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When you took out the insurance for your car do you recall be ing asked what class of car insurance you wanted? Yes you would have taken out fully comprehensive insurance, especially if your car was leased, it would be a condition of the finance agreement. But there are also three categories you would have chosen from.

All policies cover you for Social, Domestic and Pleasure (SD&P). This basic cover only covers you for personal use and doesn’t even cover you to commute to and from work. The next level is SD&P including commuting. This means social domestic and pleasure and commuting to and from work but it doesn’t cover you to travel to another branch or to say a training course.

Class 1 is the next level which includes personal business use. This includes personal business use in connection with your job, which covers travelling between branches, attending training courses etc. Class 2 will cover you and others for SD&P and all business use. Finally Class 3 will cover SD&P and commercial travelling.

You may read this and not give it much further thought but Graeme Trudgill, Executive Director at British Insurance Brokers Association, said that the law requires you to be insured for the correct use of your car, if not you risk voiding your policy and a fine. So ignore this at your peril. By Graham Hill

A few years ago I returned to my Mercedes having been away for the day at a conference only to find that the car had been keyed. I actually felt relieved that I’d been driving prestige cars for many years and this was the first time my car had been vandalised.

It didn’t stop me from parking at the corner of the road for three nights running in the hope that I would catch the cretins doing it again – very silly I know but I was furious! So I was quite surprised to read that the most vandalised car in the UK is the Smart Car. Churchill insurance analysed insurance claims and found that Smart ForTwo and Smart ForFour were the most vandalised cars.

Analysis showed one in one hundred cars being vandalised, to put this into perspective next on the list was the Mini at one in one thousand cars. Small Alfa Romeo, BMW and Mazda car owners have complained about their cars being deliberately damaged. After analysing claims between 2013 and 2017 they found that there was a vandalism claim every 22 minutes.

Most claims were for cosmetic damage with 15% blamed on scratches and similar incidents. 12% of claims were for damage to bumpers with another 12% dings in doors. Steve Barrett, head of car insurance at Churchill said, ‘We advise victims to report vandalism to police, even when the damage is minor.’ We don’t know what the problem is with Smart cars, in 2009 several were pushed into Amsterdam’s canals and 2014 several were turned upside down in San Francisco.

Bloody typical, just as we have a great deal on them! By Graham Hill

I have to say that I’m not a big fan of President Trump and when he was constantly moaning about False News I thought he was being paranoid but reading all the nonsense printed and reported about diesel cars I can understand what he means.

I’m not going to deny that petrol and diesel cars are not good for the environment but the difference between the two is minimal. Petrol pushes out more CO2 whilst Diesel pushes out more NOX. Diesels also had a problem with particulates but used properly a new Euro 6 diesel emits no particulates at all.

I was speaking to an MOT tester and even 3-year-old cars often emit zero particulates when MOT tested. My view is that by raising diesel emissions as a major problem, mayor Khan and many local authorities are using the scare tactics to impose more penalties on those driving all diesels and not just the old models.

Ford have already said that they are committed to diesel cars and others are taking a similar line but we could be looking at a totally different playing field in 2 years time. Bosche have developed a new system that will reduce NOX emissions to just 13mg/km.

That’s about a tenth of the limit set to be the level required in 2020 under the next set of regulations known as RDE2. In technical terms, Bosche has moved the Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) System and the Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) closer to the engine, allowing them to operate at optimal temperatures.

A faster-spooling turbo is fitted to improve operating efficiencies and the exhaust gas re-circulating system is modified to keep hot air pointed at emissions reduction components. The set-up also includes improvements to the fuel injection, Adblue dosing equipment and engine management software, while the development car’s engine capacity was reduced from 2.0 litres to 1.7 litres without loss of power.

When testing Bosch found the worst case scenario was driving around town when their car, a VW Golf, recorded a maximum NOx emission of 26mg/km because in very cold conditions the car struggled to get up to full operating temperature.

Fuel and AdBlue consumption remained the same although technicians said that in very cold congested conditions fuel consumption could increase by between 3% and 5%. Whilst the equipment cannot be retrofitted to older diesels it is available for manufacturers to order now. But the hardware changes needed mean the complete system is unlikely to be integrated into production lines for another two years. Excellent news for us supporters of diesel! By Graham Hill

When electric vehicles(EV) were first introduced you had to find one of the very rare charging points and leave your car plugged in for many hours in order to achieve a full charge. Th good news was that most of these charging points were totally free to use.

