. 1.6 16V VTi 120hp LX) - £300
New C5 - £500
C-Crosser - £50
C8 - £500
C6 - £50
Dispatch Combi - £200
Relay Combi - £200