DAILY: BMW i3 Debut, EV Prices Fall As Rules Tighten and Tesla Wins Power Licence | 16 Mar 2026

Welcome back to EV News Daily, today BMW's i3 debut, EV prices fall as rules tighten

and Tesla wins a power license plus stay tuned later in the podcast, I'll tell you where

old Nissan Leaf batteries are showing up.

On EV News China today we're talking about BYD, studying a Canadian plant, Mercedes weighing

up a Geely tie-up and VW's ID UNIX 08 production beginning, let's get into it.

BMW will unveil the fully electric i3 sedan on the 18th of March.

The car extends the Neue Klasse platform from SUV's into the sedan segment.

BMW started running assembly lines for the i3 already in Munich, series production should

begin in the autumn, sales will begin before the end of the year.

The launch follows early demand for the iX3 Neue Klasse version, order books are full

now for the rest of the year.

Production in their Hungarian plant, Debra Sen, has effectively sold out, they've added

an extra shift.

That matters because the i3 shares the architecture with the iX3, using BMW's 6th gen tech, 800

volts, 400 kilowatt peak charging, BMW says the i3 took far more work to develop than

the iX3, engineers had to keep the sedan's footprint comparable to the outgoing model

whilst using an all-new platform.

The first version will reach customers in XDrive 50 form, so all wheel drive, middle

of the road, pricing, BMW says the i3 would beat the iX3's 500 miles or 800 kilometers

of range because it's more slippery.

More details today about the story I've previously mentioned, let me add some more details.

As rules tighten, prices go down.

What that's doing is making the cars cheaper for you and I.

Let me add some details to what I've already mentioned.

EV prices fell by an average of 1,800 euros, that's $1,950 last year, according to Transport

and Environments.

That cut prices by 4% at the average EV price to 42,700 euros, that's $46,300, ending five

consecutive years of rising EV prices.

The biggest drop came unsurprisingly in small EVs, prices in that segment fell 13%.

Think 15,000 to 25,000, things like the Renault 5, Renault 4, Citroën EC3 and well, many,

many more.

Transport and Environments said tighter emissions rules pushed the car makers to sell more cars.

You can sell more cars by selling smaller, cheaper cars.

And then you can do some emissions trading stuff and that means you can sell more big,

profitable gas guzzlers.

The timing of the affordable EV launches was unmistakable.

It was no coincidence, it literally happened to the day when the year ticked over, now

they started selling small EVs because they wanted to wait as long as they could.

A cynical move, you make your mind up.

The average EV transaction price in the United States is $52,000, that was of January last

year.

That's way above the European average EV price now.

The US market is much smaller.

Car makers sit ahead of schedule already on the European emissions compliance targets,

the 2025 to 27 targets.

Half the markets hit it already two years early.

Only Renault and Volkswagen are a bit behind on compliance, but both are going to meet

their targets by the end of this year, at least end of next year, because both Renault

and Volkswagen have more through their brands and their sub-brands, a lot more small cars

coming.

The targets call for a 55% SIGO 2 reduction for cars versus 2019 levels, and the TNE organization

expects those targets to drive further competitive EV pricing.

By next year, sales of affordable and mass market EVs will overtake large and premium

vehicles.

Marking the first time this has happened since 2021, TNE predicts EVs will reach price parity

overall with combustion in all segments.

Large and premium EVs have already hit price parity.

Now, Tesla has won an electricity supply contract or license, I should say, not a contract,

a license with off-gem.

That's our regulator for the energy market.

It now means Tesla Energy Ventures are licensed to sell electricity to retail and businesses

in England, Scotland and Wales.

As of now, the approval ends a six year push by Tesla to become a full service energy provider.

In other words, they'll send you the bill and you'll pay your money to Mr Musk.

Because we're a small island, we have one national grid here in the UK, and at least

in Great Britain, we're a small island.

And so you can sell electricity by sitting on top of our one grid.

It's not quite so simple, but it's kind of like that.

So Tesla have wanted to become an energy retailer, much like any other company that sells

you energy like mine, which is Octopus.

Now, eight thousand four hundred people actually objected to the license based on the public

comments and the political gestures, things like the Nazi salute and things that Elon

Musk has done, his political activities.

However, there's no real rules to stop Tesla Energy having a license based on the political

affiliations of its CEO.

You might not like his politics, and many people don't like far right politics.

However, that's not a reason to not give them an energy supply contract.

Well, I mean, you might think it is, but it's simply not written in the rules in Texas.

Powerwall owners earn credits by exporting their energy back to the grid.

Every 15 minutes, that updates.

Many of the owners on the platform can charge off peak for a flat monthly fee.

