The Automobile Association is calling on petrol companies to display all their petrol prices and says the government should force them to if they don't.

Under the law petrol companies are required to display the price of all fuel products at the pump - and they are meeting that obligation.BP petrol station in Kaikōura

The AA says petrol companies should put the price of premium petrol as well as 91 octane on their roadside boards. Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King

But AA petrolwatch spokesperson Mark Stockdale said there were many complaints about service stations not putting the price of premium petrol on their roadside price boards.

In a survey of AA members, 77 percent said they kept an eye on roadside boards and 81 percent felt all fuel prices should be on them.

The boards are required to show the price of 91 and diesel, but not 95 or 98 octane. It's estimated 20 percent of cars in New Zealand use premium petrol.

|  Continue to the full article  |  January 19, 2017  |

Ducati and Diesel have teamed up to create a limited edition bike that combines “elements from the past and the future.” It’s being called the Ducati Diavel Diesel.

According to a press release from Ducati, the bike will be produced 666 times. “To create the Ducati Diavel Diesel, the two style centers were inspired by a hyperkinetic dynamism of a post-apocalyptic, retro-futuristic world,” notes Ducati.

The exterior of the bike features a hand-brushed stainless steel superstructure that has “visible welding and rivets”. These details along with the leather saddle give the bike an amazing appearance.

|  Continue to the full article with images here  |  January 17, 2017  |

Tesla is now producing lithium-ion battery cells at its “Gigafactory,” the massive plant just outside Reno, Nevada, that the company claims will become the largest factory of its kind in the world. The cells will be used for Powerwall 2 and Powerpack 2 energy-storage battery packs, at first.

The company held a grand opening for the Gigafactory last year, but until now the factory has only assembled battery packs, and not the cells that go into them. Those cells have been imported by Panasonic, which partnered with Tesla on the Gigafactory and has been the sole supplier of battery cells for the company’s electric cars and energy-storage products.

Cells manufactured at the Gigafactory are a cylindrical “2170” design co-developed by Tesla and Panasonic, according to a company blog post. The Gigafactory is currently building them for Powerwall 2 and Powerpack 2 battery packs only, but Tesla expects to start cell production for the Model 3 electric car in the second quarter of this year. The Model 3 is the 215-mile, $35,000 mass-market electric car that is the Gigafactory’s main reason for existence.

Tesla needs the massive factory to provide the economies of scale necessary to make the Model 3 profitable at its sub-$40,000 price point. It also needs to produce battery cells in large volumes: Tesla CEO Elon Musk wants the company to produce 500,000 cars per year by 2018, and the Model 3 is expected to make up the majority of that total. That’s a lot of battery cells.

By 2018, Tesla expects the Gigafactory to be producing 35 gigawatt-hours of cells per year, which it claims is nearly as much as the rest of the world’s cell production combined. Tesla will keep expanding the factory, which it says is only 30-percent complete. The current footprint of 1.9 million square feet houses 4.9 million square feet of operational space on multiple floors. When the factory is completed, Tesla expects it to be the largest building in the world.

Tesla may be kicking off 2017 with some good news, but it ended 2016 with a disappointment. The automaker delivered 76,230 cars last year, meaning it missed its target of 80,000 units by a slim margin. In q statement, Tesla attributed this primarily to the transition to new Autopilot hardware, which the company believes interrupted the flow of production.Also watch: Sony 4K UHD Blu-ray Player, TVs, Projector At CES 2017

Read more: http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/tesla-begins-gigafactory-battery-cell-production/#ixzz4VDDfebdK|  DigitalTrends  |  january 5, 2017  |

Forgotten deal relied on common sense instead of currency

 The advent of New Zealand’s only branded home-grown vehicle the Trekka 50 years ago was the result of a counter trade, a barter, that even today is still staggering in its simplicity. Indeed, the sheer scope of the barter even today is still unrecognised just because it was so straightforward.

New Zealand had a surplus of wool.

Czechoslovakia’s Skoda Works had a surplus of vehicles.

Therein lay the deal.

Until this moment it has remained a secret. We will now reveal how it worked out in practice.

The organisation to see the opportunity was Motor Holdings of Auckland. The company in that era decided to run the deal through an offshoot in Palmerston North known as Five Star Motors.

In those days 50 years ago Palmerston North was an important centre of the auto industry in terms of assembly and distribution.

It was now that the government was approached with the outline of the deal.

The reason that a government approval was necessary was that at this time any import of any kind at all was controlled by quota and licence.

At this time. 50 years ago, the export price of wool declined by 40%.

New Zealand's sheep population continued to rise. Available storage space everywhere was crammed with unsold wool.

