Bid to cut car insurance premiums

THE COMPETITION WATCHDOG is proposing to impose a cap on replacement vehicle costs following motor accidents as part of a clampdown to help cut premiums for all drivers in the £11 billion private motor insurance market. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said the cap on charges passed to the insurer of the driver who is at-fault in an accident for the cost of providing a replacement vehicle to the non-fault driver, would "more closely reflect the costs incurred and remove significant inefficiencies". The watchdog has previously found that the "complex chain" of claim costs following an accident collectively inflates premiums by as much as £200 million a year.

Audi at CES 2011

Audi will position itself as the leader in in-car electronics, is working on augmented reality head up and 3D cockpits displays, and has already integrated NVIDIA's very latest Tegra 2 super processor to power the HMI of the next A3. Those were just a few of the highlights from a keynote speech given by Rupert Stadler, Chairman of Audi, on the opening morning of the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Stadler drove onto the stage in the E-tron Spyder concept last seen at the Paris auto show — here painted a fetching shade of deep red — together with CES founder and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, Gary Shapiro.

Volkswagen Woofwagen – There’s a dog for every VW (video)

There’s a dog for every Volkswagen Instead of focusing on marketing just one car in its enormous range, Volkswagen UK has decided to go mad and produce one video advert for its entire line-up. Sensibly, VW has used a simple mechanism to make sure the advert gets the attention of British car buyers by using 36 different dogs to identify with the over 20 car VW model range (and it’s not the first time VW has used a lot of dogs to promote their cars). With getting on for half of all UK households owning at least one dog, it’s a simple way to get attention from viewers along with lots of ‘Aaahs’ and ‘that one looks just like ours’ to keep attention to the end of the sales pitch.