Category Archives: News

News

Rats Are Waging War on Britain’s Cars

Your car alarm won’t help. Neither will a steering lock. The most destructive thieves currently targeting Britain’s vehicles are silent, tireless, and about six inches long.

Across the UK, a surge in rodent activity is turning modern cars into expensive chew toys. Insurance giant Aviva reports that between 2023 and 2024, claims for rat- and mouse-related vehicle damage jumped 28 percent, while the average repair bill climbed to £2,494. In other words: rodents aren’t just stealing crumbs anymore—they’re stealing your paycheck.

Winter is when things get ugly. As temperatures drop, mice and rats hunt for warmth, and today’s cars are basically rolling heated apartments. Grilles, air vents, and even half-open windows offer easy access. Once inside, rodents go straight for the good stuff.

“Chewing wires, gnawing interiors, nesting in engines,” explains Aviva motor claims manager James Driscoll. “They can cause significant damage.”

That damage is no joke. Ask the unlucky owner of a Porsche Cayenne who called in pest controller Tony Smith. A single rat destroyed the SUV’s wiring harness, triggering a £7,000 repair bill. That’s not nibbling—that’s financial assault.

Smith, who runs All Aspects Pest Control in Reading, says the rat population is now “out of control,” and modern cars are making the problem worse. The culprit? Bioplastics used in wiring insulation. Designed to be eco-friendly, these soy-based materials apparently taste fantastic to rats.

It’s like swapping steel for spaghetti.

Garages across the country are now dealing with rodent wreckage on a routine basis. At Ravenscroft Motors in Fleet, Hampshire, Lewis Devin tells stories that sound like rejected Pixar scripts.

A Ford Ranger needed a £200 repair after rodents damaged its transmission harness—then came back the next week with the exact same problem. Another car had its cooling fan jammed by nuts a squirrel had carefully stored between the blades. Foam engine covers? Eaten. Wiring looms? Shredded. Somewhere, a rat is driving a better-equipped car than you.

The scale of the problem is massive. Between 2023 and mid-2025, UK councils logged roughly half a million rodent-related incidents. The British Pest Control Association says more than half its members have seen rat callouts rise in the past five years.

And here’s the real twist: there’s not much anyone can do.

Permanent poison baiting is illegal because it threatens other wildlife, including endangered field mice. And rats, Smith says, are too smart for their own good. They avoid unfamiliar substances, meaning even when poison is used, it’s often ignored.

So Britain’s drivers are stuck in an expensive stalemate with nature—owning vehicles filled with soy-based wiring that smells like dinner to the local wildlife, while pest controllers are legally hamstrung from stopping the feast.

The modern automobile has become quieter, cleaner, and more efficient.

Unfortunately, it’s also become delicious.

If you ever hear scratching behind the dashboard, don’t panic. Just remember: it’s probably not a mechanical fault.

It’s just a rat calculating how much of your wiring harness it can afford to eat today.

Source: Autocar; Photo: Shutterstock

News

Why China Is About to Force EVs Back to Normal Steering Wheels

For a hot minute, the yoke steering wheel was the ultimate EV flex. It looked like something lifted from a Le Mans prototype, promised better gauge visibility, and told the world you’d finally escaped the tyranny of the circle. But in China—the world’s biggest car market—that experiment is about to end.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has published a draft of a new national safety standard, GB 11557-202X, that quietly but effectively bans steering wheels with a “cut-off” top. When it takes effect on January 1, 2027, every newly approved vehicle will need to comply. And that’s bad news for yokes.

Why China Is Cracking Down

On paper, the regulation is about crash safety, not design. The existing rulebook, written back in 2011, simply isn’t up to the job anymore. EVs are heavier, faster, and packed with new structures and airbag systems that didn’t exist a decade ago. So MIIT decided to rewrite the playbook—and it took inspiration from global standards like UN Regulation R12, which governs how steering systems behave in a crash.

The new Chinese rules tighten several key limits. The maximum horizontal force measured during dummy testing is reduced to 11,110 newtons, and the allowed rearward and upward movement of the steering column in a crash is more strictly capped. Even more important: every car, no matter what clever design it uses, must now pass full human-impact testing. No more exemptions.

And that’s where the yoke runs head-first into a wall.

A Shape That Can’t Be Tested

Under the new standard, regulators must hit the steering wheel rim in ten different locations during crash tests. Among them are two killers for yoke designs: “the middle of the weakest part” and “the middle of the shortest unsupported part.” A steering wheel that doesn’t have a top section physically doesn’t have those areas. Which means it cannot, by definition, satisfy the test procedure.

That’s not bureaucratic nit-picking—it’s about how a human body interacts with the wheel in a crash. According to Autohome, nearly half of all driver injuries in China—46 percent—are related to parts of the steering system. A traditional circular wheel spreads impact loads more evenly as the driver moves forward. A yoke, by contrast, creates a ledge that the body can slide over and then strike again, raising the risk of injury during secondary impacts.

Airbags Make It Even Worse

Modern steering wheels are also airbag delivery devices, and the new Chinese rules get very specific about what’s allowed around a deploying airbag. Hard or sharp elements that could be driven toward the driver are now banned.

With a conventional wheel, that’s relatively easy to validate. With a yoke—often made from complex molded plastic and metal reinforcement—things get unpredictable. When the airbag explodes out of the hub, pieces can fracture in strange ways. Regulators don’t like “strange ways.” They like repeatable, testable outcomes.

