Low Cost Vans

Just in case it’s gone over your head, there’s been a fair bit of news recently about flying cars and the fact that they’re about to take off. As this could, in years to come, seem like a ludicrous prediction (in 1992, it was predicted that by now we’d have smellovisions - tvs that give off smells…), I won’t give too much opinion on the likelihood or not of flying cars. I don’t want to look ludicrous after all. Instead, here’s an overview of recent news on the subject. According to UK company, Gilo Industries Group, “the world’s first practical flying car” was created by them in 2009. This is the company that helped Bear Grylls fly over Mount Everest by strapping him to a paramotor – a fairly good credential. And as a further vote of confidence for this company, it has just received a £24 million investment from Chinese technology group, Kuang-Chi to double its workforce of 60. Dubbed ‘the Disneyland of engineering’, Gilo Industries Group also sounds a fun place to work. Forget the tir...

Know that famous London warning; ‘mind the gap’? The one that’s meant to stop commuters and tourists from injuring themselves when getting off the tube? Well there may be a new saying in London town - ‘Mind the robot’. Courier company Hermes, which delivers for heaps of companies (often have they brought me my latest pay day treat), is introducing a trial of self-driving robots in Southwark, a London borough. The robots will have six wheels and Hermes will send them out on missions within a two mile radius of its control centre. They’ll also be challenged with 30 minute turn around slots to see how speedy they are. And before you have any naughty thoughts that you could intervene and take the robot’s goods.. the precious cargo is in a secure compartment which customers can open with a code. During the trial, there’ll be one supervisor to watch over three robots. But it’s hoped that in time there could be one operator watching over 100. Think of how many robots would be weaving their wa...

A lumbering truck isn’t often seen as a graceful vehicle, but all that could be about to change... A group of French companies recently got together to investigate the possibility of an electric highway whereby trucks would be powered by an overhead electricity supply. This would see adapted heavy goods vehicles seamlessly transported along the highway fuel free - how effortless and very French. Apparently, this superhighway would only require slight operational adjustments to existing infrastructures and wouldn’t take much training to adapt the skills of the drivers. Sounds a no brainer if it works. Trucks of course do the heavy-duty work of transporting pretty much everything we use – from food to concrete to oil. Unsurprisingly in France, the greenhouse gas emissions of heavy goods vehicles account for 5% of the nation’s emissions. Interestingly, Sweden is already one step ahead here. Last year they ran a trial of an electric highway; it was 1.2 miles long and trucks that were ‘pant...

There’s nothing like a new tax to get your attention. Since the DVLA announced that it was going to introduce vehicle excise duty (VED) rates to cars bought from this April onwards, a massive rush has taken place for people to buy their cars before the deadline. As a result, March was the best month in the UK for new cars to be registered in the UK - the number was up 8.4% on the same month last year, with 562,337 shiny cars going to new homes. So is it that much of a deal if you missed the deadline? Well, that depends on what kind of car you’d be getting. One of the attractions of all those low emission cars that people have been snapping up in recent years has been the low – and sometimes non-existent - road tax. But if you buy the same car now, you won’t have the same bonus for being green. That’s because from now on, new cars – whether they are super low emission petrols or diesels - will pay the same standard fee of £140 a year. The only cars that won’t have to pay the vehicle exc...