Still Twitching - 18 November 2025

Welcome to the motoring podcast, your weekly discussion of motoring news. This is episode 658 on a Tuesday, the 18th of November, 2025. Hello, I'm Alan, and I'm all alone, and I've just realized I forgot to write the menu this week. So, yes, we're going to talk about some stuff. We, I'm going to talk about some stuff. You're going to learn some stuff, and it's all going to be great. But first of all, we're going to start with a little bit of follow-up. And follow-up is about

JLR, and it's JLR in the cyber attack, which sounds like some kind of pathetic in a blatant novel, but no, JLR has revealed the extent of the damage caused by the cyber attack on its bottom line, according to MotorTrader.com. And as always, for every story, there will be, there is a link in the show notes, because I've really written the show notes. So, yes, where you can find out more about the stories that I'm going to trample my way through.

This week. JLR's revenue for Q2, though, was £4.9 billion. That's 24% down on the equivalent period last year. Half one revenue was £11.5 billion, and that's down 16% year on year.

Obviously, two different things coming in on there, one of which is that revenues were impacted by the cyber incident, significantly, and also by the planned wind down of legacy Jaguar models.

Obviously, they could plan for the Jaguar model. One, that was always going to be the case, but the cyber incident, not so much.

There were losses before tax in the last quarter. Well, losses before tax and exception items, so that was £485 million, and £134 million in half one.

That's down from a profit of £398 million, 1.1 billion, respectively a year ago. The exception items.

Now, they came in at our whopping £238 million, £196 million of those are directly related to the cyber incident, and £42 million is related to the voluntary redundancy programme.

That's ongoing. Oh, and that JLR said it remained resilient, and it had investment spend expected of about £18 billion over the next five years period from financial year 2024, of course, for financial year 2025 now.

So, there was a statement put out by outgoing CEO Adrian Mardel, and he said that JLR's performance in the second quarter of financial year 26 was impact pardon me, we were in 26.

The second quarter of financial year 26 was impacted by significant challenges, including cyber incident that stopped our vehicle production in September, and the impact of US tariffs, of course, I forgot to mention those because there's so much US stuff these days.

JLR has made strong progress in recovering its operations safely, and at pace following the cyber incident in our response, we provide our clients, relate, retail and supply systems, and I'm pleased to confirm the prediction of all our luxury brands has resumed.

The speed of recovery is testament to the resilience and hard work of our colleagues, and also he goes on to say that he's extremely grateful to all our people who have shown enormous commitment during the difficult time, and I want to thank clients, retail suppliers, and everyone in the community connected with JLR.

First support through this disruption, obviously, he's retiring very soon after 35 years with the company. So, yes, quite a lot in there.

Yeah, personally, I'm really quite surprised by the speed of recovery from JLR. I know it went on for a few weeks with no production, but it could have been even worse, it really could.

And I'm pleased that they seem to be sort of have that behind them. Hopefully, it doesn't happen again.

News now though, and Stellantis. Stellantis has cancelled several raw material contracts. They were three that they had with a company's called Nuvenix and Westwater Resources, and those are for Anode Graphite.

And another with Alliance Nickel for Nickel and Cobalt.

In the case of Alliance Nickel, the deal goes right back to a non-binding agreement for 2022, when they were ordering in advance, trying to get an idea of just how much they need really making sure there was demand there so that it was worth their while actually actually digging.

Some of the others are a bit newer. From Nuvenix, they were saying that they've confirmed that deliveries from their plant in Riverside near Chattanooga in Tennessee will scheduled to begin on the 1st of January 2026. So, the cancellation is short notice, is it short notice.

Nuvenix is saying that while it's disappointed with this decision, it remains focused on its deliveries for Panasonic and Powerco, and continuing to provide samples to 15 current and potential customers for battery and industrial applications.

Yes. So, I mean, this is really to do with Stellantis North America and dialing right back its EV commitment.

As we're seeing from most people who sell the majority of their vehicles in North America, the current administration does not like EVs, they are making it actively hard to build and to sell EVs, and so companies are deciding not to do it.

Stellantis in the US always had a relatively, well, no, it had a week to non-existent EV offering. You could get plug-in hybrid jeeps, some of which have decided to start setting themselves on fire, so that's put a bit of a dampener on sales right at the moment.

And, of course, they had things like the Dodge Charger was meant to be electric, and they basically pulled that and shoved the V6 engine in the electric, or the platform that were designed to be electric.

So, lots of back pedaling from Stellantis there. As a result, I'm sure these suppliers saw that the rating was on the wall for these contracts.

They were generally non-binding anyway, so there we go.

