DAILY: BMW iX3 Starts Strong, Lucid Gravity Disappoints and Porsche Cayenne EV Range Test | 19 Oct 2025

Welcome back to the podcast. Today, BMW iX3 starts strong, lucid gravity disappoints

and the Porsche Cayenne EV range tested. Plus, stay tuned. Later in the show, I'll tell

you one of the most interesting pickup trucks around, just got more… well, interesting.

We'll start with news of BMW saying the iX3 has collected more than 3,000 orders in Germany

alone in the six weeks after debut, outpacing orders for the combustion X3. And that eases

BMW's concern about meeting expected initial volume. The iX3, the new one, bundles new motors,

new electronics, new batteries, I guess that's why they call it the Neue Klasse. BMW is saying

it's the most efficient and advanced EV they've ever made, and that for its size as well in

the marketplace. Production will begin at the new facility at Debrezen in Hungary, established

for the Neue Klasse vehicles, with first European deliveries beginning in spring, US in the summer

next year, BMW's prepping the Mexican plant as well, but that may be for US deliveries,

that may not we don't know, it might come from Hungary. So far, BMW has revealed only

the dual motor iX3, 50x drive, that's 463 horsepower, it's 62 miles an hour in 4.9 seconds,

and the battery pack is 108 kilowatt hours. It's WLTP range, 500 miles, 805 kilometers,

which BMW says is the longest range EV in Europe, I'll tell you why that's not true in a moment,

and the German starting price is 68,900 euros, that's 80,000 US dollars equivalent,

but bearing in mind that that German price would have to be the out the door price,

because we don't advertise prices over here without taxes and extra things like that,

you have to advertise the price with VAT, and that's the price you would pay. So a starting price,

which is high but not unreasonably high for that kind of vehicle, unlike the BMW 3, until the BMW

3 series launches rather, with the same package and the same engineering, but in a smaller

lighter car, which could go further, for now the iX3 wins, it is a long range EV and 500 miles is

nothing to be sniffed at WLTP, but bearing in mind, we do have the Lucid Air, now in fact Germans

have the Lucid Air, I can't buy a right hand drive Lucid Air, but you can get it in left hand drive,

Germany's one of the markets they sell it in, now the Lucid Air is obviously a vastly different body

style than a BMW iX3, but it is available here now, and in its cheapest version, the rear wheel

drive air pure trim, that's 516 miles on its smallest wheels, but it's 89,000 euros, so it's

you know it's 20,000 euros more, but again it's a whole different segment of vehicle, it's a slippery

sedan, where the grand touring, I believe, goes up to 597 miles rated WLTP, if you run it on 19

inch wheels, and so it's huge, Lucid's not selling a lot over here in Europe right now, I'm sure they

would love to, but they do technically have the longest range electric vehicle on sale, but I get

BMW's point, now let's talk Lucid, because their other car, their new car, their SUV, the Gravity,

just got a new range test by the best in the business, and that would be my friend Tom

Logany from State of Charge, now there's no doubt the Lucid Gravity is highly impressive, it's a

three row, properly three row, not all will stick a couple of you know seats in the back for people

with no legs, large SUV, Lucid rates, well the EPA rates, although the EPA lets car makers submit

their data and they go with that, Lucid rates the Gravity grand touring at 450 miles EPA,

helped by a 123 kilowatt hour battery pack, I believe that's 123 gross, not usable, efficient

in-house electric motors, compact packaging, and a highly aerodynamic body, the grand touring is the

sole model on sale, it starts at $96,000, however on a recent 70 mile an hour highway range test,

things didn't go to plan, State of Charge host Tom Logany ran his standard 70 mile an hour highway

range test on the New Jersey Turnpike, very little elevation, and he does a loop as well,

it's very windy, but he does a loop and he ran it down to 0%, he pulled into the charger at 1%

but then it ticked down to 0, tyres at manufacturer pressures, the smallest aero wheels, ambient

temperatures in the 50s, it was a nighttime run because he wanted to do exactly 70 GPS and traffic

is busy and so he finished at 3.32 in the morning I think, now the Gravity posted, and the number is

