DAILY: Car Makers Fight Euro EV Targets, F-150 Lightning Discounts and MG S6 | 17 Oct 2025

Welcome back to the podcast. Today, carmakers are fighting the Euro EV targets, the Ford

F-150 Lightning gets discounted and the MGS-6, plus stay tuned. Later in the show I'll tell

you about the true cost of EV charge cable thefts. We'll start with news of a leaked

position paper. This is from the European Carmakers Association, the ACEA. They're

proposing changes to the upcoming EU European Union CO2 rules and move the campaigner say

weakens the electric vehicle targets. This is fascinating because this paper wasn't ready

to be published. This is probably their inside thinking. This is the stuff they've been discussing.

Some of it might not be concrete. Some of it they might be disagreement of. But this

is a position paper from the carmakers themselves. The environmental group, transport and environment

warns that their proposals, more than 10 requested amendments to the 2035 clean air rules including

counting a shabby hybrid towards the zero emission totals and also changing how plug-in

hybrid emissions get measured could sharply reduce the share of BEV sold by 2035 in the

European Union, which would effectively, they say, halve the ambition to sell zero emission

cars in 2035. The ACEA responded that, well, I mean, the response from the car industry

was through a press office. It's the kind of stuff you'd expect them to say that electrification is a

principal route to decarbonisation, but that the pace should depend on the market demand and on

what they call enabling conditions. Once again, the car industry saying we need adequate charging

infrastructure when it wasn't there. Tesla built their own, for instance, for the carmakers are

saying, come on, build it for us. Effective purchase incentives and fiscal incentives to

make BEVs attractive, they say, and lower overall costs. These are all things that have been,

well, pretty much the same call for the last 10 years, they've been saying, and there's so much

price parity now between combustion and electric vehicles. Battery prices are dropping every

single year. How much more attractive and lower costs do you want EVs to be before they are

handsomely profitable? Well, that is, of course, the point of running a car company.

ACEA says flexibilities are needed to allow time for conditions to materialise without penalising

manufacturers and that alternative approaches should be examined. Yeah, some of these alternative

approaches include artificial fuels, fake fuels that would burn in the engines they've got already,

but require a lot of carbon to create them. And they say, oh, excess renewables. And of course,

that is exactly the same thing that hydrogen fans have been saying, excess renewables, or there's

no excess renewables at the minute. And actually, if you're going to run a car, run it on electric,

that's the most efficient way of doing it. Policymakers should preserve the 2035 zero

emissions sales target. It's 10 years away. Think about where the EV industry was in 2015.

And then imagine a time in 2035 and things are progressing and moving forward so quickly.

And I don't need to say China is providing some of that momentum at the moment. And of course,

the infrastructure is accelerating. There are incentives in many countries and region states

and things like that. And so, you know, of course, they're always going to fight their corner and

ask for more, more, more. Here in the UK, we've had these zero emission vehicles to the ZEV mandate,

not exactly called that, but we call it that. And so far, no one's paid a fine. They all said

last year, we can't possibly hit it. And nobody paid a fine this year, last year. This year,

so many of them said, you know, Ford have been vocal Toyota, but we can't possibly hit it. And

this year, chances are they'll no one will pay a fine. There's a there's, you know, credit trading

and selling more bevs and all those kind of things. And so complain and comply is the playbook

of the car industry over the last however many decades. And well, that's sticking to it. Right.

Let's talk about the Ford F 150 lightning prices getting cut regaining its leaders. The United

States most popular electric pickup truck Ford reclaimed the title of the best selling EV pickup

in 2025. After losing it to Tesla's cyber truck last year, they've sold more than 10,000 F 150

lightnings in Q3 versus about 5000 cyber trucks through September Ford sold over 23,000 electric

pickup trucks year to date Tesla about 16,000 38% decline on the cyber truck versus the same

time in 2024. Yeah, I think it's pretty clear. Everybody wants to buy a cyber truck has probably

gone and bought one now. There's probably not 250,000 people a year that want to go and get one

fascinating vehicle, a lot of innovation inside it that never gets talked about. But a popular EV

perhaps the cyber truck is not to sustain momentum at Ford though they're cutting the

F 150 lightning prices and increasing the range. Trim the flash trim by $4,000. Larry are down by

2000, according to Ford themselves. Now the MGS five is what I meant to call it all in one go.

It's not an MG pause S five because Audi wouldn't like that, would they? So they call it the MGS five.

No gap. Say all at once. Say it quickly. You'll get away with it so far they have. And now

there's a different version, a bigger version coming. The MGS six Euro end cap crash test photos

came out ahead of any particular official reveal. The official debut would think is coming,

but the crash test photos out and you know, great Euro end cap scores by the way.

