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Maserati head to India

Maserati Quattroporte will be the big seller in India It’s not a surprise that Maserati has announced it’s going to enter the marketplace in India, very sensibly in partnership with Indian luxury retailer the Shreyans Group, who also import Ferrari. After all, just about every other car maker is rushing headlong to the sub-continent to cash-in on India’s booming economy and Maserati wants a piece of the action. It doesn’t matter whether you’re Tata selling the Nano for a plate of rice and a cow’s udder, or Bugatti wanting a Maharajah’s Palace in exchange for their hypercar, it’s boom time in India at almost every level of consumption.

Ford Fiesta eWheelDrive gets wheel hub electric motors

The Ford Fiesta eWheelDrive – a driveable research vehicle built by Ford and German specialists Schaeffler – may be a regular supermini in size, but it points towards a potential future EV which is much more compact and very manoeuvrable. Ford has taken a regular Fiesta and dumped its powertrain, replacing it with a battery bank where the engine would be and fitted a pair of in-hub electric motors on the rear wheels. But the plan is to build new cars with the batteries under the floor which frees up the space under the bonnet which can then be all but removed to create a very compact urban car that still has space for four.

Renault Zoe EV production car at 2012 Geneva motor show

Renault had a surprise up its sleeve at the 2012 Geneva motor show – the new production version of the Zoe electric car will cost just £13,650 in the UK. That’s after the Government’s Plug-in Car grant which pays up to a quarter or £5000 of an electric car’s RRP, and makes the Zoe a more attractive proposition than other electric cars to date. Renault says the new Zoe is priced to be an equivalent to a diesel-powered supermini.