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One of the great things about new cars is the quietness of them. Improved car design reduces wind resistance and wind noise. Drive a diesel car and you could be mistaken into believing that diesel engines no longer rattle, they do, but because the soundproofing is of such a high standard now, you can hardly hear the engine from inside the car.

Tyre compounds and new suspension systems reduce road noise dramatically and of course hybrids and full electric vehicles are as quiet as a mouse when operating in electric mode. The problem is that many of the changes have come about very quickly so when a driver moves from a 3 year old car to a new car the noise level drops so significantly that he or she loses all perception of speed.

The main indicators such as engine noise, road and wind noise have been all but eliminated in some cars so the fear of many safety experts is that we will see a significant increase in accidents and/or speeding tickets as a result of speeding. Having read about the latest Tesla challenging Faraday Future FF91 capable of developing over 1000 bhp out of its electric engine taking it from 0 – 60 in 2.39 seconds without making a noise, I’m very worried.

Even petrol and diesel engine’d cars pose a threat to safety. So if I or anyone else has convinced you to ditch your 5 year old car for a brand new model make sure that you acclimatise yourself to the noise levels before you start ‘opening her up’ on an A road or motorway. You don’t want to be writing your new car and/or you off in the first few weeks of taking delivery! By Graham Hill

Over the near 30 years that I have been in this industry I have seen and done many things, seen some of the most crooked activities carried out by dealers, brokers and car supermarkets, amongst others, as well as fraudulent attempts to acquire cars by crooked customers.

For many years I was an expert witness for the Crown Prosecution Service in cases of vehicle and asset finance fraud so I’ve seen most things crooked that go on in the automotive industry, some of them revolving around so called pre-registered cars and ex demonstrators.

Whilst I won’t bore you with all the fraudulent things I’ve witnessed, you’ll have to buy my upcoming book for that, I’ll share a couple of things with you as I’ve had a couple of potential clients who have recently avoided contract hiring a new car in favour of a so called pre-registered car or an ex demonstrator on HP or PCP.

First of all I should point out that it is possible to get a good deal on an ex demonstrator but it’s the luck of the draw and I’ll explain why. But let’s start with ‘pre-registered’ cars. First of all let’s be quite clear, there is no such thing as a pre-registered car in the way that it is advertised by dealers. Even the head of CAP HPI refers to pre-registered cars when referring to cars that are registered then sold when they include huge discounts. The pre-registering of highly discounted cars is an illegal act made illegal by Stephen Byers when he was Labour Trade Secretary in 2000.

He was concerned that the practice carried out by manufacturers who forced their franchised dealers to buy cars, albeit at heavily discounted prices, was skewing the new car registration figures. So as part of his Supply of New Cars Order 2000 it was made illegal to pre-register cars, here is the excerpt:

This order was made under the monopoly provisions of the Fair Trading Act 1973. It prevents new car suppliers from:

• discriminating on price between dealers and fleet buyers
• providing bonuses and discounts to dealers on pre-registered cars
• imposing on dealers restrictions on price advertising

Now let me be clear, dealers can pre-register cars but not as a result of increased incentives applied by the manufacturer on individual cars. However, some dealers and manufacturers have found a way around this. As an incentive and across the board, a dealer will be set a sales target for the month/quarter/year and he will be paid a Volume Related Bonus (VRB) by the manufacturer if he can achieve the target.

This money is paid retrospectively on all cars sold during the month, quarter or year. As the bonus is not specifically on the ‘pre-registered’ cars they kind of get around the regulations. As an example let’s say the dealer is offered a VRB of £2,000 per car provided he hits his target of 100 cars for the month. With a few days to go he has sold 90 cars and he is aware that if he doesn’t sell the 100 he will lose £200,000 VRB.

So in order to hit his target he pre-registers the 10 cars in the name of the dealership and pays his normal purchase price for the cars – keeps him onside with the Supply of New Car Order. He now factors in the £2,000 per car that he will receive as additional discount then adds in the normal discount that he would include in the deal making the car a cheap car.