But this is the first public images that I've seen at least of the MGS six. So two wheel drive,

1900 kilograms, kerb weight, same design language as the S five. So low mounted headlights,

narrow triangular DRLs and a full width rear live bar, which you know, is just

dure a girl these days, interior shots. So show the digital instrument display and a steering

all similar to the MGS five Euro end cap says that the S six was tested as a two wheel drive

vehicle with a single rear mounted motor like the S five. That's a 228 horsepower motor,

nor 62 6.3 seconds. So this will be a slightly larger, heavier S six, maybe a little bit slower.

And again, battery capacity and range, not disclosed, well not launched yet, but the S

five uses a 62 kilowatt hour pack, 288 miles rated on that WLTP. So you're right in the,

in the ballpark there of Renault, scenics and Nissan Ari is all around 300 miles.

MGS pricing would be somewhere between the MGS five, a bit more money than the MGS five,

which is some good deals on that at the minute. By the way, I was having a look at the MGS,

just not to buy one, not just re educating myself when I was, you know, lying in bed,

waiting to fall asleep and on auto trader, spending money I don't have. And yeah, the,

the, the MGS five has got some really good deals on get, pick up a used one. Fantastic deals.

The old car that we used to own the MG ZS EV stella deals on that. Oh, and don't talk about

the estate as well. The MG five, that is again, just pick up a used one. Some of them are quite

high miles by the way. I'm wondering if they've been taxis or not. Just don't mean ridiculously

cheap. Anyway, back to what we're talking about MGS six, surprising somewhere between the MGS five

and that new IM brand, which they're bringing over here, the IM six. And so maybe it would be

around low thirties. MGS six looks like a proper model Y competitor actually, but it will be

obviously a lot cheaper. This thing looks great. I mean, obviously apart from the massive dent in

the side of it, because these are crash test pictures, but ignoring that bit and all the

airbags having gone off. And this thing, I think this looks really good. Another probably really

compelling family vehicle that's very affordable from MG. Let's talk Tesla and the standard

versions, not standard range. I want to say standard range. It's just the standard trim

version of the three and the Y, the new cheaper versions that have launched already in the US

and Europe coming to China, but not yet. Actually, they're codenamed E 41 for the model Y and D

five zero for the model three. These are lower price stripped down versions of those two vehicles.

Tesla, China is developing their own versions rather than just copy paste, I presume. So it says

here that they're according to see any of the posts coming out of China and 36 K are reporting

that they're entering validation testing. Now, I suppose they could be the same vehicles that

have to be validated in China under different rules. Preliminary timelines say a multiple sources say

mid 2026. So why not sooner? Because China's so important. Well, design and validation documents

show that there's elements from the current three and the Y in these validation vehicles.

Look, these are the standard vehicles that we've got already coming to China, but why not already?

Well, we got them on October the seventh or North America got them October the seventh,

trimming the price by about $5,000 and taking away around 20 or so features. Some of them quite

big and some of them more inconsequential 36 K are says that the reason why China hasn't gone

for the cheap Teslas yet is because of the model Y L. That's the long wheelbase version. It's a

proper three row, not like the third row for people without, you know, legs and that's selling

really well in China. So they don't need they don't feel the need to go down market just yet.

Hey, good news as well for Tesla Model Y owners in Texas. Texas now offers a grant of two and a

half thousand dollars for EVs, including the model Y, which of course is made on home soil now in

Texas where the incentive is delivered through the light duty motor vehicle purchase or lease

incentive program for purchasing or leasing new vehicles or conversion systems powered by alternative

fuel to partially offset the changes to the federal EV tax credit. It'll operate until March

next year or until funds are exhausted and will disperse up to two and a half thousand dollars

per eligible vehicle, not just on the model Y, but I'm using that as an example because of course

that is made in Texas. Buyers who purchased outright or who lease for three years or longer

get the full two and a half grand. If you lease for a lower time, there's a kind of a step down,

you get less money. Current owners and future buyers also qualify. So if you already bought

your car, your EV in Texas, well, the grant could be claimed by those who use the federal

tax credit in September as well. In fact, this is only available for people who have gone through

either a long term lease or the purchase process. You need some certain documents and stuff in

Texas. So that's good month, good, good news that you can be getting a check in the post or

however they do it. If you've bought an EV in Texas lately, maybe you qualify, go check it out.

