DAILY: Alpine Bet Pays Off, Electric BMW M3 and Is Tesla Shrinking Berlin? | 24 Jan 2026

Hiya, Kenny the Hamster here, beloved pet of Doug and Carol Brookbank. Now, I've got

to hand it to Doug and Kazza. They're doing school pickups, jobs, trips to the supermarket

and still find time to get healthy. Apparently, it's down to some NHS Healthy Choices quiz.

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Take your first little step to healthy. Search NHS Healthy Choices quiz to get a score and

a plan that's right for you. I've never been one for keeping secrets. But that's good news for you.

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conditions apply. But remember, it's a secret. Hiya, Kenny the Hamster here, proud pet of Doug

and Carol. Hey, oh, looks like my mum carols off out with the girls again. I tell you, since

she took that quick NHS Healthy Choices quiz, she's drinking less but going out more. And

to think, she thought being healthy would mean being boring. You might want to give it a go

Go girlfriend! Take your first little step to healthy. Search NHS Healthy Choices quiz

to get a score and a simple plan to follow. Welcome back to EV news daily. Today Alpine's

bet pays off the electric BMW M3 and it's Tesla shrinking Berlin. Plus stay tuned later in the

show. I'll tell you how battery swapping is going outside of China right here in Europe. No

deep dive into how the East is shaping the global EV landscape returns on Monday. Now Alpine

sold almost 11,000 cars last year. That's not many, but it is up 140% on the previous year. For

the first time, the French mark, the sporty bits of Renault crossed the 10k mark driven by, ah,

your beat meter, the punchline again. It's all thanks to electric vehicles. It always is. The

figures show how a niche sports car badge, which if you know your cars and some people listening

to this podcast will be into EVs, but also general kind of car stuff as well. Alpine,

very well known in a small group of people. Alpine is now being known a bit farther and wider,

thanks to electrification. While large car makers complain about they say it's a soft EV demand,

Alpine couldn't disagree more. The real shift came from the Alpine 290. You know the little

Renault 5? Yeah, Alpine's A290. Huge smiles if you have one of those. The firm's first fully

electric hot hatch launched last year. It accounted for over 8,000 of the units, 75% of their business.

The A290 was car of the year and several other prizes as well. Alpine pushed their sales network

wider. 15 new points of sale opened last year, taking the total to 117. 25 countries as well,

seen a few driving around, seen a few Renault 5s as well. They're super cute.

And a few Alpine A290s. Yep, very envious. They're lovely. Now, BMW's first all electric M3

wants to shout about it. The M3 will be the first battery powered M car and they say it will play

recorded combustion pops and bangs inside the cabin. If you just can't get over the fact

that it's battery powered, engineers have recorded three engines in an anechoic chamber,

a 4.4-litre V8 from an M3 GTS, a 5-litre V10 from the M6, and a twin-turbo 3-litre inline

6 from an M4 GTS. Microphones sat so close that a few revs partly melted the microphone's windscreen.

The roar of a V10 will mix, they say, with the electric drive sounds to form what BMW is creating,

they say a soundscape for the future of electric. Yet the firm hints the drivers will be able to

switch the feature off, which of course they say is a nod to purists. I'm not sure purists is the

right word, because purists sounds sniffy, right? If you're a music purist, you're probably listening

on vinyl in a separate room, the kids aren't allowed in on some speakers that cost more than your car.