But still the government sought to squelch the deal on the grounds that the barter or counter-trade was simply a device to by-pass the rigid import licencing of that era.

But Five Star motors had a trump up its sleeve which it now played carefully.

Fifty percent of the showroom floor price of the New Zealand-ised Skoda would be local input.

Moreover, it would be branded as a New Zealand product and with a New Zealand name.

It was now that the Customs Department began to give way. The Trekka had taken on a political life of its own. The department backed down. The Trekka had arrived.

The skill and patience of the Palmerston North negotiators who implemented the Trekka counter trade had much to do with Palmerston North’s presence as a swinging parliamentary seat between National and Labour.

The rest of the story is relatively well-known. The Trekka, which looked like a boxier version of the Land Rover was one of the cheapest vehicles available in a market where new car prices were high, and cash deposits of up 60 percent were mandatory.

Better still, the Trekka, a forerunner of the SUV, was available off the floor, on low deposit, making new car ownership accessible to many for the first time.

The Trekka though will be remembered as the most successful counter deal ever. Its success was in its simplicity.

The most curious thing about it was that it was so hard to repeat as New Zealand trade began to turn eastward. In spite of Asian customers being notoriously and institutionally bad payers – another topic still rarely talked about, especially departmentally—it proved a hard act to follow.

In our next revelation on the silent, and officially-ignored world of counter-trades, we will detail an example of one that did not work out and very largely because of the absence of official support.

From the MSCNewsWire reporters desk - Wednesfday 7 December 2016

In 1966, construction of the ŠKODA TREKKA lightweight off-road vehicle began in New Zealand› The chassis, based on the ŠKODA OCTAVIA, came from Mladá Boleslav along with the rigid central tubular frame and independent suspension.› Many bodywork variants, good off-road capability, low running costs

Mladá Boleslav, 2 December 2016 – The ancestor of the ŠKODA SUV models is celebrating a major birthday: exactly 50 years ago, on 2 December 1966, production of the TREKKA model began in the town of Otahuhu, New Zealand. By 1972, almost three thousand of the lightweight off-road cars had been manufactured.

“ŠKODA has always striven for solutions that are tailored for individual markets,” said Andrea Frydlová, Manager of the ŠKODA Museum in Mladá Boleslav. “The all-terrain TREKKA, which was produced in collaboration with the New Zealand importer and local businesses, is a prime example of this philosophy.”

The vehicle manufacturer from Mladá Boleslav had developed the New Zealand market early on: over 100 years ago, Laurin & Klement cars were already being exported to New Zealand.

The ŠKODA cars delivered from Czechoslovakia in a disassembled state (CKD – completely knocked down) for customs and tax reasons were imported by the company Motor Industries International based in Otahuhu since 1956. The ŠKODA TREKKA was developed in a collaboration between several dozen local businesses and representatives of the plant in Mladá Boleslav to be a robust, compact, everyday car for the local farmers, tradespeople and merchants.

In 1965 and 1966, several designs and prototypes were created, which bore the hallmarks of Josef Velebný, ŠKODA’s former Head of Bodywork Development, and New Zealand designer George Taylor. The chassis, which was based on the ŠKODA OCTAVIA, came from Mladá Boleslav along with the rigid central tubular frame and independent suspension. Its special features were the wheelbase, which was shortened from 2,389 mm to 2,165 mm, and the axle ratio, which was changed from 4.78 to 5.25. Tyres with dimensions of 5.90 x 15” contributed to the 190-mm ground clearance; there was also an optional differential lock that improved the off-road capability of the rear-wheel-drive TREKKA.

The front, longitudinally mounted OHV four-cylinder engine with a cylinder capacity of 1,221 cm3 achieved 34 kW (47 PS) at 4,500 rpm and its torque reached 87 Nm at 3,000 rpm. With its synchronised four-speed gearbox, the ŠKODA TREKKA had a top speed of 105 to 110 km/h. Its consumption of approximately 11 l per 100 km formed the basis of its relatively low running cost.

Customers could choose from several variants: a three-door pickup with between two and eight seats, a canvas soft-top, a fixed plastic hardtop, an estate model (STW) and a beach variant. The TREKKA was 3,590 mm long, 1,600 mm wide and between 1,785 and 2,040 mm high. It weighed between 920 and 980 kg, and could carry loads of up to 450-500 kg.

From 1966 to 1972, nearly 3,000 TREKKAs were made, probably the first car designed and built in New Zealand. Export markets included Australia, Fiji, Samoa and Vietnam. ŠKODA also applied a similar concept in Pakistan, where production of the SKOPAK (ŠKODA Pakistan) lightweight off-road car commenced in May 1970. The Czech car manufacturer still successfully sells its models in New Zealand today, just as in Australia and over 100 other international markets.

