The BMW i3 saloon is a new electric car from BMW that looks like a regular sedan but runs on electricity instead of petrol. It's part of BMW's plan to make more electric cars.
The Xiaomi SU7 is a new electric car shaped like an SUV made by Xiaomi, a company famous for phones. It's special because it has lots of smart technology and is one of Xiaomi’s first cars, showing they want to make electric cars too.
The Zeekr 009 is a big electric car that can carry many people, made by a company called Zeekr. It can charge very fast and is designed to be fancy and comfortable, showing that electric cars can be big and useful too.
An embargo means you have to wait until a certain day to share news or videos. Car companies use this to make sure everyone talks about a new car at the same time.
The BMW iX3 is an electric SUV, which means it's a bigger car that runs on electricity. It's one of BMW's first electric SUVs and is part of their new electric car lineup.
The BMW iX3 is an electric version of a BMW SUV that doesn’t use gas. It looks like a regular SUV but runs only on electricity, and BMW is still working on getting more people to buy it.
The Tesla Model Y is an electric car that looks like a small SUV and can drive without using gas. It's popular because it can go far on a single charge and has cool tech features. People talk about it a lot because it's one of the best electric cars you can buy.
The Lucid Air is a fancy electric car that runs only on batteries and can go a long way on a single charge. It's one of the main cars helping Lucid sell more vehicles.
A conquest scheme is when a car company tries to get people to trade in their current car from another brand and buy or lease their car instead by giving special deals.
The Volkswagen e-Golf is a small electric car that looks like the regular Golf but runs only on electricity. It was one of the first electric cars Volkswagen made and helped people get used to electric cars before newer models came out.
The MEB platform is a special design that Volkswagen uses to build many different electric cars using the same basic parts. This helps them make electric cars faster and cheaper.
Raval is a small electric car made for driving around cities easily. It’s like other small cars that don’t use gas and are good for short trips and parking in tight places.
A DC fast charger is a special charger for electric cars that fills up the battery much faster than normal chargers. It helps you get back on the road quicker.
A kilowatt hour battery is how much electricity a car's battery can store. The bigger the number, the farther the car can usually drive before needing to recharge.
The Porsche Cayenne is a fancy SUV that drives like a sports car but can carry more people and stuff. Porsche is now making an electric version that doesn’t use gas, which is new and exciting for people who want a fast, electric SUV.
900 volts architecture means the electric car uses a very high voltage system. This helps the car charge faster and work better.
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Welcome back to EV News Daily, coming up the BMW i3 saloon.
Tesla UK drops 37% and EV Go hits 5,000 stalls, plus they tune.
Later in the show I'll tell you why Lotus has introduced the Electra X, a plug-in hybrid
range extender of its electric SUV.
On EV News China today we're talking about BYD's next-gen tech, 1500kW charging, that's
0.5 megawatt and all the cars which get their new Blade 2.0 battery, plus I'll do a whole
special show about that, maybe 10, 15, 20 minutes long when I've written it, that'll be in
your podcast feed, it's really impressive.
We talk about new Xiaomi Su7 arriving in dealerships ahead of launch, and the 900V Zika 009, alright
let's get into it, BMW will unveil the new i3 saloon.
We now have a date, the 18th of March, and if you are online on YouTube you may have
seen that the i3 videos are now appearing, it's an embargo, it's when a manufacturer
or, I mean in journalism terms, an embargo can be anything where they ask you don't
release your content, your article until this date, and often with car reviews the agreement
is that because some people have, I don't know, a team of five editors and some do it
all themselves, that you might review a car but you can't put the video out for a couple
of weeks and everyone plays by those rules.
And so, embargo must have lifted, all the videos arrived, the i3 is the second model
in BMW's Neuerklasse EV family, following the recently launched iX3, still not with
a lot of customers yet, I think some early, maybe employees or fans of the brand, regular
BMW buyers, are getting some of the early ones in Germany about now, but it's not
officially getting with regular customers yet, and even before the iX3 arrives there's
so much excitement around the i3, aimed at Tesla Model 3 and the Chinese premium rivals
like X-Pungs and BYD's Denza.
