Volkswagen is a well-known car company from Germany that makes many different types of cars. They are currently doing very well in selling electric cars in Europe.
The Lucid Gravity is a fancy electric SUV made by a company called Lucid Motors. It's designed to be very high-tech and comfortable, but some people have had problems with the screens inside the car not working properly.
A kilowatt is a way to measure how powerful something is, especially in electric cars. More kilowatts usually mean the car can go faster and perform better.
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Welcome back to EV News Briefly, everything you need to know in less than five minutes.
If you haven't got time for the full podcast today, let's get the EV news in your ears.
Nice and quickly, France is building a market for electric cars amongst people who cannot
usually afford them.
They've just wrapped up their second round of the social leasing scheme.
This is where lower income households that meet certain criteria like earning less than
16,500 euros per person can lease an electric vehicle from as low as 95 euros per month
with nothing down.
There's also part of the scheme that allows you to buy them as well.
Volkswagen EV sales surging, but China and software have been a drag and actually it's
Europe where Volkswagen is winning now ahead of Tesla and taking 75% of Bev deliveries.
Europe accounting for, well, the lion's share doing pretty badly in China doing okay in
the US, actually up 40% year on year, but the actual volume is much lower.
BMW doing well, actually tell a lie, BMW flat as a business as the group, but you know what,
the EV bit of BMW going great guns.
So EV sales up 8.3% last year.
They sold 442,000 fully electric vehicles, 18% of BMW group, Mini's doing really well.
They sold 105,000 fully electric cars last year.
That's a record for the brand and up 90% on the previous year, a little Mini Cooper
and Cooper S and the Aiseman all doing pretty good business in electric form.
Lucid's new gravity SUV reached customers with malfunctioning screens and key fobs that
wouldn't work.
You had owners online saying, oh, that's okay.
Just smack the key a bit, tap it on the dash, get out of the car and lock it, leave it for
10 minutes to fall asleep and then maybe the key will work again.
That's not good enough at that price point and Lucid knows it, interim boss Mark Winterhoff
saying he replaced the software leadership team and says with two updates, January and
March, all the bugs will be squished and he knows it's embarrassing and not good enough
for a brand like Lucid.
That is a very tech savvy brand to get it so wrong in terms of software.
The engineering though is solid, not rather have it that way round.
The hardware bits are very, very good at Lucid because you can always write new lines
of code if you're patient enough to wait.
He also says car makers should stop talking about saving polar bears.
Now I don't hear too much of that so maybe he's got a different impression.
I don't really see EVs being sold as saving the planet anymore.
I think that used to happen a lot 10 years ago or five years ago, but he says that his
car making peers are doing it too much and that we should stop talking about the environmental
benefits of EVs and just talk about how they're better and have instant talk and are faster
and in some cases actually go further than the petrol equivalent of the same model.
It's a good shout.
New Jersey is pouring $32 million into e-buses and chargers, new electric school buses and
public charging for it across 16 counties.
China and India both cut their coal power in 2025.
This is important because so many people say well you can drive an EV but you're just moving
the emissions to the coal fired power plant.
Well both big emitters, both drivers of increases of greenhouse gases, China and India have
a lot of work to do but last year China installed 300 gigawatts of solar and 100 gigawatts of
wind and also in India a lot more renewables hitting the grid.
What with some milder temperatures not requiring as much electricity, both were able to significantly
cut their coal power output last year.
Let's hope that's a trend.
Two Chinese cars coming to western markets, Zika Configurator now open up how to play
its brilliant Zika 7 GT, don't get it in right hand drive here in the UK but that starts
at 47-48 thousand euros in Germany and X-Punks P7 Plus again these are both 400 plus kilowatt
charging cars, big saloons and fastback estates that's also now on sale in Europe.
About this episode
France is making strides in electric vehicle accessibility with a new social leasing scheme for low-income households, allowing leases from just 95 euros per month. Volkswagen is experiencing a surge in EV sales, particularly in Europe, while BMW's electric segment is thriving. Lucid faces software issues with its new gravity SUV, prompting leadership changes. New Jersey invests in electric buses and chargers, and both China and India are reducing coal power in favor of renewables. Additionally, two Chinese EVs are set to enter Western markets, showcasing the growing global EV landscape.
It's EV News Briefly for Wednesday 14 January 2026, everything you need to know in less than 5 minutes if you haven't got time for the full show.
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