Category Archives: Motoring News

Pick-ups Play Catchup In Safety Stakes

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New Isuzu D-Max Pick-Up driving through water

The new Isuzu D-Max has been awarded a 4-star Euro NCAP safety rating

The new Ford Ranger has a five-star Euro NCAP rating — the best possible.

The latest Isuzu D-Max and the Volkswagen Amarok pick-up both have four-star ratings.

Yet it wasn’t always like this. Just a few years ago, the story was quite different.

One-Star Safety

If I told you that some quite recent pick-up models did very badly in Euro NCAP safety tests, you might be surprised. I know I was.

You’d be even more surprised if you read what Euro NCAP says about collisions on its website:

In real life, when two cars collide the vehicle with the higher mass has an advantage over the lighter one. Generally speaking, vehicles with higher structures tend to fare better in accidents than those with lower structures.

Source: Euro NCAP, Comparable Cars

Since pick-ups are generally the heaviest, largest and highest cars on the road, surely they ought to be amongst the safest?

Apparently not. In Euro NCAP’s pre-2009 tests (which have since been made tougher), several popular pick-up models scored just one star in some categories.

The 2008 Mitsubishi L200 and Isuzu D-Max/Rodeo scored just one star in the pedestrian safety category. The Nissan Navara scored one star in the adult occupant category while the 2008 Ford Ranger and Isuzu models could only manage two stars.

It wasn’t pretty. Although it’s easy to understand how pick-ups might score badly on pedestrian safety, it’s hard to understand why they were so dangerous to their own occupants. Thankfully things are now improving, with new models scoring highly for both occupant safety and pedestrian safety.

It just goes to show that being rough and tough doesn’t necessarily make a vehicle safe in a crash.

Paralympic Route Network Now Active In London

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Two weeks after the Olympic Route Network was dismantled, the Paralympic Route Network has gone live and is now in force.

The Paralympic Route Network will be in operation from 06:00, Wednesday 29 August, and will be operation between the hours of 06:00 and midnight.

However, the good news is that the Paralympic Route Network only covers 8.7 miles in London and these Games Lanes will be opened to normal traffic when Paralympic traffic is low.

There is a separate Games Lane on the M4, also part of the PRN and operated by the Highways Agency, which is already in operation.

Here is the latest advice from Transport for London:

During the Paralympic Games, motorists are urged to avoid driving around the PRN routes and venues, particularly around the Olympic Park in Stratford and on the A102 approach roads north and south of the Blackwall Tunnel.

The A2, A12 and A13 routes into London are also expected to be busier than usual, particularly in the morning peak.

For more information on all games-related traffic and travel issues (not just road travel), visit www.getaheadofthegames.com.

New Nissan NV200 London Taxi Launched

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The London taxi is recognisable throughout the world and its distinctive combination of interior space, tight turning circle and robust build have provided maker LTI with a near monopoly for years.

However, competition has increased in recent years and LTI is not the only game in town any more. There are now two mainstream van manufacturers offering London taxi models based on their production vans — both with an eye on the lucrative global urban taxi market.

German contender

Mercedes-Benz Vito Taxi

Mercedes-Benz Vito London Taxi

First on the UK market was Mercedes-Benz, which introduced the Vito Taxi in London in 2008.

The current model is a rear-steer, six-seater variant of the popular Vito van, which comes complete with independent air conditioning for the driver and passengers, Parktronic sensors, flush-fitting electric steps and electrically opening and closing doors.

The passenger and driver space is kept clear of luggage thanks to a large boot and a further, large, versatile space next to the driver, freeing up a substantial one-metre area for stowage. The luggage sits in the rear crumple zone, leaving the passenger safety cell clear for maximum comfort.

Powering the Vito Taxi is a 116 hp, 2,148cc four-cylinder diesel engine. Equipped with a five-speed automatic gearbox, it is Euro 5 compliant, delivers combined fuel consumption of 8.1 (L/100km) or 34.9 mpg and CO2 emissions of 213 g/km.

Mercedes claims that it now has 40% of the UK metropolitan taxi market — but how will the Vito fare against the new competition?