I’ve heard of some dealers preregistering cars and selling them through auction just to recover a reasonable proportion of the money spent out rather than have the cars sitting on their forecourt. Whilst the above may sound like pre-registered cars are a great idea there are other, far more shady, methods used to heavily discount cars and sell as new cars even though they have already been registered. Some, not all, car supermarkets have been known to use this method as well as some dealers.

The cars are diverted from where they were intended – daily rental companies, driving schools or insurance company/bodyshop courtesy cars. When supplying cars to these companies the manufacturer uses part of his marketing budget to heavily discount cars that either get them seen on the road more or are driven by potential buyers. In my experience a daily rental company can buy cars at up to 45% off the list price with 20 – 25% being very common.

In order to get around the Supply of New Car Order dealers started to set up their own daily rental companies and bought their ‘pre-registered’ cars through the new operation at huge discounts then sell them on to buyers, having never put them out on hire, with just delivery miles on the clock, on big discounts as ‘pre-registered’. Nothing wrong with that. Of course the extra name in the log book will affect the resale value of the car – but only marginally. But this is where the 3 month rule comes in.

If you have ever bought a pre-reg. car you will sometimes be told that you won’t receive the V5 log book until after 3 months. This is because in order for a daily rental company to qualify for the extra discount they (normally) have to keep the car for a minimum of 3 months or say 5,000 miles, whichever comes first. Now if the manufacturer wants to carry out an audit the dealer needs to be able to show the auditor that he still has the car.

Whilst he may argue that the car is out on hire, so can’t be inspected, he can produce the copy of the V5, supposedly proving that he still has the car, and everyone is happy. Again, whilst this is shady, is this something that a buyer should worry about? There are also some dealers who will keep the cars in stock for 3 months to avoid this situation. But here’s the crunch. Remember that I said these cars were intended for daily rental companies and they are then supposed to be sold as used cars after 3 months?

Well, many years ago I became involved in this process. Before realising exactly what was going on, I had been arranging stocking finance for wholesalers who would arrange to buy batches of brand new cars from daily rental companies and sell on to car supermarkets for a small profit, similar procedure to the operation following the Stephen Byers order.

This allowed the car supermarkets to sell new cars at less than main dealers could buy them for. The daily rental company would order say 100 cars that would be funded by the wholesaler. The cars would be diverted, at the time of delivery, to the wholesaler who would pay the daily rental company £100 per car for their trouble – they never actually saw the cars.

However, as the cars were intended for daily rental I had calls from dealers, and one comes to mind, who would say that the manufacturer had produced a batch of cars using up old stock of parts, for sale to daily rental companies. In this particular case the interior trim was lower grade, items were missing in the car such as cup holders and front fog lights were missing, all part of the standard spec. of the model badge on the back of the car.

In return the dealer knocked off £250 per car. The wholesaler agreed but do you think he explained this to the supermarkets who were selling these cars as brand new but pre-registered cars? Of course not! It would be fine to sell the cars in their sub spec. condition to the daily rental company who were supposed to rent them out.

A customer is hardly likely to refuse a rental car because the interior trim didn’t match the manufacturer’s brochure for the model he was hiring. And of course they were to be sold as used cars at the end of the 3 months or when they had covered 5,000 miles so the buyer would be buying not a new car but a used car as seen.

There is another way that you can achieve a big discount on a ‘pre-registered’ car. When there is a new model coming out or a facelift on the current model the dealers need to make way for the new model and get rid of the old model cars so he practically sells them at cost but they don’t always tell you about the new model.

I’ve also heard of cars turning up at the customer’s house only to find that he has bought or leased an old model car when he thought he was buying the new model. So check the spec. very carefully if you are going to buy a pre-registered car – it may not turn out to be what you thought you were buying. Oh and some of the cheap lease deals are cars as illustrated above so make sure that you check the spec. meticulously.

