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Daimler and Renault-Nissan strike a global partnership

Daimler today struck a wide-ranging partnership with the Renault-Nissan alliance, in a deal that will usher in new jointly developed cars, shared technologies and a multitude of cost savings.  Cars such as the new 2014 Smart Fortwo will now be twinned with the next Renault Twingo, while the Forfour is set for a comeback and we can expect plenty of shared combustion engines and electric motors, borrowed platforms and jointly developed SUV tech across all three parties. And that's only scratching the surface of the possibilities opened up by this wide-ranging deal.

2014 Vauxhall Meriva facelift gets new diesel engine

2014 Vauxhall Meriva facelift (pictured) gets new diesel engine It’s more than three years since the Vauxhall Meriva arrived – at Geneva in 2010 – as Vauxhall’s compact people carrier, so it’s time for a bit of a titivate and a few updates. The cosmetic makeover for the 2014 MY Meriva isn’t huge, but Vauxhall has thrown in a new grill and new headlights to fulfil the ‘new nose’ requirements of a facelift, there’s new alloys and new alloy options and daytime running lights. But the biggest change comes under the skin, with the old 1.7 litre turbo diesel being supplanted by the new 1.6 litre from the Zafira which offers 134bhp and 236lb/ft of torque.

Volvo develops new energy storage technology

Volvo is looking to make heavy batteries in electric vehicles a thing of the past, unveiling a new technology still under development that could use the body panels of the vehicle to store energy. Everyone knows that right now one of the biggest technological limiting factors of electric vehicles are the batteries. They can be damaged through depletion, they add weight, they use expensive and polluting technologies to manufacture, and they just don't hold as much energy as we'd like.