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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.

New Ford Kuga production increased to meet strong demand

Ford has revealed that it having to increase production of the new Kuga by 10 per cent at its Valencia Plant to meet strong demand. We reported in February that Ford were chuffed with sales of the new Kuga - especially as almost all buyers were opting for ‘premium’ versions – with orders for almost 2,000 in the UK just weeks after the Kuga went in to production in Spain, and sales across Europe for the Kuga up 27 per cent year on year. So Ford is now doing the only thing they can to deal with the burgeoning sales of the Kuga and are upping production in Valencia by 10 per cent, and now expect to build 100,000 new Kugas this year for Europe alone.

Nissan UK Battery plans confirmed

Nissan - the Renault Nissan Alliance - has confirmed plans for car battery production in the UK and Portugal The aim of the battery production plants is to supply batteries for electric cars built by the Renault Nissan alliance, but Nissan haven’t actually said that they will build any electric cars in the UK. Hmm. The target production is 60,000 annually to be used in a range of Nissan and Renault electric cars that will start to hit the market next year (2010) – in the US and Japan – with full global roll-out by 2010.