BRITAIN’s beleaguered carmakers are to ask Lord Mandelson, the business secretary, for a package of measures to help boost demand and safeguard manufacturing jobs.
They want ministers to scrap plans to raise vehicle excise duty and will ask for subsidies for companies that renew old corporate fleets. Alistair Darling, the chancellor, has separately been asked by industry leaders to throw his weight behind a €40 billion (£30 billion) package of loans being prepared in Brussels.
Car companies are being hammered by a fall in sales. New-car registrations dipped 23% in October, with sales for the year now forecast to be 2.15m vehicles, down from last year’s 2.4m. Most UK carmakers have laid off staff, cut back working hours and are planning long shutdowns over Christmas.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/t...g/article5114376.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=1185799
Traffic on Britain's roads is decreasing significantly for the first time since the three-day week of the early 1970s, suggesting the car economy is heading for a crash, official figures revealed yesterday.
In a sign that the country is already in recession, fewer car and lorry journeys on motorways, rural and urban roads were made over the last six months compared to the same period a year ago.
The Department for Transport (DfT) recorded two consecutive quarters where road traffic has decreased year on year – the first time for more than 30 years. If the trend continues to the end of the year, it will hugely undermine the "great car economy" championed by Margaret Thatcher.
At the same time, sales of new cars have fallen by 23 per cent and are at their lowest since 1996. The motor industry is suffering across the world, with Volvo, the Swedish giant, selling just 115 heavy trucks over the past few months, compared to 41,970 during the same period last year – a 99.7 per cent fall.
And the jobs of 3,700 people at two UK car plants are at risk after General Motors warned it would be bankrupt within months unless it received a bailout from the US government.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...cades-motor-firms-head-for-crash-1003948.html
High fuel prices helped to save up to 140 lives this year because motorists slowed down and drove less aggressively to save money, an analysis by the AA suggests.
Road deaths fell by a fifth in April, May and June, the biggest drop in any three-month period for 20 years. There were 580 deaths compared with 721 in the same period last year, the Department for Transport said.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/driving/news/article5101322.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797084
The number of HGVs on the roads fell by 4% in the third quarter of 2008 when compared to the same period of 2007. According to Department for Transport figures on traffic levels, van traffic remained static while HGV and car numbers fell. This trend was seen across all types of road.
http://www.roadtransport.com/Articles/2008/11/06/132141/number-of-trucks-on-the-road-falls.html
In the third quarter of 2007, Volvo AB booked 41,970 European orders for new trucks. Guess how many prospective purchases Volvo, the world's second-biggest maker of heavy rigs, received in the third quarter of this year?
Here's a clue. Picture a highway gridlocked by 41,815 abandoned trucks -- because Volvo's order book got destroyed to the tune of 99.63 percent, with customers signing up for just 155 vehicles in the three-month period, the Gothenburg, Sweden-based company said last week.
The pathogen that has fatally infected swathes of the banking industry is now contaminating non-financial companies. ``We're heading toward the sharpest downturn I've ever seen in Europe,'' said Chief Executive Officer Leif Johansson.
Volvo has company. Daimler AG, the world's biggest truckmaker, said earlier this month that its U.S. deliveries slumped by a third in the first half of the year.
After months of money-market madness, slumping stock markets, collapsing currencies and bank bailouts, the headlines from the broader economy are starting to roll in -- and the news is all bad and getting worse, fast.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=a7AhRhE4NJlM&refer=home
They want ministers to scrap plans to raise vehicle excise duty and will ask for subsidies for companies that renew old corporate fleets. Alistair Darling, the chancellor, has separately been asked by industry leaders to throw his weight behind a €40 billion (£30 billion) package of loans being prepared in Brussels.
Car companies are being hammered by a fall in sales. New-car registrations dipped 23% in October, with sales for the year now forecast to be 2.15m vehicles, down from last year’s 2.4m. Most UK carmakers have laid off staff, cut back working hours and are planning long shutdowns over Christmas.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/t...g/article5114376.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=1185799
Traffic on Britain's roads is decreasing significantly for the first time since the three-day week of the early 1970s, suggesting the car economy is heading for a crash, official figures revealed yesterday.
In a sign that the country is already in recession, fewer car and lorry journeys on motorways, rural and urban roads were made over the last six months compared to the same period a year ago.
The Department for Transport (DfT) recorded two consecutive quarters where road traffic has decreased year on year – the first time for more than 30 years. If the trend continues to the end of the year, it will hugely undermine the "great car economy" championed by Margaret Thatcher.
At the same time, sales of new cars have fallen by 23 per cent and are at their lowest since 1996. The motor industry is suffering across the world, with Volvo, the Swedish giant, selling just 115 heavy trucks over the past few months, compared to 41,970 during the same period last year – a 99.7 per cent fall.
And the jobs of 3,700 people at two UK car plants are at risk after General Motors warned it would be bankrupt within months unless it received a bailout from the US government.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...cades-motor-firms-head-for-crash-1003948.html
High fuel prices helped to save up to 140 lives this year because motorists slowed down and drove less aggressively to save money, an analysis by the AA suggests.
Road deaths fell by a fifth in April, May and June, the biggest drop in any three-month period for 20 years. There were 580 deaths compared with 721 in the same period last year, the Department for Transport said.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/driving/news/article5101322.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797084
The number of HGVs on the roads fell by 4% in the third quarter of 2008 when compared to the same period of 2007. According to Department for Transport figures on traffic levels, van traffic remained static while HGV and car numbers fell. This trend was seen across all types of road.
http://www.roadtransport.com/Articles/2008/11/06/132141/number-of-trucks-on-the-road-falls.html
In the third quarter of 2007, Volvo AB booked 41,970 European orders for new trucks. Guess how many prospective purchases Volvo, the world's second-biggest maker of heavy rigs, received in the third quarter of this year?
Here's a clue. Picture a highway gridlocked by 41,815 abandoned trucks -- because Volvo's order book got destroyed to the tune of 99.63 percent, with customers signing up for just 155 vehicles in the three-month period, the Gothenburg, Sweden-based company said last week.
The pathogen that has fatally infected swathes of the banking industry is now contaminating non-financial companies. ``We're heading toward the sharpest downturn I've ever seen in Europe,'' said Chief Executive Officer Leif Johansson.
Volvo has company. Daimler AG, the world's biggest truckmaker, said earlier this month that its U.S. deliveries slumped by a third in the first half of the year.
After months of money-market madness, slumping stock markets, collapsing currencies and bank bailouts, the headlines from the broader economy are starting to roll in -- and the news is all bad and getting worse, fast.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=a7AhRhE4NJlM&refer=home
Last edited: