Audi Previews TT-Inspired EV, Mercedes Taps LG For Cells and Volvo XC60 Launch Date | 04 Sep 2025

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Welcome back to AV News Daily.

Coming up today, Audi previews a TT-inspired EV, Mercedes-Taptel G for Cells,

and the Volvo XC60 launch date plus date tuned later in the show.

I'll tell you about a program aiming to increase the take up of electric motorcycles in Africa by women.

Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you're listening in the world.

Welcome to AV News Daily, your trusted source of EV information.

It is Thursday, September 4th.

I'm Martin Lee.

I go through every EV story, so you don't have to.

And Patreon producers get the shows ad-free, fund the show and be part of the EV News Daily community.

You can be like them by clicking on a link in the show notes.

Audi's concept C has been revealed.

Audi's concept C is a two-seat, all-electric, hardtop convertible.

This previews Audi's next design era.

I've got to say, I think it looks fantastic, but design is subjective.

And it will head to production as the spiritual successor

to the world famous Audi TT.

But it won't use the TT name.

This isn't a TT reboot, reboot exactly.

It's a brand new, all-electric, two-seater.

It comes with a retractable hardtop and a midship's battery layout for lower seating,

aimed at a gap that Audi says is there with EV sports cars.

The original TT arrived back in 1998.

I owned one, the lower powered one, 180 brake horsepower.

And beautiful, absolutely beautiful car.

What was I doing only one of those when I was just a wee nipper back in the 1990s?

I guess no kids and had money to spend on cars, I guess.

The concept C nods to the icon.

It introduces Audi's new vertical frame face and a four-element light signature inside.

Physical controls remain alongside a foldaway display,

keeping the focus on driving rather than screens.

I love this, by the way, any move that we can do away

from just massive slabs of glass inside driver's cars or luxury cars as well.

It's got to be a better way of doing it.

Expected production car to share fundamentals with Porsche's new electric 718,

with a layout that stacks the battery centrally behind the seats

to mimic mid-engined balance and enable a much lower driving position.

Audi says this isn't just some sort of design concept.

This is going into production in 2027.

The CEO, Gernert Donner, is clear on branding.

The concept C is not a successor to the TT.

It sits between the TT and an Audi.

All right, this thing looks proper special.

Brilliant, what an Audi going out on a bit of a limb with this one,

but saying it will go into production.

Let's move on.

LG Energy Solution has signed agreements to deliver 107 gigawatt hours of sales to Mercedes.

That's enough to power, well, you know, plus or minus,

about 1.5 million electric Mercedes-Benz.

New filings today show that LG will supply Mercedes-Benz AG

with 32 gigawatt hours in Europe from August in 2028 to December 2035

and also supply their US affiliate from July 29 through to December 37.

So these are big long-term plans.

I say it all the time, the car industry works on timelines like this.

They're bread and butter and the move to EV.

No wonder it's get the wits out of everybody because it happened so quickly.

The two contracts are worth $10.7 billion on basing an assumed price

of $100 per kilowatt hour for cylindrical cells, these 46 series.

LG plans to start mass producing next generation cylindrical batteries

next year at the Arizona plant under construction.

In October last year, LG separately agreed to provide

50 gigawatt hours for North America and other markets between again,

2028 and 2038 Mercedes previously sourced extensively

from the Chinese CATL, Pharis as well to bring costs down.

Now, tapping up the Koreans.

OK, let's talk about a really important electric vehicle,

Puree V for Volvo, and that's the EX 60 doesn't exist at the minute,

but it will do.

And I'll tell you why it's important in a minute.

Volvo will unveil the EX 60, the family SUV.

They'll do it in Stockholm.

They'll do it on 21st of January 2026.

The dates in the diary because they're counting down to it.

The company calls it a cornerstone of the lineup.

435 miles of range is the target.

That's 700 kilometers production will start in Gothenburg

in the first half of the year.

A preview silhouette shows proportions like the XC 60.

Why would you change a winning formula?

The front has narrow headlights with the brand's

Thor's Hammer signature like the EX 90.

And I say winning formula because, look, the EX 60, sorry,

XC 60 is not just their best selling vehicle.

It's their best selling vehicle of all time as Volvo.

It just tipped over that.

And so the EX 60, when it goes electric, doesn't have to just have to be good.

It has to be brilliant.

This is the vehicle Volvo need to work using the SBA 3 platform,

a successor to the architecture underneath the EX 90 and AES 90.

The SBA 3 platform is designed to support smaller and larger models

of electric vehicles.

They call it 100% electric and 100% Volvo.

I wonder if they've had some, I don't know, market research

or customer insight or something, saying Volvo owners are, you know,

off by the Geely parent company, shared architectures that sit underneath

things like poll stars that have been wobbly, I would say.

Fine for China, but some of the autonomy and some of the software stuff

with those early poll stars on the shared platforms needed some dialing out

and some tweaking sounds like it's all sorted out at the moment.

But Volvo saying this is 100% Volvo.

It distinguishes it from a Geely platform like the SBA platform,

which is underneath the EX 30.

Of course, another vehicle that Volvo didn't get right when they launched it.

That vehicle was not fully baked, rushed, I don't know.

But software updates over a period of months and maybe up

to the first year of that car being out took it to get properly sorted.

The EX 60 will be designed for mega casting with the SBA 3 platform,

which is large body sections produced in single pieces.

OK, Volvo, sorry, Volkswagen is next in the news after Volvo

and Volkswagen have done the unthinkable.

I'm only joking.

This is great news, by the way,

Volkswagen is going back to naming their vehicles.

Now, for a long time listener of the podcast,

firstly, my commiserations, why do you do this to yourself?

However, if you're a long time listener of the podcast,

you'll know that for years I've been talking about the balance

between established car makers having to tread that fine line.

Do they reinvent themselves?

Do they have new names?

Do they lean into the old names?

How do you compete with Chinese startups?

Do you lean into your heritage?

And I've for a long time been saying of all the pros and cons

of having a fresh start and goodness,

with after dieselgate did VW need a fresh start.

I really think that the ID thing was perhaps a mistake.

And well, the idiot podcaster here seems to agree

with the top brass at Volkswagen

because they're going back to names.

The plan will start with what was previously called the ID to all.

It launches next year and the Polo is back, which is brilliant.

It's still going to be called the ID Polo

because, as I've said as well many times,

big companies don't like admitting mistakes.

And so to go look, the ID thing was an error.

So they fudged it.

It's not called the Polo or the Polo Electric or just the Polo.

It's called the ID Polo, which is, I don't know.

It seems like a fudge, a nod to the ID thing we really believe in.

But I don't know. They tried it.

I wouldn't have worried about it.

I like names for cars.

And if you've got names like Golf Polo,

Passat, Tiguan in your locker.

I mean, how's Bell's Volvo lean into that?

Early Volkswagen EVs were called the Golf and the Up.

E-Golf, E-Up, admittedly.

And then they went all in with all ID.

But to know they also changed.

Maybe it wasn't the name.

They also changed the look of the cars.

And so the the the the EVs are going back to looking like

Volkswagen's as well.

Confirming the GTI badge will return replacing GTX

because yes, you got GTI in your locker.

Use it. Use it. I love this.

This is absolutely common sense.

I think this will drive the next phase of EV adoption

for people who want, you know, they've had several golfs.

We've owned several golfs who just want the next golf.

Oh, it's got batteries.

That's such a cool thing.

Right. Let's talk Norway.

Norway EVs 97 percent.

If you're thinking about August's number now in the books,

13,915 vehicles were sold in Norway last month.

How many were electric?

Thirteen thousand four hundred and eighty two.

Yes, there's less than five hundred vehicles

now that weren't all electric in in Norway.

And when I say EV, I mean pure Beth when I talk about Norway,

plug-in hybrids are a proportion.

A bit of a petrol and a little bit of diesel.

But otherwise, nothing ready to write home about 97 percent pure.

Bev, who led the way?

Tesla, actually, with the Model Y, they needed a good month.

I mean, Norway's not a big car market.

You know, Tesla is desperate for a good month in well,

anywhere like Germany, UK, France, but big car markets.

But nor they'll take Norway.

They'll absolutely take Norway.

Seventeen percent of the entire car market was Tesla Model Y,

followed by VW ID three.

Sorry, ID four.

Then any act from Scott, ID three, ID seven, LROC,

EX 30, IX one and the BYDC line, seven rounding out the top 10.

Now, Ford is looking at adding a plug-in hybrid version of the Ranger,

the Ranger MSRT, selling it in Europe.

The MSRT is M Sport Road Technology.

So M Sport, an offshoot of Ford's rally partner, M Sport,

the Ranger MSRT is a plug-in hybrid honeycomb grill,

new front splitter, sporty visuals as well.

Four centimetres lower, 40 mil lower or 1.5

say at seven inches at the plug-in hybrid.

We'll have a 2.3 litre turbocharged EcoBoost engine,

12 kilowatt hour battery.

So not very big and a 75 kilowatt electric motor.

So not really strong electric specs

and actually these days, that's a tiddly battery, isn't it?

On a vehicle as big as a Ford Ranger.

But anyway, maybe you think the Ford Rangers are not not a big vehicle.

It's big over here.

Power goes to all four wheels via a 10 speed auto box

and full-time four wheel drive system, only 40 miles rated electric.

And that gets eaten into if you start using a Ranger for worky stuff.

European order books open this year, deliveries next year.

Stick around, new bolt has been spied.

I'll tell you what the inside looks like.

Tesla's master plan for and Toyota building a factory in Europe for a new EV.

Those stories and more stick around back in a mo.

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All right, welcome back to the podcast.

Now, General Motors just brought back the Chevrolet Bolt after killing it in 2023.

And now new spy shots reveal what's inside the cabin, the redesigned interior show

GM learned from customer complaints about the original,

the old eight inch gauge cluster in a chunky housing with a 10.2 inch center screen.

That's all gone.

New Bolt gets much bigger displays.

The instrument cluster now uses a larger rectangular format

like you'd find in an equinox that makes sense.

New dashboard ditching the old button style gear selector.

A stalk behind the steering wheel is the new gear selector center

console has a proper cup holder and arm rest rather than the old design.

The climate controls get an upgrade to rather than being buried in a touchscreen.

GM looks like they've got physical buttons and dials below the display

looking identical to the GMC Canyon.

If you are familiar with that, a spy photo of the instrument cluster

did show it did show.

Two hundred and sorry, one hundred and ninety four miles

and the battery was a hundred percent full.

Now, the old bolt was 259.

So why is the new bolt got 65 fewer miles?

There is no way of saying this is a test vehicle.

This vehicle could have just been sitting with the air conditioning on.

That's going to affect the algorithm for the range.

It could have been, I don't know, doing some performance testing.

That's going to hit the range.

But either way, 100 percent charge, less than 200 miles.

They would not want that photo have been leaking out today.

The return of the bolt means GM isn't abandoning affordable cars.

They obviously make premium Cadillacs and lyrics and Sierra EVs and the bolt used

to be a twenty seven thousand dollar vehicle.

And I'm pleased it's coming back because it does.

Certainly, you know, scratch that itch for cheaper vehicles.

Now Elon Musk's master plans have long guided Tesla strategy for many people.

Early, early supporters of the business, one of the things they could

really understand about Tesla being a mission driven company.

It's one of the things that I understood when I read the master

plans that I think the master plan one and two Elon Musk.

It said he wrote himself.

No way of proving it, but why would we not believe that?

I mean, they're not war and peace.

So why wouldn't the chap have written them?

But they really communicated the mission of Tesla so clearly, very specifically

as well. The first one was 2006.

And at that time, he was just an investor in the company.

And he talked about how an electric sports car would be followed by

affordable cars. Part D in 2016 added autonomy and a bit more as well.

Part three, which was two, three years ago, is March 23, wasn't it?

Part three talked about sustainability.

Tesla made it much more of a company mission in terms of they presented it on stage.

It was well thought out.

They followed it up with or they accompanied a big white paper as well of how they'll do this.