We then saw the introduction of home (or works) chargers that could be installed at home and run off the standard domestic electric supply. In order to encourage the installation of these charges whilst promoting the use of electric cars the Government offered a subsidy to those installing a charge point.

Of course this now meant that you would be paying to top up the batteries with latest figures showing that to charge the battery of the Renault Zoe from 0 – 80% would cost in the region of £4.00. Compare this with what you would now have to pay to charge your car at a public Polar slow charge point and it will now cost you £13 over 3 times as much.

What Car has looked into the anomalies and I’ve used some of their findings to report on the current situation. First of all they found that there were still some free charging points. They also found some wide variances between suppliers. Looking at the cost per kilowatt hour – when you charge your car at home it will cost on average 14p per kWh. Some public chargers are charging up to 40 pence per kWh with Shell currently on a promotional tariff of 25pence per kWh which will rise to an astronomical 49pence per kWh from 1^st June.

The charging points can charge at 22Kw or 43Kw, a slow or fast charge. But they found that whilst they were charged for the fast charge they only received the slow charge when connected to a Polar charge point in Hampshire. This meant that they paid £6 for a 30-minute charge but only got the equivalent of 15 minutes charging.

In addition to the cost of the electricity, you can also be charged per visit. This can add as much as £3.50 to the cost each time you charge the car. Some demand a registration fee of up to £20 to join their network. To add to the total confusion some will charge on a kWh basis whilst others charge on a minutes or hours basis. This makes it very difficult to compare tariffs.

The range of the cars is also confusing. The Zoe is top of the production car trees with an official range of 250 miles. But in the middle of Winter in real-world conditions, it was only found to achieve 130 miles. Like many EV’s the Zoe has two battery sizes, 22kWh and 41kWh, the second capable of rapid charging. Using the car with the larger capacity battery they carried out a 10% charge at a Source London charging point in south-west London. It cost £2.07 which may seem reasonable but would have cost £17 had they charged 80%. The fast charger took half an hour to charge up to 10%.

Next they were off to Winchester on the M3 where they hooked up to an Ecotricity rapid charger. They were down to 30% but in 46 minutes were back up to 80% at a cost of £6.90. That would mean the cost of 0-80% would be £9.36. However, if you are an Ecotricity customer with a home charger fitted the cost would drop down to half that figure as you receive a 50% rebate.

Finally, on their way back to London they used a Polar instant charger which cost £6 for a 30-minute charge. However, the bill was calculated on a charge rate of 43kWh but in fact they only received a 22kWh charge so they only received half of the charge they paid for.

So the industry needs to tighten up and if the cost of charging increases much more simple economics will take over and put people off this ‘cheaper form of motoring’. So is running an EV becoming more expensive to fuel than a petrol or diesel car. What Car put it to the test.

A 50% EV charge will give you a realistic 65 mile range. You pay £6 for that via a rapid charger. That calculates out at 9 pence per mile. If you have to add an admin fee for every charge (Geniepoint London demands £1.80 every time you charge using one of its rapid chargers)  the figure increases to 12 pence per mile. If you stop at a Shell garage after 1^st June the figure increases to 15 pence per mile.

Compare these figures with a Fiesta 1.0 petrol which costs about 13 pence per mile or a VW Polo 1.0 Diesel that costs 11 pence per mile. Of course, the electricity cost comes down if you only ever use your home charger. But if you use public chargers the cost is already above petrol and diesel equivalents. Something needs to be done. By Graham Hill

We all know that one of the most common car insurance fiddles is the widely publicised Cash for Crash whiplash claim. Simply a car races past you, swerves in front and brakes hard. You brake and still run into the back of the car. As you ran into the car in front you are considered at fault whilst all 5 people in the car at the time claim for whiplash and each receive several thousands of pounds in costs and compensation.

With the introduction of the Civil Liabilities Act (at Bill stage at the moment) compensation for whiplash claims will drop from the current maximum of £1,850 to £425. The new Act will make it illegal to submit a whiplash claim without medical evidence. Together it is felt that this will discourage this scurrilous activity and in turn save the Insurance Industry £1 billion each year.

This is the equivalent to £35 per motorist. The Ministry of Justice says that despite the UK having some of the safest roads in Europe the number of whiplash claims has increased by 50% in the past 10 years. They blame a predatory industry that encourages motorists to submit exaggerated or fraudulent claims driving up insurance premiums for all.

Justice secretary, David Gauke, said, ‘This legislation will ensure that whiplash claims are no longer an easy payday. The Bill will seek to set fixed amounts of compensation for whiplash claims and halt the practice of setting claims without medical evidence.’

