November 29, 2017
Chinese car maker Geely, owner of Volvo, considers building its new branded Lynk 01 car in the Belgian Volvo factory in Ghent. This was confined to the Reuters news agency in an interview by Alain Visser, commercial director at Lynk & Co and a Belgian himself. Same platform as XC40 The new brand is a […]
November 29, 2017
German car builder Audi is going to build two new electric SUV models in its home factory in Ingolstadt (Germany) from 2021 on. This was confirmed by CEO Rupert Stadler on Tuesday. He promised the German Audi employees job security until 2025. Audi’s two first electric models will be build in Brussels (Vorst), starting in […]
November 28, 2017
Russian car manufacturer Avtovaz, controled by French car maker Renault, is resuming export of Lada cars to Cuba after a twelve year stop. A first shipment of some 350 cars of the latest two models are expected in Havana beginning next year. Public taxi companies The new Ladas will be used by local public taxi […]
November 28, 2017
Dutch oil company Shell announced on Monday an agreement with tech company Ionity, to roll out 80 of their superfast chargers in Shell’s own pump station network. Ionity, created by car makers BMW, Daimler, Porsche, Audi and Ford in 2016, develops chargers that allow to charge a battery in five to eight minutes. Ionity’s mission […]
November 27, 2017
Premium brands of plug-in hybrids are overwhelmed these days with ‘last minute’ orders for luxury plug-in hybrids before the end of the year. These cars, combining a fat combustion engine with a small battery driven electro-motor with an average range of 40 km, are targeted by Belgian federal government as ‘fake hybrids’ and will lose […]
November 24, 2017
Last year sales of heavy pickup trucks, combining a passenger cab with an open loading platform doubled compared to 2009 to 5.700. This year almost as much pickups were sold in ten months time, according to figures of sector federation FEBIAC. Huge fiscal benefits – that are questioned more and more – are at the […]
November 20, 2017
Last week Elon Musk surprised the world again after introducing the Tesla Semi electric truck, with a late Steve Jobs like ‘one more last thing’: a new Tesla supercar rolling out of the back of one of the trucks. The charismatic entrepreneur keeps on scattering new promises, but can’t fulfil the old ones up today, […]
November 17, 2017
French start-up OnePark collects 12 million euros to develop its activity in France and Europe. OnePark offers drivers the possibility to reserve vacant parking spots from hotels or companies, with an app. A kind of ‘booking.com’ of car parking. OnePark is a French start-up that claims to be number one in parking spots booking to […]
November 17, 2017
After revolutionizing the electric car, Tesla’s flamboyant CEO Elon Musk wants to do the same for heavy transport lorries. Musk himself drove a prototype of the ‘Semi’ on stage in Hawthorn, California, on Thursday, a fully electric 40 ton lorry with a range of 600 to 800 kilometres. Tesla’s Semi is a futuristic looking lorry […]
November 16, 2017
Italian sports car maker Lamborghini offered Pope Francis a snow white Lamborgini Huracan. But you won’t see the Pope racing around the Vatican with it. He’ll stick with his Popemobile and puts up the Lambo – like his Harley Davidson bike before – for auction at Sotheby’s for charity. Blessed and signed Being blessed and […]
November 15, 2017
French car maker PSA Group and Chinese telecom manufacturer Huawei announced a new partnership to develop a platform dedicated to connected vehicles. Named CVMP (Connected Vehicle Modular Platform), this new platform has been created by the French car manufacturer group PSA and Chinese telecom manufacturer Huawei. “It will allow to deploy new services such as […]
November 13, 2017
French car maker group PSA created this Sunday a new joint venture with three Algerian companies to build cars in a new plant in Oran. In five years, it should produce 75.000 Peugeots and Citroëns. After Renault, Hyundai and Volkswagen, PSA’s is to start building cars in Algeria. After two years of negotiations, the French […]
November 10, 2017
To lead its European division, Kia Motors has chosen Yong Kew Park, nicknamed ‘Mr Russia’. Leading the Russian Kia division, he managed to make the South Korean the top seller in the Russian car market in one year. Today, one car out of ten sold in Russia is a Kia. USA, Africa, China and Europe […]
November 10, 2017
Dutch car buyers are going massively for ‘big’ performing cars again, rather than a ‘green’ car, now that the fiscal incentives for the latter are scrapped. That’s why the CO2 emissions in the Netherlands are rising for the second year, being 10% higher again. Last year it was already clear that CO2 emissions were rising […]
November 09, 2017
Flemish public transport company De Lijn sees it ambitiuos: they want to take 10.000 cars off the roads every day in the northern edge of Brussels. Therefore De Lijn have ordered fourteen trambuses from bus builder Van Hool from Koningshooikt (Lier). Alternative to tram The trambuses are of the Exqui.City 24 Hyb type. They can […]
November 07, 2017
Uber Belgium has listened to the different demands from its drivers and the company will now offer more flexibility, reduce the passenger free cancel period to 2 minutes and charge the passenger 25 cent/min when the driver has to wait more than 2 minutes. Job’s attracticeness Before, we put our priority on growth and perhaps […]