Now, Vauxhall has published its twin motor all wheel drive Grandland electric pricing qualifies

for the UK EV grant of fifteen hundred pounds, not the full amount though. The twin motor model

is also fifteen hundred pounds cheaper than the single motor version. So yes, you heard that

correct. It's not a typo. The dual motor all wheel drive version is considerably cheaper than the

one you can buy at the moment, which is a single motor. It starts at thirty six nine nine five,

but with the grant from the government, the GS entry level model is thirty five four nine five

sixteen inch infotainment screen, wireless Apple and Android integration, 10 inch digital instrument

cluster, wireless smartphone charging runs on nineteen's standard with some cool black exterior

detailing illuminated Vauxhall badges, electric tailgate, the ultimate trim, which is only

thirty six nine nine five after the grant comes off. Get your matrix LED headlights, heated wind

screen, heated front seats, head up display and a better high-five system as well. The all wheel

drive Vauxhall Grandland is their most powerful electric model to date. Three hundred and twenty

horsepower, not a sixty two six point one seconds and the big battery is seventy three kilowatt hours,

three hundred and eleven miles on that one DC fast charging is about right for this mid priced

family SUV market. Hundred and sixty kilowatts peak. It's all about the curve, isn't it really?

You don't want a car that just hits it and drops off straight away. So they give the twenty to eighty

time in twenty six minutes, which is a fudge. We always want the ten to eighty time please. Now

Waymo will run a pilot of fully driverless Jaguar eyepaces in London next year. Waymo operates

driverless services in six US states and entering Japan with their vehicles covering more than a

hundred million miles. The announcement comes following a June confirmation that Uber will

also begin trialing driverless vehicles under current UK law. Privately owned driverless cars are not

allowed. We get them. I think the legislation allows from the second half of twenty twenty seven,

but there's a government framework which allows companies like Waymo and Uber

to run pilot services. There's little driverless Jaguar eyepaces, which I've only ever seen on

YouTube videos, never even written in one. I've not been to the States in a while. I come in over

here to London now. Rivians are Jay Scarridge. He's the CEO who says other automakers, aka his

competition, must build in-house software to stay competitive as AI becomes central to EV

experiences. He warns the current approach, which is little islands of software dotted around the

vehicle that don't communicate with each other and the abstraction layers between the code being

written by third parties ending up with the manufacturers all prevents deep understanding

which is needed for the best practice in an EV. He says the way Rivian does it, obviously he would

say this, which is to make its own tech stack with its own code. They have a joint software

development program with Volkswagen as well as you know reported up to five point eight billion

dollars reports from Germany. I believe it was manager magazine. I haven't noted that they might

have been handles that last few weeks have been talking about how that relationship is strained

as Volkswagen have been saying, oh, we need to make some more combustion cars in the short to

make some money and the Rivian bit of the partnership effectively saying we have no

interest in rewriting our code to work out, you know, liters of fuel per minute and making little

bangs in your your cute engines. We make EVs and that's it. And so I think there's some fallout in

that partnership and what was described as a crunch meeting, although there was perhaps a

little bit of perhaps journalistic, you know, embellishment going on in that one. Or maybe it

was maybe it's crisis times there, I don't know. A the model though that they've got with Volkswagen

RJ Scarridge saying this week that others should be emulating without in-house capabilities or

partnerships, carmakers risk falling behind as vehicles rely on their own software and integrated

AI. Let's go to Germany now where Ian B. Vey is opening a 14.2 megawatts solar park with EV battery

storage. A new solar park is coming in in southwestern Germany. It generates enough electricity

for about five and a half thousand households. It is 810 kilowatts, 2.34 megawatt hours of stored

energy supplied by Encore and DB Deutsche Bahn startup for energy storage using old EV batteries.

So whether that's EV batteries that have come from carmakers from, you know, validation vehicles,

test vehicles, test batteries, batteries that were no longer needed that weren't insalable vehicles,

they've all been used about 360 of them from about 40 different vehicles to add storage to

this EV charging station. That's really cool. Now a full charge, the storage can supply the

equivalent of about two and a half thousand German households for three hours. So it's grid

connected as well. And that's a lot of stuff like that. It's brilliant about using EV batteries in

cool ways. Right, we'll take a little break and when we come back, lots more to talk about on the

podcast. Stick around. All right, welcome back to the show. Now, final few stories. Firstly, Tesla

facing weak demand for the Cybertruck has found an ingenious way to get rid of some of the

Cybertrucks that have been on, they're not dealer lots, are they? But, you know, in inventory

in Tesla's parlance, they've now begun selling their vehicles to SpaceX and XAI. Now, why would

XAI, which I presume is an anonymous office block somewhere in America, full of fabulously smart

AI coders and engineers, why would they want a fleet of Cybertrucks? Well, because Tesla can't

tell them. And I can understand why SpaceX might need some vehicles to do, you know, things, taking

people off to the rocket launch sites and high profile things like that. But XAI, well, maybe

they do need a fleet of vehicles for writing software. But either way, Elon Musk has found an

ingenious way to sell a bunch of Cybertrucks that nobody wants. And that's to sell them to

effectively himself. SpaceX and XAI have taken receipt of what they call a substantial number

of vehicles, an internal transfer that follows a lot of Cybertrucks sitting in inventory. The

