Car alliances are the future in an age of technological disruption

Larry Elliott's excellent article about the reasons for carmakers struggling, is developed here - with the news that Ford and VW are planning not a merger, but an alliance to exploit new technology and look to avoid the unnecessary duplication of R&D, reducing their costs.

They are clearly hoping that this will give them a competitive advantage in a sector characterised by uncertainty, and, global over-production at present. Whether this will lead to a fuller merger in time, we'll need to wait and see.

Dropping demand for diesel cars

BBC Reality Check looks at how the market for diesel has changed, and what owners of diesel vehicles should do. My own experience of this has been: sell them. However, there has been a precipitous drop in the number of diesel cars being sold, but curiously the second-hand market has held up despite this.