You sometimes get what you pay for. Moving on to ex-demonstrators. There are two points to be made here. First is the discount. Demonstrators are taken by dealers not just to demonstrate the basic car. They will often have a mass of options fitted, clearly so that they can be demonstrated to potential customers.

So when they tell you that they will knock 8 grand off the list price of the car that’s the list price including the options that may still make this used car, having had multiple drivers, more expensive than the brand new car with the standard spec. which is what you were originally looking for.

Their trick is to compare the cost of the demo with the full list price of the new standard car – but you’d not have paid full list on the new car in the first place. Balance up the desire of the options and the fact that the car is used against a new car without the options and with a discount. Secondly we have perception.

When you call into a dealership and take a demonstrator out with a nice salesman beside you, toodling along at 30 mph you believe that this is the way that all ex-demonstrators have been treated. Well, let me correct that perception. Many years ago in industry as general manager in one of the UK’s most successful PLC’s, I had a fleet department report into me, responsible for around 700 vehicles.

With a fleet that size we were signed into the manufacturers’ demonstrator programmes which meant that every day transporters of brand new cars would turn up, with virtually every make of car on board, that we would have on loan for anything up to 3 months, often 2-4 weeks. I would allow our sales and service staff to use these cars. As they weren’t their own company car they would proceed to ‘burn rubber’ out of our depot and treat the cars like rallycross cars till they were returned.

As we didn’t own the cars I wasn’t worried but at that point I thought to myself I will never ever buy an ex demonstrator as I know how many of them are treated. Oh and often dealer sales staff get to use the demonstrators for personal use and I’ve seen the way they drive them away from the dealership so I strongly recommend that you give ex-demonstrators a very wide berth or you may end up spending more time waiting for repairs to be carried out than actually driving the car! By Graham Hill

One of the things I’ve never quite understood is the way that so many industries, the motor industry in particular, avoid like the plague the rights of consumers. If the rules are considered to be unfair on the providers then the industry should fight to have them changed.

Take for example personal contract purchases (PCP). Dealers try to con customers into coming out of the agreement early in order to put them into another new car. They will tell the customer that they are simply taking their old car back and allowing them to go again with a brand new car.

Nothing wrong with that you might think but they are exercising, on behalf of the customer, what is known as Voluntary Termination (VT), sections 99 & 100 of the Consumer Credit Act. This allows a customer to simply hand back anything (cars, TV’s, lounge suites, computers etc.) he has on HP or Conditional Sale after 50% of the total cost has been fully paid.

Again nothing wrong with that, it’s your legal right. However, few dealers actually explain the process properly and forget to mention that whilst exercising a VT shouldn’t affect your credit score it is noted on your credit file and could affect your ability to obtain finance in the future. Miss-selling? Only time will tell when the claims companies move into the PCP arena.

Now that process exercised by car dealers, as it seems to have a somewhat minor affect on the leasing companies that provide PCP, has become an acceptable practice as it would seem very few people exercise the VT right in order to obtain a car a little early anyway.

However, when I suggest that people who are locked into a PCP, should use VT to terminate their agreement early in order to avoid a service and MOT that is usually due just as the car is due for return at the end of a 3 year agreement, you’d think I’d turned into Satan himself! Even worse when I go on to use VT to avoid excess mileage charges.

Let’s say you have been conned by a salesman to take out an agreement based on 5,000 miles per annum, without him asking what your actual mileage is likely to be, and find that you have actually overshot the mileage allowance by 20,000 miles. It is common to find that you will be facing an end of agreement excess mileage cost of £2,000.

So I suggest that the driver VT the car to avoid the excess mileage charge because if you return the car under the VT rules there is no reference to mileage so in theory you could be 100,000 miles over the mileage allowance but as there is no mileage restriction on the VT of a PCP, as long as the car is in reasonable condition you can VT the car.