If you link up enough battery energy storage at home, you can even form a virtual power

plant and then you can do some funky stuff with energy trading.

No doubt that's the big prize that Tesla has its eye on.

Now, UK karmic makers are beating their ZV target, the mandate.

We have a mandate over here.

I know that American politicians, well, one in particular, your president likes to talk

about, well, we're getting rid of the mandates.

America's never had a man.

No state has ever had a mandate for electricity, even in California, which is about the harshest

it gets saying, we want to go all EV and yet we do have a mandate.

And so all the carmakers are lobbying really hard through their lobby

organization, of course, to keep a level of, you know, playing nicely.

And let the let the lobby organization take a few punches.

They're lobbying, say it's too hard.

We can't do it.

It's too hard.

We can't do it.

It's too expensive.

We can't do it.

It's too hard.

The UK government came back.

I mentioned this yesterday.

I got more data on it and said, well, you've done it already.

They released all of the 2024 data, which we'd never previously had.

The first year of our mandate, the Department for Transport published the data

and against a target of 22 percent, the auto industry hit it at 24.1.

It's technically called the vehicle emissions trading scheme vets.

And yeah, they were going for 22, they hit 24.1.

So the industry's 2.1 percentage points above the target.

It's all about letting manufacturers bank EV credits for future compliance years.

You can also trade with other car makers that only sell EVs.

They've got excess credits, a nice little earner for them.

They like serving up poll stars and some of the Chinese makers that only sell EVs.

They'll have an excess of credits.

You can pool with them.

You can trade with them.

And therefore, nobody paid the 12,000 pounds per car fine for non-compliance.

The government says that the average trading price of credits was 4,000 pounds.

So that absolutely puts a big line through the car industry's argument,

which is we're having to discount cars because it's cheaper to discount a car

by 11,000 pounds than pay the 12,000 pounds government fine for missing our targets.

So we're having to knock 11 grand off every car.

And that's not fair.

I'm not saying they didn't have to put money out of the pocket, but it ain't 11.

It's 4,000 pounds and it's not a government fine.

It's trading that they're doing between the carmakers.

And you know what?

If you want other carmakers to pay you that 4,000 pounds, sell more EVs and have

excess credits so then you can make some money.

And so some manufacturers have forward borrowed the equivalent of registration

registrations to avoid any fines as well.

They've got a bit of catch up to do, but that's amazing news.

I'm sure that this story will rumble on and on.

Interesting how the UK government's getting a bit punchy with the car industry.

Stellantis and Ford are some of the most outspoken themselves, not through

the lobby organization, saying, you must do what we say or else or else or else or else.

We have lots of employees will pull investment.

That's interesting, making those direct threats.

UK government at the moment is not backing down.

If anything, I think getting a bit more punchy by pushing back and saying, no,

look, you're doing it, you're hitting the targets that we set you.

So it's interesting.

We'll see where it goes.

Let's take a break or come back or talk charging and battery strength and

Australia sticking a stick around back in a mo.

Welcome back to the podcast now.

Green end cap and the charging interface initiative.

Charon will work together on EV charging into operability and performance,

transparency, the deal could bring Charon's.

That's the charging organization that puts together the CCS standard.

They're testing programs and roll into green end caps vehicle assessment to give

consumers data, independent data on how well an individual EV would work with

the charging infrastructure.

That matters because testing checks, whether EVs and charging equipment or

talk nicely to each other.

It also confirms that vehicles and charges perform as intended across

brands, networks and countries.

Testing whether a car and charger can basically dance well under the agreement.

The Charon label would be referenced in green end caps driving experience

assessment for EVs.

Now let's talk leasing.

Arvel, a big leasing company, have been looking at data on battery health.

And they say that battery health falls by 1% per year in their fleet after 20,

after an initial drop, falls by 1% per 25,000 kilometers.

The fleet management company based its finding on looking at 24,000 battery

health certificates in 11 European countries of the vehicles analyzed.

66% pure Bev, the remainder plug-in hybrids.

They found that EVs and plug-in hybrids that reached 160,000 kilometers or

six years of service had a battery health above 90% and that after an initial

drop that the battery degradation was 1% per 25,000 kilometers.

And in fact newer generation EVs skewing the average because they're too good.

And so newer EVs doing a way better job than older models in terms of battery

health as car makers and battery manufacturers learn this industry's

five minutes old, you know, in the grand scheme of things.

And so the tech is improving rapidly.

Fuel prices are rising across the world and they're rising in Australia, just as

EV advocates are pushing the federal government to keep tax breaks for EVs.

The incentive is the electric vehicle discount letting workers cut their tax

bill if you buy an EV through salary sacrifice.

The scheme can cut the cost of a new EV by thousands of Aussie dollars.