the number by the way, 345 miles, 345, yeah I just told you EPA at 450 miles, that's a significant

difference, and there's lots of mitigating factors in this, it averaged 3 miles per kilowatt hour,

but it's more than 100 miles short of the EPA estimate and Lucid's efficiency target of 3.6

miles per kilowatt hour, Lucid air will do easily 4 miles per kilowatt hour and more at those speeds,

at 3 a.m. with the car at 0%, Tom couldn't start charging at the Tesla Supercharger that he started

at, considering it's the same charger that he'd just used and the car wouldn't initiate a charge

on any of the, I think he did three units on the Supercharger, so with the car showing battery

critically low on the dash, he crawled to an Electrify America station one mile away and it

saved him, who'd have thought Electrify America to the rescue, it's one of the oldest stations in

New Jersey as well, but it's a fast, it's a 350 kilowatt DC fast charger, he needed like five

minutes of charging to get home on the gravity, but the Tesla Supercharger simply wasn't playing

ball, but we think it was the car, so luckily Tom bought his CCS to Nax adapter, because the

gravity has a native Nax port, he charged, he got home, afterwards he contacted Lucid, now the

engineers, because it's a connected vehicle, were able to go through the data of the range test,

they say they found a problem with the rear drive unit, it's not all bad news, the car will do

naught to 80% in 30 minutes on a massive battery, but it's all about the efficiency as well, so

you're going to add 280 miles of range in 26 minutes of charging, which is why Tom needed

like five minutes to get home, however, a couple of questions, Tom has many questions, go and watch

the video, link in the show notes if you want to spend, you know, 40-50 minutes of Tom Malogny

brilliant of doing range testing, and there's no wonder why car makers send their cars to him

to do that repeatable range, a proper range test, 70 mile an hour highway range test,

but it was cold, it was windy, but that accounts for a little bit, Lucid say that he left the

rear climate on, that'll be a few miles, he turned it off, but it was on,

but the more concerning is the rear drive unit issue, but this was a press car that they

shipped to him, now I'm not saying that they should fettle every press car or even worse, tune

them differently to what would be a customer series production car, you want something

that is just representative of what a customer would buy, but the car drove fine and seemed fine,

but Lucid say no, we have an issue with the rear drive unit, which is what stopped it starting a

on the Tesla supercharger at 3.30 in the morning, but that didn't flag up anywhere, so if you'd

spent $100,000 on that vehicle, presumably you'd be driving around with it, and there is apparently

an issue, they came and collected the car the next morning, it was gone, he didn't even get to

finish his week he had with it, because they're like don't use this vehicle, we'll get you a new

one, so yeah some questions around that, because well if the car is broken and wrong and they don't

have been shipped in the first place, why wasn't the issue identified, and you know it's complex,

it's difficult, they're a startup company, they've been around a long long time, Lucid has a big

history, and this is a new vehicle, and I'm not pretending it's not harder than it is, but it's

not ideal is it, and so they'll get him a new car in the next, well I'll say a few months he'll do

it again, but that gets really cold where he is on the east coast, so maybe some warm weather,

range testing, and by the way I'm fully aware that it's 350 miles or 345 on a big three row SUV,

and it sounds like I'm belly aching about it, and I'm really not, it's a very impressive result.

Another range test done, Porsche's third all-electric model, the Cayenne Electric, logged the big

number 353 on a 70 mile an hour range test, however they want production vehicles, they're

nine months away from series production, very very kindly, and you know Porsche, it's very very open

with the YouTubers who did this, and so again my friends, Tom Logney, State of Charge, Kyle from

OuterSpec, also Mac Hogan inside EVs, were invited by Porsche to come and drive these

camouflage cars in the US, 70 mile an hour range test, lots of variable speed though,

it wasn't perfect in traffic, and also lots of elevation on the route they chose, but still,

these are journalists, and they don't owe Porsche anything to fake the result or whatever, well

there were Porsche engineers in the vehicle, so again the vehicles were heavier than typically,

you know you normally do a range test with one person in it, it had luggage and stuff inside the