Finance companies will try to charge the excess mileage on a pro-rata basis but here’s the thing, they are abusing the law. They know that they can’t charge the excess mileage but they do it in order to frighten the driver with a court case. And that shouldn’t be allowed to happen. The lender knows the rules perfectly well but they are allowed to frighten customers into parting with cash – it’s not right! By Graham Hill

Sadly I have already started to see dealerships and some brokers trying to benefit from the ignorance of consumers and SME’s by manipulating the FCA rules to their advantage. So in this extract from my new updated book, launching in 2017, I have exposed some industry secrets, never before explained and then answered some fundamental questions about Personal Contract Purchase as to why most consumers use this product to finance their new cars and yet the vast majority of businesses use Contract Hire, a product that is also available to consumers.

I’m going to talk about, what appears to be, one of the motor industry’s great mysteries. Recent statistics, from a variety of sources, show that somewhere in the region of 85% of new cars, acquired by consumers, are financed on a Personal Contract Purchase (PCP), with less than 5% financed on Contract Hire, often referred to as a lease. But this isn’t the case with businesses who have accountants and fleet specialists to advise them on the best method to use. Around 85% of businesses acquire their cars through Contract Hire. So why should this be so?

One could argue that PCP is only available to consumers so businesses are denied this facility. Not true, it is possible, from some funders, to arrange a business Contract Purchase with a guaranteed future value, allowing the business to simply hand the car back or purchase it, at the contracted figure, at the end of the agreement, as you or I would do with a PCP. But businesses aren’t interested, for a number of reasons, the main one being cost. And as business takeup of Contract Purchase has been so low, many leasing companies have dropped it from their product range.

So if contract hire is so great for businesses why does it only account for less than 5% of new cars funded by consumers? The answer must surely be VAT as VAT is charged on the contract hire initial and monthly rentals? And as businesses can claim back 50% of the VAT this must be the reason for the high business take up? As PCP payments don’t have VAT added it must therefore be a better product for consumers? Again not strictly true. Firstly many businesses are not VAT registered so they can’t claim back the 50% of the VAT from the VAT man anyway. Secondly, the VAT man isn’t dopey, he will get his pound of flesh one way or the other.

In the case of a car, if you contract hire the car, without getting too technical, the contract hire company can claim back 100% of the VAT it pays on the new car. So a car costing £20,000 + VAT actually only costs the leasing company £20,000 because the car is a business asset that no-one in the leasing company will have use of. It applies its magic formula, allowing for the balloon payment, interest charges and admin costs and comes up with a monthly figure. The VAT man needs some money so he now insists on VAT being applied to the monthly payment. However, with a PCP, whilst the formula for calculating the monthly cost is very similar, as you will have ownership rights in the car the finance company cannot claim back the VAT on the purchase price of the vehicle. Don’t ask – it’s the rules.

So instead of making his calculations based on a purchase price of £20,000 he now has to make his calculations based on a purchase price of £24,000 (£20,000 + VAT). But here is the crunch. Included in both calculations are interest charges. In a lease the interest is calculated on the net purchase price of £20,000 whilst a PCP uses a purchase price of £24,000. So with a PCP you pay additional interest on the unrecoverable £4,000 worth of VAT. I hope you followed that but if you didn’t let me explain simply: In summary, and often contrary to advice given by car salesmen, paying VAT on the contract hire rentals is better for you than making PCP payments that effectively include VAT as well as an additional chunk of interest charge. MYTH EXPLODED!!!!!

Maybe the difference is in rate? Do consumers get charged a much higher rate than businesses making contract hire much less attractive. If you are a business user would you not expect to lease a car for less than a consumer and if you were a large company with hundreds of cars would you not expect to lease cars for less than say a sole trader or small business? Again the answer is no. Whilst one might assume this to be the case, thanks to a rather bizarre ruling, introduced by Labour Secretary of State for Trade and Industry at the time, Stephen Byers, there can be no discrimination between the terms offered to businesses of any size and to those offered to consumers.

