DAILY: BMW U.S. EV Production, Volvo’s Massive Upgrade and EV Microcars | 22 Jan 2026

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Welcome back to EV News Daily.

Today, BMW's US EV production, Volvo's massive upgrade,

and EV microcars plus they tuned because later in the show,

I'll tell you why one Arctic ferry is putting batteries to the test.

On EV News China today, we're talking about BYD,

unloading on Argentina, China's charging network,

and the Zika 8X plug-in hybrid.

Let's kick off.

BMW will start building electric cars in America later this year,

even as its main battery partner delays a key plant.

Automotive Energy Supply Corporation, AESC,

has paused work on a $1.6 billion battery cell factory in South Carolina

that was meant to feed BMW's electric ramp up there.

BMW is pressing on.

It plans to produce at least six models in the US by the end of the decade

to cover the gap left by the stalled AESC site.

The supplier will divert cells from its other factories

to BMW's South Carolina operations.

Spartanburg has already been tooled to build Neuerklasse models this year,

and BMW has built a dedicated battery assembly plant in nearby Woodruff to feed it.

The plan had been simple.

Woodruff would receive cells from AESC's new facility in Florence,

also South Carolina.

AESC's decision to pause construction there, though,

they cited uncertainty in the United States,

puts that schedule at risk and raised doubts over making BMWs in the US.

Nikolai Martin, BMW's chief procurement officer,

has now said that the supply problem has been eliminated.

The Woodruff assembly plant will start operations as planned this year.

Spartanburg will begin fully electric vehicle production by the end of this year,

and during the transition AESC will ship itself from existing global production networks,

not Florence.

The workhorse of the new lineup, of course, is going to be the IX5.

That follows the IX3 and the new three series electric as well.

That's the all electric version of the fifth gen X5, due by the end of this year.

BMW then expects to add IX7, sometime next year, and IX6 the year after.

There'll be an off-road one, rumored 2029, a fully electric IX4 in developments as well,

but BMW has yet to fix a production side.

Perhaps there would have been in Hungary, where the firm is building a new plant.

That's one option.

Now Volvo will deliver a new infotainment interface

to 2.5 million cars later this year, in what it calls

one of the largest over-the-air updates in automotive history.

Every single Volvo running Android since its 2020 debut, that was the XC40 recharge,

that debuted that, is going to get the new Volvo car user experience.

That's already on their brand new cars, the new EX30, EX90, EX60,

talk about that on tomorrow's podcast.

The update turns a six-year-old car, an old 2020 Volvo, into effectively a car,

with displays and functions that match the latest models.

It also underlines the core promise of connected cars,

a fleet that will be current for far longer, through remote software not new hardware.

Volvo had planned to overhaul last year, but delayed it for more development time.

Anders Bell, the firm's chief technology officer, now says the software sits in

final testing and validation, and will launch within months.

He argues that because Volvo operates in many more countries than Tesla,

the scale and spread of a single roll-out ranks amongst the most significant fleet-wide update

ever, even if the American firm is the one that normalized OTA updates.

Once installed, the software will give updated cars infotainment,

that is essentially identical to what you'd get if you walked in and brought a brand new

100 grand EX90. Aside from, well, the obvious limits, the chips are older, the screens are smaller,

but the common base also sets up a big step. Bell says that after the upgrade,

they will be able to roll out the current Gemini artificial intelligence

rather than Google Assistant. That becomes much more straightforward.

As a Polestar driver myself, and a big Gemini AI user, I can't wait to see what that's like

in the car. Gemini will let drivers hold natural conversations with their cars,

not having to use clunky exact phrases the amount of times I ask my Polestar something,

and he goes, sorry, I do not understand. And you're like, it wasn't that hard.

You can translate messages, you can tell it to send messages from your phone,

you can query the owner's manual, ask you how to do things, you can pull precise information

on destinations, you can ask, well, anything that you would ask an LLM. Using artificial

intelligence on your phone or your computer, Volvo says that when you have a real life dialogue

with an AI that is intelligent and knows the nuance of conversation because Gemini has been

trained on, well, everything ever. So when you ask how many kilowatt hours are left in my battery,

it knows what a kilowatt hour is. It knows that EV stands for electric vehicle,

which other voice assistants don't. It's a step change. And if you don't get the whole AI thing,

and I get it, it's a bit of a gold rush and a bit of a fad and a trend. I'm super, super

interested in how that translates to cars. Let's move on. Renault and Stellantis are backing

the plan in Europe for small electric cars, but they fear the fine print in December.

The European Commission floated plans to shift to full electrification for small vehicles,

still allowing for some internal combustion, though. Car makers liked the political signals.