The i3 obviously sits on the Neuerklasse Gen 6 platform, that brings 800 volt architecture,
400 kilowatt fast charging, and BMW previously delayed an electric 3 series, they said waiting
for battery technology to catch up with the performance that it wanted to have, comparable
with combustion.
The launch model now looks set to be the XDrive 50, mirroring the iX3, and so that would be
the model motors, 464 horsepower, and 108 kilowatt hour NMC battery pack in the iX3.
That's 500 miles of range, of course, the 3 series is aerodynamically a lot lower and
more slippery, and they haven't told us the range, but it's going to be a really big
number, isn't it?
Wow, that is absolutely class leading, that just puts everything else to bed.
There is some stuff around it that gets close though, because there's obviously the Mercedes
Benz C-Class forthcoming, that's going to have just under 500 miles of range, there's
the Mercedes Benz GLC, falls a little shorter, there's going to be an Audi A4 EV, but I don't
know the range figures on that yet, but the 3 series is a cornerstone of BMW, and I can't
wait to see how many of those they sell.
Now, Tesla's UK registrations continue to suffer down 37% in February last month compared
to the same month in 2025.
We should always try and look at year on year figures, not month to month, because, well,
then last year we had New Tesla Model Y, and there was excitement around Tesla a year ago,
so that is significantly down according to the SMMT, that's the car industry body here,
and that slip came as Chinese rivals, led by BYD, pushed further into the United Kingdom.
In fact, the UK car market, this is fascinating as an aside, the UK car market had its strongest
ever February since 2004, yes, not a typo, and total registrations up 7.2%, a recovery
by retail sales, what drove that, Tesla lost ground in the kind of market that's had its
best time in 20 plus years.
Work to do at Tesla, isn't that?
BYD climbed fastest amongst the challenges, BYD UK registrations rose 83% year on year.
This is really fascinating, according to the website electrifying.com, run by Ginny Buckley
and a great team of journalists and video reviewers and more there.
So electrifying.com, a very reputable journalistic outlet, they say Tesla contacted them directly
and pushed back on reporting the data.
The website says they were contacted by a staff member from Tesla directly who suggested
to them in the strongest possible terms that they should not reveal the registration data
for February as it doesn't reflect actual sales nor orders that they should instead
only publish quarterly data to capture the performance of how vehicles arrive in the
United Kingdom when they're not made here.
Electrifying.com also said Tesla told them the combined January and February orders and
reservations are up on 2025 but they've had a problem getting the vehicles into the country
or they are here in Southampton maybe.
I was at Ikea Southampton last week and having veggie meatballs on the top floor and when
you look out from Ikea you see the big Tesla delivery centre and it didn't look any busier
particularly last week than normal.
It's always really busy though so there's always tons of Teslas there waiting to you
can go and pick it up from there if you want to.
They are in the country say Tesla but they haven't been registered or you've got to pay
registration fee but that is the rules of the car selling game in this country when
I read that my reaction like okay that kind of sucks and down 37% of rubbish headline
but that's the same for everybody so they're not being singled out so that's down to their
logistics and sucks and if March is stellar well then they can do a nice big victory
lap can't they and go haha we told you so.
The reaction from electrifying.com reading between the lines seemed to be an element
of surprise that Tesla wanted to influence editorial direction.
Bevs in this country took 24% of all new UK car registrations last month a quarter of
the market.
Plug-in hybrid vehicles which is obviously all Bevs and plug-in hybrids were more than
a third.
The SMMT data showed Bev registrations up almost 3% year on year as the wider car market
was up as well but pure petrol cars down 8% and diesels down 11.
Market analysts knew automotive said the shift away from internal combustion now looks well
established indeed it would be a gas gobbler these days.
For now the UK market expands quite significantly while Tesla registrations continue to shrink.
Now EVGO finished Q4 last year with 5100 DC fast charging stalls in operation up 25%
year on year.
The company called that enough to cement its place as the third largest DC fast charging
network in the United States and the second fastest growing.
The quarter delivered a gain of 510 stalls, EVGO added 320, EVGO owned and 190 extend stalls.
For the full year EVGO added 1200 stalls then at gain came in at roughly 1000 after their
renew program replaced older hardware.