A purist does sound rather elitist, doesn't it? I don't know if to enjoy an electric M car from

BMW, you need vroom vroom bang bang, but if you are the kind of person who can't enjoy a car without

some noises, then it's an option, right? It cares, it's an option. The hardware matters more than

the soundtrack. The M3 will use four electric motors, I've mentioned this stats already on the podcast

last week, so that's a motor-pair wheel. It can decouple the front pair if you want to do rear-wheel

drive honing, BMW developing a new battery pack as well, 100 kilowatt hours usable,

related to Neuer-class iX3, so these new 6th gen round cells and engineers plan to bolt the M3's

battery, they say to the front axle, so it doubles as a structural member, stiffening the car and

feeding it as well with some electrons. Prototypes in BMW's recent videos still relied on some earlier

technology, but it'll be fully updated by the time it arrives into market when it does it'll

bring four motors and some interesting sounds as well. Tesla could be shrinking Berlin. Tesla's

German bet might be getting smaller over the past year. Data routes today shows the firm has cut

around 1,700 jobs a gig of Berlin. They reduced the workforce by a significant amount, it was 12,415

and it's now 10,703. That's a 14% drop and this is all to do with the works council elections

and because of that they have to publish how many people are working there. However, Tesla have denied

that there have been any numbers going down, so the plant manager there, Andre Teary, often talks

publicly and says there has been no cuts, so I wonder what accounts for the the reduction Berlin

was going to be the anchor, I guess call it that, of Tesla's European growth and previous claim of

one time it was called unlimited demand in Europe for Tesla's. The factory now has more production

capacity than it could possibly use, so it's shipping cars to Canada and other places. The

job losses there fit a broader pattern. In 2024 Tesla trimmed 10% of its global workforce, sales

have slipped in Europe as Europeans have voted with their wallets in the last 12 months. Sales

have slipped as Chinese EV makers have established presence on the continent, how Tesla executed

the cuts in Berlin, which they deny they have, remains unclear. The 14% drop in headcount could

be direct layoffs, could be voluntary buyouts, we call them redundancies, or temporary contracts

that weren't renewed. We'd like some clarity around this. I have seen people online predicting

that they would start to wind down giga Berlin as demand for Tesla's can be easily met from Shanghai

now and it's cheaper to make the cars there and that the Berlin factory would be sold to perhaps

another car company. That's maybe a little fanciful at this stage, but we'll see.

BYD will install 300 of their ultra rapid charges. When I say ultra, I mean a thousand

kilowatts. Okay, megawatt charging from BYD. We've seen these rolling out. We've seen

in China very fast charging. Tesla's pure V4, so the V4 dispenser and V4 cabinets

have been very slow. There's one site in the US and that's half open. BYD want to put

300 of them in within one year. Wow. The UK's country manager for BYD set out the plan at a

media launch whilst they were launching the BYD C-Line 5. That's the SUV. The rollout marks a new

push by the Chinese group to deepen its presence in Britain as it brings its premium sub-brand

denser here as well. It shows BYD wants to not only shape what we drive but how we charge. The

as they called. Nice. Got a flash new motor. Yeah, got a flash charger as well. Sorry, enjoy.

There will be a denser Z9 GT coming in April in the UK. BYD says the technology will add 250

miles of range in five minutes. I've been talking for almost eight already. The 1.2 miles of range

a second in case you were wondering if it works in real use and a lot depends on

the site and temperatures of your battery and all sorts of things but you know I'd be pretty

happy with whatever speed if it got anywhere near that as well. BYD will expand the flash

chargers beyond the initial 300 sites but only after it studies how drivers are using the new

units. I presume very quickly. Price will be part of the pitch. BYD plans to keep charging costs

reasonable they say as they grow the network. More details on both the denser Z9 GT and their

flash chargers. A due before the April launch BYD's promise of 1.2 miles of range per second

makes clear that at least in Britain the fight for EV buys now runs through the charging bays

as much as the forecourt. That would change the game here. Now let's talk about Ford,

Doug Ford that would be not Ford Motor Company. This has been a sketchy week in Canada so just

the recap. Canada opened its doors again to Chinese EVs. Doug Ford wants Ontarians to shun

Chinese cars before they arrive to officially boycott Chinese cars. That'll be easier said than

done there aren't any really to speak of in Canada but still but still it'll be a moral victory

either way. The province's premier has urged drivers not to buy any Chinese cars as Otto

awaits its own response to a wave of these low-cost models hitting Europe and they're gonna arrive in