Japanese may do better

Nissan NV200 London Taxi

Nissan NV200 London Taxi

The latest entrant to the London taxi market is the Nissan NV200 London Taxi. It has a strong reputation, having already been chosen as New York’s ‘Taxi of Tomorrow’ and offers a number of benefits over the Vito Taxi, thanks to its modern engine and drivetrain.

The NV200 London Taxi will offer significantly reduced CO2 outputs compared to current taxi models – the NV200 London Taxi’s Euro V engine only emits up to 138g/km of CO2, compared with 209g/km from the ‘greenest’ TX4 model.

An all-electric e-NV200 concept is also set to undergo trials in the Capital.

Save fuel

Nissan’s NV200 also promises a big improvement in fuel consumption over current models.

Nissan NV200 London Taxi interior

Nissan has maintained the traditional London Taxi interior layout, with the front passenger seat removed to make room for luggage

The model’s frugal 1.5 dCi 89 HP EuroV, 6-speed manual drivetrain achieves 53.3mpg on a combined cycle meaning an almost 50% fuel saving over the most efficient TX4, with its combined cycle figure of 35.3mpg. In terms of emissions,

However, Nissan doesn’t seem to specify what the fuel consumption figures will be with an automatic gearbox, which is the norm for London taxis. If a modern automated manual transmission is fitted, then fuel consumption should be broadly unaffected — but the cost is likely to rise. If a more traditional automatic gearbox is fitted, then fuel consumption is likely to rise.

Nissan has a sterling reputation amongst London taxi drivers — it’s old 2.7-litre diesel engine was for many years the standard powerplant in London Taxis and was used in both the Fairway FX4 model and its successor, the TX1.

If Nissan’s new engine can deliver the kind of reliability, performance and fuel consumption it promises, then it is likely to be a winner.

Olympic Games Lanes Come Into Force: Are You Ready?

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Painting The Olympic 'Zil' Lanes

An Olympic Games Lane in London (courtesy of Copwatcher/Flickr)

Today marks the beginning of the Olympic Games — at least for drivers in central London, who now have to contend with the 30-mile network of new ‘Games Lanes’ that can only be used by Olympic participants between 6am and midnight.

The result, predictably, was additional traffic, with additional congestion in all the usual traffic blackspots, such as the A40, and the A4 in West London. It’s not for nothing that these lanes have become known as Zil lanes.

Games Lanes are in place around one-third of the Olympic Route Network, according to Transport for London, which says that a network of 150 electronic signs around the network will advise motorists when they can use the lane — something that appeared to be causing confusion this morning.

Not too late for van hire

If you have been adopting a ‘wait and see’ approach to Olympic traffic and have now decided that you need to get hold of some extra rental vans or minibuses to enable you to deal with the disruption, then the good news is that there is still some availability, even in central London.

Our unique van hire price comparison system enables you to compare van hire throughout London and the rest of the UK and find the best prices. Wherever we quote a price, it is a ‘live’ price obtained directly from the hire company, so you can normally click through and book immediately at that price.

Click here to compare van hire or minibus hire prices or view all of our London branches here.

Are Petrol and Diesel Prices Rigged?

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Fuel gauge nearing emptyHot on the heels of the Libor interest-rate fixing scandal comes the suggestion (in a report commissioned by the G20, no less) that oil prices may have been manipulated too.

To be more precise, a report produced by International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) has concluded that the oil market is open to “manipulation or distortion”.

Here’s how the oil market should work:

  1. Oil traders at big banks accurately report how much they are paying for oil to an organisation called Platts or one of a few alternatives.
  2. Platts (& co) compares the prices and creates a benchmark price.
  3. The benchmark price is used as the basis for trillions of dollars worth of contracts to buy and sell the petrol and diesel we buy at the pump.

Here are the problems:

  1. Platts and its main competitor, Argus, don’t have the authority to challenge the numbers they are given by oil traders, so the traders could submit incorrect or misleading numbers, thereby manipulating the pump price of petrol and diesel.
  2. Although Platts and Argus have no financial interest in the oil market, their services are funded by subscriptions, which are paid for by — you guessed it — the oil traders’ banks. This does lead to a possible conflict of interest or imbalanced view of the market.
  3. If the oil price is falsely inflated, we pay more than we should do for fuel.

If it sounds similar to the Libor-rigging scandal, where traders understated the interest rates their banks were paying to borrow money, that’s because it is — like so much in London’s financial world, it’s based on trust.