The rule falls within the Supply of New Cars Order 2000. So that argument doesn’t stand up to scrutiny and my own experience suggests that most leasing companies operate a like for like rate system. So consumers and SME’s enjoy the same cheap rates enjoyed by some of the biggest companies in the country. Dealers may cite the VAT case and the differential between lease rates provided to consumers compared to businesses as reasons why you should opt for the wildly popular PCP but you now know the truth. Unfortunately as more consumers are convinced of the ‘advantages’ of PCP it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

The more people that take out a PCP the more that dealers can claim it to be the best product suggesting that 85% of consumers can’t all be wrong! So it’s clear to see that dealers would prefer you didn’t know the above, as the VAT implications are often part of their sales pitch. But I’m now going deeper. I’m going to take you to the dark side and expose the way that a large number of PCP users are simply led by the nose in the name of profit and are often not even offered the choice of PCH.

OK, let’s say you are a salesman working in an electronics store selling TV’s. You have two virtually identical TV’s all the same features, same size etc. For selling one TV the salesman is told he will make £30 commission but for selling the second he will be paid £100 commission. Boy will he find features in the second TV that probably haven’t even been invented yet! However many times salesmen are told to ‘treat customers fairly’ and be honest about the products and not misrepresent them, money talks. So when a salesman is incentivized to sell PCP he will of course sell PCP over HP or any other product.

The reason for the greater incentive is that the finance provider makes significantly more interest out of a PCP and as only 20% of customers ever buy their car on PCP the leasing company also stand to make a profit out of the resell of the car at the end of the contract along with any excess mileage charges and charges for repairs. First off let’s look at the shady comparison between a 3 year PCP agreement and a 3 year HP agreement and the reason why the dealer and lender prefer PCP. Your intention is to own the car at the end of the 3 years, either by paying off the final balloon payment, incorporated into the PCP, or simply paying off the whole of the HP. You are paying exactly the same APR on both agreements – this is important.

The car is a £20,000 car after you have paid the deposit. Now if you took the car on a PCP with an £8,000 final payment, also known as a balloon, the monthly payment over 3 years would be £460.45, according to an online calculator. If you add in the balloon payment you would end up paying £24,576 in total. So let’s be clear, you buy a £20,000 car after deposit on a PCP on 10% APR over 3 years and pay the balloon to own the car at the end of 3 years. If you were to take a straight HP over 3 years on 10% APR you would pay £645.34 per month which makes the total amount payable to be £23,232. So you end up paying over £1,300 more on a PCP over the same period on the same APR – That my friends is why dealers and lenders prefer you to take a PCP over an HP agreement!!! The lender makes more and in turn pays more to the dealership in commission.

I have actually been in showrooms where sales staff have said things like: ‘On a PCP you push back part of the cost to the end of the agreement. As you pay no interest on that final figure – that is the reason why the monthly costs are so low compared to HP.’ Completely wrong. The structure of the deal is such that the final balloon payment is the equivalent of an interest only loan. It is far from interest free. It’s like taking out an interest only mortgage of let’s say £200,000 over 15 years. You pay much less than a repayment mortgage per month but you still owe the £200,000 at the end of the agreement. Same principal.

Another common statement used if a customer asks about PCH is something like, ‘Contract hire is mainly for businesses, the rates are cheaper for business users and whilst businesses can claim back the VAT of course you can’t as a consumer so not only are you likely to be paying more per month in the first place you have the added burden of VAT which isn’t applied to PCP payments’. Again, as you can see from above totally misleading and completely untrue. And finally, ‘With PCP you have the choice of buying the car at the end of the agreement or you can simply hand the car back, unlike a lease where you have no choice. Added to which you will no doubt have a profit in the car at the end of the agreement which you can put down on the next car.’ Again, not strictly accurate.

