B&m 80797 Hi-tek Street Bandit; Automatic Shifter on 2040-parts.com

Electric cars enjoyed one of the best months of sales in June 2013

If you think you've been seeing more Teslas and Nissan Leafs on the streets, it's not your imagination -- there really are more of them on our roads. Just in the month of June of this year, almost 9,000 plug-in electric vehicles have been sold in the U.S. This adds to more than 110,000 plug-in electric vehicles that have been sold in this country in the last two and a half years, the Electrification Coalition reports.

Volkswagen Golf GTE Plug-in Hybrid UK debut

The VW Golf GTE (pictured) gets its UK debut at the NEX next week The Volkswagen Golf GTE – which VW see as a plug-in hybrid Golf GTI – was revealed in February ahead of its debut at the Geneva Motor Show last month and is now heading for the Gadget Show Live at the NEC next week for its UK debut. With a 1.4 litre TSI petrol turbo producing 148bhp and a 101 bhp electric motor, the Golf GTE promises decent performance – 0-62mph in 7.6 seconds – daft official economy figures of 188 mpg and the ability to run on electric power only for up to 31 miles. It’s an appealing combination for a Golf that can offer city running benefits with a turn of decent performance when the mood takes, although at a price likely to be north of £30k it’s not exactly a budget buy.

Skoda Fabia (2015) unveiled: first pictures of Czech supermini

By Tim Pollard First Official Pictures 19 August 2014 08:00 Czech HQ has issued this pair of pictures of the new 2015 Skoda Fabia. They reveal a conservatively styled supermini in the vein of a shrunken Octavia with a dash more sophistication than today’s workaday hatch. The new, third-generation Fabia sticks with the crisp, defined surfacing that has come to represent Skoda’s ascetic formality.