The total of 419,200 cars sold, however, meant only a meager plus of 0.1 percent compared to the same month the year before (418,600). As the company reported in wolfsburg on tuesday, growth in registrations in western europe and china cooled off. In other markets such as the USA and russia, however, sales continued to rise.

Europe’s industry leader had already hinted in recent months at a possible downturn in the auto market and warned of caution in view of future developments. VW board member for sales christian klingler nevertheless spoke of a stable start to 2012: "despite the volatile development, especially in europe, we were able to maintain the previous year’s high level of deliveries."

The group’s core brand ended the full year 2011 with an all-time high in deliveries. Just under 5.1 million cars with the VW emblem represented an increase of 13.1 percent.

In wolfsburg’s view, the decline in sales in western europe in january was due to the "current uncertainties" caused by the euro debt crisis. The VW passenger car brand sold 2.9 percent fewer cars here than a year ago. In the domestic market of germany, the decline was even more pronounced at 8.4 percent.

VW also suffered a setback in china, where the decline was 8.6 percent. This was mainly due to the non-working days around the chinese new year, it said in explanation. The festivities started in january and therefore earlier than usual. In the asia/pacific region as a whole, the decline was 6.9 percent.

By contrast, VW was again able to make up considerable ground in the USA, where sales increased by almost half. Central and eastern europe posted a clear increase of 67 percent. In india, the increase was 42.2 percent, and in russia as much as 118.4 percent. In these markets, however, the absolute number of VW cars sold is still comparatively low.

The competition also expects 2012 to be rather mixed. VW’s premium subsidiary audi achieved record sales in january – but compared with the start of 2011, the increase of 0.8 percent was less impressive than at BMW (+6.6) or daimler (+5.8). While audi’s sales in china and the united states soared, sales in europe shrank by 13 percent. The sharpest declines were in spain (-38.1) and italy (-27.6).

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Shortly after 14.3 p.M. A 72-year-old man from the district of kulmbach wanted to turn onto the bundesstrabe in his BMW coming from schwarzach. He overlooked the audi A8 of a 77 and 74 year old couple from burgkunstadt approaching from the direction of kulmbach. The driver of the aud was unable to prevent a collision and crashed with full force into the driver’s side of the BMW.

The driver of this car suffered fatal injuries as a result of the collision. He died despite all efforts of an emergency medical team still at the accident place. His 71-year-old female passenger from kulmbach and the couple in the audi had to be taken to nearby hospitals by the emergency medical services with serious injuries.

Representatives of the public prosecutor’s office in bayreuth made themselves a picture on site and assigned an expert to clarify the course of the accident.

Due to the recovery work, the federal highway was completely closed until late afternoon. 45 firefighters from kulmbach, mainleus, schwarzach and rothwind set up a local detour and assisted in the recovery efforts. The two completely demolished cars are worth nothing but scrap metal. Police estimate total property damage at 30,000 euros.

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Shortage of semiconductors makes ready-to-sell new cars a scarce commodity on the german market. For this reason, there are few reasons for dealers and manufacturers to provide additional incentives to buy.

This is the finding of auto expert ferdinand dudenhoffer in the latest discount study by his duisburg car institute. "The german car market is suffering from the semiconductor crisis and new car buyers have to live with long delivery times and higher net prices."

Discounts offered on internet platforms for self-configured new cars declined in july compared to the previous month, the institute reported. The number of car subscriptions on offer, a relatively new form of distribution in which customers rent their car for only a few months, including insurance, was also up.

The share of own registrations to manufacturers or dealers, on the other hand, rose slightly to 26 percent. Dudenhoffer attributes this to strong incentives set by seven importers for their respective trading partners. The vehicles from hyundai, suzuki and nissan, among others, were allowed to be marketed in the coming weeks at so-called house prices. In dudenhoffer’s opinion, better times for prospective buyers of new cars were not likely to dawn for another nine to twelve months.

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"We should switch to electromobility", county councilman wolfgang fees (SPD) was convinced at the end of the environment committee meeting. The district administration’s fleet of company cars is to be successively expanded to include more electric vehicles. The board decided to give preference to e-vehicles when leasing or purchasing new vehicles in the future.

