Ecstatic partying - 24 March 2026
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54:02
Company
JLR
JLR is Jaguar Land Rover, the company that makes Jaguar and Land Rover cars. They’re talking about a top executive leaving that company.
Company
AutoCar
AutoCar is a car-news website/magazine. They’re saying AutoCar first reported the story, then it was later denied.
Concept
corporate speak
“Corporate speak” means the very formal, careful wording companies use in announcements. It often sounds impressive but doesn’t always say much in plain terms.
Concept
tariffs
Tariffs are extra taxes on imported products. If cars or parts have to cross a border, tariffs can make them more expensive and harder to sell profitably.
Concept
deliveries of cars
“Deliveries” is how many cars the company actually got to customers (or dealers) during that time. It’s a key number for judging sales performance.
Brand
Bentley
Bentley is a luxury car brand from the UK. Here they’re talking about the company cutting jobs and changing what cars they plan to build next.
Concept
knock-on effect
A knock-on effect means one problem causes other problems later. In this case, delaying a platform delays development for other cars too.
Brand
Rolls Royce
Rolls-Royce is a top-tier luxury car brand. The hosts say it’s backing away from an all-electric goal because customers still want V12-powered cars.
Concept
electric only
“Electric only” means a future where new cars are only electric. The point here is that some companies assumed the transition would be easy just because things looked good for a short time.
Concept
EVs
EVs are cars that run on electricity from a battery. The hosts are talking about how EV sales can grow fast for a while, then settle down.
Term
nav system
A nav system is the car’s GPS guidance. It can make sounds to tell you when to turn or approach a route change.
Concept
Euro 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7
Euro 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 are EU rules that make vehicles cleaner over time. Higher numbers generally mean stricter emissions limits.
Brand
Volvo trucks
Volvo Trucks is a big company that makes heavy trucks. In this discussion, they’re mentioned because they’re involved in trying to influence how the EU sets emissions rules.
Concept
battery recycling
Battery recycling means taking old EV batteries and breaking them down so useful metals can be reused. That helps reduce the need to mine new materials and keeps batteries from just being thrown away.
Concept
vehicle accident packs reused
Sometimes a car is wrecked, but the battery might still be usable. After inspection, that battery can be reused for storing electricity instead of being scrapped right away.
Term
associated infrastructure
It means the charging setup and electrical work needed so the buses can run every day. Without it, the buses can’t operate.
Concept
mandated levels
“Mandated levels” are the minimum targets the government requires car companies to hit. If they sell more than required, they may end up with extra credit.
Concept
buying credits
If a company doesn’t sell enough zero-emissions vehicles, it can sometimes “buy” credits instead. Those credits make up for the shortfall.
Term
carbon fiber frame
A carbon fiber frame means parts of the car’s structure are made from carbon fiber. It helps keep the car lighter, which can improve efficiency and driving feel.
Car
BMW i3
The BMW i3 is BMW’s electric small car. They’re talking about how it looks and how it compares to other electric cars like the Tesla Model 3.
Concept
platform sharing
Platform sharing means two different cars are built on similar “bones” underneath. That can help manufacturers make cars faster and cheaper.
Term
doctored studio photographs
Sometimes car photos are edited to make the car look better. That can change how the shape and colors really look, so it’s worth seeing the car in person.
Term
rendering
A rendering is a computer picture of a car. It can look great, but it might not be exactly what the real car looks like.
Term
windscreen
The windscreen is the big front window you look through. If someone mentions details near the top of it, they mean styling or parts mounted around that glass.
Term
thumb cutouts
Some steering wheels have special notches where your thumbs sit. The speaker thinks these notches make the wheel look and feel worse.
Term
internal lighting
They’re talking about lights inside the car’s cabin. The speaker thinks the lighting makes the interior look overdone.
Concept
right-hand drive
Right-hand drive just means the steering wheel is on the right side of the car. Some car designs are easier to adapt for countries that drive on the left.
Concept
charged at a premium rate
A “premium rate” means the car costs more than the regular versions in the same class. The speaker suggests DS charges extra because it’s marketed as more luxurious.
Brand
KGM
KGM is the brand name used for vehicles that were previously marketed under SsangYong. The segment highlights the rebranding, which matters for buyers researching parts, dealer support, and model history. It also helps explain why the same vehicle lineage may appear under different names.
Term
EV
EV just means an electric car or truck. Instead of a gasoline engine, it runs on an electric motor and a battery.
Term
two-wheel drive
Two-wheel drive means only two wheels get power. It’s usually fine for normal roads, but it can struggle more than four-wheel drive on slippery or rough surfaces.
Brand
General Motors
General Motors is the company that built the EV1. The speaker is saying GM isn’t the owner here—someone else is.
LIVE
Welcome to the Motoring Podcast, a weekly discussion of Motory News, this episode 676 on Tuesday,
the 24th of March, 2026.
Hello, I'm Alan.
Hello, I'm Andrew, and this week you'll hear us discuss how some are saying goodbye this
week.
In New New Car News, you will find out some are hoping this is a new beginning.
And in points of interest, you will go back in time.
And we do have some follow-up this week.
After being told that someone was leaving and then told eventually someone was not
leaving, we can now say officially that Jerry McGovern is actually going to leave JLR at
the end of this month in this year to start his own creative consultancy.
There is an article linked to AutoCar who first broke the news back at the beginning
of December 2025 and then were told, no, it's not true.
And then there was silence for ages, if you remember, before there came out a very carefully
worded statement in which the lawyers earned a lot of money and had a Christmas bonus.
It's a fantastic pair of statements.
We might read out some quotes from that shortly.
Well, yeah, the new statements now as a memo went round JLR last week to say that Jerry
was leaving.
Okay, the new CEO, PB Pelage, has said that Jerry's creative leadership, vision, drive
and passion have left an indelible stamp on our brands.
And this is really special if you know corporate speak.
I would like to thank Jerry for the significant contribution he has made to JLR and wish him
every success in his next creative chapter.
The equivalent from the very reverent Professor McGovern is that he talks about the privilege
that it's been.
He'd like to thank the Tata family in particular and also the dedication and passion of thousands
of people across the business.