America. We know they are. The appeal matters less for today's sales than for tomorrow's market

because Ontario anchors Canada's car industry, hosts most of the assembly plants and is spending

billions to lure battery investment. Mr Ford argues that a flood of low-priced Chinese EVs

would undercut those bets and shift jobs to Asia as the legacy firms are retooling well it's

only 49,000 vehicles a year isn't it and that was what they were doing a couple of years ago

before the tariffs. So hardly a flood hardly a flood. His stance lines up with Washington

which has put tariffs on EVs of 100% from China and with Brussels which has launched an anti-subsidy

probe yet Canada has so far held back no federal tariffs on Chinese EVs of 100% anymore. Chinese

brands have cut the cost in the supply chain from sales to software the cars land in Europe at prices

that undercut the western rivals with badges that nobody knows but the tech on offer is huge and

what's interesting about this next phase of Chinese EVs which is why I started the spin-off

podcast EP News China is because there is a section of the population that goes they're nice

they're cheap and all that which is nice but they're a bit ropey and actually this I think the

story of Chinese cars this year maybe to the end of the decade we'll see as you and I discuss it on

the podcast I think that the emerging storylines are going to be one of quality of standards and

of wanting to lead the conversation and they're lining up the pieces to do that by the way.

Mr. Ford's boycott remains symbolic because there are no Chinese EVs really in Canada

but symbols can move ahead of trade law if Ottawa follows America and Europe with its own curbs.

Today's plea to drivers would just be an opening move in a fight that I think will go on and on.

Geely is on the way we'll talk about them we'll talk about Volvos plug-in hybrids

and Volkswagen they're rolling in cash.

Bish back in a moment after a break.

Take your first little step to healthy.

Search NHS Healthy Choices Quiz to get a score and a simple plan to follow.

Hiya Kenny the hamster here proud pet of Doug and Carol.

Hey up looks like my mum Carol's off out with the girls again.

I tell you since she took that quick NHS Healthy Choices Quiz she's drinking less but going out

more and to think she thought being healthy would mean being boring you might want to give it a go

yourself. Go girlfriend. Take your first little step to healthy.

Search NHS Healthy Choices Quiz to get a score and a simple plan to follow.

Welcome back to the podcast now Geely has shaped their new plug-in hybrid for Britain

the Starray EMI to look nothing like their auto electric siblings the EX5 despite sharing many

parts actually the firm wants clear boundaries between its BEVs and plug-in hybrids and rejects

what this is the Russian doll family look the split now sits at the heart of how car makers

sell EVs the Starray which is a bit of a weird name but we'll get used to it the Starray EMI

shares 60% of its interior with the all-electric EX5 and yet it's got a different front end.

Geely's designers finished the project in three and a half months they say pushing full-scale

clay models and rapid digital iterations through engineering checks the car's nose

does most of the work in terms of the changes Geely closed the grille to cut drag claiming a drag

coefficient of 0.288 not spectacular but good a split headlamp layout aims to sharpen the face

and lowering the glare for oncoming traffic at small but useful thing if you're driving opposite

one of towards one of those the firm insists it's a design with a job to do not just a different

face for the sake of it inside they have tried to balance digital convenience with familiar

controls the cockpit has a 15.4 inch screen a 10.2 inch LCD cluster and a 13.8 inch head-up display

the Starray EMI began as a Chinese car but coming over here to certainly the UK

be very interesting to see whether that's a plug-in hybrid that UK buyers are interested in

talking of that Volvo will not drag its buyers into a battery only future for now many still want

the backup of a fuel tank it wouldn't be for me but I totally understand the logic so the

firm is rolling out next-gen plug-in hybrids the company pitches these cars as a practical answer

to range anxiety and patchy charging I don't experience either but maybe you do um Michael