The suggestion came from the climate protection manager of the district office, dominik bigge. Background is the goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the county. In contrast to diesel and gasoline vehicles, electric vehicles do not produce any CO2 on site.

Four years of experience with e-cars

Bigge and his employees have looked at the logbooks of all official cars. The agency has had four years of practical experience with electric vehicles. A BMW i3 has been available to district office employees since 2014, and two more e-cars since 2016. In 2018, a new renault zoe was also acquired. "We monitored where there were problems and analyzed the entire vehicle pool", bigge explained. The employees at the district office in forchheim and the office in ebermannstadt can choose from the existing pool of vehicles themselves.

The most important results: employees use the e-vehicles slightly less, so the mileage of the e-cars is slightly below average. But the distances are continuously increasing. "Many employees still don’t know exactly how e-mobility works", explained the climate protection manager. The charging infrastructure in the district, on the other hand, is problem-free. Even charging between two business trips in one day is not necessary in practice.

During the past four years, there have been hardly any problems with the e-cars. In total, there were only four incidents: once, an employee did not charge the vehicle properly and was unable to continue driving. Once there was a defective charging box in ebermannstadt, and once an employee broke down while driving because he hadn’t paid attention to the battery display.

More e-mobility possible at the district office in forchheim

To find out whether additional e-cars made sense, bigge also evaluated the employees’ usage behavior and daily mileage. The result: since they mainly travel short distances (less than 250 kilometers), more e-mobility would be possible. Of the ten vehicles in the forchheim pool, he believes seven could be electrified in the future. Of the five cars in the ebermannstadt pool, four could be electrified. In addition, seven charging stations at the district administration office in forchheim (costing up to 18,000 euros) and two charging stations in ebermannstadt (costing up to 2,500 euros) had to be upgraded at relatively little expense.

The economics between the e-cars and the conventional service vehicles of the district office were also examined. According to a mileage-based full cost calculation, the renault zoe averages 44 cents per kilometer driven. So far, this electric service vehicle has been driven 8000 kilometers. The higher mileage made it significantly more economical (26 cents per kilometer) and thus more favorable for the district office, bigge calculates.

One vote against

District councilor sebastian korber (FDP) could not be convinced by the climate protection manager. "I am not a rough friend of the elektromobilitat. We pretend to be ecological, but we need rare earths for the batteries. We are not being honest." Korber voted against the resolution and criticized the district office for investing in electromobility without knowing which drive technology will prevail in the future. Bigge conceded that transportation experts believe e-mobility will not be the only technology of the future. But he emphasized: "electric vehicles have advantages in the short term, and that is where we are at the district administration office."

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Robot car company waymo is bracing itself for the fact that software for self-driving cars won’t take humans off the wheel completely.

"We will continue to see an incredible number of interesting cars for human drivers, perhaps even more than in the past," the head of the google sister company, john krafcik, told "auto motor und sport" magazine. Autonomous driving, on the other hand, could help with commuting and make roads safer.

Krafcik is striking a different tone than has long been the norm among developers of self-driving cars. They often pointed out that human error at the wheel is responsible for more than 90 percent of fatal accidents, and that a flat transition to autonomous driving will save many lives. However, over the past few years, it has turned out that it takes much longer than initially expected to get the robotic car software up and running in everyday use.

Waymo is considered to be particularly far along in developing the technology and is operating a robotaxi service on a test basis in parts of the city of phoenix in arizona. The google sister company wants to offer its software, the "waymo driver" (driver) also to car manufacturers. "We are thinking hard about the best way to introduce the waymo rider to german roads. I’m personally very motivated to do this," said krafcik to "auto motor und sport.

At the same time, he confirmed that his company’s robot car software does not need the super-fast 5G data radio that is often described as a prerequisite for autonomous driving. "Waymo does not need 5G – or 4G. Everything we need is on board the car," said krafcik. Mobile communications needed the cars only for additional services, such as fleet monitoring.