And then ends with, I look forward to the next chapter of my creative career.
Which we all know means.
Welcome by then.
Well, good luck to him.
I think consultancy is probably the best thing for him right now, particularly when you saw
the reaction to the news that then got denied that he was leaving the company or had been
kicked out company when you saw the reaction and the outpouring for love.
Oh no, it was the opposite of love.
It wasn't love.
It was the other thing.
It wasn't grief either.
Yes.
We shall see what he gets up to.
We'll see how long it is before we hear from him.
I imagine it will be a few months.
I imagine his golden parachute is meant that he doesn't need to work for a very long time.
Yes, but I'm sure he will anyway.
Anyway, do you want to take us on to the new news this week?
New news this week.
First of all comes from OD.
OD has the right answers, supposedly.
But it has whatever those answers were and whatever the question was, it has made £2.9 billion
of profit in 2025 against revenues of £56.6 billion.
That sure enough is not a wonderfully high percentage.
And Andrew is pulling a face like Donald Trump trying to smile right at the moment.
Oh, hang on.
That's harsh.
I know I have a face for radio, but come on.
That doesn't sound great, but that's pretty good in motor manufacturing speak, really.
And VW Group Lander is.
And VW Group Lander, it is caused for ecstatic partying at Odie Lampakini Bentley and Chukati.
There was a rise, there was £1 billion more in revenue than in 2024.
And despite the tariffs and the various other fun traps left for Odie and others trying to do business
in and around the United States of America, they managed only a 0.9% dip in their operating margin.
And that is impressive, actually.
Well, it is as well as that.
The deliveries of cars from across the group dropped from £1.69 million to £1.644 million.
Again, the difficulties, the uncertainties in shipping stuff across the Atlantic played into that.
Similarly, the Chinese market for anything that's not a Chinese car has also dropped significantly over the last couple of years.
But we're going to speak about that another couple of times.
I'm afraid in the first half of the show.
But yeah, well done Odie, well done Odie Group.
The Odie for the Chinese market is completely bombed by the way, the one without the four rings where it says Odie.
The capital Odie.
Yeah, it's just not going well.
No.
As much because of just region and just it being a foreign manufacturer in China.
Don't think it matters how good your product is.
Yes, absolutely.
Well, talking of the Odie Group, we're going to stick with Bentley because they had a bit of a tougher year in amongst all of the news that came out.
And as a result, they are going to cut 150 jobs in crew and they have had to tweak their future model plan.
But the talking of the job side of things, they have 125 positions that are open roles that they're just not going to fill now as part of the 150.
And the rest are going to be made by not renewing agency contracts.
If you've listened to us for any length of time, Alan Will has said that agency staff are the first to go whenever there is any talk of staff cutting because of the very nature of their job.
That's kind of why they're there to be honest.
On top of that, when it talks to them and when I mentioned about them, a future model plan, obviously with Porsche having delayed their SSP sport platform that was going to be electrified, etc.
That has had the knock on effect like I discussed with Lamborghini because if the platform's not there, then no one can develop a car on top of it and that's just the way it goes.
That's the fact that obviously cuts in China and in North America hit these luxury low volume brands much harder than it does.
More volume brands which have a higher volume in Europe and in other parts of the world as well.
And the jobs that are going are going to be office based jobs.
They are not factory floor jobs because they still need the number of people who are producing the cars on the factory floor.
Absolutely.
Rolls Royce, he says wandering down the country, is EV powered as headlined this as Rolls Royce scraps 2030 all electric target as demand for V12 engines persists.
Which I don't know makes this sound more, it makes this sound more of a thing than it is.
Well, the tone of this article is very much the customers really, it's clear to us the customers still want, there's plenty of customers who still want an engine and don't want EV.
Yeah.
But there are also ones who want EVs as well.
So this is not excluding one or two other, but the headline is a little bit more of that.
They're being pragmatic about what their customers want, aren't they?
Absolutely.
And they're not going to, it's not going to be completely electric.
Frankly, with the volumes of Rolls Royce that are built, I sort of shrug and go, so what?
Doesn't matter what the cost of fuel does, if you're commissioning a new Rolls Royce territory, you'll cope.
And it's because regulations keep wiggling and changing and again, North America once again, China once again, coming into this again.
If you're in China and you're in a Rolls Royce buyer, then you're not really, if you're in that market space, then you're not really too bothered by the shout by Chinese cars because you possibly own the companies that are making the parts for the cars.
Yeah.
Not really a big deal for you there.
But I also think this is another reminder, because we've talked about this with the zero emission vehicle mandate.
The car companies themselves got sucked into a trap of thinking one or two exceptional years, totally off kilter from what had been normally happening, meant that was going to be how it goes to the future moving forward.
Instead of going, actually, these are outliers, are they not?
Maybe we need to hold our breath just a little bit to just check for longer term trends.
So many companies went, oh, 2030, electric only. Yeah, that's easy. No problem.
You're talking about post COVID, aren't you?
Yeah.
And also, there is massive growth in EVs. And it's the MG syndrome, isn't it?
There's massive growth because it's based on nothing before that.
Yeah.
And there's massive growth. You've got two years of massive growth and everyone goes, well, it's going to be a third year of massive growth, isn't there?
This is the new normal, is it? Because at some point someone's got to start paying for this.
Yeah.
And then it all starts to stabilize and there's steady reasonable growth brought on by people wanting to change and by availability and all these kinds of things.
Yeah.
They've really made big, big changes and governments made big, big predictions based on those and on their made up numbers.
I do like the look of the spectrum. I do really like it.
I can't stand it. I've seen one up close.
I know you're the opposite, but I think they look great.
Yeah, that's the joy of design.
Anyway, moving on and this is an article linked in the show notes that is titled,
Thatchum ends 22 year Euro NCAP partnership.
This caught me a little bit by surprise, I have to say,
because whenever one mentioned Euro NCAP in the UK, you automatically mentioned Thatchum for good reason.
Apparently they are amicably split.
This is just in time for the new Euro NCAP rules when it comes to testing vehicles and how they're going to score them and give them however many stars they wish to give them or they can achieve.
And there's a lot of wording from Thatchum which makes me cautiously optimistic.