The electric vehicle discount is sitting under review now.

Reports suggest the upcoming federal budget could remove it.

But energy advocates oppose the move.

They argue that removing it comes at a bad time with a global fuel crisis.

Thanks to Middle East conflict pushing costs up.

Now is not the time to move people back towards gas guzzlers.

Couple of good stories.

First of all, Škoda posted record financial results for 2025 with higher

volume, more profit, more cash flow and a sharp rise in deliveries.

Deliveries of EVs and what did the work?

Last year, they doubled their electric car sales to almost 220,000 units at

Škoda plug-in models, including Bevs and plug-in hybrids were 26 percent of their

sales, the LROC and ENIAC driving their growth with the LROC little crossover,

the second best-selling Bev in Europe last year.

SEAT also very happy.

SEAT expects profitability will recover this year after the European Union

dropped the tariffs on their Tava scan.

They've done a deal to make the Tava scan in China and sell it in Europe

without an added levy.

It was costing them until they did the deal.

Costing SEAT 250 million euros, that's 288 million dollars in 2025 after the rate

went from a 10 percent import duty for making it in China to a 30.7 percent.

The EU made the move after a nine month investigation into subsidies for EVs.

SEAT didn't actually raise the price of the vehicle.

They they took the 7000 euro hit on every Tava scan sold and they sold

35 and a half thousand Tava scans last year, according to data force.

The extra duty ended in February last month after the EU accepted an application

from Volkswagen to sell the vehicle at or above a minimum import price.

And therefore the levy went back down to 10 percent.

And that Tava scan charge last year wiped out SEAT's profit.

SEAT said EV margins still trail those of a comparable combustion car in SEAT at

the moment. They said that the Reval is also only weeks away from series production.

And finally, where do Nissan Leaf batteries go to die?

I'll give you a clue. They don't.

They just get used again.

Nissan has partnered with the Spanish energy storage specialist, Little Electric Energy,

to deploy a second life battery charging setup.

This one's at the Port of Vigo in Spain.

The system has repurposed 12 old battery packs.

They're 30 kilowatt hours each from the Nissan Leaf and battery backup at a charger.

The unit powers four charging points, 22 kilowatt ACs and some DC ultra fast charging

at 240 kilowatts as well.

They got CCS2 and Shadowmo connectors, green charge targets sites

where the grid capacity is tight.

And this is such a good use of second life batteries.

OK, so you can't pull absolute maximum juice from the battery

if you want to floor it anymore in a car.

That's OK, because for charging an EV, you don't need that much current.

And so put the batteries together, find a grid connection that's got

like a little teeny weeny grid collection, a connection constantly be charging up that battery.

A car turns up, plugs in big dump of energy.

Off they go.

Meanwhile, the battery is just constantly sipping at the grid and refilling the storage unit charges

slowly and delivers that stored energy quickly, avoiding a costly grid upgrade

and giving a very happy retirement year to the Nissan Leaf batteries.

30 kilowatt hour packs.

They're not the oldest that they've made, but they are some of the older packs in Nissan Leafs.

Nissan launched the original 24 kilowatt hour pack 16 years ago

and then introduced the 30 kilowatt hour pack 11 years ago.

And they're not done yet.

I'm afraid you can't enjoy your retirement years and go off and play some golf battery packs.

No, you've got a bit more work to do, and that is now you've finished helping

EVs propel themselves down the road.

Now it's time to help charge some more EVs.

I love that story.

I know it's just one site in Spain.

And it's just a single example, but stuff like that gives me huge hope.

It's in a microcosm exactly where our energy industries go.

My kids are grown up.

This is the world they're grown up into, and I'm here for it.

And that's your podcast for today.

Thanks to our premium partners, National Car Charging on the US mainland

and the Low Heart Charge in Hawaii and Test EV, Avalu's trusted partner

for independent EV battery health testing in Australia and New Zealand.

Have a good and soon tomorrow.

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

DAILY: BMW i3 Debut, EV Prices Fall As Rules Tighten and Tesla Wins Power Licence | 16 Mar 2026

About this episode

BMW i3

Neue Klasse platform

BMW Neue Klasse

iX3 (G08)

BMW iX3

800 volts electrical architecture

400 kilowatt peak charging

all wheel drive

XDrive 50

EV prices

Renault 5

Volkswagen

Tesla

Octopus Energy

Powerwall

virtual power plant

EV mandate

lobbying

EV credits trading

Stellantis

Ford

CCS standard

battery health

battery degradation

pure BEV

plug-in hybrids

salary sacrifice

electric vehicle discount

Škoda

SEAT

second life batteries

Nissan Leaf

kilowatt hour packs

self charging hybrid

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