On the other hand, there are some points to suggest that rigging oil markets would be harder than rigging Libor:

  1. Platts and Argus are in competition with each other to provide the most authoritative benchmark prices. Neither would be keen to lose credibility by producing questionable benchmark prices.
  2. Platts says that its journalists (who compile the benchmark prices) are trained to watch out for anything fishy and are expected to check any figures that appear dodgy.
  3. In total, four organisations set oil prices for the market — Platts, Argus, OPIS and ICIS-LOR. I’d have thought that any consistent discrepancies between their benchmark prices would be investigated by big oil companies. With Libor, on the other hand, only one organisation compiled the interest rates, so there was nothing to compare them to, meaning it was impossible to know if they were accurate (they weren’t)…

So what’s a hard-working van driver to do?

Well, motoring campaigner Quentin Wilson is in a towering rage over at the Fair Fuel UK campaign and is trying to persuade the government to order an official inquiry. If you agree with Quentin, then head over and vote in Quentin’s poll, which he is running to find out how much public support there is for an official inquiry into the oil markets.

M25 Will Use Hard Shoulder Running To Reduce Traffic

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A 15-mile section of the M25 is to be widen by using the hard shoulder to provide an extra lane, with work due to start next year.

The affected section is on the southern side of the motorway, between junctions five and seven (Sevenoaks and Redhill/M23 intersection). It is one of the most notorious traffic blackspots on the orbital motorway, which is known for its traffic congestion at peak times.

Using the hard shoulder in this way will make the M25 a ‘managed motorway’, which means that additional lights and signage and speed controls will be installed to allow the hard shoulder to be opened as a running lane during busy times and closed at quiet times to preserve its original function.

Emergency refuge areas are provided every 1.5 miles and CCTV is used to monitor the road, so any breakdowns are quickly cleared. Variable speed limits are often also used to help manage traffic flow, based on the well-proven premise that when traffic is heavy, traffic flows much better if everyone sticks to a lower, more stable speed.

The concept was first trialled in the UK in 2006 on the M42 near Birmingham and is was credited with reducing accidents by more than fifty per cent over a three-year period.  Since then, schemes have also been introduced on the M6, M4  and M5 — all notorious congestion blackspots.

The decision was welcomed by James Hookham of the Freight Transport Association:

“FTA feels that the proposal of what is essentially ‘creating an extra lane on the M25 is good news for this particularly busy stretch of motorway.  Some may see it as the Highways Agency widening on the cheap, but we feel that this will give motorists and most importantly our members extra capacity and will help to keep the motorway moving.”

Leeds-Bradford Traffic Is Worse Than London

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Drivers in Leeds and Bradford spend even more time stuck in traffic than drivers in London, according to a new study by sat nav firm TomTom.

TomTom Congestion Index example graphic

TomTom Congestion Index - click to enlarge

Drivers in the Leeds-Bradford area are delayed by an average of 36 minutes in every hour during peak times — meaning that some spend a depressing 86 hours per year stuck in traffic jams. That’s equivalent to two weeks at work!

London is next on the list, with drivers in the capital spending an average of 74 hours per year in traffic jams.

Rush hour traffic in London was found to double  journey times,  with traffic delays adding 27% onto the length of journeys at other times.

Also near the top of the list is  Birmingham (73 hours per year), but Leeds-Bradford holds the overall crown for the UK and has the 7th worst traffic congestion in Europe – here’s the European top 10:

  1. Warsaw
  2. Marseille
  3. Rome
  4. Brussels
  5. Paris
  6. Dublin
  7. Bradford-Leeds
  8. London
  9. Stockholm
  10. Hamburg

TomTom gathers the data through its IQ Routes system, which collects anonymous data from millions of drivers’ sat navs all over Europe and uses it to calculate the fastest route for the time of day when working out a route for any journey.

For van drivers and others who are driving on business, it can be a make a worthwhile difference — especially if you choose a TomTom Live model, which receives live data about traffic congestion and delays and automatically recalculates your route, if necessary, to route you around the problem, rather than straight into it.

If you don’t have a sat nav of your own, many car and van hire firms now offers them as an optional extra — check when booking if you’re interested.

You can find the complete TomTom Congestion Index here.