If anybody does need a load of anode graphite and nickel and co-op going cheap, then I'm sure that you can find it in North America right at the moment.

Next up, the first and our sort of resuscitation stories, TVR, I cannot believe I'm talking about TVR, really. I thought that it twitched its last, let out a significant sigh, and we were never really going to talk about TVRs ever again.

But it seems that they have been bought. TVR automotive is merging with a company called Charge Holdings.

TVR will become a subsidiary, and Charge Holdings is going to make delivery of the new Griffith to customers, a first priority.

Charge Holdings is a company that, according to its CEO, has a mission to bring together iconic performance brands and world-class manufacturing expertise.

The Strategic Manager with TVR is set to unite heritage with innovation, creating a new leader in the low-volume luxury automotive sector.

More details will be announced in 2026.

It would be perfectly reasonable if one of you turned around to me and said, I'm going to put money on never hearing about this again, and I could believe that.

This is actually the link that's in the show. It's a great article to Evo and a piece by Ethan Joplin, Stuart Gallagher, talking about the story of the Griffith and of TVR post-smallensky and post-Peter Wheeler.

All the various government funding that went into it and then had to be paid back again, people deciding that we should make this electric, and then that really not working.

It was all meant to be built on good-morry-developed ice-dream chassis.

And it seems that the new owners and the license to do that seems to have expired.

So even if you want to build the cars, and I don't know if they've got somewhere to build the cars, although charge holdings did by charge cars, which we talked about a while ago.

They were behind an all-carbon, all-electric, 1960s forged Mustang, evocation, which I think means copy almost, but just enough that Ford aren't going to come after us.

And yeah, it went into administration last year just before it was acquired.

I mean, I'm sure charge holdings has lots and lots of money to pour into this, to invest in these, and it better have, basically.

So let's see what happens. So TBR seems to be twitching again.

I don't know if it'll ever become a thing. I hope it does, because I'm always like TBRs. I think it'd be cool.

I've been through this cycle a few times now, so I am losing a little bit of faith in that one.

Let's move on from that and talk a little bit about used EV values.

There's a thing, of course, people don't really buy cars as much these days.

Generally get it on PCP, you lease them, you buy them through work on salary, sacrifice if you've got that kind of job and work for that kind of scale of company.

People don't go out and just say, right, I'm going to buy this car new and I'm going to pay it off.

Oh, there are exceptions. Hello.

But generally that's not because I'm not buying normal cars when I buy cars.

But generally people do that. They will lease them rather than own the depreciating asset.

And, of course, somebody at some point has to actually own the depreciation asset and that tends to be rental and leasing companies.

And because people didn't necessarily calculate the residuals correctly at the time and just couldn't know.

It was almost guesswork three, four years ago, then the maths doesn't necessarily add up anymore.

The rates that they were being leased for and the residuals, it just doesn't.

The maths isn't adding up for the rental and leasing companies.

As a result, the rental and leasing companies are off to have a word with Downing Street to try to lobby for support for the used electric vehicle market.

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't think that the government is going to be handing out money left to right and centre on used cars whenever they're kind of refusing to hand it out on new cars.

Or they're saying, well, we're paying it out on new cars, why should we be any out on used cars as well.

So I don't know how they're going to do this. Basically, they're saying things like CEO of the BVRLA, the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association, has pointed out that draconian forward used car values, which also impacted hard on dealers.

And, you know, they're saying that falling values create short term benefit for used DV buyers, but negatively impact finance houses and fleets.

There is a bit of a mathematics problem here, and it was at the rental house and fleet end, really.

I don't think they're going to get any money from the government. I don't think they really should get any from the government.

I think they're going to have to work out how to solve this themselves.

Which very neatly, it's almost as if I planned it, pulls us into the next story.

So Leasing Company Zenith has decided that actually what it's going to do is it's going to try to had a product to its portfolio in order to try to stimulate used DV market and try and make them more affordable for drivers without them necessarily losing

the way that they have been after the two years, after the three years.

And, you know, absorbing most of the depreciation in that period.

So what they're doing is they're trying to extend their salary sacrifice product to include not just new cars, but also recently defleated electric cars.

So, you know, retaining them and then making them available to essentially a used a used buyer, a used Lisa renting the same thing out twice really rather than just just once and then getting rid of it.

Doing this, it's hoping to stimulate the used DV market and make them more affordable to to drivers as well.

Doing this, Zenith can offer options with more affordable monthly rentals, and that of course means that the company car tax is lower to because the taxable value is lower to.