Anyone who's listened to the show for, I don't know, more than a week has possibly heard how frustrated I have been with ADAS systems and cars.
Alan has had that problem as well, but I seem to have it more than him.
Oh, sorry, you mean I've had the problem with cars or the problem of having to listen to you because they're two different things there.
You've put up with that for over 10 years, so that's your own fault now.
There's no one but yourself to blame now.
I could have tapped out at any point.
Yeah, exactly.
What they're talking about here, because there's some nice quotes in here that there should be some more nuance when it comes to analysing and reviewing ADAS and testing ADAS.
They say, quoting here from the Chief Research and Operations Officer, Richard Billiard,
that the discussion is around how ADAS systems interfere with the job of driving and that is mostly a negative and not a positive thing.
Well, yes.
Thank you for listening to the show, Richard.
That's great.
They are talking about real-world safety and there's a lot of mention of real-world stuff here which is refreshing to hear.
I have to say, because up to now it has always been on a sanitised test track.
I like this particular paragraph.
I think this is very interesting.
A five-star car will perform fantastically on track.
They put two five-star cars on the road and they all perform very differently.
You can have the bings and bongs and the steering wheel shaking in your hands,
but that can happen more on some cars than others.
We're measuring how accurate those responses are,
and that's basically where you're going to do what you're keen for as well, isn't it?
Yes, because I saw one of the officers from Thatcham talking about safe driver scoring
and that worried me because that made me immediately think,
oh, hang on, are you talking about what insurers do?
I asked for clarification and he made it clear that it was about how safe the driving environment was for the driver,
how little distracted they were.
If a bong goes off and you look down at your dashboard,
it then doesn't bong at you for going, you've looked away from the road, which happens.
Oh, that happens.
Or things like there's one particular tone for there's a speed camera ahead
and then as you get to the speed camera, there's a different tone, or things like that.
It's just making it much more user-friendly.
And in case you think Andrew's making that up, I drove a BYD not so long ago,
which was making all sorts of crazy bongs, so I looked down at the dashboard
to try to work out what the crazy bongs were,
and then it started another round of crazy bongs because I wasn't looking at the road.
I've had some cars that shouted me that there's a corner,
no matter what the corner is, or what speed I'm doing, or how severe it is,
and then there's other times that it chooses not to tell you there's a corner
when it is more severe than the corner that was before.
Do you remember we've had that problem for almost a decade, Andrew,
that Mitsubishi L200 animal, which was the very first press car I ever had,
did that to me?
It would bing at the entrance to every flipping corner on country roads,
and it took me ages to work out what the noise was and why.
It was a nav system going bing at me to go, here's a corner,
if I could have ripped out the truck and thrown it out.
So I have my moments too.
That you were saying, they want to stop that sort of thing now.
So like I say, I'm cautiously optimistic because words are cheap.
Let's see how this manifests itself.
But anyway, do you want to take us into Europe, our HGV correspondent?
Oh, so much, so very much.
We've been talking about emissions already this show,
but we've always been talking about it around cars.
The European Parliament has been looking at the CO2 targets that it put in place
for truck and lorry manufacturers.
So we're talking heavy duty vehicles and large goods vehicles.
I don't know if you know, but much as we have Euro 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7,
plus any sub variants thereof for cars,
then the same thing exists for trucks and agricultural vehicles as well.
Just completeness.
The same thing applies for trucks.
What's actually going to happen is that the EU is looking to relax some of the targets
for some of these trucks and heavy duty vehicles.
And as a result, make it kind of ease the burden I think on the manufacturers
and also on buyers as well.
What's quite nice about this is that if manufacturers
it seed the targets some years, which is a not impossible thing to do,
then that then that over saving that gets passed on as a credit into the next year.
As well, which is kind of good.
So it means that there are benefits for getting on with it as well.
Yeah, it's not allowing them to sit complacent.
It rewards you for, as you say, getting ahead of things
and continuing to improve the fleet CO2 emission reduction.
Therefore, when it does come to the jump from the level
that they're looking at from 2025 to 2030,
you've potentially taken a big chunk of that out the way
because you've already got that banked.
Some of this change, there's lots of this change.
It appears to be the result of lobbying Volvo trucks,
which includes Renault and others.
Daniela Trucks, Scania Man, Volvo, Evacual and Ford
all wrote to the EU back in October asking for something like this.
Big worry of course around trucks is if there's enough charging infrastructure
for more than depot to depot type work.
We know that in the UK there are companies who are looking at that
and implementing that already.
I am going to move us on and this is the news
that the US company Lighten has acquired yet another Northvolt unit.
Northvolt is basically no more,
as it was going to be the European hope for battery manufacturing and recycling.
They have retreated continuously
and Lighten has kept buying up their assets and their factories and everything.
They have applied to buy the recycling plant that Northvolt had in Sweden
and they're just going through the checks and balances to get that permitted.
I find this very interesting at a time when the EU has brought out that
build in the EU and a lot of that was around recycling of materials
within the EU or having the own materials in the EU
for basically security reasons so that they could still continue to build
environmentally friendly products, especially cars,
that an American company has been coming in and buying these things up.
It's very interesting in American companies doing that,
considering the regulatory spin and pivot from their government
but equally how tensions between Europe and America have emerged
in terms of trade and geopolitical things.
When it comes to recycling, as I said before, that's a massive thing,
recycling batteries.
The EU has made it very clear they want that to be a big portion
of what is happening in the continent.
I think it's something like 76% is a target figure
and I have seen a few articles and posts on LinkedIn and the likes
and Blue Sky where people are just presuming that we're doing recycling,
battery recycling already, and it is happening,
but it is nowhere near the scale that is required
or that I think many people expect it to be at because it is very, very difficult.
I think part of the challenge with it, especially when it's around EU recycling and stuff,
is that actually there's a much bigger secondary market for these things.
First of all, that everything is lasting much longer than was originally predicted.
And secondly, not only that, but there's a whole market for things which are done
and there's a market for being able to manage packs and rearrange cells,
so there's far less waste than I think people anticipated there being.
The trouble is that then, because there's not enough waste to keep these things viable,
which is one of the things that happened here in an unpronounceable town in Sweden,
then it becomes very difficult to be profitable when you're working at what, a tenth?