Budget 2012: Fuel Duty Will Rise; Van Benefit Frozen

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Today’s budget contained few surprises for van operators – here are the highlights:

  • No change to fuel duty plans – this means that the planned 3p/litre increase in September is likely to go ahead
  • Van Benefit frozen – the benefit-in-kind charge on private use of company vans will remain unchanged at £3,000 for the 2012/13 tax year, meaning those on the 20% basic rate of income tax pay £600 and those on the 40% rate pay £1,200.

The Van Benefit charge applies to van operators using a commercial vehicle (including pickups) with a payload of at least 1,000kg for private as well as commercial use.

The Chancellor also confirmed that the Van Fuel Benefit Charge (FBC) will remain unchanged at £550 for the 2012 tax year and will rise in line with inflation from April 2013.

The FBC exemption for zero carbon emitting vans will continue until April 2015, as previously planned.

Updated 1945:

John Lewis, chief executive of the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA), had this to say about today’s announcements:

“The fleet sector is the only part of the new vehicle market that is still growing at the moment. It will adapt to the new tax regime as it always does, but these ambitious targets could bring a temporary stall to the market as businesses re-evaluate their fleet policies.”

Road Privatisation – Drivers Left To Choose Between Tolls And Queues?

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The Prime Minister’s suggestion that parts of Britain’s road network might be privatised looks like it could be a double-edged sword for the UK’s van and commercial drivers.

On the one hand, private investment in new and upgraded roads could provide some much needed improvements.

On the other hand, the promise that road builders will be able to levy tolls on new road capacity (but not on existing roads) suggests that a two-tier road system could emerge:

  • Cheap, congested old roads
  • Expensive, empty new roads

The M6 Toll provides a perfect example of how badly this system could work. It’s underused because it is expensive. Most commercial and private traffic cannot justify the cost of using the M6 Toll and chooses the slower but cheaper M6 alternative.

This arrangements suits the operators of the M6 Toll very well – their lightly-used road suffers from much less wear and tear than the regular M6 and so costs them much less to maintain than the equivalent stretch of the main M6 motorway.

Proposals to extend this road management model across the UK could simply replicate this problem on a wider scale, rather than fixing the capacity and maintenance problems that exist on the road network as a whole.

It seems, again, as if government policy might be aligned to the interests of the big businesses who will invest in the road network, rather than the millions of individuals and SMEs who need to use the UK’s road network to make a living.

Record Diesel Prices Put Pressure On Van Operators – But Who Is Profiting?

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Diesel prices have hit record average levels in the UK, according to the latest fuel price reports from the AA.

The average price of diesel in the UK has overtaken the record set in May last year, hitting 143. 05 p a litre.

Since peaking at 143.04p a litre on 5 May last year, the pump price of diesel fell back to 137.59p in July before starting to climb again. Two years ago, diesel in the UK averaged 113.62p a litre.

Average UK diesel prices, courtesy of www.whatgas.com

(Graph courtesy of www.whatgas.com)

For a commercial van with an 80-litre fuel tank, the cost of filling up has risen from £90.90 in February 2010 to £ 114.44 now, having dropped to £110.07 in July.

Edmund King, the AA’s President said:

“A stronger pound has staved off this moment for longer than might have been expected, but diesel drivers across the country will have been watching in trepidation. They hoped that below-record prices would hold until the spring, when winter price pressures on diesel traditionally ease.”

Diesel Prices Rising Faster Than Oil Prices

These graphs from WhatGas.com show that diesel prices have been accelerating steadily away from underlying oil prices:

Oil prices vs diesel prices - courtesy of whatgas.com

(Graph courtesy of www.whatgas.com)

The fuel market is far from transparent and the effects of financial market speculation on oil prices can be dramatic – and unpleasant for ordinary motorists. There is no way for us to know whether we are paying a fair price for petrol and diesel – and the profits accumulated by the major oil companies suggest that we might not be.

The AA has written to the Chancellor calling for an investigation of the oil, refining, fuel product and retail markets to ensure UK families and business are protected from over-inflated prices and supply difficulties.

In the meantime, I would expect the van hire market to continue to do well as high fuel prices and uncertain business conditions prompt owners to delay fleet replacements but to seek out the most fuel efficient vans – both objectives that can best be met by daily rental or contract hire.