Category Archives: Travel and transport

‘We are losing debates’: combustion engine row divides Germany’s coalition

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Green party accuses FDP of gambling away country’s reputation after last-minute blocking of phase-out from 2035

A clash over climate protection measures is threatening to unravel Germany’s three-party governing alliance, after the Green party accused its liberal coalition partners of gambling away the country’s reputation by blocking a EU-wide phase-out of internal combustion engines in cars.

“You can’t have a coalition of progress where only one party is in charge of progress and the others try to stop the progress,” the country’s vice-chancellor and economy minister, Robert Habeck, said at a meeting of the Green party’s parliamentary group in Weimar on Tuesday.

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Thailand’s tuk-tuks go green amid rising demand for electric models

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Travel without the combustion-engine fumes and noise is increasingly popular in the country with some of the world’s worst air pollution

Thailand’s iconic, gas-guzzling tuk-tuks are being replaced by a greener, more energy efficient model, offering travellers a more environmentally friendly way of getting around what is one of the world’s worst countries when it comes to air pollution.

“The benefits are quite clear in terms of the environment”, says Krisada Kritayakirana, co-founder and CEO of start-up Urban Mobility Tech. “When you use traditional tuk-tuks, you can smell the gas and it sometimes could be unpleasant. With the electric tuk-tuks, basically you don’t have any noise and you don’t have any emission from tailpipes.”

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UK new car sales rise as industry leaders say recovery ‘within grasp’

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Increase for fourth consecutive month, with almost 143,000 new vehicles registered in November

Sales of new cars in the UK have risen for the fourth month running, with purely electric vehicles accounting for a fifth of the total.

In the best November for the industry since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, almost 143,000 new vehicles were registered.

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Climate activists storm Amsterdam airport and block private jets

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Sitdown protests are part of a day of demonstrations in and around Schiphol airport

Dutch border police arrested hundreds of climate activists who stormed Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport and sat in front of the wheels of aircraft to prevent them from leaving.

More than 100 protesters, wearing white suits, entered an area where private jets are kept on Saturday as part of a day of demonstrations in and around the airport organised by environmental groups.

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Row over Germany’s public transport ticket jumping from €9 to €49

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Charities warn increase in monthly local travel pass will freeze out millions struggling with living costs

Germany plans to replace its successful €9-a-month local public transport pass with a €49 version, a move that is drawing criticism from charities and social care groups who say the new price tag will freeze out millions of Germans suffering under the cost of living crisis.

The €9 pass (equating to about £7.80) was introduced as an experiment over the summer in an effort to entice people to use public transport and help counter rising inflation.

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Biden talks up electric vehicle revolution – but is America ready to give up gas?

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President appears at Detroit auto show, where EVs are this year’s stars – but the road to electrification promises to be a bumpy one

Fresh off signing legislation aimed at propelling the nation’s electric vehicle (EV) transition, Joe Biden was in Detroit last week to reaffirm his support for electrification ahead of the opening of the US’s largest annual car show.

“The great American road trip is going to be fully electrified, whether you’re driving along the coast, or on I-75 here in Michigan,” he declared as the first North American International Auto Show since 2019 prepared to open its doors.

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Promote safety benefits of low-traffic schemes, Boardman tells councils

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Head of Active Travel England says aim is to give neighbourhoods back what has been taken away

Councils should face down rows over low-traffic neighbourhoods by reframing the debate in terms of livable streets that children can use safely, the head of England’s walking and cycling watchdog has argued as it unveiled its first raft of projects.

Chris Boardman, the former Olympic cyclist who heads Active Travel England (ATE), has promised his organisation will help local authorities navigate culture wars and media controversies over traffic schemes, along with carrying out its core role of ensuring good design.

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Just one of 50 aviation industry climate targets met, study finds

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Charity’s report says nearly all targets set since 2000 have been missed, revised or quietly ignored

The international aviation industry has failed to meet all but one of 50 of its own climate targets in the past two decades, environment campaigners say.