They presented it with managers on stage, that kind of thing.

They added they wanted to add a lower cost compact version below the three and the Y.

But that was ditched, obviously, by Elon Musk.

And now part four has come very quickly after part three.

This talks about accelerating the shift to sustainable energy.

They say, and I quote, our desire is to push beyond what is considered achievable.

We'll foster the growth needed for truly sustainable abundance.

And it does.

It's very fluffy.

Now, if you've read the criticism aimed at it, then that's it.

It's not as clear as the as the previous plans.

This one sort of written by, you know, very high level

thinking, aims, aspirations, that kind of thing.

No concrete steps, as it were.

So it's had some pushback, I think, from, you know, from people who read it.

And we're like, what's this?

This really reads like a, you know, kind of corporate speak,

kind of woolly, fluffy thing.

But, you know, have a look for yourself and see what you think.

It's it's it kind of it.

There's bits of it that remind me of a high school student

that's just found the thesaurus button or the episode of friends

where Joey finds the thesaurus and they just use unnecessary words.

But I don't know, I don't want to go too hard in because people think

I criticize Tesla too much these days.

But it didn't really float my boat, didn't do too much for me.

But have a look now.

Toyota's first Europe made bev will be built in Czechia.

Toyota will build their battery electric vehicle for Europe

at its Czech Republic plant with the Czech government.

It will expand production lines and battery assembly.

They were investing 680 million euros and some state money coming in as well.

They didn't disclose the start of production.

They currently make the I go there and the Yaris in Czech Republic

and they're going to make their first Europe destined EV from Toyota there.

The Schodder EVs are now eligible for some UK grant money.

The 1500 pounds goes towards the L Rocks.

So the L Rock SE, SEL edition,

Sportline as well with the 82 kilowatt hour battery.

That's 355 miles of range in the L Rock.

And so they get that apart from the expensive one,

which is the L Rock VRS, which is now higher than the new upper tier,

which is 42,000 pounds, so it doesn't get the money off.

Zaptech is a charging company, a charge maker over here.

EVSE maker, I should say, releasing the new go to hardware.

They say it's the first vehicle to grid ready AC charger in the UK

designed to meet residential and commercial use as a built in screen,

anticipating forthcoming rules on energy metering.

For billing and salary sacrifice,

connectivity includes 4G and OCPP compliance.

It's solar ready energy management apps like EV energy.

There's a three phase 22 kilowatts version

supporting ISO 15118 for plug and charge

and bidirectional communication as well.

Not that you can buy it today and immediately just do vehicle to grid.

But there's a lot of bits to join up, but that's a good bit of news.

And finally, motorcycles are central

to many bits of urban transport around the world, particularly Africa.

More than 20 million are in use, most running on petrol.

Riders are men in Uganda.

Women account for less than one percent of motorcycle taxi operators.

A new project in Kenya and Uganda,

funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation,

has trained more than 100 women as electric motorcycle operators,

mechanics and entrepreneurs.

This aim is to cut pollution and expand economic opportunities.

Training also covers maintenance of solar panels

and repairing EV charging infrastructure.

Demand for motorcycles is rising in Africa.

And Kenya and Uganda are targeting this with electric models.

It's amazing that there's so many motorcycles there.

There's a lot of sunshine and yet

less than one percent of African motorcycles are electric.

Sales are rising and they're rising very quickly.

Zembo is an electric motorcycle maker.

They report that riders can save five hundred

US dollars equivalent per year on fuel just by charging on the sun.

Amazing projects happening all around with electric vehicles all around the world.

And so many of these projects come across my desk every day.

Inevitably for timing, we don't get to talk about everything.

But I wanted to include that today.

Just an example of how electric vehicles are touching

so many bits of our lives around the world as well.

And that's your podcast for today.

Thanks to our premium partners for getting the show on the air.

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Have a good one.

See you tomorrow.

And remember, there's no such thing as a self charging hybrid.

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Audi Previews TT-Inspired EV, Mercedes Taps LG For Cells and Volvo XC60 Launch Date | 04 Sep 2025

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