Munich - Shares in the world's leading luxury carmaker BMW AG dropped nearly 10 per cent Friday after the German-based group said it was cutting its earnings forecast for the year in the face of a slowing world economy, increasing raw material costs and a weak outlook for US sales.

"We now expect that the pretax return on sales for the year to be at least 4 per cent," BMW chief Norbert Reithofer said releasing the carmaker's latest figures. BMW had previously expected its 2008 pretax profit to top its 2007 level.

Tokyo - Nissan Motor Co said Friday that its net profit fell 42.8 per cent to 52.8 billion yen (505 million dollars) in its first quarter from the same quarter a year before, mainly because of the rise in the yen.

Operating profit also plunged 46.1 per cent in the April-to-June quarter to 79.9 billion yen.

Japan's third-largest automaker saw its sales fall 4.1 per cent to 2.35 trillion yen.

Nissan's global sales were up 6.9 per cent for the quarter to 936,000 units.

To compete with local and foreign heavy vehicle rivals, Ashok Leyland, India's second giant heavy vehicle manufacturer announced that it is working on developing an all-new full range truck platform for global markets.

The proposed new truck platform named Unitruck, will not only meet all safety and emission norms for developed markets, but it will also create variants to meet different geographies, road and load conditions, different applications and legislative requirement.

London, July 30 : A British designer has come up with a sports car that can be folded in half to park it in tight spaces.

Daniel Bailey, 22, has revealed that the BRB Evolution jacks up on its nose with its back wheels sliding underneath on two rollers, and thus uses 50 per cent less parking space.

He says that motorists will have to step out of the car before it morphs into its "upright" parking pose.

He adds that the car will run on electricity or hydrogen fuel, and will be more "sexy, sleek and mean" than other eco-cars.

According to him, his invention is inspired by the Lamborghini Murcielago and Peugeot 908.