With some PCH funders you have the opportunity to buy the car at the end of the lease at something around trade value but this is trade value at the end of the lease, it isn’t a pre-determined figure. As only 20% of PCP customers buy their cars at the end of the agreement it doesn’t appear to be a major benefit. And if you have a ‘profit’ at the end of the agreement it isn’t actually a profit, you have simply paid more depreciation than was necessary and you are receiving a refund of the money you have paid. Moving on to Contract Hire for consumers, known as PCH, I hear from customers constantly, after visiting dealerships, that PCH is not even offered.

This can be for a number of reasons, often the most obvious is that the salesman is not even aware of the availability of the product. And even if he is he often hasn’t been trained sufficiently to be competent enough to be able to provide you with a comprehensive guide to the product. On the other hand he may know of the product but, like the TV salesman, the incentive may not be so great for him to sell it in preference to PCP. The problem for dealerships is that generally speaking, the price they have to sell the car to their leasing company is dictated by their quoting system and is generally less than what they would sell the car for on a PCP.

The good news for consumers is that they don’t have to go through the negotiating thing, the computer system has already been geared up to your advantage. In many cases the car manufacturer provides the leasing arm with some extra bonus that wouldn’t be available when you take a PCP. It can be shocking to learn that the combined discount from the dealer and the bonus from the manufacturer can sometimes reach 45% off the retail price of the car. And it is very common for discounts of 25 – 30% to be incorporated into the contract hire rate. And here’s the thing, when you contract hire a car all that will appear on your quotes and on the agreement is the rental. No mention whatsoever of the cost of the car. But on a PCP quote and on the agreement the price of the car must be shown.

It would hardly help the sale of the used, 12 month old cars on the dealer’s forecourt if it could be seen that new cars were being sold cheaper than their 12 month old cars. Used car sales, often with more profit in, would collapse as customers learned the truth. But supply a £30,000 car on rentals of £200 + VAT per month – and it seems like a pretty good deal. The fact that a 40% discount has been built into the rate has no effect on the dealer’s used stock. Having said that, in an effort to help the franchised dealers retail more vehicles, manufacturers and the leasing companies can provide discounts in the form of: Manufacturer’s contribution, PCP contribution and Dealer Contribution but even then they won’t normally discount as much as may be achieved in a PCH. Even a discounted APR, free tank of fuel and even free service can still be considerably short of the 30% or £6,000 off a £20,000 car that can then be hidden away in a contract hire rate.

So there you have my thoughts on PCP vs PCH. I am not dismissing PCP as it can occasionally work out cheaper if the manufacturer is not giving away any extra bonus to the leasing companies but the manufacturer bonus is allowing the leasing arm to provide discounted APR on PCP agreements. It may also be convenient to pay extra per month if it results in some equity in the car at the end of the agreement. In other words, if the final payment is say £8,000 and the dealer offers £9,000 in part exchange, giving you £1,000 towards the next car. However, this is a gamble and there is always a chance that the car isn’t worth the final balloon payment. And as only 20% of cars financed on PCP are ever bought it suggests that this is rarely the case. I should also add that PCP can certainly work well on used cars, especially as you cannot usually arrange PCH on a used car.

My final thought is don’t dismiss HP if you are still hell bent on owning or at least having the option to own the car at the end of the agreement. Before the sudden surge in PCP consumers would generally use HP as their funding method of choice. They would finance the car over 5 years with no intention of keeping the car for 5 years. It was common knowledge that after 3 years you could settle the finance and for most cars you would be at the sweet spot when the settlement figure to the finance company matched the trade value of the car. It doesn’t take an accountant to realise this is pretty much what happens with a PCP. After 3 years you settle out the finance simply by handing the car back and this is the advantage of PCP if the car is worth less than the final payment, the finance company suffers the loss. With HP you may not suffer the loss, you would probably keep the car a little longer till the settlement matched the car’s value.

But here’s another revelation. Take the PCP example above on the £20,000 car with an £8,000 balloon, as you can see the monthly payment is £460.45. However, if you took out a 5 year HP on the same APR you would pay just £427.14 per month and guess what, the settlement figure at the end of 36 months is £8,135. So whilst the car salesman may rave over the benefits of PCP you may be better off with an HP agreement, in this case you would be £1,000 better off over the 3 years.

