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2012 BMW 3 Series UK: New photos & video – 4WD, new engines & hybrid confirmed

Lots of new 2012 BMW 3-Series photos BMW UK has produced a big gallery of UK specific photos for the new 2012 BMW 3-Series – and a video too – and confirmed xDrive and hybrid 3-Series for the UK. We got the reveal of the 2012 BMW 3-Series back in October, together with a decent amount of detail, a big photo gallery and video too. But as BMW UK has taken the trouble to send us a huge gallery of UK-specific photos of the new 3-Series, new UK 3-Series video and confirmed extra models, we thought the least we could was publish what they’ve sent.

UK Car Insurance Company reports buyers downsizing

Swinton Insurance claim quote requests for bigger cars are down 20% Swinton say that it has seen an increase of 25% in quote requests for smaller engined cars in the last six months and a decrease of 20% in car insurance quotes for cars over 1.8 litres (which, short of the big-engined cars being scrapped begs the question: What’s happened to the big-engined cars? Did they just disappear, or are they just not being insured?). But this got us thinking.

Battery breakthrough set to accelerate electric-car development

A team of scientists working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are claiming a significant breakthrough in recharging times for lithium-ion batteries. According to findings published in the scientific journal Nature, MIT researchers Byoungwoo Kang and Gerbrand Ceder have unlocked the potential of lithium-ion batteries by patenting a unique process which is claimed to allow a typical laptop power pack to be fully recharged in less than a minute--an improvement in recharging performance of roughly 90 percent over existing lithium-ion batteries. Lithium-ion batteries generate electric current via the flow of lithium ions across an electrolyte, from an electrode to a cathode.