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NORWAY isn’t the usual destination for a car launch. Manufacturers tend to head south, where the sun shines and the roads are great. But when it comes to electric cars, Norway is the place to be – as Mercedes was this week. You can read our first verdict on the new EQC on Page 28, but the picture above sums up why Norway is the destination of choice for electric car launches. I took the snap as I left the airport and walked through a car park. A whole floor was dedicated to electric cars – rows and rows of Teslas, Jaguar I-Paces, Nissan Leafs, BMW i3s and many more cars with leads running to charging points. Hundreds of them. Then you get back to London and Heathrow Airport where,…

James_Batchelor@dennis.co.uk @JRRBatchelor ● Revised A4 goes on sale in September, priced from about £27,000 ● Changes include revised styling inside and out, plus new engines “High waistline of previous A4 is replaced by more butch-looking design that apes A1 Sportback” THE Audi A4 has been around for 25 years and in that time over 7.5 million examples have been built. Now there’s a new version of the company’s top-seller, featuring a new look, a raft of updated engines and a tweaked interior design. The current, fifth-generation A4 has clocked up four years of service, but with BMW launching an all-new 3 Series and Jaguar revealing a substantially improved XE in recent months, Audi’s best-seller was looking a little stale. Step forward this new A4, with the saloon, Allroad and Avant…

John_McIlroy@dennis.co.uk @johnmcilroy ● New Golf-sized hatchback on sale now ● Initial UK batch snapped up in hours THE Volkswagen ID.3 is now available for pre-order in the UK. And the first cars to arrive here will have around 260 miles of range and 110kW fast charging as standard. VW launched a microsite at the start of May for the ID.3 1st Plus, but deliveries of the car – the first model to use the MEB all-electric platform – aren’t expected to start until summer 2020. Customers pay £750 and they will be contacted early next year to confirm their order, once full specs and prices have been finalised. The initial production run is of 30,000 units – and while VW declined to say how many will come to the UK,…

VW head of sales & marketing VW’S sales & marketing boss gives us extra insight into why the firm has chosen a limited-edition launch version of the ID.3. Q Why have you chosen to start sales with an ID.3 that could cost £40,000 instead of the model you promised at roughly the same price as a high-spec diesel Golf? A “The initial 30,000 cars will be first editions, for those customers who want to be part of the pre-booking. And orders [for those cars] will be from the Frankfurt show onwards. But we’ll start orders for the regular car from market launch in summer 2020. So if you want a base-spec ID.3, you will be able to have it before the end of 2020.” Q Will the ID.3 be sold…

● Taycan will be a ‘true Porsche’ ● Due to go on sale in September IN a little over six months Porsche will enter the world of EVs with the Taycan, and the German firm is aiming for nothing less than pole position, according to the car’s chief engineer, Stefan Weckbach. To see how Porsche’s most radical model ever is shaping up, we joined him for a ride. Porsche’s Tesla fighter has been almost five years in the making and the brief was clear from the very beginning. “We wanted the Taycan to be a true Porsche,” Weckbach told us. “That means it must be a maximum performer under every circumstance for as long as the driver demands it.” We’ve joined Porsche’s development engineers as they put the finishing touches…

FORD has priced its all-new Focus ST hot hatch from £29,495, with the range climbing to £33,095 for the flagship estate model. The new ST line-up kicks off with the diesel-powered hatchback, which uses Ford’s 2.0-litre EcoBlue engine. It develops 187bhp and 400Nm of torque, making it the most powerful diesel engine ever offered in a Focus. For an extra £1,100 buyers can also have the diesel-powered ST as an estate. Both versions come with a six-speed manual gearbox as standard. A 2.3-litre four-cylinder turbocharged motor – a revised version of the engine from the Mk3 Focus RS – powers the new petrol ST, which is priced from £31,995. In the ST, it develops 276bhp and 420Nm of torque to give 0-62mph in a claimed 5.7 seconds and a top…