Arias Pistons 12.5:1 Compression 82mm Bore Honda B-series on 2040-parts.com

Electric cars get a £500 million government cash boost – but will it get spent?

The new BMW i3 EV (pictured) will be subsidised until 2017. The subsidy of up to £5000 paid to buyers of electric cars has been with us for three years, but it hasn’t had much impact on EV sales and it did look like the government had decided to scrap it all together. But it looks like the coalition has allowed Nick Clegg to have his way with EV subsides in a move that will see £500 million injected in to promoting and supporting electric cars in the UK in the next few years.

Audi A2 electric concept heads for Frankfurt

Audi A2 Concept EV - Frankfurt bound The last Audi A2 was perhaps the only real failure for Audi in the last twenty years. But that hasn’t stopped them reviving the moniker and attaching it to a new concept heading to Frankfurt – the electric Audi A2 Concept. Audi say the A2 concept has an electric-only powertrain, which sadly means they are not pursuing the elegant range-extender solution with a Wankel engine they showed in the A1 e-Tron at Geneva last year.

Nissan Friend-ME – looks better than it sounds: Shanghia Motor Show

Nissan has built the Friend-ME (which must rank as one of the most useless car monikers ever) to appeal to the potentially huge market of ‘B?línghòu’ buyers, a group of buyers, born in the 1980s, who grew up as single children thanks to China’s ‘One Child’ policy. Nissan sees this group as totally reliant on their network of friends for support, and has built a car that owners can enjoy with their friends on an equal basis. So every one of the four seats gets full instrumentation - SatNav, Fuel, Speed – and an ‘Oracle Stone’ runs down the centre of the cabin which can display whatever content the occupants want from their connected Smartphones and tablets.