2021: the year the electric car comes of age?
Last year was a record one for electric car sales. With the 2030 ban on petrol and diesel now a step closer, electric cars will become far more established in the mainstream in 2021.
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Alison Jones was appointed as group managing director of Peugeot, Citroën, DS Automobiles in the UK and Senior Vice President for the PSA Group in February 2019. She joined PSA from the Volkswagen Group, where she most recently held the position of managing director of Volkswagen Passenger Cars. Jones was promoted to the top job at the Volkswagen brand in the UK in 2016 from her previous position as aftersales and customer quality director for the wider VW Group. Jones has spent 20 years of her 30-year career at the VW Group, starting in finance, before moving to retail operations and then customer services. She became finance director in 2004, before being made head of aftersales and customer services in 2007. She then switched to a group role, overseeing the transformation of the customer services centre, before being made sales director for the Audi brand in 2011. She was back at group level in 2012, working as customer quality director, before adding aftersales to her remit in 2014.
Professor Richard Parry-Jones has over 50 years’ experience in business, design and development and manufacturing at all levels of the automotive industry. Now a consultant, Parry-Jones also works on various plc Board and public sector advisory roles, including chairing the Faraday Battery Challenge Group.
In a 38-year career with Ford, he oversaw product development activities for all Ford Group vehicles worldwide, as well as the Design, Research and Vehicle Technology functions. As Chief Technical Officer, he reported to the company’s Board of Directors on technical matters, headed a technical staff of 30,000 engineers, scientists, designers and business professionals in North America, Europe, Latin America and the Asia- Pacific region, including the Ford, Lincoln, Jaguar, Volvo, Land Rover, and Aston Martin brands. He also chaired the Mazda Advisory Board for several years.
He is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineers, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, and the Royal Statistical Society. In early 2005 he was awarded a CBE for services to the automobile industry.
He founded and for many years chaired the partnership between the UK Government and Industry through the Automotive Council, which was established to analyse the strategic issues facing the UK automotive industry, and now chairs the Faraday Battery Challenge Group. He was Policy Advisor to UK and Welsh Assembly Governments on economic development, manufacturing industrial policy, transport, and energy until 2014 and is a Visiting Professor in Automotive Engineering at Loughborough University. He is currently the UKRI Ambassador for the Mobility, Manufacturing and Materials sectors.
Jim Holder is the Editorial Director of Haymarket Automotive, which publishes Autocar, Car Accessory Trader, Classic & Sports Car and What Car?, and as such has a hands-on view on every aspect of car ownership and buying. He's a former editor of Autocar and What Car?, a regular on the BBC and other television channels on all topics relating to motoring, and was formerly the Formula 1 correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, Reuters and the Daily Star.
Steve Cropley has been testing cars and writing about it for 48 years, more than half that time as editor-in-chief of Autocar. He began working in journalism in Australia in 1967, joined the staff of Sydney-based Wheels magazine in 1973, moved to the UK in 1978 to join the staff of CAR magazine, and was editor between 1981 to 1988, during which time CAR became Britain’s best-selling car magazine.
In 1989 he launched his own magazine, Buying Cars, bought two years later by Haymarket Media Group, who used its contributors and content to augment their existing titles What Car? and Autocar. He has worked “very happily” at Haymarket ever since. His Autocar column “A week in cars” has been a prominent part of Autocar for nearly 30 years.
In 2005 Cropley helped found the world’s first postgraduate course in automotive journalism at Coventry University, where was made a visiting professor. He is a Trustee of the British Motor Museum, Gaydon. Since 2005 he has organised and chaired a series of technical panel debates for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and in 2013 was made a Companion of the Institution.
Cropley claims he remains as keen on cars - and the industry that creates them - as he was on day one.