Porsche Cayenne, these aren't finished vehicles, the engineers were using the drives as well for

some validation stuff, so not a pure range test on a vehicle that isn't going to be made for six

to nine months, but the Cayenne absolutely smashed it, now the Cayenne uses six battery modules

rather than the McCann's 12, integrating the modules on the Cayenne as a structural part

of the vehicle, rather than a battery box or tray, that reduces mass, it adds a second,

a top battery cooling plate, an heating plate as well, alongside the bottom plate for better

thermal management, Porsche expects the charging to be materially better than a Taycan or a McCann,

so 400 kilowatt charging, fantastic thermal management, and you know if you are 70 mile an

hour in a Porsche Cayenne after 350 miles, and it would have gone further because the batteries

weren't even at zero when they ended it, then charging at 400 kilowatts with a great charge

curve as well, I think it's fine, like physically you need a break as a driver, and to go and get

some refreshments and on off you go again, and so they went down to 2% state of charge to get

353 would have gone further, maybe 360, 365 wasn't a perfect range test, but that Porsche Cayenne,

which is a long way off from serious production, looks deeply impressive already, now China's

extended range electric vehicles are now 10% of their NEV market in the second quarter of this

year, a market that until now has been EVs or plug-in hybrids, EREVs are plug-in hybrids, but

there's no official definition, I think we can define them as a battery and traction motors,

which are electric, and gasoline engine which charges the high-voltage battery never connected

to the front wheels or rear wheels, that's not a perfect definition because some can connect to

the wheels at highway speeds, because it's not a traditional gearbox, but they can anyway, it's

normally their extended range EVs means a gasoline generator, and so they're becoming a little popular

in China because the car makers are advertising the total range, so they're a 2,000 kilometer vehicle,

yeah the battery, they're big batteries as well in the Chinese one, 70, 80 kilowatt hours,

and an engine, and you just, it's kind of overkill to be honest, now the European group Transport

and Environment published a new study this week arguing that when EREV batteries are depleted

they're just as bad as conventional gasoline vehicles, emitting just as many pollutants,

the principle justification for EREVs is that you plug them in and do everything you want to do

electronically or electrically, but plug-in hybrid studies in Europe show owners seldom plug in

and instead drive primarily on gasoline, producing equal or greater emissions and higher fuel

spending, plug-in hybrids have been one of the great cons of so many emissions reductions stories,

because many plug-in hybrids were bought because of tax benefits through fleets and business purchases,

and yet the owners didn't put a plug charger on the wall of the house or whatever,

they just got it because it was the cheaper version, and they never plugged them in,

and so they're just as bad as combustion cars, and of course plenty of plug-in hybrid owners

do charge them to 100% and do most of their miles on electric, it's not everybody,

but if you don't charge these vehicles there's no point carrying around a really heavy massive

battery, now in China that's not the case because there's a thing called utility factor,

it's the share of driving that you do in electric mode, and EREVs in China have at least 70%

utility factor because people in China plug them in and drive them as electric vehicles,

so they do have climate benefits, lower running costs, no range anxiety, contributing factors cited

for the outcome include China's big charging infrastructure and socio-technical environments

where electric driving is more established and it supports owners using EREVs as intended with

massive batteries, again by something like an 80 kilowatt hour pack in, if you live in a country

that's got good charging and you're not towing, I'd argue just get the pure Bev and avoid oil changes,

but still, yeah, if you don't, outside of China there is not a culture of plugging in plug-in

hybrids and a lot of the car makers are now looking at EREVs and going, ooh, we could make those.

Let's talk about how many plug sockets there are in chargers in the US and London, Australia,

and we'll talk Model Y in Texas more when we come back from a break, stick around back in a mo.

All right, welcome back to the podcast, now some plug stats for your weekend, the US public

charging network now has 170,000 level two public AC ports, up 15,000 since the start of the year

and averaging about 1500 new AC stalls a month, according to the AFDC. California leads with

45,000 level two AC ports, followed by New York, Florida, Massachusetts and Texas. At the lower

end, Alaska has 109 AC ports, but you know, places where there's some more people, North Dakota,

Wyoming, South Dakota, in the hundreds of AC charging level two ports. Looking forward,

a cautious forecast projects publicly available AC charging ports in the United States to exceed

173,000 by the end of this year and 175,000 sometime around the middle of Q1 next year.

