This week brought the usually highly diverse and entertaining mix of auto news and opinion with EVs, range and use of, discuss, featuring rather prominently.

It started on Sunday night when (in)famous presenter Jeremy Clarkson of the globally (in)famous BBC Top Gear show set off for the seaside in a Nissan Leaf, ran out of volts in a place called Lincoln and was then ‘stranded’ for hours waiting for the car to recharge. A Times writer leapt to Nissan’s defence and so it went. Oh, and there was a row about the use of disabled parking bays as well.

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All this reminded me of why journalists used to refer to the summer holiday ‘no real news’ days as the ‘silly season’ but it was, at least, a chance for us to inject a bit of balance into the EV debate. And then came more bad range publicity for the Leaf from a respected website in LA which has one on long term test…

Another interesting development was GM’s return to the top of the global sales charts at Toyota’s expense, for the first time since itself was toppled by the Japanese firm five years ago but you know, and they know, that was due only to an earthquake in Japan. There’ll be a rematch.

End-of-Q2-or-fiscal-Q1 results continued to roll in, biggies this week included Toyota, GM, TRW, Visteon and Magna, well worth a look.

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Also well worth a weekend read is scrutiny of the new Fiat-Chrysler giant by a guest author.

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Finally, Saab’s back on the agenda again and we’ve had plenty of coverage this week of the latest financial wranglings. This is the latest; do a search for ‘Saab’ and see the rest.

And, so to the weekend. We’ve been spared the heatwave much of the US is still baking in but it’s still comfortably warm and very dry in my little corner of the UK.

Enjoy yours.

Graeme Roberts, Deputy Editor, just-auto.com