They worry, though, that the rules may turn a simple release valve into a bit of a tangle.

At the core is the M1E. That would be a new category of car in Europe. Under 4.2 meters long

has to be built on European soil. Each sale would count as effectively 1.3 combustion cars.

That's 1.3 electric credits, if you get my drift. Those are these CO2 targets. And so the car makers

like the idea of that. In theory, it lets them sell more petrol cars for a little bit longer,

without ruinous fines. Brussels has promised to recognize the heavy development costs of

small EVs and to freeze the rules that add extra burden. National and city governments inside

and outside the EU, like here in Great Britain, could add perks like lower parking charges and

scrappage bonuses if you buy one of these M1E cars. The scheme ties the support

to local content. The aim is to back small car makers. While keeping the supply chain and jobs

in Europe. Emmanuel Capilano says the move is sound but rejects any strict sourcing rules.

He wants a stage supply buildup. The Renault 5 is built in France with batteries from AESC.

That would comply. The Fiat Grande Panda is in Serbia that may scrape through on EU content.

Chinese parts, batteries and motors, the big ones, of course,

complicate the bill of materials Renault's Dacia pushes for fleet level rules, rather than

per car. Because that would offset its China built spring against the EU models. Renault says

it already keeps supplies close to its plants. Really interesting. I got a bonus show all about

that. Just my opinion, I think it's a fantastic idea. There's a lot of stuff around how safe cars

have to be now and there's no point building a small city car that's never going to do 150mph

on a motorway, needing all of the protection if it's limited to say 62mph. You want it to be safe,

obviously, but there's costs and it's not clear cut. We'll wait and see.

Hyundai's IONIQ 6N wants a few thrill seekers to be interested. It's second electric performance

car, 0-62 in 3.2 seconds, top speed of 160, and it's clear it's a step up from the IONIQ 6.

That matters because Hyundai's N division is fast becoming one of the few mass market outfits to

really treat EV performance as more than just a straight line party trick. The IONIQ 6N follows

the 5N using hardware and software that adds texture, not just straight line thrust. A high

output dual motor powertrain fed by the usual 84kWh battery is good for 302 miles, officially WLTP,

electrically adjustable dampers, important, and an electronic limited slip diff back up the power.

The car will cope with more than just motorway work, but maybe it's not going to be taken on the

ever by its owners, but it could do. The firm's simulated sequential gearbox was seen on the

IONIQ 5N and that returns with shorter ratios and a new sound system. The feature won much praise

on the earlier car as it gave drivers cues about speed and acceleration, and it is that

is a party trick, but it does make you smile. Hyundai has dressed the car to match the numbers,

new rear spoiler front splitter side skirts, rear diffuser, I love all the little red lines on the

5N, looks so cool on those big wide Pirelli P-Zeros. Inside, an N-specific steering wheel

carries paddles for the simulated gearbox and extra controls for drive mode. Six-paint finishes

with pearlescent white standard, looks amazing, and their signature blue, their N blue,

that is so gorgeous, you get that pearlescent black as well. Oh, the metallic grey looks good.

All right, let's move on. We'll talk Kia, sister company. They've been cutting prices at home on

their EVs by up to $2,000, and South Korea's price war is a little bubbling up trend I've

been talking about for a few weeks now. The clearest sign yet, the South Korea's EV price war

has only just begun. The move follows something that Tesla started, reducing the Model Y and Model

3 by as much as $9.4 million. That's almost $6,500 USD. BYD wants some action in South Korea as well.

The Dolphin hatchback is launching about $13,000 USD equivalent. That brings the average selling

price down of the EV market, pulling Kia's core models into that price fight. EV6 dropped by $3,000,

EV5 down by $2.8 million, and sole buyers, if you live in Seoul, you could get an EV3

for $23,500 USD equivalent with some local subsidies. That's an amazing price for an EV3.

Standard variant EV5 would start at $23,000 USD as well, again, with local discounts and incentives.

Kia wants to shore up residual values so as not to absolutely kill the people that just bought

their brand new EVs. They want to issue performance certificates for used EVs and expand its in-house

quality grading system. Customers trading in an existing Kia EV for a new one get even more discounts

as well. Tesla, though, still sits at the top of the market. The Model Y Long Range Premium

sells for $41,000 USD equivalent. That's about $60,000,000, but they just took $10,000,000 off of it

at the year end. Now we'll take a break. We'll come back. We'll talk about Scotland,

EV interest online, and electric buses. Stick around back in a moment.