So, it's quite interesting. Let's see what happens. I mean, I hope stuff like that. I would much rather there was stuff like this and ways that, you know, and maybe there had to be some change and transformation within the Leasing Age, the Leasing market.

And Leasing companies, rather than just going back and asking for a government handout doesn't go government help, you know, get on with it yourselves folks.

This seems like quite a good way.

Andy Wolf, the commercial director of Zenith's corporate division said the offer has been designed based on driver feedback and all vehicles include a quality check and AA safety inspiration, a full service history and comprehensive service and maintenance packages as well.

So, you know, if that's something that's attractive to you or attractive to your company, then that's quite, I think that's quite a good idea.

Good way to try to soften the impacted depreciation.

More electric car talk. It was quite a lot of electric car talk really, but that's kind of mostly what there is these days.

And there's actually something which I'm surprised is news now. And I would have thought I'd been happening for a while anyway.

But Pogo charge, which is an EV charger company, an EV charging company, they've actually partnered up with a company called Intelli Park.

Now Intelli Park does a NPR or automatic number plate recognition systems and ticketing systems.

And they're putting this in place to basically point to EV charging spots and prevent icing, prevent people with petrol and diesel cars parking in those spaces using them as parking spots or just hilariously blocking EVs in or out.

And of course it does this by then tickets.

It'd be quite interesting as if it's how that works if somebody leaves an EV in parking space plugged in or not plugged in for an extended period of time and how they deal with that.

But, you know, maybe it's well, if there's a vehicle parked in a spot and there's no charge being drawn after a certain period, then maybe you get an overstay fine that way.

This is being kicked off in Coombrand in Wales in their town centre, they have 16 ultra rapid 200 kilowatt charging base and they have problems with icing with internal combustion engine cars parking in the spots.

And so they're looking to do this and to solve the problem this way.

Let's see how that goes.

Last story before we get to guilt minute and that's Amazon.

Amazon has placed the largest ever in the verticals electric truck order in the UK.

I strongly suspect it's not largest ever in terms of volume, although 160 is a lot of vehicles no matter what size it is.

But I imagine that it's largest ever in terms of cost because they've ordered 160 Mercedes-Benz E-Actross 600s.

I've seen a few of these on the road.

The ones I've seen generally have been white and they do have a little bit of the stormtrooper about them.

But Amazon's ones are in the photo here which shows some of the first on the road in the UK are sort of dark grey Amazon colour scheme with the smiley arrow on them.

So they're going to be used to transport products between the very Amazon's very logistics to bed depots across the UK.

And Amazon says that with a 500 kilometer range the trucks are able to carry up to 22 metric tons per journey between a fulfilment centre, sorting centres and delivery hubs.

At all of the sites Amazon has installed fast charges to support all of this right the way up to 360 kilowatt.

Yeah, this is good because these will filter into the used market in a few years' time.

And this is exactly the kind of thing that an electric tractor unit, HGV tractor unit is pretty much perfect for you're going from hub to hub.

In this case of course there are articulated lorry so you can get there you can drop the trailer and charge or top up or whatever and then swap trailers.

But you can charge for the 45 minutes for however long it needs to be of your rest period before moving on essentially.

So this is cool, this is what's, this is the kind of thing that's needed and this is the kind of thing that's going to expand the whole, the whole of the industry in, you know, to expand the electrification of the whole of the industry even.

Amazon is also by the way not just sticking with the big trucks on this it's also introducing smaller vehicles including 800 East printers for home delivery and electric car electric cargo bikes for cities like Manchester Glasgow and London.

And in some London boroughs you can get on foot deliveries that will fairly lower the carbon footprint literally but don't.

Yeah good stuff looking forward to seeing more of those I was quite surprised to see the to see these the actress this far north to be honest because it's beyond the sort of normal distribution hub type set up once you start to get into into this part of Scotland.

So yeah I'll be interested to be interested to know where they're charging and stuff but I suppose 500 kilometers you're doing you're easily doing Edinburgh to Edinburgh to Aberdeen and back and stuff it's not so bad completely possible.

Anyway let's see what happens with all of that.

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As you expect new new car news is up next and we have news of a new Bentley.

The new 666 horsepower continental GT super sports is the lightest Bentley for 85 years.

It weighs less than two tons and that's despite it having the new bigger turbos on its twin turbocharged V8 engine.

As it probably won't be a surprise you do have to sacrifice some things to get your Bentley to weigh under two tons these days.

Some of the things that have gone are front drive shafts so it is only rear wheel drive.

Any sort of plug in hybrid hardware that's all gone you're not hybrid anymore me and things like rear seats as well.

You do still retain electric seats by the way you still get 11 way electric sort of bucket seats so there's something.