Flase Volvo's chief strategy and product officer said that the new series of plug-in hybrids will

be electric only of 100 miles that would take them far beyond today's typical plug-in hybrids yet

Volvo wants long-distance flexibility they want a combined driving driving range of up to a thousand

kilometers or 620 miles all in when the battery runs low of course you can just fill it up with some

fossils but the layout sets Volvo's plug-in hybrids apart from many in the industry and I think 100

miles if you're going to go plug-in hybrid over the next 10 years maybe that's what governments

and regulators and the lawmakers should be looking at it's a nice round number isn't it 100 miles 100

miles of range um wouldn't be for me because unless you're leasing a vehicle for two or three years

and then it's somebody else's problem I've had too many old cars with oily bits that cost me money

and this all seems nice now but wait till those plug-in hybrids have got both an aging battery

and an aging engine I just don't I don't understand the logic now it's kind of 10

years ago thinking but there are many people my wife would be one of them if it wasn't for me

she's all up for trying new like electric car stuff um but if it wasn't for me in the household

she'd probably have a plug-in hybrid just because I forgot to charge it so I'll just use the petrol

diesel whereas I don't see a need in them anymore but I respect people that do and Volvo say they'll

now drive them 100 miles on electric only power. Volkswagen's automotive arm managed to generate

6 billion euros of net cash flow in 2025 having earlier told investors to expect

none what a pleasant surprise to find down the back of the sofa the surprise sent its

shares up more than 5% in trading the cash haul matters more than most line items because

net liquidity in the automotive division hit 34 billion euros at the end of the year that's

four billion more than they even forecast themselves they've been selling a lot of electric vehicles

I told you recently the Volkswagen brand is now bigger than Tesla in Europe many years ago they

said they would do that and many people laughed I might have been one of them the laughed I just

got a Herbert D Sierra the old the old boss of Volkswagen when him and Elon Musk had a bit of a

loving uh a bit of a bromance and you know they said at the time well we'll be we'll be bigger than

Tesla at least in Europe I may have mocked slightly because there's no sign at the time that they had

a serious chance of catching up what we believed at the time was Tesla when they said oh we're

do 20 million vehicles a year by the end of the decade well the last two years have been

in decline now for Tesla and they've pivoted away we're not a car company we're robots and

I don't know autonomy and home storage don't don't look at the car business

so that's why it's happened is you know Tesla hasn't grown at the rates that it

it uh it said it would and we all thought they would carry on growing at that pace

and Volkswagen has really smashed it they they started wobbly and they fixed a lot of stuff the

improvement came from tighter working capital management and lower than expected capital

expenditure yet the car division which still anchors VW's business across 10 brands plus

their battery businesses and engineering operations is is a harsh world the group wants to strip out

six billion euros of costs by the end of the decade as it wrestles with lower sales in China

and things being expensive to make here in Europe VW has already agreed to slash out

but at German plants and cut 35 000 jobs in the country by 2030 under a plan struck at the end of

2024 it's also trimmed its rolling five-year investment budget to 160 billion from 180 billion

now here our government have something called the warm homes plan sounds nice this time of year

in our winter 15 billion pounds going to warm homes a new scheme that amounts to an EV

policy by stealth if you ask me the plan will fund solar panels and battery storage and heat pumps

and insulation on paper the aim is to warm our housing stock we have a terrible housing stock

in this country ours are pretty well built compared to some countries we tend to build

solid materials however they're aging and we haven't needed to build them like say the Nordic

countries have a long history of you know needing to build warm homes we get a couple of really cold

months and historically we just sort of fumbled through in this country lighter fire in the lounge

kind of thing whereas the government now say if we can update our housing stock and warm everybody

up it's good for the nation well in practice it changes how britains power their homes and

therefore their cars just as much as their radiators home charging underpins EV economics

i talk about it all the time we rave about fast charging and then we always charge our cars at

home if you can charge your car at home then you absolutely should do obviously it's far far cheaper

cost and convenience though still block buyers i mean there's an electric car grant either a