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Cars as far as the eye can see. Especially the tuned vehicles attract astonished looks. It's the "VW&" again audi days" in geiselwind. Stephan fleischmann is the owner of one such eye-catcher.
He had traveled 180 kilometers with his polo 6N1, year of construction 94, to the fan meeting at the autohof strohofer, in order to be there for the first time at the "VW& audi days to be there. Its "from the ground up completely tuned polo has given him the name "poloholix" in the scene brought in. "The polo took around four years to build. And every winter we continue to work on it", explains stephan fleischmann.
He has painted the ornament in brown tones and attached many details, such as dollar bills, to the car. "I'm into chic and wanted to give the whole thing a bit of an oldschool look," explains, says the tuner. The brauntone recently gave his car the nickname "toffifee" brought to. That's why he has also put a pack of the subigkeiten in a clearly visible place behind his windshield.

Screws as a search

Stephan fleischmann has been wrenching on cars since he was 16. "It's like a search, you decide to stop, but then you see something you could change" he explains. With his "sanctuary he goes to two or three tuning meetings a year. "Until now I never had a vacation when the meeting takes place in geiselwind, but this year it worked out", he is pleased.
Also the next years he wants to come again to the steigerwald. What he likes is this: "there are many different cars here and also older models."
Until sunday at the event area the cars from wolfsburg and ingolstadt were honored. Last weekend, the event grounds of the autohof strohofer were filled with roaring engines and squealing tires. Once a year, everything there is about volkswagen and audi. Numerous visitors, both with and without lovingly tuned vehicles, wanted to see the "VW&" in action audi days" not to be missed this year. In order not to miss anything, a large part of the visitors made themselves comfortable on the festival camping ground over the weekend.
The organization team had again come up with a lot of ideas to keep the car fans happy. It already started on friday at noon, true to the motto: first come, first served. From now on, it was all about getting the best seats in order to be able to present their favorite metal cars in the first rows. Once again, owners had the opportunity to have their cars evaluated by a total of four teams of evaluators.
The first day of the festival was also themed "summer carnival". The female car fans were asked to dress up in a costume that best matched the car. The winner was able to enjoy a place on the jury of the "ladies cup" and together with the other members of the jury they could find the best "madels-car" elections.
On friday and saturday, the evening was full of action in the event hall on the land. Here DJ falk and deejane cassey doreen from the radio station "sunshine live" showed their music their skills at the plates and heated up the car freaks properly.
On saturday the red carpet was rolled out at the open air stage on the festival ground. At "show and shine the cars were driven up and photographed together with models by a professional photographer. The show also decided who could take home the coveted trophies. The event was moderated by helge thomsen, known from the RTL II show "die autoschrauber", test drivers from the "grip" program and publisher of the "motoraver" magazine. But there was also a lot going on at the gelande. Again and again there were highlights like body-painting demonstrations or sexy car-washes to discover. Otherwise, the guests could store on a merchant mile or enjoy the many food and drink stalls strong.
For a whole weekend, festival-goers were able to marvel at the four-wheeled main attractions before heading home again to prepare the jewelry for the next meeting.

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According to this 16 disappeared.613 cars permanently registered, a drop of almost 13 percent compared to the previous year. The drop in the number of trucks is even more pronounced – by 22.6 percent to 921 vehicles.

According to the BKA, the german manufacturers VW, BMW, audi and mercedes continue to be particularly popular with car thieves. More than 56 percent of the cars put on the wanted list that disappeared permanently had these marks. Vehicles from the four manufacturers account for around 45 percent of total registrations.

Contrary to the general downward trend, more small vans were stolen, such as fiat ducato, ford transit or mercedes sprinter, the BKA situation report says. Thefts of mercedes sprinters (type 906) alone increased by around 22 percent year-on-year in 2018.

There is a high demand for stolen vehicles in southeastern and eastern europe as well as in the middle east. "International motor vehicle theft continues to be dominated by highly skilled, specialized groups of offenders, most of whom operate on the basis of a division of labor," the report states. If a car had a SIM card and could theoretically be tracked, thieves often leveraged that capability with special technology.

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The good news: the land of the former brockardt concrete factory and the former dairy farm on kanonenweg, which has lain fallow since 2000, will be built on. The edeka group of companies in northern bavaria-saxony-thuringia wants to build a supermarket as well as a student residence and a senior citizens’ residence on the site. Residential development is planned in the core area – a small new district is being created there.