Hallelujah wish more networks would do that.
Gridsurf did a great job over here when they bought an ageing network the Electric Highway
which in fairness we couldn't have done without it in the very early days and nobody else
did the job did they but the Electric Highway did but the hardware was long in the tooth
when Gridsurf got hold of it and spent big and replaced it all and it's fantastic now.
Bigger sites grew more common in the United States, 29% of stations had at least 6 stalls
up from 20% a year earlier and the hardware is skewing faster too for EVGO, 62% of stalls
featuring a 350 kilowatt charger.
Now good news for Lucid in the United States about 1500 US sales in February nearly double
the previous month.
Lucid tied February's lift to a production ramp up of their SUV the Gravity customer
deliveries began last year after initial handovers to employees and family in February they
sold 900 air sedans and 600 gravities in the US.
Gravity sales rising tenfold though the air starts at 80k gravity start at 95,000 US dollars
that's for the grand touring trim and 80,000 for the touring variant Lucid also offered
a $7,500 lease credit for the gravity SUV after a previous expiration date a conquest
I think it's called a conquest scheme they were specifically targeting Tesla Rivian
and Polestar owners.
Europe has not helped Lucid registered 18 vehicles in January and just five in February.
Now it's like a break we'll come back and we'll talk about Volkswagen stuff that's
really interesting suing Scout and the new Lotus Electra X stick around back in a mo.
Welcome back to the podcast now so far my continued sore throat and illness by the way
occupational hazard of having two small children just constantly being ill sniffy cold sore
throat flu that kind of thing and so hey I'm sorry about that if it's not fun to listen
to a podcast with a croaky throat I'm very sorry.
All right let's carry on Volkswagen group has delivered its four millionth battery electric
vehicle the milestone came just days after the Volkswagen brand hit two million the group
has tracked their delivery since 2013 when the e-up became the first electric model
e-golf followed shortly after then volumes really kicked in in 2019 with a cross brand push
on the MEB platform CEO Oliver Bloom put the pace in context the group needed a decade to
reach a million bevs and delivered the fourth million in just one year the scale now sits on
the widespread of products and plants Volkswagen group sells 30 all electric passenger cars
plus trucks and buses and 20 EV production sites in Europe China USA and Brazil Europe
does most of the work though since 2013 77% of the group's four million pure bevs were manufactured
in Europe in China one in five of its bevs has been produced the US accounts for 3% of bev production
what would that be ID for Chattanooga is that it yes it probably would be um deliveries skew even
more towards Europe it's 70% Europe 20% China 8% in the US the core brand accounts for 72%
as with Volkswagen passenger cars making up half of the number the compact class accounts for 70%
of bev sales and they're about to go into the smaller subcompact slash urban aren't they
uh segment with the little Coupre Reval and ID Polo and things like that
shcotta epic i can't wait for those cars to arrive now interesting VW story from the US
to Volkswagen dealerships one in Connecticut one in New York have filed a class action lawsuit
against scout motors and Volkswagen over scouts desire to sell direct consumers scout motors
the new electric brand from Volkswagen group they ended up with a scout brand through a
bizarre sequence of acquisitions and things um they wanted to revive scouts and they realized
they own it buried in the back cupboard somewhere so let's let's make scouts again they thought but
no let's sell them direct to consumers in a Tesla style model however it has a very powerful dealer
lobby in the US to go up against it plans to set prices itself and control the sales process like
Tesla Rivian Lucid and the rest of the dealers say that the plan cuts across the existing
franchise setup to sell Volkswagen's and they want their cut of selling scouts the dealerships
argue scout is an extension of Volkswagen and therefore must be sold in franchised dealerships
the lawsuit claims Volkswagen breaches the agreements by bypassing dealers and denies dealers the right
to sell scout vehicles and they say at a significant financial loss to them okay let's talk a little
bit about um a 60 kilowatt DC fast charger which doesn't sound like it should be headline worthy
e.g bat has launched their new nova 60 it's a it's a commercial EV charger and it's really
interesting because it's meant to be affordable and it's meant to suit exactly what that use case is
for that particular DC fast charger because it's built to avoid grid delays the nova 60
has a 60 kilowatt DC fast charger not going to set the world alight we were charging on 50 kilowatt