Tesla engineer, Wes Morrill, who led Cybertruck Development, saying on social media, he is

delighted to see the vehicles being used across various Musk companies. Now, the New York Times

has released a new calculator. It's an EV versus gas car calculator to compare

lifetime ownership costs of EVs versus gas cars. Users choose preselected models or enter your own

vehicle specs. The tool combines purchase price, efficiency, planned ownership years and annual

mileage to work out your ownership costs. It accounts for EVs typically higher upfront price,

but lower ongoing costs from reduced maintenance and cheaper charging. A graph projects total costs

up to 15 years and marks cost checkpoints at five and 10 years, showing if and when an EV becomes

less expensive than a gas car. One limitation to the calculator. You can't adjust the charging

location for how much you pay. You and I know that if you charge an EV a certain times of the day

in a sunny climate, that might be during the day in sunny places. Here, it's overnight. It's

well, wait for people to have their dinner and head off to bed. Maybe eight or nine PM,

the grid gets very much underutilized here. My cheap rate kicks in at 11.30 PM on Intelligent

Octopus Go and then that runs through to 5.30 AM. For me, it's overnight hours. We know that

charging EVs at certain times of the day is many, many times cheaper than charging it on a DC fast

charging station. What are New York times for making a cool sounding calculator? I haven't

actually tried it in practice myself, but it's an insignificant thing. It would make a

material change of when that EV becomes cheaper to run if you can't input what you're paying

overnight versus public charging. They've worked to do, I think. Finally, theft and vandalism at

UK EV charge points has caused losses running into millions of pounds in the last three years

and some say threatens confidence in the whole EV rollout in this country. A freedom of information

request to more than 30 police forces disclosed over 200 incidents between 2022 and the middle

of this year, Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire forces together accounting for over 100 cases

in the past three years of cables being cut. Now, Alleggo, which is a CPO in this country,

Alleggo submitted the freedom of information request to the police forces, cautions that these

figures at the tip of the iceberg because many of the incidents go unreported and 40% of forces

contacted couldn't supply data. They're not recording it in their records as charger cable

theft. Maybe it's just a keyword mismatch thing, but they weren't able to match the crimes with

what was being asked for. Criminals typically target the copper. Actually, many metals in

the cables is the copper. They want each cable on a typical, each cable is different,

but each cable on a typical DC fast charge would be about 20 pounds. That's maybe $25

of copper to repair them. I would say, first of all, there's the inconvenience.

Then there's the repair cost. Instavolt, another CPO here, reports roughly 100 cable thefts

in the calendar year 2023-2024 costing 410,000 pounds. That's a significant amount of charges

they could have put in the ground, but they were spending it on fixing problems caused by

low life scumbags. Alleggo says cable theft harms drivers and erodes confidence in the network,

and we need a better design, deterrence, and faster mediation to limit the costs and preserve

reliable electric transportation. It's a bigger issue than I thought because I don't see it. I

tend to work from home without two young kiddos and I've got my work cut out there for various

reasons there and due to circumstances. I've largely given up doing anything but this podcast

so that I can be there for them. I don't do a lot of miles anymore and I don't see it,

but just because I don't see it doesn't mean it's not a massive problem. If you see it,

then I'd always love to know and send me a picture or something and you can always

email me hello at evnewsdaily.com direct email and yeah, is it a bigger problem where you are

than what I see down here? I did see my first ones at the swimming pool. I take my little

seven-year-old boy too. It's a leisure center. There's like football pitches for kids. There's

a kids gym, kids swimming pool, and a kids soft play area and they've put some EV charges there

for the parents DC fast charges to recharge. So yay, yay, well done you guys, well done for

stealing all the cables. They're all just ripped off at the moment and yeah brilliant, well done,

well done people. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. If you do on Patreon,

thanks to our premium partners Portia of the Village in Cincinnati, Audi of Cincinnati East

and Volvo cars of Cincinnati East, National Car Charging on the US Mome Land and the Low Heart

Charging in Hawaii and Octopus Electroverse. Global public charging made simple with one app

and one map. Have a good and see you tomorrow and remember there's no such thing as a self-charging

hybrid.

DAILY: Car Makers Fight Euro EV Targets, F-150 Lightning Discounts and MG S6 | 17 Oct 2025

About this episode

Ford F150 Lightning

BEV

decarbonisation

charging infrastructure

purchase incentives

electric vehicles

battery prices

electric pickup truck

MG5

MG6

Euro NCAP

kerb weight

WLTP

Nissan Ariya

MG ZS EV

Tesla Model Y

MG

Tesla Model 3

EV tax credit

Grandland

Vauxhall

EV grant

horsepower

fully driverless

EV

Volkswagen

combustion cars

EVs

Tesla Cybertruck

SpaceX

lifetime ownership costs

Volvo

Audi

Octopus Electroverse

Request an Explanation

Want to learn more?

Help improve this episode

More from EV News Daily - Technology and Business of EVs