Traffic chaos feared

This will have an impact on residents, especially in kalenderweg and scharnhorststrabe. There, the construction plans elicited skepticism and, in some cases, rejection. This became clear at an information event on tuesday evening in the rosengarten congress center. The owners of the neighboring properties fear traffic chaos in kalenderweg. From there, an access road will lead into the residential area. In addition, they are concerned that the red creek, which is to be relocated, comes too close to their homes.
But first, edeka regional manager stephan kohler explained what is actually planned for the 3.8-hectare site. A preliminary investigation has shown that there are still contaminated sites in the soil that need to be removed. "We will have to remove several thousand cubic meters of soil", he said. In addition, the rottenbach, which runs across the land and is currently still encased in concrete, is to be renaturalized and relocated to the eastern boundary of the site. And here the first criticism of the directly affected residents began. They fear that especially during heavy rainfall the water will press on their properties. Matthias kohler, who was responsible for the hydraulic expertise, countered that the water management office had found the plan to be sound and had not raised any concerns. In addition, the renaturation, together with the existing retention basin, will reduce the flow of water and alleviate the situation.
Another point of discussion was the development and its consequences for traffic. On the one hand, there is the edeka market with around 2600 square meters of sales area, a bakery with open seating area and the associated parking spaces. In addition, a parking garage is planned on the land of the former milk yard with 300 parking spaces. The development will take place via kanonenweg. There will be fub and bike paths throughout the gelande area.

130 housing units

The access to the northern part of the residential area with about 130 intended residential units as well as to the senior and student residence is planned from kalenderweg. Against this there was the grossest resistance. Especially since a traffic forecast for the year 2020, presented by peter knieling, predicts about a doubling of traffic volume in both kanonenweg and kalenderweg during peak hours in the morning and afternoon. "We can hardly get out of our properties now when the cars are jammed up at the railroad overpass", stated a local resident. And another pointed out that the calendar path is already half parked and it is sometimes difficult to move forward. "We have now sometimes already chaos. What will it be like then??"

Plans are openly available

Joachim trager from the city planning office pointed out that the plans have been on display for four weeks and will remain so until 9. September in the amtergebaude open to the public. "There you can express your concerns and give your opinion." Also on the homepage of the city under burgerservice/veroffentlichungen or in the baublog the plans are visible. "Everything is then discussed in the building and environment senate and nothing is swept under the carpet."

Georg witt from the engineering office explained what larvae will affect the residents of the neighboring properties and the new residential buildings. The impact of the businesses, the parking garage, the development traffic as well as the railroad line in the northern area have been scrutinized. The result: both the senior citizens’ and the students’ dormitories will be exposed to relatively high levels of traffic because they will be built along the railroad line. Noise protection must be provided on the construction side. Because both buildings are planned to be four to five stories high, they will serve as a barrier to the rest of the residential development and the residents of the existing properties. The facade of the otherwise open parking garage will be closed off from the apartments for reasons of noise protection. All in all, the study of the noise levels showed that even at peak times, the limits set by the federal immission control ordinance were not exceeded, georg witt noted.
The subsequent discussion focused on the future of the old edeka building on flobanger, which will be vacant after the move to kanonenweg. "I cannot say anything about it. We are only tenants there, explained stephan kohler. The proposal to move the rottenbach to the area north of the railroad line had to be rejected by joachim trager. "There are too many lines there. This became a multi-million dollar project." Finally, in response to a question, the edeka regional manager announced that demolition of the old buildings on the brockardt site and development would probably begin in 2017.

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At around 12 o’clock on tuesday, the man drove his smart through the danndorf district of mainleus. In the process, he touched two parked cars. He must have noticed the impact because an attentive witness was able to observe how he stopped his vehicle within sight of the scene of the accident and examined the damage caused. But instead of worrying about immediate regulation, he first sought his salvation in – unpromising – flight.

When he tried to leave the scene of the accident and hit several delineators on the opposite side of the road, he finally came to his senses and a few minutes later returned to the damaged parked cars. No one there was unaware of his distinct alcoholic odor – not even the police, who had been called in in the meantime.

The 37-year-old had a blood alcohol level of around one and a half percent. The officers confiscated his driver’s license and took the driver who caused the accident for a blood sample. He now has to answer to the judiciary for several offences. The damage to property runs into thousands of dollars.

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