But yeah and you don't get any wood either that's all been replaced with carbon fiber too.

That said you know if you want these things back again then Bentley will you know they'll force themselves to refit them for you via their Milner division so you know you can have wood and you can have the seats.

If you want but generally the the 300,000 ish pounds that you that this will cost you will will just you know that's that's your starting point if you want to add things back in again.

So let's talk about some of the numbers so the 40 to V8 gets larger larger turbos and you crankshaft resulting in the 666 horsepower and 590 pound feet of torque.

That runs for an 8 speed dual clutch transmission and super sports can get from 0 to 62 miles now in 3.7 seconds and on to 192 miles an hour.

You also get carbon fiber arrow kit fix rear wing that generates more than 300 kilos in down force.

I get carbon ceramic brakes 22 inch Ford man tie alloy wheels and a crap of it titanium exhaust as well not to mention Pirelli Trafal RS tyres too.

If that floats your boat then it will be on sale and available from March 2026.

I don't know I choose the sort of sat in black if the one in the press photos I'd really quite like to see it in a different color.

But that's not really going to be too much of a challenge overall I don't foresee me being able to pop out and purchase one of these for my birthday.

So I shall stop worrying about that particular problem.

Another new car news or new car news item that was mentioned this week that came up is that Al Maserati and Alfa Romeo are going to twin up to create what they're describing as few off.

So not one off or two off but a few off flagship models as part of their new bespoke program which is called Bautiga Fua Rosari.

Probably pronounced with an attack correctly and then with an Italian accent.

The idea is that this is similar to the just mentioned Moulinne type set up from Bentley or Ad Persona which is a Lamborghini's equivalent.

And the idea is that this will enable buyers to customize their purchase and turn their car into a unique model or just spec it the way they want it.

The same new Maserati and Alfa Romeo arm which I'm not going to try and pronounce again is also going to become the cradle of high emotion vehicles that push the boundaries.

So this is going to be successes to things like the Alfa 33 Stradale the M the Maserati MC20 MC extrema as well as any new sort of range topping cool halo models that's going to go alongside them.

I'll be interested to see how this how this works.

Especially as this program is also going to incorporate the Maserati Corsa racing team which will be developing new powertrains aerodynamic packs and chassis designs.

So yes, let's see what happens there that's going to be quite interesting looking for team on the next creation is I thought the Alfa 33 Stradale is pretty cool not nearly as gorgeous and pure as the original but you know it wasn't really designed as a road car first.

But yeah, that's sort of thing let's see what happens there and keep an eye on it.

Last bit of new car news is another quick go get the defibrillator out type story and not one that I was expecting I think I don't know.

Did I expect there's less did I expect to be talking about this less than TVR being revised probably did actually and that's news that Mitsubishi will be returning to the UK market next year.

When Mitsubishi Motors what was originally called car company closed when Mitsubishi said they weren't selling to the UK anymore a couple of years ago then international motors the importers of GWM is usually Subaru and X-Peng cars to the UK.

They took over the parts distribution so that if you owned a Mitsubishi you could still get bits for it.

Then I was saying that they're going to be doing introducing customer deliveries in summer 2026 despite the fact they're not really saying what models they're going to send to and sell in the UK.

Auto car goes on to suggest that lightly call it lightly candidates include the eclipse cross which is a Renault scenic EV that's been re styled well that's got to be better than its predecessor.

And the outlander plugin hybrid SUV its predecessor being basically the only model that Mitsubishi really managed to sell in the UK for a few years before they left.

Interesting thing there is that of course that's just been announced in the US as the Nissan Rogue plugin hybrid which is different from previous Rogue's previous Rogue's were always the Nissan X-Trail from over here.

I say always I think the last two generations before that they were different models.

Yeah I don't know Mitsubishi has a really shaky product offering elsewhere right at the minute.

I don't know if this is I'll be interested to see how they they can come up with something which is going to be vaguely competitive when it hits the market especially as Mitsubishi will be entering.

I would imagine at a price point which puts them against an awful lot of the new Chinese brands.

And maybe the fact that Mitsubishi is recognized, people know the name, they think that's how they can stand out.

Maybe they've decided that we've got a tolerance for pure quality vehicles or not to quip less refined vehicles let's just say.

Now then maybe we did before but I just think this seems a very strange very strange very strange decision.

Anyway we'll see as ever as I keep saying this week we'll see what happens.

Yeah I'm curious oh by the way this is they're going to be establishing new dealerships supposedly to complement the existing network of the 100 Mitsubishi after sales garages at the RR cross the UK.

The after sales garage is generally are trying are selling you is users and possibly super is.