No.
The figures are that NorthVault was talking about recycling capacity of 125,000 tons
and the only figure that comes out from all the documentation in terms of the takeover
is 8,500 tons per year.
That's quite a significant difference as Alan just pointed out
and I think that shows the scale of the problem in terms of actually making it happen,
let alone, as you quite rightly point out,
the supply of dud batteries or batteries to be recycled is a lot less, I think,
I agree with you on this, I think than everyone was expecting.
There is less to trial and practice and learn from.
To give an example, quite a lot of the sales and stuff for having,
if you've got solar and battery storage,
then that's one of those great secondary purposes where the stuff doesn't have to be quite as accurately balanced
and all these kind of things as it does for a vehicle.
That's where some of the sales are coming out of cars which might have had an accident or something
and then they're being checked and then they're being reused in for that kind of thing.
Similarly, many of these EV conversions of classics and stuff, again,
accident damaged vehicles that have been written off,
then the entire power trade and the entire battery packs are being repackaged into other vehicles.
There is a massive market there for bits out of common EVs.
Yep, absolutely.
Alan, do you want to take us on, and I've kept this one especially for you
because I know you love this acronym so much, onto our electric buses in the UK.
Yes, the English government, isn't it, has launched another funding round for electric buses
through its zero-emission bus regional areas, or Zebras, as I said.
An acronym just looking for a meaning.
This time, however, it's 73.2 million pounds, or 84.7 million euros if that works for you.
That is being allocated across England for the procurement of battery electric buses
and the associated infrastructure, and I want to emphasize that
because the infrastructure for some of these has to be pretty chunky.
The areas getting the money are South Yorkshire for 186 buses.
The T's value for 82 buses, Devon for 90 buses, and it's not getting very much,
so we assume they're little buses that can get round corners.
36 buses, Isle of Wight, 23 buses, those are not the ones we talked about last week.
Or is that more?
There must be more.
This is new.
Northeast 18 buses, Reading 17 buses, West Northamptonshire.
Well, that one out here compass everyone.
17 buses, Nottinghamshire, 11 buses, and Surrey 4 buses.
Poor little Surrey.
It's all good.
Yep, very good to see.
Let me move us on, and we were talking about it earlier,
but the zero emission vehicle mandate,
that we've got the first report on the vehicle emissions trading schemes, or VETs,
because the government cannot produce anything without there being an acronym,
and hot off the press, where people have been crunching the numbers quickly,
as we are towards the end of March in 2026.
We get the 2024 report telling us how well the manufacturers did for electric cars and vans,
and how close they got to the mandated levels.
And in fact, they exceeded the mandated levels.
They did this through a combination of actually hitting targets when it came to registrations,
but also through some small amounts of buying credits from organizations within their particular markets
that had excess.
I don't understand how it takes nearly...
Well, it takes a year and three months.
Have you ever tried to format an Excel spreadsheet?
Yes, thank you.
Do you think you're almost there, and then it just goes,
and it's all gone?
I mean, it's not as bad as trying to arrange a picture in Word or something, but...
Yeah.
That's a ninja level up.
Yeah.
But it's good news, and the expectation is that from SMMT
that it's going to be a similar result for 2025.
We'll find out maybe in 2027, 2028, whatever.
You know, when the information gets reported out,
because we don't want to rush these things.
They've authored the spreadsheet.
They've written the calculations and the macros.
Now, they just have to use it again for the next year.
Where they've already got the information.
Yeah, type the numbers in the boxes.
Simple.
You'd think.
You would think so.
What's also simple, of course, is guiltment.
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That means, I believe, it is new, new car news, Alan.
It is.
And lots of conversation on all of the social medias
and all of the publications and on all of the YouTubes as well.
About the new BMW i3.
Now, this is not a two and two half plus boot.
We have a hatchback as it was before,
made of with a carbon fiber frame and composite body panels
and all of the cleverness that's there
and probably one of the nicest car interiors in the world.
It is a saloon car.
We don't say that very often, but it is.
It is an electric saloon car.
And the headline thing about this new BMW electric saloon car
is that it offers up to 559 miles of range,
which is excellent.
Which is, well, neither of my cars can manage that on petrol.
One of them you would have to fill up twice in that time.
559 miles range.
It's still quite a lot.
It shares platform with the iX3 SUV
and it says here on this motoring research article
that the i3 will take on the Tesla Model 3
with class leaving EDD range and clever interior tech.
We'll come back to the interior shortly.
Sorry, anyone still buying a Tesla Model 3 in this day and age?
Well, that's it.
I was kind of going to go there.
Why is that the benchmark when, you know,
it's not a vehicle that's moved on.
Well, the man who's actively paid for
and called for a regime change by violence if needed
in this country and others.
Why is anyone giving him any money?
I cannot fathom it.
No, neither can I.
But moving on from that,
the i3, however, is a very different beast
in that it is actually got, you know, some styling.
And yeah, we differ on this.
There's your warning, everyone.
I actually quite like it from the outside.
But I do have that usual massive caveat
that these are very doctored studio photographs.
And therefore, I don't know how accurately they reflect
what the vehicle looks like in real life
beside people and in an actual environment
that isn't essentially just a gradient.
And don't go pointing me at the rendering of it
that was placed against the blurry road background.
Andrew's not going to,
so I'm going to say that to all of you at home
because that was simulated rendering as well.
What I see, I like, I mean, the rear lights are a bit odd,
but so are the ones on the i7.
The side's a bit tall.
The wheels are 21 inches and can cost you a flippant fortune
in getting new tyres.
And the sort of black with polished bits is gross,
and I really don't like that.
But actually think that the general form of the outside
is really pretty smart.
I don't mind the front,
well, I am less offended by the front on look.
I quite like the front on look.
But I think part of that is because the recent past of BMWs
at the front has not been aesthetically pleasing,
he shall say, being very kind.
It does not in any way resemble a beaver.
There is marked a difference in that.
I quite like the way that they've done the lights
and gone into then shape that up the bonnet.
But other than that externally,
I just find just on the lines,
and I totally agree with you,
you have knocked it into me now over nearly 10 and a half years
that commenting on purely rendered images
is not something one can do accurately with confidence.