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All right, welcome back to the podcast. Now, British car buyers spent much of last year

looking at electric cars they didn't actually buy. Imagine Studio's quarterly report based on 2.3

billion image views on UK car buying websites. Retailers, brokers, finance platforms, etc.

showed BEVs were 29% of all cars searched for. Let's call it a third, right? But BEVs were 23%

of our new car market last year. The gap between browsing and buying is interesting. A zero

emission vehicle mandate demands 33% of new sales are pure BEVs by the end of this year.

Again, last two years, none of the car makers are to pay any of the fines. They complained.

Boy, did they complain. None of them have had to pay any fines. In fact, in December,

we had such a killer month last month of pure BEV sales here in the UK that if we had every month,

like December, we'd be at 33%. It won't be. But still, four of the five most searched for EVs

were what they call the SUV style. Dacia Spring, Kiri V3, Shkoda L Rock and Shkoda Enniak.

This SUV style is really starting to bother me. What do you think an SUV is? I think an SUV

is a big, possibly three row family wagon, right? Slab sided. The dimensions have to be

physically large in my mind to be called an SUV. They call the Dacia Spring an SUV. Sport utility

vehicle. Dacia Spring, really? All right. Okay. Come on. Off high horse. Come on. But only around

a quarter of EV models are qualifying at the moment for the EV purchase grant here. So much of

the EV curiosity might have to be outside the scope of the discounts that are being offered here.

Now, let's talk about electric tram buses. 39 new EV buses coming from a Riva in the Netherlands.

A rare foothold in one of Europe's most mature EV bus markets. The deal covers 18 new buses

and 21 articulated vehicles for high capacity bus transport in the Oost Brabant region

and cities like Tilburg. Urban networks work to tight operational standards there. Dense timetables

and certainly no patience for unreliability. A Riva will deploy all new electric fleets

on high frequency city routes testing both the technology and the ability to sport intensive

duty cycles. They use the Irizard buses, 615 kilowatt hours. So no stopping during the day,

overnight depot charging. Rivian is next in the news. They've moved fast to fill the gap of the F-150

Lightning by Ford. Rivian senior manager for fleet sales. Seth Parks taking to LinkedIn

to urge fleet buyers if you've had a lightning order in or maybe it's even a cancelled order

to come and buy a Rivian R1T. Ford's retreat sits at the center of an EV shakeup in America

that's really spooked the likes of GM and Ford. In fact, a $19.5 billion impairment charge,

Jim Farley, Ford's boss said EV vehicles priced between $50,000 and $80,000 don't sell. The

lightning itself was between $60,000 and $90,000. That leaves corporate buyers with budgets to spend

and decarbonization targets to hit without one of the options. In fact, the most popular option

for an EV truck in America. So Rivian says, come here, we'll open the doors and welcome you.

They've also of course got the electric delivery van, the EDV. They sell that to

the meal kit firm Hello Fresh and pizza firm Slice and of course Amazon is their biggest customer

and investor at more than 35,000 branded Rivian EDVs on run routes for the e-commerce giant

out of a 100,000 unit order which should be fulfilled by the end of 2030. They're over a

third of the way in now. Let's talk about this. This is such a cool story. On January 1st, the

MF Varsgund, an all electric passenger and car ferry completed its first ever run in Northern

Norway where the temperatures were minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit, minus 25 degrees Celsius,

a corner of the Arctic where cold and reliability, not something like a carbon footprint, is what

usually shapes a design choice of a ferry. Yet the MF Varsgund runs purely on electricity.

Unlike the other car ferries all in the region, no engine running, turning a routine crossing into

a test of whether pure battery power could cope with some of the harshest conditions. The ship is

50 meters, which is enough for 28 cars and 100 passengers, modest by ferry standards, but enough

to prove a point. A fully electric vessel keeps a regular schedule, even in sub-zero weather,

with no backup engine, no hybrid drive. Last year, 96% of new car registrations in Norway

were pure electric. I think we're at the point of saying Norway's done. No offence Norway,

but we're done with you. As drivers and firms have moved ahead of everybody else to go electric,

road transport has shifted. Now coastal shipping is the next battleground, and it's edging the same

way. And that's your podcast for today, thanks to our premium partners National Car Charging on the

US mainland and Aloha Charge in Hawaii, and Test EV, Avalu's trusted partner for independent

EV battery health testing in Australia and New Zealand. There is a bonus show in your Patreon

feed talking to Nathan from Test EV, and that's out on Saturday this weekend on the public ad

supported free feed. That's a really good one. Actually, fascinating use cases for battery

health testing that I think will put a lot of worries for many people to bed. But there we go.

Have a good day and remember, there is no such thing as a self-charging hybrid.

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DAILY: BMW U.S. EV Production, Volvo’s Massive Upgrade and EV Microcars | 22 Jan 2026

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