Whilst some insurers, including Liverpool Victoria and Aviva have pledged to pass on any savings to motorists I have my doubts. And how will we know? Will they send a note to all clients advising of a drop in their premiums? I doubt it. My concern is that the £425 ceiling is too low when applied to a genuine case. Genuine cases of whiplash should be treated fairly with those affected being suitably recompensed. I know people who have suffered whiplash with the problem remaining forever. It can be very painful and debilitating. £425 hardly seems fair to me simply because a few crooks make false claims. By Graham Hill

If like me, you like to watch QI you will know that when asked a question with an obvious answer, the chances are that the obvious answer is wrong. So if you believed that the obvious answer to the question above was the ‘UK’ you would only be partly right.

The reason for saying this is that we will still be exporting to Europe, whether free of duty or not, the products must still conform to health and safety standards set down by the EU. Emissions from our cars must still conform to the EU standards, currently Euro 6.

But that aside we will have International Accounting standards that mean we can’t account for anything in a way we feel we should do – we must conform to the International rules. And that’s not all. What or who is the United Nations? If you thought out loud and said a body set up to maintain world peace and you were sitting on the panel of QI you would have an incorrect answer klaxon blasting in your ear.

The truth is that the UN is currently not only investigating the use of Chemical weapons by Assad but also headlight glare. A United Nations working party has been set up, following concerns by the public, to look into headlight glare to determine whether headlights are now too bright? With newer cars now being fitted with bi-xenon bulbs and even using matrix laser technology (no I don’t either) the public are suggesting that they are being blinded by the bright headlights.

Seriously, a body that I thought was set up to police the world is checking out the safety of car headlights. When did that responsibility pass to them or am I completely missing a point here?

On the point of headlights I read in the same article that an RAC investigation found that 65% of all motorists claimed that they were regularly blinded by oncoming traffic. Good enough then – no wonder the UN are involved. I could possibly understand it if headlight blinding was resulting in a serious number of accidents each year – but there is no evidence of that. All very confusing.

If they carry on down this path I can see us exiting from the UN – let’s call it BREXITUN. The world’s going nuts! By Graham Hill

When Apple updates the operating system on their iPhones in the autumn of this year to IOS 11 it will include a mode that will prevent alerts from coming through to their iPhone whilst driving.

The ‘Do Not Disturb Whilst Driving’ feature is activated when connected to a car via Bluetooth or cable. It will silence all notifications and blank the screen. The feature will also respond to all messages coming through with a text message that says that the person is currently driving and is unavailable.

Passengers who are also connected to the car can opt to disable the feature by confirming that they are not behind the wheel. Drivers will be able to send messages in an emergency by saying the word ‘Urgent’ and can tailor the replies to different contacts.

The new feature, whilst it doesn’t stop those who are not Bluetooth connected from holding the phone to their ear or texting whilst driving, it is certainly a step in the right direction. Others in the industry have given the revision a thumbs up.

Pete Willians, spokesman for the BePhoneSmart campaign said, ‘We’re pleased that at last millions of drivers who use an iPhone are about to be able to put an end to intrusive notifications while they are behind the wheel.’ I agree. By Graham Hill

Nearly a million bus lane fines are issued a year according to the RAC. Between 2015 and 2017 3.4 million penalty charge notices have been issued by local councils, estimated to be £68 million a year or £200 million over the 3 years – so why has this been happening?

The RAC puts it down to ‘inadequate’ or ‘confusing’ signage causing drivers to accidentally move into a bus lane without realising it. It begs the question, is the signage poor in order to catch unsuspecting motorists? The problem is that whilst the local councils wring their hands the confusion causes traffic delays and jams leading also to increased emissions.

One of the problems, in addition to signage, is inconsistency. Some towns and cities have bus lanes that are reserved as bus lanes 24/7 whilst others allow other drivers to use their bus lanes outside set times. So when motorists travel from town to town, to be on the safe side, they stay out of the bus lane.

You will often see cars pulling over at the end of a bus lane to turn left at a junction or roundabout only to be prevented from doing so by those who have zoomed down the bus lane (as they know the rules) giving the impression they are doing something illegal – when they aren’t. This can lead to traffic delays at junctions and possible road rage. A motorcyclist also pointed out that in some towns he can drive along the bus lanes at any time whereas others he can’t.

If you are concerned about receiving a fine it was interesting to note that Manchester was top of the fine list. 2^nd was Glasgow, followed by Cardiff, Bradford and Nottingham. Strangely, whilst London was left off the list, it actually slotted in below Glasgow – quite a surprise. I won’t bore you with more stats but I would point out that in London the borough with the biggest increase was my good friends – Croydon with a 787% increase. I think if you sneezed in a car in Croydon you’de be done for driving without due care and attention!

