19th Mar 2019
4 mins
It’s a fast-paced world and between them, Volvo and the European Union are seeking to slow it down.
Switching attentions from protracted and painful Brexit negotiations, the EU this month announced plans to introduce continental speed limiters. Little did they know that Volvo had beaten them to the punch. Sort of.
22nd Feb 2019
6 mins
Music giant David Bowie certainly left his mark on modern pop culture. With a back catalogue to rival the very best songwriters, his legend was fuelled by a chameleon like ability to interchange between several different personas; each as iconic as the last.
From Ziggy Stardust to Halloween Jack, Bowie’s eternal evolution garnered a cult following, one that continues long after his death in 2016. This loyalty was best demonstrated at last month’s Festival Automobile International event in Paris where, to the delight of fans, a new Bowie concept car was unveiled. As tributes go this is quite something.
18th Feb 2019
3 mins
With the world population currently in excess of 7.5 Billion and still predicted to increase, there has never been so many cars on the road in all of human history. Coupled with the fact that these cars are ballooning in size; car parking space has become a precious commodity and a serious problem. Indeed for many a universal equivalent of Tesla's Smart Summon, which automatically finds a space for you, cannot come quock enough.
1st Feb 2019
3 mins
Of all the new technologies that emerge for use in automobiles, ones that improve safety usually find their way into widespread use.
It’s also true that most new technologies begin life reserved for a select few high-end vehicles, before eventually disseminating their way down the automotive family tree and into the average hatchback or supermini.
A piece of tech that attracted a lot of attention at the beginning of 2019 benefits from being both a safety improvement and quite a cool piece of kit – one that just about any car owner would like to have the option of using.
30th Jan 2019
3 mins
Camshafts are another of the many critical components required to enable a combustion engine to work, but what exactly is a camshaft and why is its role so important?
28th Jan 2019
4 mins
It is a new year and the rise of the autonomous vehicle shows no signs of slowing down in 2019. Few however have posed the question of what lies beyond the self-driving car. That was until KIA unveiled their new READ technology earlier this month and proceeded to melt minds whilst simultaneously readjusting our perception of reality.
16th Jan 2019
3 mins
Traditionally the dashboard in the standard road car has been made up of buttons, switches and dials; uniformly identifiable in all makes of cars and only slightly modified by manufacturers.
This useful consistency is somewhat counterbalanced by most vehicles having subtly different layouts which tend to only become apparent at inopportune moments when driving an unfamiliar vehicle - such as when trying to locate the central locking button with all your passengers waiting impatiently in the cold.
Aside from these inconveniences, and maybe not knowing what some of the warning lights on a dashboard mean, the system works – but technological advances have been at a minimum.
18th Dec 2018
5 mins
Despite what is undoubtably very clever and complex engineering, the Double (or Dual) Clutch Transmission (DCT), has a mixed reputation with drivers and has not achieved the level of ubiquity many thought it would.
Sitting in the middle ground between an automatic and a manual transmission, the simplest way of describing their operation, is that they’re an automatically operated manual transmission – achieved by using two clutches.
