Electric lorry maker backed by David Beckham collapses into administration
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
Another one bites the dust:
An electric vehicle (EV) start-up backed by celebrities including David Beckham and Jack Whitehall has put its commercial arm into administration, blaming the Government’s decision to delay a ban on petrol car sales.
Lunaz Group, which retrofits combustion engine vehicles with electric powertrains, on Monday confirmed it was shutting down Lunaz Applied Technologies as part of a wider overhaul.
The troubled division was focused on “upcycling” bin lorries and had secured a deal with refuse collector Biffa to electrify its fleet.
The Silverstone-based company was founded in 2018 by entrepreneur David Lorenz and former Formula 1 technical director Jon Hilton, with the business securing investment from Mr Beckham in 2021.
The former England footballer reportedly took a 10pc stake, with other investors including Mr Whitehall – who fronted promotional videos for Lunaz – and the Reuben brothers and the Barclay family, who are the current owners of The Telegraph.
Quite why the decision on electric cars has affected electric lorry sales is a mystery!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
O/T Nothing has happened in Misson. Nottinghamshire since since Feb 15th
https://drillordrop.com/2024/02/15/misson-shale-gas-well-decommissioned/
I found that when i watched ITV local NewsPRprog at 6pm
Opening item
“anti -fracking protesters gather in Misson to celebrate concreting up of the exploration well”
Fawning report with them drinking champagne
They were 97% women with the odd man on the periphery of the crowd
The government ordered the site to close 4 years ago, so that is when the protesters actual victory was.
Then I searched on twitter there is nothing new .. the protesters FrackFreeMisson last tweeted weeks ago
and they get minimal Likes
Yet news media and activists are closely connected
so their items get run at the smallest pretext
Normally you can watch the prog on catchup for 24 hours , however this time, they have uploaded the Northern edition on both North and South pages, so unless they fix this the southern edition is not available.
The odd man were probably the drivers of the BEVs they used to get there.
Aye , I liked it – the Odd man …. amongst so many odd wifies
They probably got there in Diesels.
There was an exploratory well down my road that was started by Cuadrilla but had since been sold on. I don’t know if it was to be a fracked well, but given our ignorant media would be easily led on by even more ignorant ecofascists to claim it was like the one at Balcombe in Sussex they protested at. The owner told me it wasn’t. Not far from me, adjacent to the M25 there are a couple of production wells you would be lucky to find on Google Earth and the well here would have tapped into the same basin. It was capped off a few years back but I see no reason it could not be reopened or redrilled and the same would apply to Mission.
Another solution looking for a problem, under the climate banner.
Comedian who was a history of art dropout and someone whose life training was football invest in unproven tech, what could possibly go wrong?
‘Stay in your lane’ is sometimes good advice..
Good advice, perhaps there was even something in the name “Lunaz“
“former Formula 1 technical director Jon Hilton”
The head of Arrows’s heroic, but predictably disastrous, attempt to build its own engines after buying out Brian Hart’s operation in the late ’90s. Then, to be fair, he spent about three years with the title of “TD, Engine Division” at Renault, since that team used the title “Executive Engineer” for what most others would call Technical Director, the overall technical head of the team.
The wording above, though, is clearly intended to give the impression that he held that role. I don’t doubt that he’s a capable engineer, and probably did lend this operation what little credibility it had – Renault wouldn’t hire a fool – but he’s never run an entire F1 team.
Beckham scored an own goal…
b
Did the celebs have a guilt problem about their footprints? No need to worry; CO2 is saturated
I typed “Lunaz Applied Technologies” into a Twitter search
results show as ever that green stuff isn’t as popular as the media folk make out.
I was met with a sea of tweets which had zero replies and almost always zero Likes
example
Keir Starmer was at the factory just before Christmas saying how “cost effective” all this EV stuff is
The National Grid is equally deluded.
Britain’s energy system will not hit net zero until 2035, National Grid tells Labour
Accelerated timeline for a carbon neutral grid would weigh more heavily on bill payers
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/19/britains-energy-system-not-hit-net-zero-until-2035/
The whole electric vehicle myth is crumbling. Nice idea, but not at all practical.
Sensible investors will not be interested in putting their money into businesses with little or no future.
blaming the Government’s decision to delay a ban on petrol car sales
EVs are great . . . once everything else is banned.
Pogo-sticks are far better! … if you ban EVs [and roller skates and horse-drawn wagons, and skate boards …].
Honestly.
Auto
Lorry drivers in the UK should count their blessings. The state of California prides itself as being the crash test dummy for green energy in the US. They just instituted a mandate for electric trucks which ferry containers from the ports to inland rail yards. The Wall Street journal covered the experience of first adopters.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/electric-mandates-have-california-truckers-charging-overtime-advanced-clean-fleets-regulation-dda13188
Drivers have to devote a big portion of their day to charging and recharging trucks. The charging infrastructure is inadequate as is the grid to support the charging stations. Grid upgrades to support the charging networks take years to put in place. The most common summery of the situation is that the cart has been placed before the horse with forced electric truck mandates.
California has been working hard for years to kill their seaports industry.
Pure decadence. They stack on rules and regulations, expecting the oppressed to just take it. I’m sure Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver appreciate it.
Would this be the California that last year had to tell owners NOT to charge their battery vehicles because there was not enough grid capacity? And if vehicles are not being used and drivers not driving then costs are going to go up. And isn’t that the way with EVERYTHING to do with Net Zero and green fantasies? It does seem that there are still a lot of idiots that think throwing money at green ideas is ‘investment’ and one such is an idiot called Nigel who is actually employed – yes, not an Ofcom required leftie guest – by GB News as a political reporter. He is pure Davos Fascist in his outlook and not pro-Britain.
Anyone done a calculation to show the reduction in goods carrying capacity as a result of having to carry traction batteries? I guess that the result would be pretty grim reading for fleet transport managers looking to achieve full loading of their vehicles.
Reduced capacity means more journeys or more vehicles, less productive driver time, increased overheads etc etc for any given volume of goods.
Dutch manufacturer DAF has relatively recently launched its XB Electric lorries in 16 and 19 tonnes versions. They say the ranges are up to 360kms for “light applications” For more “intensive operations” they can travel up to 200kms with two batteries. Of course that would of necessity reduce the carrying capacity.
Can’t see 10 and 12 wheeler HGVs going electric any time soon.
Note to investors: Don’t make investment decisions based on what the British government says.
La perfide Albion.
No surprise there then. Well to be honest I thought the Barkleys might have more sense, so that is a surprise!
Of course these trendy green schemes will fail. There isn’t a real market. Period.
Instantly recognised the name of Jon Hilton, who was involved with the purely mechanical fuel saving gearbox company Torotrak, which folded a few years back due to the imminent advent of all electric vehicles !
I wonder what the feedback from Biffa and their drivers was on these vehicles?