There's a point actually I wonder if they'll bring about the L 200 sorry tacking that on to the end there because I was trying to think what I'd really sold from Mitsubishi and of course the L 200 and the Outlander.

Definitely not my eyes though don't bring that back just just just throw it to the bottom and see.

Points of interest then and this week's lunchtime read this week's lunchtime read.

I don't know have we been lazy possibly but this is the third part of Patrick Lecuml's LADS series for driven to right talking about the evolution the introduction of the the Citroen DS and how it came to be

and what it was meant to be at various points and then what he what he'd ended up as and the characters behind it as well.

So again part three of this I just think this is fantastic series I'm really enjoying it so yeah I'm going to I'm going to recommend that you enjoy it too.

List of the week this week is from Haggity it's by Antengrum and it's ten modern classics that can't wait for winter now.

As you scroll through this don't judge it by the pictures alright.

For funny thing the picture editor should be shot but the words are really really good.

You'll know what I mean about the pictures whenever you see the ones that are wrong.

There are only ten in this list I would love to talk about loads of these I really really would and there are some great options for those of us who love plastic cladding and as such I'm going to choose one of them.

I'm going to choose the tenth one the list and I'm going to choose the Azuzu vei cross.

Slightly worried though I am that it's described as a modern classic these days obviously I owned an Azuzu vei cross.

A Japanese one the one pictured here is is an American model in America.

But yeah I owned one for nine years and it was it was really pretty cool and really loved winter winter.

It just didn't even really notice the snow you shoved the talk on demand into into sort of four high and it would just it would just drive over or whatever.

I mean it just generally drove over whatever anyway but yeah it was it was particularly particularly good when it came to winter time and comfortable and smooth and lovely as well.

Just check for rust and vacuum lines as well check for vacuum check the vacuum lines too.

But now super cool there's some great options in the rest of that in the rest of in the rest of that not all of them forward drives not all of them SUVs either.

So do have a little bit of a look and have a bit of a bit of a read there.

I can't believe that's already bringing me to the end finally but that is the case I'm afraid.

And this week's out and finally is is one that is one of Andrew's favorites and it is the final part of the C90 adventures driving 650 miles in a mini Jeep.

It's no more sensible than it was at the start of all of this it's still completely bad poo but do go have a watch settle down 40 minutes of mindless amusement and just Utah and Nevada and all of these parts of that west it's the area of the US I really really wanted to get to and I never quite managed.

Because it's just stunning out there it's absolutely gorgeous and you know when you just on dirt trails and all of the miles that the Ed's covering it's it's very cool so do please have a little bit of a have a watch of have a watch of that and just chill out and enjoy it so yeah it's super cool.

That I fear is it this week Andrew maybe back next week hope so but but yeah if he isn't then sorry folks it's me again but yeah I feel that for for all of you it breaks it up when there's two do there's two different slightly adds an oil voices chatting away rather than rather than just one of us.

Anyway don't forget now and next week you can give us any feedback share thoughts of the show at motoringpodcast.com on blue sky at motoringpodcasts and Instagram and Facebook and on the count tag page of www.motoringpodcast.com the hub of all our activities remember you can support us via financially via patron similarly watching watching or listening to the podcast via YouTube does help us on the path towards monetization on that particular platform.

But please leave a review on rating on Apple Podcasts YouTube or however your podcast app lets you do such a thing best way to get in touch with Andrew is to search for cracked windscreen on blue sky or under his real name on LinkedIn because he enjoys that kind of stuff I don't know just frustrates me best way to get in touch with me well you can use my real name on your LinkedIn actually you will find me there but much much better than that is to use blue sky

I'm at a JP Bradley that's b-r-a-d-l-e-y dot b sky dot social we'll be back very soon but until then I've been out of Bradley the empty voice that you've been missing has been Andrew close and safe motoring.

Still Twitching - 18 November 2025

About this episode

Stellantis

EV commitment

plug-in hybrid jeeps

Griffith

TVR

Charge Holdings

low-volume luxury automotive sector

all-electric

Ford Mustang

used EV values

Pogo Charge

automatic number plate recognition (ANPR)

ultra-rapid 200 kW charging base

Amazon electric truck fleet

Mercedes-Benz E-Actross 600

fast charges

electric tractor unit

articulated lorry

electric cargo bikes

plug-in hybrid hardware

11-way electric bucket seats

carbon fiber

Milner division

666 horsepower

Trafal RS tyres

titanium exhaust

Alfa Romeo

Maserati

powertrains

aerodynamic packs

chassis designs

Citroen DS

vacuum lines

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