TFL, so London, Transport for London, TFL, their latest EV strategy plan shows London now has over

25,000 public charge points, comparing to 9,000 from 2021. Last time they did this report,

London has also experienced a growth in ultra rapid and rapid charging hubs to support fast

charging electric vehicles. And then Australia, the fast charging network is now 1272 locations

and three and a half thousand charging plugs, according to the Electric Vehicle Council,

the EVC. That is a 20% rise in locations and 22% increase in charging capacity versus last year,

based on the first half of this year's data. New South Wales leads the way. The EVC also

notes that the charge at large app provides a good real-time status updates for the networks.

Now, the Model Y standard is now in production at Gigafactory Texas, at least according to one

YouTuber, the longtime Gigatexus watcher, Joe Teggmeyer, confirming on the social network X,

Model Y standard production is well underway at Gigatexus, he wrote and says the outbound lot

holds numerous freshly built Model Y standard units, along with some cyber trucks as well.

The Model Y standard is 321 EPA range rated, by the way, but they do delete around 20

some useful, some not so useful features. For what is a still a very expensive car,

heading towards $40,000, the only car in the United States with manual mirror adjustments,

which seems saving a few cents for the sake of it, but if it helps you get an EV,

then it lowers the price, doesn't it? Now, Chargeway is an app, now Chargeway is adding

real-time pricing to its map ahead of Electrify Expo in New York. Chargeway announced Chargeway

Plus subscribers get real-time pricing for half of North America's public charging stations,

with price per kilowatt hour embedded into the app and station level pricing in your own details

and your mapping, so it's both cost and grid conscious drivers being able to make informed

choices. I hadn't thought about this actually, yeah, when you pull up to a petrol station,

you've always got today's prices on the big board outside, lit up in big lights, and those prices

can change daily, weekly, in some cases, multiple times a day, I've been reading, and so we don't

really do that for electric vehicle charging, but this Chargeway Plus integration shows the

electricity rates and how they change during the day and actually what it will cost to charge your

electric vehicle. So if you say, right, I'm going to arrive with a 5% state of charge,

I'm going to go to 80%, this is the car I drive, and I'm going to go to a Tesla supercharger

in this location at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and the app says, great, so your fill-up will

be this many dollars. The CEO, Matt Teske, says drivers can see total cost and time to charge

and decide where to navigate to based on total cost. That's really interesting, it's a good way of

looking at EV charging, isn't it? Not just what's available and what plugs are there, but you might

think, well, I won't go to the 350 kilowatt charger, I might go to the 150 kilowatt charger,

because my app is telling me it's a $10 difference on the charge I'm going to do. Now,

historically, some networks even build by the minute, but most of the time these days it's per

kilowatt hours delivered. Utilities and time of use pricing encourage off-peak charging,

and Chargeway now monitors the dynamic pricing, this is US only for now, and half the public

chargers, actually North America, are now added, and so EV-related uncertainty for new buyers,

and even I would love this as well, so right, I'm going to arrive in this town or city,

I don't mind where I charge, but here's where I want to go, and here's, you know,

what it's going to cost me. Really interesting. The Canary Islands, Teneree, Lanzarote, etc.

The Canary Islands is launching a 1.8 million euro subsidy for some electric vehicle adoption.

The program is aimed at professional passenger transport operators, so local transport companies,

taxi and bus operators, commercial transport licenses as well, in places like Gran Canaria,

Lanzarote, Teneree, and Fweta Ventura to go EV. BEV, or BE.EV is the company name,

they're a charge point operator here, they have now lowered their pricing to 39 pence per kilowatt

hour on their subscription tier, which is $9.99 a month, it's 10 quid a month, 120 quid a year,

but if you charge a lot on public DC charging and you are using the BEV network, then 39 pence

per kilowatt hour is very cheap. Now this is only the 7pm onwards rate, by the way, so there's,

yeah, a few hoops to jump through here, but it's 12 pence per mile on the average EV,

that's half the average cost of DC fast charging here, which is, you know, around 52 pence,

450 kilowatt charging, 76 pence on the motorway, 90 pence or more, that's what,

$1.10 for my US listeners on the more expensive DC fast charging we have, yeah, we pay a lot.