November 07, 2017
According to recent figures from the Flemish mobility organization VAB, the price of the second hand diesel car take a serious dive. The sector even predicts that prices will dip further. Already today, VAB sells only 16% diesel-occasions compared to 84% used cars on petrol. Five years ago this balance was 61% diesel-occasions to 39% […]
November 07, 2017
One year ago, 31-year-old Perrine Collin launched Cycad, a young company building electric bikes out of bamboo. They now offer these ecological bicycles for long term rent at a degressive rate. “I met Narciso while I was working for an NGO in the Philippines”, explains Perrinne, “He was building bicycles out of bamboo and I […]
November 06, 2017
Since September 2017, numerous shared bicycles from different renting companies such as GoBee Bike, OBike or Billy Bike are appearing all around Brussels., totaling around 850 today. These “free-floating” bicycles can be picked-up and dropped-off wherever the user desires it, without the need of a station. In Brussels, the concept of the shared bike is […]
November 06, 2017
A growing number of lakes and rivers prohibit the use of combustion engines in leisure boats. The Belgian Liso Yacht anticipates this trend by building luxury electric pleasure boats, capable of reaching speeds up to 100 kph on the water. “We are the Tesla of the boats,” says Dirk De Munter, the founder of Liso […]
November 03, 2017
Elon Musk himself predicted that the production start of the Model 3 would be ‘a hell’. But the actual problems go beyond his worst case scenario. Especially the software for the Model 3 batteries from Tesla’s own Gigafactory turns out to be problematic. Production prognoses are delayed by another three months. GigaFactory If all goes […]
November 02, 2017
Californian electric car maker Tesla announced on Wedsnesday its biggest quarterly loss ever, due to continuing production problems with the new Model 3 and 700 sacked employees. Since it entered the stock market back in June 29 2010, Tesla has experienced eight annual losses. Yesterday, the company announced its biggest loss ever of 620 million […]
October 30, 2017
Japanese carmaker Subaru has confirmed that its certification method for home market cars wasn’t done by certified inspectors, just like Nissan. The company plans on recalling 250.000 cars. “These methods involving controlling new vehicles by non-accredited inspectors for the Japanese market have been going on for 30 years at Subaru”, declared CEO Yasuyuki Yoshinaga. The […]
October 27, 2017
Two Brussels police zones will be given bait-bikes equipped with GPS trackers and use them to catch bicycle thieves. The justice deems the method to be legal. “Lately, the Dutch Tilburg University published a study reveiling that the number of bicycle thefts in the municipalities using bait-bikes had decreased by 40% in one year”, explains […]
October 26, 2017
Toyota and Opel/Vauxhall are freezing their investments in the United Kingdom due to the uncertainty of what Brexit might bring. Toyota wants to be certain that a free EU market access without customs levies is maintained before investing in its UK plant. Toyota is uncertain about its future in the UK. In March, the Japanese […]
October 26, 2017
With the launch of its new Leaf 2, Nissan wants to remain the world’s number one in electric vehicle. In Belgium, it hopes that the new model will oversell the Tesla Model S that is currently the country’s best selling EV. Nissan has been playing in the electric vehicle segment for much longer than its […]
October 26, 2017
Swedish NEVS, the former Saab which is owned by a number of Chinese investment companies, is going to build electric taxis for taxi hailing and private car sharing service DiDi, the ‘Chinese Uber’. An agreement was signed on Wednesday in Trollhättan (Sweden) for developing a specific electric vehicle, capable of autonomous driving in the future. NEVS, […]
October 25, 2017
The automatic gearbox gains in popularity. Seven years ago only 11,5 per cent of the cars sold in Belgium had an automatic gearbox. Today a third of the cars sold in 2017 are ‘automatics’ while experts predict the disappearance of the manual gearbox. “In family cars the manual gearbox remains the most popular”, says Maarten […]
October 24, 2017
The European Commission opened on Friday an anti-dumping investigation on Chinese electric bicycles, after complaints from EU bike producers. “These Chinese bikes are sold at ridiculously low prices and don’t respect the same quality standards as bicycles built in Europe.” Europe’s electric bicycles market is booming in terms of sales and production. In 2016, 1,1 […]
October 23, 2017
According to the Wall Street Journal there is an agreement between American electric car maker Tesla and the Chinese government to start the construction of a Tesla plant in the free-trade zone in Shanghai. China is an important market for Tesla. It counts for 15 per cent of Tesla’s turn-over with an expected growth of […]
October 23, 2017
Dutch company Prodrive Technologies introduces a sensor that is capable of detecting PM2.5 particulates entering the car interior and shutting of air intake or filtering it out by the air con. The sensor is developed for a not yet disclosed German car maker, who intends to launch the product in 2018. Prodrive Technologies already developed […]