To sum up each type of finance has its place. What I’m suggesting is that when financing a new car you look at all options including HP, PCP and PCH to make sure that you are getting the best deal to suit your needs. And if you are currently looking at a used car as this is all you feel you can afford consider a new car on PCH you might be pleasantly surprised.  By Graham Hill

If, like me, you are worried about the damage that pollution is doing to our environment and to the health of our children then Brexit carries with it some additional concerns. The Government has lost a legal battle in the High Court against environmental campaigners over pollution levels and now have to take action by drawing up more ambitious plans to reduce emissions.

The ruling by the High Court was the result of an appeal by the Government over a Supreme Court ruling in favour of environmental lawyers, ClientEarth who successfully argued that the Government had continually failed to tackle the national air pollution crisis.

Mr Justice Garnham, presiding over the High Court case, said that the Government had continually failed to take steps to bring the UK into compliance with European pollution laws, and that they should take steps, as soon as possible, to correct the situation. However, this is fine whilst we are within the EU but when we are outside will the Government be as keen as the Europeans to keep pollution under control?

I somehow have my doubts which must be a worry to those of us who believe, unlike president elect Trump, that humans are the biggest contributors to the high pollution levels we see around the world, through the poorly controlled burning of fossil fuels. What a doughnut! By Graham Hill

Are electric cars the way forward? Clearly as far as the environment is concerned of course it is so why are many fleets taking them off their options list and consumers becoming reluctant to buy or lease them? Cost has always been a problem but the costs have been dropping whilst driving ranges increase.

So why are people not only refusing to take electric vehicles but also the plug in hybrids? The answer according to Business Car is charging points. There is still a grave lack of charging points but not only that, early points need to be replaced as many are no longer working and those that are, are simply inefficient or have the wrong connection points fitted.

The Government which was fairly and squarely behind this project has let the industry down according to experts, something that Transport Minister, John Hayes is well aware of. One of the issues that needs to be addressed is the mapping of charge point locations that was to be undertaken by Government. Not only the location but also which charge points were most suitable for which car.

In a survey it was found that only 25% of fleets offered a plug in model to its drivers whilst 69% of drivers said that they would be happy to drive an electric car. John Hayes has agreed to take the issues on board and look into the infrastructure as this is clearly a barrier to EV expansion.

He is also looking into driver education although I would suggest that this isn’t needed as drivers are very much in favour of electric vehicles. So if you are looking into an electric vehicle at the moment it may be worth some extra investigation before taking the plunge. By Graham Hill

Technology is advancing at an amazing rate in cars to the point where many new and used car drivers are quite oblivious to some of the latest features fitted to their cars. It is bad enough getting to find out what is fitted to your car when it is new but when you buy a used car from a used car lot the chances are that the dealer hasn’t a clue so you’ve no chance.

However, as always Hill is here to help so here is a breakdown of some of the latest features and what they do: 360 Degree Cameras: Rear parking cameras have been with us for about 15 years but the low cost of cameras and new technology enables you to have an all round view of the car and in some cases an image of your car from a position above. This technology can help with parking, especially into car park bays with cars either side.

However, what we need is continual surveillance and a voice that tells anyone, in no uncertain terms to F*** Off if they are about to key the side of your car and inform them that they have been photographed – something I could have done with a year ago. Bastards!

Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB): This uses sensors to check to see if you are getting too close to an obstacle when driving. If, given your speed, you are getting too close a visual and audible warning is given. Get too close, where the system senses an accident is about to happen, and the brakes are applied with sufficient force to enable you to stop before impact. Euro NCAP safety tests favour cars with this feature fitted as it is believed to prevent 38% of rear end crashes.