A report commissioned by the climate charity Possible assessed every target set by the industry since 2000 and found that nearly all had been missed, revised or quietly ignored. The charity says the findings undermine a UK government plan to leave airlines to reduce their emissions through self-regulation.

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Women with electric rickshaws combat Delhi’s toxic air – and its sexism

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Break into male-dominated public-transport helps tackle city’s pollution crisis and safety concerns

Monika Devi is thrilled to be driving her autorickshaw. The 35-year-old has two reasons to be particularly proud as she winds her way through New Delhi’s insanely congested streets.

She is one of the first women to be driving one of the three-wheeled taxis that swarm the roads of the Indian capital. And she is driving one of Delhi’s first e-rickshaws – part of the city’s drive to tackle its notoriously filthy air.

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Climate activists ‘disrupt supplies from three oil terminals in England’

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Just Stop Oil says action will affect fuel availability at petrol pumps across south-east and Midlands

Clean energy campaigners claim to have disrupted supplies from three oil terminals in the Midlands and south-east of England, as motorists complain that some petrol stations are running short of fuel.

The government said only one terminal was out of action on Sunday afternoon as a result of the Just Stop Oil protests, and that local police forces were working with the industry to ensure that fuel supplies can be maintained.

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UK government vows 10-fold increase in electric car chargers by 2030

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New target comes after criticism of infrastructure rollout for failing to match surging vehicle sales

The UK government has set a new target to increase the number of electric car chargers more than ten times to 300,000 by 2030 after heavy criticism that the rollout of public infrastructure is too slow to match rapid growth in sales.

The Department for Transport (DfT) said it would invest an extra £450m to do so, alongside hefty sums of private capital. Sales of new cars and vans with petrol and diesel engines will be banned from 2030.

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Nurdles: the worst toxic waste you’ve probably never heard of

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Billions of these tiny plastic pellets are floating in the ocean, causing as much damage as oil spills, yet they are still not classified as hazardous

When the X-Press Pearl container ship caught fire and sank in the Indian Ocean in May, Sri Lanka was terrified that the vessel’s 350 tonnes of heavy fuel oil would spill into the ocean, causing an environmental disaster for the country’s pristine coral reefs and fishing industry.

Classified by the UN as Sri Lanka’s “worst maritime disaster”, the biggest impact was not caused by the heavy fuel oil. Nor was it the hazardous chemicals on board, which included nitric acid, caustic soda and methanol. The most “significant” harm, according to the UN, came from the spillage of 87 containers full of lentil-sized plastic pellets: nurdles.

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Easy rider? We’ll miss the roar, but electric motorbikes can’t kill our road romance

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For bikers, combustive power is one of the thrills of a long-haul trip. But flat batteries and charging points will just become part of exciting new journeys

A full tank of gas, a twist of the wrist, the roar of the exhaust as you speed towards the horizon … These are the visceral touchstones of the motorcycling experience, and all are a direct product of petrol-fuelled power, as is much of the biker’s lexicon: “open it up”, “give it some gas”, “go full throttle”. For a motorcycle rider, as opposed to the modern car driver, the journey is a full-body communication game, constantly applying judgment, skill and nerve to control the thousands of explosions that are happening between your thighs in order to transport yourself, upright and in one piece, to your destination.

Yet the days of the internal combustion engine are numbered. By 2050 the European Commission aims to have cut transport emissions by 90%, and electric vehicle technology is striding ahead for cars, trucks, buses and even aircraft. But where does this leave the motorcycle? Can this romantic form of transport and its subcultures survive the end of the petrol age?

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Rio Tinto’s past casts a shadow over Serbia’s hopes of a lithium revolution

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People in the Jadar valley fear environmental catastrophe as Europe presses for self-sufficiency in battery technology

Photographs by Vladimir Zivojinovic

A battery sign, flashing dangerously low, appears superimposed over a view of the globe as seen from space. “Green technologies, electric cars, clean air – all of these depend on one of the most significant lithium deposits in the world, which is located right here in Jadar, Serbia,” a gravel-voiced narrator announces. “We completely understand your concerns about the environment. Rio Tinto is carrying out detailed analyses, so as to make all of us sure that we develop the Jadar project in line with the highest environmental, security and health standards.”