McLaren Automotive has awarded its first international internship to a student from the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

Following in the footsteps of the McLaren founder, Bruce McLaren, Andrew McLaren (no relation), a third-year student in the Faculty of Engineering studying Mechatronics Engineering, will spend nine weeks at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, Surrey, working alongside the company’s Research and Development engineers.

Nearly 60 years beforehand, the McLaren founder, Bruce McLaren, travelled to England on a similar ‘Driver to Europe’ scholarship to pursue his motorsport aspirations and founded his own racing company in 1963.

Born in Auckland, New Zealand, Bruce McLaren studied at the Auckland University of Technology and was an accomplished engineer and innovator as well as a successful racing driver.

Andrew McLaren was born in Dargaville, New Zealand and attended Dargaville High School before starting his Bachelor of Engineering in Mechatronics.

Mechatronics is a mix of mechanical, electrical and computer engineering. Andrew McLaren’s particular focus is in the Research and Development of future products, and especially the company’s efforts to reduce the emissions of the next generation of sports and supercars.

Andrew said: “I can’t wait, it’s a field that is very hard to get into because there is very little opportunity in New Zealand, so I thought I would never get a chance like this.

"I would love to be at the forefront of that kind of innovative thinking. I’d really like to do something that would benefit society."

Brand Ambassador for McLaren Automotive and daughter of Bruce, Amanda McLaren added: “I’m delighted to welcome Andrew to McLaren Automotive to continue his education.

"Even though my father passed away many years ago, the connection between McLaren and New Zealand still remains very strong and the parallels in both of their early careers is especially poignant.”

Volkswagen AG (IW 1000/8) reached a landmark agreement with workers to cut as many as 30,000 jobs globally and save 3.7 billion euros (US$3.9 billion) in expenses as the company tries to claw back from the emissions-cheating scandal and invest in electric vehicles.

Reducing headcount by nearly 5% will come through attrition as the automaker agreed to refrain from forced layoffs until 2025, the Wolfsburg, Germany-based company said Friday. After months of intense talks, labor and management agreed on a package to balance cost-cutting with investment as the auto industry shifts away from traditional combustion engines and adapts to car-sharing services and self-driving technologies.

“This is a big step forward, maybe the biggest in the company’s history,” VW brand chief Herbert Diess said at a press conference in Wolfsburg. “All manufacturers must rebuild themselves because of the imminent changes for the industry. We need to brace for the storm.”

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Nov. 17, 2016 / PRZen / SAN JOSE, Calif. -- RaceAmerica Corporation, world leaders in solutions for Track Safety lighting, Race Timing, LED Scoreboards and Race Management Software, celebrates 25 years of providing customers around the world with state of the art technology by announcing a strategic partnership with ALM Sales Pty Ltd of Melbourne Australia.

ALM Sales Pty Ltd will partner with RaceAmerica to provide representation and engineering expertise in the Australian and New Zealand region.

The team at ALM Sales Pty Ltd, headed by well-known and respected racing identity and "Mr Dunlop" of Karting, Les May, brings over 35 years' experience in motorsport, not only as a highly credited driver but also one of Australia's largest distribution networks and a strong engineering design and manufacturing ability.

Through this partnership, ALM Sales Pty Ltd will provide the important local link between Australian and New Zealand customers and RaceAmerica.

"ALM Sales is a well-established company with a strong reputation in the Australia and New Zealand racing industry. The support and assistance provided to Karting Australia demonstrate their in-depth knowledge of technology, and high levels of customer service and support. This makes ALM Sales an ideal partner as we grow in this market. With ALM Sales providing a local presence, customers will receive a higher level of support with RaceAmerica products," said Dennis Laczny, President of RaceAmerica.

Les May explains, "We see ourselves as the feet on the ground in this region where we can react quickly and effectively to customers' questions, inquiries and requirements, provide assistance and engineering expertise with installation and, of course, back up the RaceAmerica products with local service and technical support."

As is the case with all the products distributed or supported by ALM Sales, product quality and support, along with customer service, are of paramount importance.

Les May reiterated, "We do not enter into partnerships or distribution arrangements with just anybody, or take on products that are not backed by honest, reputable and well established manufacturers. We have been in business for over 35 years and have grown one of the strongest platforms in motorsport by providing our customers the absolute best products and aftersales service, second to none. RaceAmerica's state of the art technology and 25 years of experience in the motorsports industry is a perfect fit for us with expansion of our business that now includes clubs, associations, circuits and track owners."

ALM Sales and RaceAmerica now offer a strong, viable, well supported future proof solution for Track Safety lighting, Race Timing, LED Scoreboards and Race Management Software in Australia and New Zealand.