Lane Departure Warning: Does what it says, if it feels that the driver is drifting across the lane markings the system will alert the driver with either an audible and/or visual alert and in some cars a vibrating steering wheel (leave it). This feature is already standard on many new cars.

Traffic Jam Assistance: This uses AEB technology along with lane departure technology to keep you in the lane in slow moving traffic with little intervention by the driver.

Blind Spot Warning: this detects cars approaching either side of the car from behind using radar technology to detect cars approaching in your blind spot. It doesn’t do this every time a car is about to overtake or a bike undertake – that would be silly!  Only when it senses that you are attempting a lane change and senses an approaching vehicle will it sound an alarm or lights appear around the door mirror on the side that the vehicle is approaching. Automatic Main Beam: You can switch this on continuously but will only automatically activate when the light dictates. The system senses when you are approaching a car in front or a car is approaching you from the opposite direction and automatically dips the main beam. It can even detect cyclists approaching and also drops to dip beam in lit up areas. Some new LED units can now give the driver as much light in front even though the headlights are no longer dazzling approaching drivers. Clever!

Rear Collision Warnings: This clever system senses a fast approaching car from behind and immediately switches on the hazard warning lights to alert the driver of both vehicles. If the car continues to close fast the seatbelt pre-tensioners are applied and the brakes are also applied to reduce whiplash injury and attempt to stop the concertina effect.

Evasive Steering Assist: This system senses an approaching vehicle on a single carriageway and prevents the car from veering into its path. Some systems can sense a pedestrian walking into the path of the car and allows the car to gently swerve to miss the person then return to the normal driving line.

Rear Cross Traffic Alert: This is activated when reversing out of a parking space and can sense anyone else approaching, possibly also in reverse, and stops the car in order to prevent a collision. Some can also sense cyclists and pedestrians.

Speed Limit Detection: This picks up the speed limit from speed limit signs and adjusts the cruise control speed automatically. It can also place the speed limit on the screen if you are exceeding it and it will gradually adjust the adaptive cruise control speed down to within 5mph of the limit. So there you have it, some of the latest advances in technology, most of which is either available as an optional extra or fitted as standard on new cars. By Graham Hill

I recently heard at a Motor Industry conference, to the point of annoyance, about the continued move towards the totally connected car. Manufacturers seem obsessed with the collection of data for a number of reasons. Some data helps them with the design of future vehicles, collecting information such as true MPG, emissions, faults and systems failures.

This information along with other data/information relating to where the vehicle is during working hours, scheduling servicing, monitoring deliveries and customer calls, calculating running costs and evaluating efficiency can help larger company fleet managers. Personally, a driver could use data to challenge speeding fines, tickets collected by cloned cars and identify ‘cash for crash’ scams.

But this increase in data collection could have sinister implications. Especially as there seems to be no differentiation between the cars that are bought or leased by large fleets and those bought or leased by SME’s and consumers. Within the large organisations employee rights to privacy are laid out in their conditions of employment but what about consumers and SME’s running cars within their businesses?

I don’t recall any customer ever being asked to sign a release allowing manufacturers to collect data from the new cars they drive. And when does the transmission of data stop. If you buy a used car that is 2 or 3 years old does data collection continue. Also if you are connected to the Internet it would seem that not only Google, or whichever search engine you use, can collect search history, so can the manufacturers it would seem.

And if large companies can collect information about where their drivers have been or currently are located why can’t a crook with a bit of IT nous do the same to find out where you are before breaking into your house? Or if the vehicles are out on business a competitor could see where all your sales and delivery staff are and target the same clients. We are entering a dangerous world and one over which we are having less control.

Little did I know that when I explained that you should clear down your telephone contact list held in your car when you sell it or return it at the end of your lease, that so much more data was likely to be collected and passed on. And how do you clear that down and prevent future transmission? We need legislation to protect us and our businesses urgently, it is a big flaw to this whole Big Data tsunami! Oh and I don’t doubt that the private eyes out there preparing divorce cases are all over this like a rash!!! By Graham Hill