A round wheel gives them that. A yoke does not.

Real-World Driving Still Matters

Even if you don’t care about crash labs and dummy metrics, drivers have their own beef with yokes. Production cars, unlike race cars, need big steering angles for U-turns, parking, and tight city maneuvers. With no top rim to grab, one-handed steering becomes awkward, and drivers report accidentally brushing touchscreen controls while scrambling for leverage.

The yoke may look futuristic, but daily driving is stubbornly analog.

What Happens Next

Once the new GB 11557-202X standard takes effect in 2027, any newly homologated vehicle in China will need a compliant steering system. Cars already on sale will likely get about a 13-month grace period before they, too, must be updated.

For automakers, especially those chasing the EV trend with sci-fi interiors, the message is clear: the circle is back.

And honestly? Good. The steering wheel has survived more than a century not because it looks cool, but because it works—ergonomically, mechanically, and now, it turns out, legally.

Source: Autohome

News

Mercedes Plans a Product Tsunami, and It’s Bigger Than the EV Push

If you thought the freshly updated S-Class was Mercedes-Benz’s big swing for 2026, think again. That was just the opening act. According to internal planning documents first surfaced by Motor1, the three-pointed star is about to unleash a full-scale product blitz: seven new or heavily updated models in the next three months alone, at least 16 by the end of the year, and nearly that many again lined up for 2027. This isn’t a refresh cycle—it’s a market invasion.

And here’s the twist: despite all the corporate talk about electrification, most of these new Mercs will still burn gasoline.

S-Class, Maybachs, and the Return of Opulence

At the top of the pyramid, Mercedes is doubling down on what it does best—rolling luxury. The recently revealed facelifted S-Class will quickly be followed by a refreshed Maybach S-Class, because if there’s one thing wealth still demands, it’s more chrome, more leather, and more ways to shut out the outside world.

The GLS is next in line for a refresh, and, naturally, a Maybach GLS will trail behind it like a private-jet lounge on wheels. And don’t be surprised if Mercedes uses this moment to drop one more halo model with an internal-combustion heartbeat—possibly the long-rumored G-Class Cabriolet or a fire-breathing AMG CLE packing a V-8.

Yes, a V-8. In 2026. From Mercedes. Let that sink in.

Electric Flagships, Minus the Weird Styling

On the EV side, the EQS sedan and EQS SUV are due for updates, and Mercedes may also be ready to unleash a fully electric AMG super-sedan to effectively replace the GT 4-Door Coupe. That suggests a future where AMG’s idea of performance no longer requires exhaust pipes—but it still needs eye-watering acceleration.

More importantly, Mercedes is finally killing off the “egg-shaped” EQ look. The next wave of EVs will be visually aligned with their gas-powered siblings, which means your electric C-Class won’t look like it escaped from a wind-tunnel experiment.

The Real Money: C-Class and GLC

In Mercedes-speak, the “Core” segment is where the profits live—and where the updates are coming fast. The C-Class sedan and wagon are both set for redesigns, and the GLC and GLC Coupe with combustion engines will get freshened up to match their already-revealed electric counterparts.

But the big news lands in 2026: the first C-Class without an engine at all. A fully electric C-Class could be the model that finally convinces European buyers that EVs can replace their beloved diesel sedans without feeling like a downgrade.

Interestingly, the EQE and EQE SUV are expected to bow out entirely, suggesting Mercedes is pruning the early-generation EVs that never quite found their footing.

Entry-Level Gets Serious

Mercedes knows it can’t survive on six-figure S-Classes alone. A new-generation GLA arrives later this year, followed closely by a fully electric version wearing the “EQ Technology” badge. This is where volume—and profits—are won and lost.

Then, in 2027, the A-Class as we know it is gone. Its replacement won’t be a traditional compact hatchback but something closer to a small MPV-SUV mashup, aimed squarely at buyers who want practicality, tech, and a premium badge without stepping up to a GLC.

Also coming: a smaller G-Class (because everything cool eventually gets shrunk) and a dedicated electric AMG SUV designed to take on BMW’s M and Neue Klasse EVs head-on.

Mercedes Is Quietly Walking Back the EV Hype

Perhaps the most telling part of all this isn’t what Mercedes is launching—it’s why. The company has openly acknowledged that the real-world transition to electric cars is happening more slowly than the boardroom projections suggested. So instead of killing off internal combustion, Mercedes is embracing it.

That’s why models like the GLC 53 with a six-cylinder exist—and why a C 53 is on the way. Mercedes has realized that buyers still want engines with character, not just kilowatts.

The Strategy in One Sentence

Mercedes is no longer betting everything on batteries. It’s building a lineup where electric and gasoline models coexist, look the same, and compete on equal footing—while using high-performance AMGs and luxury Maybachs to keep the brand aspirational.

For BMW, this means a brutal fight in the entry-level and midsize segments. For drivers, especially in Europe, it means something even better: more choice, more engines, and more reasons to keep loving cars in an era that keeps trying to make them appliances.

And if Mercedes really does deliver a V-8 CLE, an electric AMG super-sedan, and a fully electric C-Class all in the same product cycle, it might just pull off the rarest trick in modern auto history—being relevant to everyone at once.

Source: Motor1