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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.

New Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer (2011) Revealed

The Vauxhall Astra ST 2011 You can’t have a new Vauxhall Astra without a new Astra Estate, so Vauxhall has now got round to revealing the Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer, which will go on sale at the end of the year and be built at Vauxhall’s plant in Ellesmere Port. Vauxhall has done a good job of making a load-lugger from the stylish Astra. The wheelbase remains the same but the load length grows by 28mm, not a huge amount but enough to give the Astra ST 500 litres of load space with the seats up and 1550 litres with them down.

Caterham 620R heading for Goodwood debut

The Caterham 620R (pictured) will debut at the Goodwood FoS Caterham may be planning an assault on the mainstream car market with an SUV and a City Car, but it’s not forgetting its roots, with a new entry-level 7 in the mix and now a new range-topping 7 – the Caterham 620R. The Caterham 620R is heading for Goodwood this week for a debut – and consigning the current R500 to the history bin in the process – as the most powerful road going car Caterham have ever produced. The power comes from the same 2.0 litre Supercharged Ford engine as the R500, but in the 620R the wick has been turned up to 11, with 310bhp on offer, enough to scoot the 500kg 620R to 62mph in just 2.8 seconds.