But there are enough elements that I feel that we can see
that I am disappointed with.
There was one that we discussed before the show
when we were running through the stories.
And the more I look at it,
the more I think that's a bad Photoshop job.
And I actually think that what you feel should happen
probably will in real life,
just looking at the reflection because they vary.
The reflections all vary from the angles.
You look at the rear three-quarters,
you look at the rear three-quarters,
it's off as well.
I think that that's a problem that somebody's been at it
with Photoshop.
I hope you are correct because then I wouldn't be
viscerally angry when I saw it in person.
Yeah, no, I honestly,
I think that that and some of these renders,
they don't all match, mate.
And some of the things that we think do line up
and in others they don't.
It just depends which one you look at.
The interior, however, does tend to go a little bit tessely.
We're in very much agreement.
Very much more in agreement, yes.
I like all the stuff at the top, at the bottom of the windscreen.
The slanty screen, so it's a parallelogram of a screen,
is unusual, but I don't dislike it.
I just go, oh, that's a bit odd.
Where I see my ire,
and we're going to come back to this again,
is the steering wheel.
In this world where basically everyone's decided
that interiors should have sod all in them
and not be interesting at all,
the only thing left for designers to pleasure themselves over
seemed to be the steering wheels.
Now, I don't know if this is some optional sport version,
but it's horrible.
It's really horrible.
And I don't like BMW steering wheels anyway.
The last 10 years or so,
they've been getting chunkier and chunkier.
They're aping the GT3 wheels.
They are aping GT3 wheels.
Now, because if you look on this particular one,
they've got cutouts for the thumb.
They've got those thumb cutouts.
It's just horrible.
But it's not just that for me.
It's the fact that it's four spoke with one spoke going straight up.
Yeah, I know.
It looks like it's just off.
That's just so off-putting.
When it comes to the interior as well,
obviously it's festooned with internal lighting.
You know, see my mention of it last week with Mercedes.
I cannot fathom how people have decided
that let's make them look like Twitch streamers set-ups.
That that is now definition of luxury.
I don't get that at all.
I mean, all it needs is a can of the Red Bull or something in the corner,
and then we can just go full-on and give someone
with the sound of Call of Duty in the background.
There's no bucket in here as well.
It's all in the screen,
which is total contradiction of what Euro NCAP have said
that they are demanding.
I cannot stand that bar under the window,
except for the bit in front of the driver.
The fact that they've then carried it the width of the thing
is ridiculous and stupid, and that is going to be dangerous.
And also makes it much cheaper to engineer for right-hand drive.
I do not understand how we've got to this stage with premium vehicles
and others where we feel that this is luxury, this is premium.
It just looks so cheap and nasty is my problem.
We don't, and we're being told it is, and everybody's going,
it's a bit bare in here, isn't it?
It's not, it's not premium. It is cheap and dark.
It looks cheap.
Well, luxury is now you don't actually have anything.
Yeah, it looks incredibly cheap.
But once again, I think that the rendering here
and the fact that it was chosen to show it off with white seats,
white handling, white steering wheel,
who the heck would ever choose a white steering wheel?
Come on.
This is someone who lives in a house with white sofas and white carpets.
I can understand it from this perspective
because they need to show it.
Because if you did black in that, you can't see any of the details at all.
Well, that's one of the reasons why it's really hard to,
why I hate these renderings.
I hate them with a passion when we get shown them.
And everybody does just so.
And of all the lighting has been balanced, all the everything.
And it's not a true reflection, no pun intended,
of what it's like to sit in it.
And although admittedly, you know,
it does have heirs of fatty parts on Great Western Road or whatever.
It just, you know, this is cheap nightclub stuff.
Anyway, there are some statistics about it.
There's loads of other stuff you can do to find out about that,
but that's Andrew and I have got to show to you about that.
Full UK prices and specifications will be confirmed closer
to the August 2026 production date.
But cracking range, absolutely stunning range.
Well done BMW for that alone.
Yes, absolutely.
Shall we talk about the new Citroen DS?
Yes.
Or DS, it's not Citroen DS.
There is a DS and it is the number seven
because now all their vehicles are numbered,
whereas previously they were just numbered.
The number seven is the number they will register every month.
Okay.
Look, I look forward to the Christmas card from Stalantis this year.
Forget anything from Stalantis.
I'll be amazed.
Well, acknowledgement that we exist.
Yeah, that's a start.
Yes, that's the first challenge or something.
However, getting back to this,
this is a mid-sized SUV.
So if you are thinking in terms of the Stalantis range,
you are looking at the Peugeot 5008,
the C5 Aircross, the Jeep Compass and the Vauxhall Grandland.
It's that sort of size.
But DS is their premium brand.
Let's not forget.
And it is going to be charged at a premium rate
because they make it clear they have the technology
and the luxury and the fit and finish
that allows them to do that
unlike if he's implied,
unlike the rest of them.
All the rest of them.
And let's be straight up.
We had a quick spin at SMMT last year
in the Vauxhall Grandland
and we were both very impressed.
We liked the Grandland.
With the fit, finish and the way it drove.
In terms of how it should drive,
it should be good.
Equally, the 5008 got a good kicking
because that was the first one that came out
and lots of UK journalists said that it wasn't very well.
It wasn't nice to drive.
DS have managed, I feel,
to pull off a bit of a trick here
when it comes to the external design.
As we know, Stalantis like to share platforms
and many body panels.
However, I think the DS
is seriously distinct from the rest of the range
in what they've been able to actually tweak and change
in terms of economies of scale
because that's very important to Stalantis
and the previous CEO.
And I think it looks quite neat, actually.
The colour that they've chosen for the press
images, again, heavily rendered.
There is caveats inserted here.
But I think the colour they've chosen,
which is a sort of dark metallic green,
is a very clever and good one.
So externally, I think it looks pretty decent.
I really like how they've resolved around the back end,
the back three quarters of it
and stuff. I'm impressed with that.
When it comes to the interior,
again, we will now just insert our its sparse.
There are some buttons in this, at least.
There do appear to be buttons when you zoom in deeply.
There is lighting, though.