1500 quid or almost 4 000 pounds as new public ad campaign to go EV 25 percent of cars were EV last

year 33 percent in december alone that's actually funnily enough this year's mandate number letting

households generate and store their own clean power makes EV ownership more attractive and

don't i know it uh since we put 16 panels on the roof and a 10 kilowatt hour battery into this

place we just moved in when we did it and so we knew that we are between two good schools so that's

seven years of schooling and our little girl starts in september so we're here like we were in this

house for a long time well i don't want to move again it's too much hassle i hate paying stamp

duty tax and so we're here right so we over an hour said we also put them on at around the time of

russia's invasion of ukraine and so energy prices went crazy and payback went from like 12 years to

four years so it was an insane time but in the summer when we're generating loads it just all

goes into the car and people notice when your neighbors are doing that and you realize your

neighbors driving for free obviously it's not free but that's kind of the way that you think

about it letting households generate and store their own clean power is a really good idea and so

heat pumps and rooftop solar push households towards smart energy i couldn't wait to rip out the gas

hob that we had here so induction cooking obviously and then the next job is the heat pump and it's

a really hard justification for us with a young family and without a lot of spare money to just

rip out a working gas boiler and that was here when we bought the house would love a heat pump

now there's seven and a half thousand pounds off a heat pump at the minute in this country

i think octopus say the average on top of that is about three grand that will not fly

with mrs lee uh we have heating that works and but when the boiler dies then it'll i don't know

what like 1500 quid two grand for a new gas boiler or three for a heat pump

um you can kind of make the argument can't you but the uk already sells more evs than ever add in

some subsidized generation looking forward to what uh what shape that takes and bit of storage

this is great news for evs although they were never mentioned right finally let's talk about neo

they have clocked 250 000 battery swaps now in europe four years after opening its first station

in norway in january 2022 it took them four years to get 250 000 swaps under their belt the chinese

ev maker still treats europe as a test bed yet its swap data now shows a bit of momentum at home

they run 3 700 swap stations and it's closing in on 100 million chinese swaps they do about 100

thousand a day so it took them four years here will take some two and a half days back at home

europe is tiny in terms of battery swapping the pace is quickening but not enough neo has

begun to retrench it shut its first danish station it's only danish station the first closure in

europe since they launched where the swapping reaches european markets now lies with neo's

local plans which also handle the cheaper firefly sub brand as well neo doubled their european

market presence last year but that was 1300 vehicles so we'll wait and see if battery swapping ever

does work outside of china and that's your podcast for today thanks to national car charging on the

u.s mainland and the loha charge in hawaii and test ev avalos trusted partner for independent ev

battery health testing in australia and new zealand have a good and cinema and remember

there's no such thing as a self-charging hybrid

hiya kenny the hamster here proud pet of doug and carol hey oh looks like my mom carol's off

out with the girls again i tell you since she took that quick nhs healthy choices quiz she's

drinking less but going out more and to think she thought being healthy would mean being boring

you might want to give it a go yourself go girlfriend take your first little step to

healthy search nhs healthy choices quiz to get a score and a simple plan to follow

DAILY: Alpine Bet Pays Off, Electric BMW M3 and Is Tesla Shrinking Berlin? | 24 Jan 2026

About this episode

BMW M3

battery swapping

electrification

Alpine A290

Renault 5

battery powered

4.4-litre V8

5-litre V10

twin-turbo 3-litre inline 6

BMW M6

soundscape

electric motors

kilowatt hours

structural member

BYD

megawatt charging

BYD C-Line 5

Dodge Charger

Denza Z9 GT

flash chargers

miles of range per second

Geely Starray EMI

Geely Galaxy EX5

drag coefficient

plug-in hybrid

Volvo

range anxiety

electric only

driving range

aging battery

Volkswagen

Tesla

electric vehicles

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