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The argument over motorway speed limits continues with a number of people now pushing to increase it from 70 to 80 miles per hour. Fleet operators are generally against an increase as they feel it wouldn’t make drivers any more productive or arrive at destinations any quicker. There would also be an increase in operating costs as higher speeds Read more »

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If you were a visitor to this country driving on our motorways you could be excused for believing that the limit was 80 miles per hour and not, as I believe it is, 70 miles per hour. It seems that Transport Secretary, Philip Hammond supports the idea of lifting the speed limit as our limit is one of the slowest in Europe. However the anti car brigade are Read more »

Ford has announced their plans to create the ‘most significant’ engine ever. They are close to making a spectacular breakthrough that will drop the fuel consumption on some of their most popular cars to 100 miles per gallon. The goal will be reached within the next 5 years. The power unit is a new 3 cylinder engine has been created by their research team in Holland. The final decision to go into production lies with the development engineers based in Dunton in Essex. The engine will have a 1.0 litre Read more »

The gap is starting to open up between petrol and diesel at the pumps again, pushing drivers towards petrol cars. There is also continued concern that people that take diesels fitted with particulate filters, as all new diesel cars have to have fitted, do not understand that they need to run the car at over 50mph for at least 20 minutes in one session per month in order to create the chemical reaction that clears out the filter. If this isn’t done the filter clogs and needs to be replaced costing hundreds of Read more »

The Graham Hill gadget of the week is a tyre pressure warning system. I’ve reported on many occasions the importance of running tyres at the correct pressure. Not only is it a legal requirement punishable by points and a fine, tyres wear quicker, grip is reduced and fuel consumption can increase by up to 10%. We all know that we should check our tyres daily and at worst fortnightly (as suggested by tyre Read more »

You can forget going green with your next car in order to save fuel and kick out fewer CO2’s according to the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM – is it me or does that sound like a cat food?). They suggest that drivers and businesses could save much more by simply using better, more efficient driving techniques, such as advanced anticipation, intelligent route planning and speed control which if used together could Read more »

We have a bit of an exclusive from GHA Finance this week. I am often fighting with dealers and my quoting systems to get the keenest rates for my clients. But whilst we try to get the rates as low as possible customers see this as the only area where they can make cost savings when changing their cars. In fact this shouldn’t be the end of the journey, it should be the start. There are many things you can do to minimise your transport costs which we have discussed in the past such as:  Read more »

What makes a ‘green’ motorist? Some drivers give themselves a good old pat on the back when changing from a petrol driven car to a diesel. Excellent! Count me into that group and there’s a small degree of merit as diesel, once stripped of particulates, is a little better for the environment than petrol. Taking it one step further there are those that use old chip oil to power their aging diesel cars but whilst it’s a good Read more »

I’ve pointed out the importance of correct tyre pressures in the past but during the recent bad weather many motorists are believed to have dropped their tyre pressures in order to increase the grip on roads covered in ice and packed snow. It is important, if you did this, to re-inflate to the correct pressure. In fact, according to compressor manufacturer Ring Automotive, you should check your tyre pressures Read more »

Many large companies now use telematics to assess the efficiency of their drivers, understand how they drive and whether they take the most efficient route when they are out on their travels. Telematics is a sort of extended Tracker system that not only plots the route of the driver but also records all sorts of other data such as speed, acceleration, braking, fuel consumption etc. The fact is that with so much data Read more »