Not quite as much as Mercedes and BMW like to deploy.
And there is a large centre screen.
However, and I now hand over to our new steering wheel correspondent,
because the theme is continuing.
It's an X. It's not like four spokes in a traditional one.
It's like they're pointing at north-eastern,
south-west and north-west and south-east,
he says, going round the very straight way.
But yeah, they're sort of on the diagonals.
And that just seems a bit weird, both from a...
One of my complaints about the BMW steering wheel
is it's so moulded to hand,
or made to look like it's moulded to the hand
and to be ergonomic, because it's got these big thumb rests.
Whereas this is absolutely the opposite.
You think, well, just where I would quite like to rest my hand,
there is either nothing,
or there is what looks like a metal spoke,
a metal style spoke going through it.
So it's actually the opposite.
And yet it still also has a little bit of the old quartica leg row about it.
Yes, it does.
If you look, it's flattened at the top, the bottom and the sides.
And it's chunky.
And again, if you want to put your hand...
There's a way I could describe it,
but Andrew would just have to edit it out
and he would look at me in a funny way.
Well, what you need to do is you need to click the AutoCar article
and have a look at the picture
so you can understand what Alan was going to say.
But, you know, if you want to grip hold of a solid...
But then do it to your own.
It just seems rather weird.
It's just weird.
It is odd.
The positioning of the spokes is confusing.
But I think it's what you said.
I think it's one of the few things a designer's allowed to play with
to continue this metaphor dreadfully.
Anyway, do you want to take us on to an electric pickup now?
Because there's no interior picture in this one as well.
So that's helpful.
I've never been so relieved, actually, after partly my own fault.
To want to talk about an electric KGM Musso.
KGM, of course, used to be saying,
they're not anymore.
They're KGM.
The Musso pickup truck, the latest version, is kind of...
kind of hummer looking, to be honest.
It will arrive in the UK showrooms in May.
It will offer 240 miles of electrically powered range
and a 690 kilogram payload capacity.
It will also be priced from £42,495, including VAT,
and the government's £2,500 plug-in Vanguard.
That sounds like a lot, but compared to the prices
of most pickup trucks these days, that's blooming good value.
It has an 80.6 kilowatt hour BYD supplied lithium-ion
phosphate battery, electric motor per axle,
which combines the 206 brake horsepower
and £250 foot of all the torques through all four wheels.
2280% because it's BYD batteries, 28 to 80% in 31 minutes.
And it can also be used to power external devices,
such as lights or power tools.
Interior has screens, all sorts of stuff like that.
Cargo bed can be treated like a cargo bed,
and the tailgate itself can be used to seat
supporting up to 150 kilograms, or a builder.
What's interesting about this is that for a long time,
EV picked up, so you only got the two-wheel drive Maxis T90,
but the latest Maxis offering the E-terron 9,
the D-Max EV, and the Hilux Electric are all four-wheel drive.
This is becoming an area where...
I think this is an enlarging segment.
I think there's a lot of...
I'm trying not to make terrible puns here,
but there's a lot of drive for electric pickup trucks,
front fleets, more than anything else probably, front fleets.
I will now move us on to points of interest,
and we have a lunchtime read from the drive.
Alan put this one in, and it is titled
Inside GM's Decision to Help Restore a Rare EV-1
for the first time ever.
It's a fascinating read, actually, having run through it,
because I didn't know...
I mean, I knew of the EV-1, and I knew of
GM's apparent indifference or embarrassment
or some issue for some executive at some point
where quite a big chunk of these got destroyed,
but they were first...
They were allowed out twice, one in 97 and one in 99,
where they were leased to the general public.
Not many of them, but then they were brought back
within the fold, and like I say, most have been...
Should we say recycled?
Literally, yes, yes, literally.
But many others were disabled,
and then lent out to universities, technical colleges, museums.
I said, you know, there's one in the Henry Ford Museum,
there's another one in the...
It was a very good car museum in Cleveland, Ohio as well.
I went from never having seen one to having seen
about five in a week at one point,
maybe because I visited too many car museums.
The thing was, all of those ones were disabled
one way or another,
and there were very strict agreements in place with GM
that this was only on loan.
It didn't absolutely not belong to them.
And if they made it work, there would be very harsh penalties
and it would be taken away from them.
So people weren't allowed to.
And you can follow this.
If you go to the questionable garage on YouTube,
we've talked about Jared Pink's stuff before,
and he goes back through all of the histories of it
and all the legal parts that got to it.
But one of those technical universities,
the building got damaged, the car got damaged,
the car was left outside in a parking area.
Eventually the company, the towing company that took that away,
if a vehicle isn't claimed or can't be found
on a number of registers after something like six months,
then the towing company legally owns it and is allowed to sell it.
As long as the towing company can prove that it went through all of the
jump through all the appropriate hoops.
Well, they treated it just like any other 20-year-old damaged car
and they went through all of the appropriate hoops
and all of a sudden they end up owning it
and they put it up for auction.
And so whoever buys it at the auction is the legal owner.
So this happened to chat.
You can go watch the, I'm trying not to give away too much here.
Chat did that, bid in the auction,
made sure his friends were not bidding against him and stuff.
And now is the only other legal owner of a GM EV1 that isn't General Motors.
It's the only one in private hands.
And the trouble is that it's in pretty bad way.
It's been sitting with a smashed windscreen for many years.
It's been water ingress, it's been all sorts of stuff.
Things are grotty.
The unique windscreen is broken, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And they were expecting calls from GM's lawyers at some point in this.
They'd made sure they had, legally, they'd made sure they had everything in place.
It was definitely theirs.
But they were not expecting GM to make life easy for them.
GM has done the opposite.
GM's come along and said,
we want to help support you with this because this is a really cool project
and you've done everything right and it is yours.
Which is mind-blowing considering how they've treated the car in the past,
particularly with the recycling of so many of their models that they had, et cetera.
If you read the article, because it's difficult not to get too much weight with it.
Read this article, go off the question of the garage and watch them
because later than this article, more recently than this article,
there's been another video and it goes,
sure, this is the kind of one about it,
but they go through and they don't pull any punches asking people like,
got as far as the CEO put it that way.