So the warning, check the signage carefully and don’t assume that a car whizzing down the bus lane knows the rules and is taking advantage, then follow him, he’s probably just nicked the car and doesn’t give a damn! By Graham Hill

I first started using contract hire in the late 70’s. I was working for a large manufacturer and leasing company and as General Manager I had overall responsibility for over 700 vehicles. We owned all of our vehicles and I had to fight a massive battle to convince the board that we would be better off leasing our vehicles. I had progressed from being the Group Cost and Management Accountant through Group IT Manager to Group General Manager.

This background meant that I could put forward a very strong and convincing case. It also meant that in those days for a contract hire company to capture a fleet of that size they had to be very flexible. It meant that we could pool our mileage and whilst some cars would be returned in excellent condition some, with very high mileage, would go back in pretty ropey condition. Again they would take a view and we rarely received a charge for damage repair.

In other words, cars that were returned under mileage would use their mileage credit to offset any cars returning over mileage. So we effectively received a rebate. And cars in showroom condition when returned would help to balance out those in relatively poor condition.

Those days are long gone, causing many customers all sorts of issues at the end of their contracts. For example when you set your mileage at 10,000 miles per annum and at the end of 3 years you exceed the mileage allowance by say 3,000 miles you are likely to receive a bill for say £300 if your excess mileage charge was 10 pence per mile. However, if you sent back the car with just 27,000 miles on the clock, 3,000 miles under, you receive no rebate. That’s not fair. I wouldn’t even mind if your rebate was just 5 pence per mile for under mileage, I would be a little happier.

The same applies to end of lease damage, especially if you are a good customer. I have to say that whilst I’m currently taking on MB Finance over a lease extension, when it comes to returning a car with minor damage on it I have twice had the charge waived as a ‘gesture of goodwill’.

Here’s the point, All leasing companies tend to work the same when it comes to excess mileage but I have just quoted the same car on the same mileage with two different suppliers. The excess mileage with one company was 8 pence per mile whilst the other was more than twice as much at 16.7 pence per mile. It becomes very confusing.

The same applies to repairs if you return the car with damage. Most leasing companies use the BVRLA standard recommendations, which is good news. The bad news is that they charge different amounts for the same work to be carried out. We need more consistency if leasing is to expand at least cost to the customer. By Graham Hill

Far too often I’ve heard complaints from consumers who have made a warranty claim only to be told that the manufacturer won’t honour it – insisting that the problem was down to wear and tear or the driver’s driving style. In many cases the decision is wrong but what do you do if the manufacturer has point blank refused to carry out a repair?

Well first off you read the relevant sections in my PCP guide – soon to be available as a free download. The same rules apply whether you took the car on PCP, HP or PCH finance. You don’t own the car so your beef is with the owner of the car – the finance provider.

If you’re not satisfied with the response from the dealer and the manufacturer, make a formal complaint to the finance provider. If you still can’t get the problem sorted you report both the lender and the dealer to Trading Standards. They will contact the dealer and the lender. Still no joy? Move on to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) but only if you have financed the car. If you bought for cash there is nothing they can do. The official alternative is what used to be called Motor Codes, now the Motor Ombudsman.

This isn’t part of FOS. FOS is a government-run independent body very much on the side of consumers. However, the Motor Ombudsman is funded by the garages that sign up to their scheme and you can only complain about a garage that is one of their members. Are you starting to get the same feelings as I’m getting? How certain can you be that you’ll be treated fairly over a part that is very expensive and needs replacing? In my opinion, avoid the Motor Ombudsman.

Next down the list are the trade bodies, a route very rarely suggested but can be very effective. Your issue is actually with the lender so check on the websites to see if the finance provider is a member of the Finance and Leasing Association (FLA) and the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA), you should make a formal complaint against the funder if he fails to get involved or come up with an acceptable solution.

You can also ask the association for details of their Dispute Resolution Service and make an application to them to help if you are in a stalemate. Every trade body must have a Dispute Resolution Service that they can provide details of. The dealer and manufacturer must carry some responsibility, so make the same complaint to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) and if you want to take up the case with them (not the lender) you can, but beware of stepping on the toes of a lender. They will also have a Dispute Resolution Service which you can call upon.

Finally, you can file a legal claim through the small claims court but hopefully, you would have resolved the problem before you get to this stage at no cost other than your time. By Graham Hill