chargers 10 years ago weren't we but it has a 60 kilowatt hour battery all nicely integrated into a
single floor standing enclosure e.g bat says the battery buffer draws on stored stored energy so you
need that if they're stopping to reload on a lunch break 60 kilowatts can often be enough and it also
doesn't lean on grid connections the battery's there is a buffer and for sites with solar
there's a dc input as well up to 20 kilowatts for direct solar pv integration plenty of
commercial premises with big roofs could well quite do with using that electricity rather
than sending it back to the grid which you could sell obviously but they could charge
their electric vehicles directly from it and this sounds like a great solution for a very
particular problem i love it now finally over on our spin-off channel ev news china i recently
told you about them adding an engine to the lotus eletra and they've called it the lotus for me
not the number four but f or me the lotus for me which given lotus has some really cool names
is a bit weird so i was delighted to read top gear magazine when they say that when it comes to the
uk it'll be called the eletra x which makes a lot more sense it's a e rev so extended range
electric vehicle but it can mechanically connect to the front wheels i think when you're up at speed
so that gives you the essence of driving a purie v because you're driving on motors nearly all of
the time electric motors very luxurious end of the market but it's fair to say lotus has not
sold the number of evs which they were probably planning to and so in that that electric cayenne
segment they've had to do something different and you could look at this as taking a step back
i would understand that viewpoint the eletra x has an engine but the numbers are very loud
even if the reviewers of top gear say the engine's very very quiet you can't really hear it come on
to recharge the battery so almost a thousand horsepower 0 to 62 3.3 seconds so that's a
Porsche cayenne turbo gt kind of level but this is a 2.6 ton lotus eletra 70 kilowatt hour pack
900 volts architecture and 80 charge in nine minutes over on the ev news china channel i think
i reported this is either a nine c or a 12 c battery it's a ridiculously fast charging and
discharging and so a real world electric range would be around 150 miles so that's fine for many
people two liter engine uh recharges that as a generator but it can clutch into the front wheels
through a single speed transmission at motorway speeds that's actually quite efficient and an
efficient way to do high speeds lotus calls the underpinning a new geely platform but with new
front end structures a new floor a new suspension geometry the zika nine x shares a version of the
platform and drivetrain uh otherwise it looks like a lotus eletra and not my neighbor but a few
houses down from me has one in green it's a very very beautiful vehicle and a very big vehicle as
well like it almost looks too big for british roads maybe it suits chinese roads or american roads
but you don't get many there so lotus says the electric x which is a much better name than the
lotus for me that drives identically to the pure electric version smooth silent instant brutal
acceleration no powertrain steps no lag no revving that kind of thing and above 20 state of charge
the petrol engine will only cut in at full throttle or in a kind of charge sustained mode but you've
got all those modes you can force it to run on electric you can force it to start the engine
and recharge your battery from fuel you know air suspension 48 volt active anti roll and adaptive
dampers bespoke tires it's a two and a half ton beast but it drives very tidy according to
top gear the electric x launches in china first like i say not called that but uk sales will
start early 2027 so you know maybe it's a step backwards you can make your own mind up on that
one but they've got to do something to sell some lotuses does that appeal more to a typical lotus
slash cayenne buyer with that kind of budget interesting question well that's your podcast
for today thanks to our premium partners national car charging on the u.s mainland and the loha charge
in hawaii and test ev avaloos trusted partner for independent ev battery health testing
in australia and new zealand have a good and see tomorrow and remember there's no such thing
as a self-charging hybrid
About this episode
The discussion covers BMW's upcoming i3 saloon launch with impressive range and performance specs, Tesla's 37% drop in UK registrations amid supply challenges, and BYD's rapid growth in the UK market. EVgo's expansion to 5,100 DC fast charging stalls in the US and Lucid's rising US sales are highlighted. Volkswagen Group's milestone of 4 million BEVs delivered is noted alongside a US dealer lawsuit against Volkswagen's Scout direct sales model. Additionally, new affordable DC fast charger tech and Lotus's plug-in hybrid Electra X SUV are briefly explored.