And somebody showed him the video and said,
you should watch this.
And so he's speaking to them and they interview him about it.
And he says, well, the thing is, we were kind of embarrassed really about what happened.
There's part of it.
A certain amount of the sort of denial of the EV1 is that at the time,
it was the thing that kind of made sense, but it was a terrible PR move.
And he's talking about it.
And he said, well, you know,
and then there's been a certain amount of embarrassment.
We did a thing that maybe wasn't the right thing.
It seemed like it at the time, but it wasn't later.
The thing is that GMF is still on an EV push as well.
So it makes sense.
Because they've got stuff like the Cadillac Celestique is a gorgeous thing.
And some of the smaller models as well,
names of which ended Eek, but I can't remember what they are.
You should go watch this as a couple hours worth of stuff
if you want to go right from the beginning.
But it's very, very interesting.
I haven't watched the latest video, but they've got creative stuff from GM.
It's the one that follows all of this.
But it seems that it probably contains a new windscreen.
I've talked far too much on this.
The whole thing is interesting.
Go watch, please.
Do click the link in the show notes because it'll take you through to various links
to the YouTube channels and stuff like that.
Plus you get to read a little bit more.
There is actually a little bit more than what we've already said
for you to find out.
But it's a fascinating story.
And I'm now going to be following it because I'm invested now
thanks to Alan's enthusiasm for this.
Yeah, sorry.
And as I said, questionable garage is a really good YouTube channel to follow
because it's so nice and varied.
Excellent.
Well, Alan, do you want to take us on to stuff that we might have forgotten?
Yes.
Well, forgotten cars are the 1990s.
So for people of a certain age...
Our listeners remember the 1990s according to the demographic data that we have.
Some of you maybe don't and that's quite scary for some of us.
There were a lot of very cool cars with big booms in Japan.
There were all sorts of things, just positivity around the world who remembers that.
And there were some very cool, limited cars.
And there were so many that many of them have been forgotten.
This is a really good list by Matthew McConnell on auto car.
Me being me, I haven't forgotten about many of them,
but I can't remember a shopping list.
Don't judge it by me.
There's 40 slides.
Andrew, what have you chosen?
Well, it is tough.
There's some of them I didn't know about because some of them are from across the pond
and things like that.
And some of them I do know very well thanks to you.
However, if the ladies and gentlemen would like to move to slide 17 in their pack
and go to the Citroen AX GTI.
Okay, this is a good call.
Me like.
There was probably four others that I thought I could pick.
A couple of them were a little bit obvious.
Well, no, like as in definitely pick.
I think there's probably about two or three that I just go there.
Other than that, I would not object to any of the others.
However, this one, I've never driven an AX because at the time I had my Polo S Coupe
because they couldn't call it a hatchback.
But I did always look longingly at the AX GTI.
Not that I would have ever been able to afford the insurance at that age or anything like that.
But I always liked the AX.
It's a Citroen for starters, light nimble and everything like that.
Not the fastest because, you know, it wasn't going to beat the 205 GTI, etc.
I just love the fact that Citroen did it.
Yep, it's cool. It's a small nippy hatchback.
What am I going to dislike about it?
I know exactly. Front-wheel drive as well.
Alan, of the 39 other slides out there.
It's kind of funny because there's all sorts of stuff from some limited production supercars right the way down.
And we're both going for something that's pretty present.
I've chosen the Mitsubishi Galant VR4 because I think that if you're going to have four-wheel drive
you might as well have four-wheel steering and all of the other toys in there as well.
276bhp, four-wheel drive, 160mph, 0-60 in 5.3 seconds.
Automatic, tip-tronic based, yeah, with literally tip-tronic based on the Porsche system.
I remember it was their big rally, it was their rally car.
It was the Mitsubishi rally car before they started using the Lancer instead.
Much like the legacy was the Subaru's equivalent before they moved on to the Impressor.
Supercars, I've always liked these. There was an estate version as well.
But I just always thought that these were that sort of, it's kind of staid but it's kind of handsome styling.
I just really, really liked them.
And of course, as I say, four-wheel drive and four-wheel steer. Who doesn't like that?
Awesome. What a fantastic choice. Well done.
Yeah, thoroughly agree.
He approves.
I'm going to take us to the unfinding because we have waffled for Britain tonight.
And think of this as a lunchtime watch because there is 47 minutes and 25 seconds of Mr. and Miss Hubnut
walking around the NEC restoration show and it's lovely.
It's just wonderful, low-key, relaxed as you would expect from the Hubnut channel.
It's just relaxed walking around, pointing out all the things that they saw and piqued their interest,
which pretty much is all of the show.
It's utterly wonderful.
Great. And they get off to an absolutely storming start with the first car that they actually interact with.
I'm not going to say any more.
At least watch that.
It is wonderful. It made me heartily laugh out loud.
But do go and enjoy this.
Do go and support Hubnut.
They are friends of the show and we love what they do.
But yeah, here's something to take us out of ourselves and think about something different in the current climate.
Oh, God, Andrew, we've just been talking about the Citroen AX and the GTI.
And now scrolling through the bottom half of the internet here,
under the intermediate and somebody's pointing out this 30 years of the Citroen Saxa,
which replaced the AX.
No, that's no, no, it was no.
It can't be. There's no way it's more than 15.
It's only 15.
It's 15.
Yeah.
No way.
Yeah.
And we'll stab anyone who says something different.
As you say, no other parish notes.
We both intend on being here the same as time and place next week,
which I think means that all that's left for me to say is to remind people not to forget that between now and next week,
you can give us any feedback and share your thoughts for the show at motoringpodcast.com on Blue Sky,
at Motoring Podcasts on Instagram and Facebook,
and on the contact page of www.motoringpodcast.com to help with all our activities.
Remember, we can support us financially via Patreon and please leave a review and rating on Apple Podcasts,
YouTube or however your podcast app lets you do such a thing.
Andrew, what's the best way to get in touch with you?
Very difficult in the minute because I have chosen to exclude myself from social media again recently.
There was nothing nice out there, so I stepped away from my own health.
I haven't even been on it very much recently.
You can try on LinkedIn because I do check that a couple of times a week.
