All Analysis articles
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Analysis
Fuelling the front-line services
Petrol filling stations up and down the country have helped to keep the nation’s emergency services working during the coronavirus lockdown, despite facing some major challenges. Keeping sites open has been vital to provide the fuel for emergency service staff to get to work, and to maintain deliveries to hospitals, ...
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Analysis
Protection is on hand
In just one week, more than 1,000 forecourts globally have taken up Devon-based GripHero’s offer of providing free hand-protection dispensers to protect their customers from the transmission of coronavirus at the fuel pump. GripHero is a hand-protection dispenser which sits on top of each hand pump on the forecourt, so ...
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Analysis
Essential service in virus panic
Fuel retailers have been identified by the government as one of the keys to keeping emergency personnel mobile, and making the transportation of vital supplies possible, during the coronavirus lockdown. But while the fuel retailing industry has been working flat out to ensure it can operate safely for customers and ...
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Analysis
Powering into future mobility
Fuel cell electric vehicles will be the mainstay of vehicles going forward, according to Jon Hunt, manager of alternative fuels at Toyota. During an enthralling presentation at Forecourt Trader’s inaugural Summit at The Belfry Hotel in Sutton Coldfield last month, he told delegates that Toyota believes "pure electrification is not ...
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Analysis
Moving the goalposts
The announcement that the government may bring forward the end of sales of new petrol and diesel cars and vans to 2035, or even earlier, has alarmed many stakeholders involved in the automotive industry. The sector has been working towards a target date of 2040 since it was first set ...
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Analysis
Riding crest of the wave into 2020
After MFG got approval for its huge takeover of MRH in 2018, the market was bracing itself for an even bigger deal in 2019, with Sainsbury bidding to take over Asda to become the UK’s biggest fuel retailer by volume. But while the Competition and Markets Authority was willing to ...
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Analysis
Zeroing in with fuels
The government made its commitment to electrification of transport clear in its Road to Zero strategy, which it published in July 2018. The document claimed the government remains ’technology neutral’ but then devoted the majority of its pages to highlighting its support for the development of electric vehicles (EVs) and ...
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Analysis
EVolving the network
Shell is planning to be the first fuel retailer in the UK to take out traditional fuels from an operating service station and replace them with an electric vehicle-only charging hub. An application for planning permission for the development on the company’s site in Fulham, west London, was made at ...
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Analysis
Speeding ahead
Sales of electric cars in the UK are currently minuscule compared with their internal combustion engine (ICE) cousins, but the country’s biggest-selling car maker is gearing up for a rapid change in this state of affairs. At the Frankfurt Motor Show last month, Ford announced that it expects the majority ...
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Analysis
A moving target?
In July 2017, when the government published its long-awaited clean air strategy and its Road to Zero transport policy, its confirmation that it would ban sales of conventional internal combustion engine cars and vans by 2040 met with very little opposition. Just the fact that it had set a firm ...
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Analysis
We should be ’celling’ the future
A future where battery- powered and hybrid vehicles are superseded by vehicles running on hydrogen fuel cells was predicted by Jon Hunt, manager, alternative fuels, at Toyota. Speaking at a conference organised by the Westminster Energy, Environment Transport Forum, he explained why the company that produced ...
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Analysis
Emission impossible
Government indecision over the introduction of E10 a blend of fuel with up to 10% ethanol content compared with the current limit of 5% in E5 is nothing new. It was just after the London Olympics in 2012 when the then Transport Minister Norman Baker wrote to industry ...
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Analysis
C-store growth rate set to soar
New market analysis by HIM, revealed by insight director Gareth Nash, predicts that the growth rate in the convenience sector in 2019 will accelerate, with overall turnover up 3.5% to £41.7bn, compared with a growth rate of 2.7% last year. He said the growth rate had been slowing slightly over ...
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Analysis
Fuelling the future
The UK is lagging behind the rest of the world in terms of automotive hydrogen development, with countries such as China, Korea and Japan pushing ahead at a rapid rate, according to Charles Purkess, business development manager at ITM Power. He was part of the ’Fuelling the Future: On the ...
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Analysis
Last throw of the dice
When the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published its damning provisional findings on the proposed merger between Sainsbury’s and Asda on February 20, many commentators thought the deal was dead. The CMA said it was concerned the deal would lead to a substantial lessening of competition at both a ...
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Analysis
A year of upheaval
This year has seen massive upheaval in the Top 50 Indies listing, compared with 2018 when not only were the Top 10 companies all the same companies as the previous year, but they were all in the same order too. Not least among the changes is that, for the first ...
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Analysis
Evading the issue
When a Parliamentary Committee of MPs announced last year that it was launching an inquiry into the hand car wash sector it appeared that a long campaign was finally paying off. For years the PRA and its sister organisation, the Car Wash Association (CWA), have been highlighting the explosion in ...
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Analysis
Competition for growth still intense
We’ve just had a year of seismic events with the second largest operator, MFG, buying its larger rival MRH, and Sainsbury’s agreeing a deal with Asda that would make it the UK’s number one road fuel retailer. And while one deal has cleared all its regulatory hurdles, and the other ...
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Analysis
Turning the tide
For many years the government has turned a deaf ear whenever the PRA and the Car Wash Association (CWA) have highlighted the scourge of illegal hand car washes springing up in towns and cities across the UK, but finally it has been presented with evidence it can’t ignore. The Commons ...
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Analysis
The police have got it wrong
As police services across the UK have cut the number of frontline officers in response to funding pressures, chief constables and politicians have been looking for ways to ease the burden on the remaining crime fighters. One way that has been repeatedly suggested is downgrading the importance attached to forecourt ...