Beamed into the country’s living rooms on the public service channel RTS, the slick television ad, shown just after the evening news, finishes with images of reassuring scientists and a comforted young couple walking into the sunset: “Rio Tinto: Together we have the chance to save the planet.”

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London drivers ditching diesel cars six times faster than rest of UK

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Abandoning of polluting vehicles has accelerated since expansion of ultra-low emission zone announced

Drivers in London have abandoned diesel cars six times faster than those in the rest of the UK since Sadiq Khan announced plans for a massive expansion of the London’s clean air zone.

Research released days before London’s ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) is rolled out across the capital shows there are about 128,000 fewer diesel cars on the city’s roads than in 2017, when the mayor announced plans to create one of the biggest clean air zones in Europe.

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Students’ solar-powered camper van turns heads on 1,800-mile road trip

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Dutch team designed and built two-person van with kitchen, bed, shower, loo and range of up to 450 miles a day

A team of students from the Netherlands are due to complete an 1,800-mile (3,000km) road trip across western Europe in a solar-powered camper van that they designed and built themselves.

The Stella Vita is designed for two passengers and has a kitchen, sitting area, bed, shower and toilet. Using solar energy alone, the vehicle can cover up to 450 miles on a sunny day, reaching a top speed of 75mph, as well as powering all the inside amenities, a TV and a laptop.

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Berlin’s car ban campaign: ‘It’s about how we want to live, breathe and play’

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Petition to forbid private car use in area equal in size to London’s zones 1 and 2 has collected 50,000 backers

A citizens’ initiative calling for a ban on private car use in central Berlin would create the largest car-free urban area in the world.

The campaign group Berlin Autofrei has taken the first step in a process known as the people’s referendum, submitting a petition with more than 50,000 signatures calling for a ban covering the 88 sq km (34 sq mile) area circled by the “S-Bahn ring” trainline – an area roughly equal in size to all the boroughs in London’s zones 1 and 2.

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Electric vehicles divide opinion as car-loving Germany goes to polls

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Election has framed future of automobility as showdown between petrolheads and green zealots

The second Steve Dumke spots a gap in the traffic on the road from Eggersdorf to Strausberg, his white Hyundai Ioniq lurches forward and nestles between two fast-moving Volkswagens in the right-hand lane. “A tap on the accelerator and the gap is mine,” he howls with glee.

Dumke, a 37-year-old former chef, is less a speed freak than, in his own words, “a vehicle eroticist”. “I love cars with curves and the growl of an eight-cylinder piston engine,” he says. But for the last four years the vehicular object of his desires has run on megawatts rather than litres.

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Leading the charge! Can I make it from Land’s End to John o’Groats in an electric car?

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New petrol and diesel cars will be banned in the UK from 2030, and sales of electric vehicles are rising fast. But with drivers reliant on charging points how practical is the greener option? One writer finds out

Range anxiety hits hard on the A9 in the Highlands of Scotland. For the uninitiated, this is the fear that an electric vehicle (EV) won’t reach its destination before running out of power. I’m driving through some of Britain’s loveliest landscape – mountains, rivers, lochs and firths – but I hardly notice. I’m focused hard – on the road in front, but mainly on two numbers on the dashboard. One is how far it is in miles to where I’m going; the other is the range in miles remaining in the battery. Sometimes, especially on downhill stretches when what is known as “regenerative braking” means the battery is getting charged, I tell myself it’s going to be OK, I’ll make it. But going uphill the range plummets. Squeaky bum time.

Plus, I’ve read Michel Faber’s Under the Skin. I know what happens to men stranded on the A9. To range anxiety add the fear of being processed and eaten by aliens.

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Flying car makes successful test run between airports in Slovakia – video

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A flying car is seen completing its first intercity flight in Slovakia. The prototype, called AirCar, takes off from Nitra airport and lands in Bratislava 35 minutes later. Using wings that fold away in less than three minutes and a propeller at its rear, the dual-transportation vehicle has now completed more than 40 hours of test flight

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