And good luck to everybody out there at the moment.
And Alan, if people want to get in touch with you personally.
With me, it's pretty much always Blue Sky where I'm at agpbradley.bsky.social or LinkedIn if you are that way inclined.
We'll be back very soon, but until then, I've been Alan Bradley, I've been Andrew Clues and Safe Motoring.
About this episode
Jerry McGovern’s confirmed exit from JLR ends a long corporate back-and-forth, with both sides issuing polished, lawyer-heavy farewell statements. The news then pivots to profit and pressure: Audi/VW Group results look solid despite tariffs and delivery dips, while Bentley cuts jobs and adjusts its future plans. Rolls-Royce drops its all-electric 2030 target as V12 demand persists. Euro NCAP and Thatcham split ends a 22-year partnership as ADAS testing shifts toward real-world driver distraction. The show also covers EU truck CO2 target relaxation, Lighten buying more Northvolt assets, UK funding for battery-electric buses, and a deep dive into the GM EV1’s rare surviving example. New car reviews include the BMW i3, DS 7, and an electric KGM Musso pickup, plus 90s “forgotten cars” picks and Hubnut’s NEC restoration walk-through.
Original notes
FOLLOW UP: MCGOVERN OFFICIALLY LEAVING JLR
Following an ‘is he/isn’t he’ saga which started back at the beginning of December 2025, Gerry McGovern is officially leaving JLR at the end of March 2026. He will be starting his own consultancy. Details are almost non-existent outside of that. Click this Autocar article for the story.
AUDI MAKES £2.9 BILLION PROFITAs expected, more brands from within the Volkswagen Group have been announcing their financial results for 2025. Audi, despite it being a difficult year, managed to make a £2.9 billion profit, from a revenue of £56.6 billion. This was all done whilst fewer overall vehicles were delivered. To read more, click this Autocar article.
BENTLEY TO CUT JOBSSeat and Cupra had very impressive sales figures for 2025, but that did not translate to much of a profit thanks to tariffs and capex investment costs. Tariffs were imposed by the EU on Chinese made EVs, this hit the Tavascan as the company chose to not pass the costs onto customers. They are also investing in a new battery factory, developing new models and updating existing. To read more, click this Autocar article link here.
ROLLS ROYCE NOT GOING 100% EV FROM 2030Rolls Royce has announced that it will no longer be producing EVs exclusively, from 2030. They state that customer wishes mean that they will still offer internal combustion engine options. For more on this, click this link here to take you an EV Powered article.
THATCHAM SPLITS FROM EURONCAPThatcham, after 22 years in partnership, are splitting from EuroNCAP and developing their own systems for testing car safety systems. They mention real world safety quite a bit and also how they believe the technology should not be intrusive and annoying. Time will tell if they can deliver on this. Click this link here to read more from Autocar.
EU RELAXES CO2 RULES FOR LORRIESThe EU has listened to lorry manufacturers and softened the requirements of their fleets, in terms of CO2 emissions. Whilst the fixed jumps, from the interim targets at 2025, 2030 and 2040 still stand, the intervening years will not have moving requirements. This means, if a brand manages to exceed the target they can carry over that extra to the next year, thus companies are rewarded for pushing. If you want to find out more, click this electrive article link here.
LYTEN BUYS MORE OF NORTHVOLTLyten, a US based company, has continued to purchase operations from the collapsed Northvolt electric car battery and recycling company, this time they have bought the Swedish battery recycling facility at Skellefteå. For more about this story, click this electrive article link here.
FRESH ZEBRA FUNDING MADE AVAILABLEThe Government has announced a new raft of funding for the Zero Emission Bus Regional Areas (ZEBRA) to a total of £73.2 million. There are 10 areas across England that will receive money to help pay for infrastructure and electric buses. To read more, click this electrive article link here.
FIRST YEAR ZEV MANADATE REPORTThe UK Government has finally published their report on compliance with the car and van zero emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate for 2024. No brand has been fined as all reached the required minimums through a combination of registration numbers and purchasing credits from others who had exceeded the requirements. Click this electrive article link here for more.
If you like what we do, on this show, and think it is worth a £1.00, please consider supporting us via Patreon. Here is the link to that CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT THE PODCASTNEW NEW CAR NEWS -BMW i3After much teasing BMW has finally taken the wraps off their i3 electric saloon. Boasting an astonishing range of up to 559 miles, with looks, both inside and out, that have divided opinion but cannot be trusted as we have only been given heavily rendered images so far. Further details are to be announced later, including the price. Click this Motoring Research article link here for more.
DS No7The latest Stellantis brand to utilise the mid sized SUV platform is DS, being the premium one of the group they will be charging a suitable price, above their sister brands. Click this Autocar article link here to read more.
KGM Musso EVKGM are bringing their first electric pickup to the UK from May 2026. With four wheel drive and payload capacity of 690kgs, the vehicle will have a maximum range of 240 miles. This is the fourth four wheel drive pickup for the UK market and it will be competitively priced at £42, 495 (inclusive of VAT and £2,500 Plug0In Van Grant). Click this Autocar article link here to read more.
LUNCHTIME READ: INSIDE GM’S DECISION TO HELP RESTORE A RARE EV1 FOR THE FIRST TIME EVERGM have seemed like a company embaressed by their pioneering EV1 which was available to the public on a strict leasing deal for two years in the later 1990s, with many examples having been destroyed and recycled. However, one person has managed to legally get hold of a damaged EV1 and is in the process of restoring it. GM heard and instead of deploying a fleet of lawyers to stop this their President heard and has ordered the company to help. Click this article link here from The Drive to find out more.
LIST OF THE WEEK: FORGOTTEN CARS OF THE 1990SAutocar are where we are sending you this week. They have a slideshow dedicated to cars you might well have forgotten, if you are not Alan. Do you agree with chaps choices? Click this link here to see what your options are.
AND FINALLY: WALKING AROUND AND POINTING AT THINGSThis week we are recommending you click this HubNut YouTube video link to check out their interesting spots from the NEC Restoration Show. As ever, this is a lovely, relaxed film that will allow all of us who missed out to experience the sights and sounds of last weekend.
Motoring Podcast - News Show
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