Driverless cars on UK pavements by 2015

REX Driverless cars are starting to look less and less like science fiction and much more like a realistic vision of our near future – and now the first UK trial of the technology is set to start in Milton Keynes in 2015. But don’t go expecting a Ford Fiesta with a brain. Instead the Milton Keynes experiment will feature compact pods that you can hail via a smartphone app, zipping along pavements at up to 12mph.

SSC Tuatara revealed in Shanghai

Jerod Shelby reveals the SSC Tuatara in Shanghai We finally discovered last month that Shelby Supercars wouldn’t be calling their new Veyron-bashing hypercar the Ultimate Aero II (which seemed logical) but has instead taken a leaf out of Pagani’s ‘Book of obscure names for Supercars’ and decided on SSC Tuatara. Yep, SSC has named their hypercar after the Maori name for a lizard, a lizard with the fastest evolving DNA of any creature (doubtless the motivation for Jerod nicking the name for his car). Interestingly, a comment on the story we ran about the new SSC getting the Tuatara moniker said that as well as having the fastest evolving DNA of any creature, the Tuatara “…puts a tortoise to shame in the slow moving stakes, and is also regarded as a living link to the dinosaurs” which, for Jerod Shelby’s benefit, we should probably gloss over.

Nissan LEAF £2500 UK price drop

Nissan has revealed that the LEAF EV will be reduced in price by £2500 with immediate effect and ahead of the launch of the uprated 2013 LEAF. The world hasn’t exactly fallen in love with electric cars, which has as much to do with the fact that an electric car, with its limited range, is never going to be a replacement for a normal ICE car. But compounding the impracticality of the EV as a replacement for the ICE car is the very high prices car makers are charging for electric cars, the sort of prices that mean buyers will probably find the ‘Cheap to Fuel’ EV a more costly option than fuelling a much cheaper comparable iICE car with petrol or diesel.