And finally, BYD, make one of the most interesting vehicles out there, the BYD Shark 6 is a plug-in

hybrid, it's an E-rev, actually, big battery, but the engine can technically drive the wheels

up at highway speeds, it will do a mechanical connect. BYD is now developing a 2-litre plug-in

hybrid Shark that'll be rated for 3,500 kilograms, braked towing, and that matches anything that

diesel can do like a Ford Ranger or Toyota Hilux. Fleet-oriented variants are planned,

and a high-performance version, the Shark 6 MEG, would take on the Ranger Raptor. A cab chassis,

Shark 6 is due next year for fleets, with increased towing capacity next year, the current 1.5-litre

plug-in hybrid remains on sale with a 2,500 kilogram brake towing limit and 790 kilograms

payload. BYD identifying that the limit on towing is a weakness compared to diesel vehicles in the

sector, and we'll remedy that with the 2-litre DMO off-road powertrain. We find this in the

Denzer B8, 550 kilowatts of power going in a Shark 6. Now, the global utility vehicle segment

is a big challenge to enter. It's a market where brand loyalty is high, diesel powertrains have

been the industry standard for a long time. High torque and good range. Key models like the Toyota

Hilux and Ford Ranger have established 3,500 kilograms as the required braked towing capacity,

and if you can't do that, you are a second-class truck or ute in Australian parlance. Any vehicle

falling short might not even be considered, and so now BYD says they're developing a 2-litre version

of that EREV Shark 6 in Australia to match that. The choice of plug-in hybrid powertrains is

pragmatic, I think, for a working vehicle. Wouldn't be any good for me. I don't want to be doing

servicing and oil changes and belts and pulleys and catalytic converters, but if you need the

benefits of electric, because you drive on electric power, but with internal combustion,

silent, zero-emission operations most of the time, but having that range extender

for any range or towing limitations. I can't believe we're still talking about this,

because this was BMW i3 Rex 10 years ago, plus. However, if you have a working vehicle and you

know, you're towing a lot and, you know, big towing, and it's not so much the weight, it's often

the size and the aero that affects towing more than having that range extender. Wouldn't be for

me, not for many people, but is a pragmatic, I think, approach for working vehicles. And we,

you know, come to a vehicle to load and all those kind of things for tools and external equipment,

not particularly common on diesel trucks. And so there are many benefits to this. I find the

BYD Shark 6 one of the more interesting vehicles on the market, because it tends to, I think,

head off at the pass some of the criticisms aimed at the US trucks that are all pure, you know,

the likes of the Cybertruck, which isn't a working vehicle, and the Ford F-150 Lightning, which,

you know, all Bev trucks can suffer if you're towing, you know, a really large load. And so, yeah,

fascinating, I think fascinating stuff. Now, thanks to our premium partners, the podcast

Porsche of the village in Cincinnati, Audi of Cincinnati East and Volvo cars of Cincinnati

East, national car charging on the US mainland and the Loha Charge in Hawaii and octopus

Electroverse global public charging made simple with one app and one map. Have a good

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

DAILY: BMW iX3 Starts Strong, Lucid Gravity Disappoints and Porsche Cayenne EV Range Test | 19 Oct 2025

About this episode

Lucid Gravity

Bmw Ix3

BMW Neue Klasse

out-the-door price

Bmw 3

Lucid Air

rear wheel drive

EPA range

123 kilowatt hour battery pack

in-house electric motors

miles per kilowatt hour

Tesla Supercharger

Electrify America

DC fast charger

naught to 80%

range testing

rear drive unit

Porsche Cayenne

Porsche Taycan

400 kilowatt charging

extended range electric vehicles (EREVs)

kilowatt hours (kWh)

BEV

plug-in hybrids

Tesla Model Y

level two AC ports

Chargeway

Ram 3500

Toyota Hilux

Ford Ranger Raptor

plug-in hybrid powertrains

Bmw I3

Ford F150 Lightning

Tesla Cybertruck

Request an Explanation

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