The Ford F-150 Lightning is an electric truck that looks like the regular F-150 but runs on electricity instead of gas. It's important because it's one of the first popular trucks to go electric, showing that you can have a powerful vehicle without using fuel. Recently, Ford has been lowering its price to attract more buyers.
BEV means Battery Electric Vehicle. It's a car that runs only on electricity and doesn't use gas or diesel, so it doesn't pollute the air from its exhaust.
Decarbonisation is about reducing carbon emissions, which are harmful to the environment. In cars, this means using cleaner energy sources, like electricity, instead of gas or diesel.
Charging infrastructure means the places where electric cars can recharge their batteries. It's important for making electric cars more convenient to use.
Electric vehicles are cars that run on electricity instead of gasoline. They are often seen as better for the environment because they produce less pollution.
Battery prices are how much it costs to buy the batteries that power electric cars. When these prices go down, electric cars can become cheaper to buy.
An electric pickup truck is a truck that runs on electricity instead of gasoline. This means it doesn't produce exhaust fumes and can be better for the environment.
Car
MG5
The MG5 is an electric car made by the MG brand. It's designed to be a more affordable option for people who want to drive an electric vehicle without spending too much money.
Car
MG6
The MG6 is a bigger electric car from MG, which means it has more room and features than the MG5. It's designed for families or those who need more space in their vehicle.
Kerb weight is how much a car weighs when it's ready to go, with gas in the tank but no people or stuff inside. This helps you know how heavy the car is, which affects how it drives.
WLTP is a way to test how much fuel a car uses and how much pollution it makes. It's a standard used around the world to give better numbers than older tests.
The MG ZS EV is a budget-friendly electric SUV that is great for city driving. It's known for being practical and affordable compared to other electric cars.
The Tesla Model Y is an electric SUV that is similar to a car but has more space and a higher seating position, making it great for families. It runs on electricity, so you don't need gas, and it has a lot of cool tech features. It's becoming a popular choice for people looking for an eco-friendly vehicle.
The EV tax credit is a way for the government to help people save money when they buy electric cars. It reduces the amount of taxes you have to pay, making the car cheaper.
Fully driverless means that a car can drive itself without any help from a person. It can make all the decisions needed to get to a destination safely.
Volkswagen is a well-known car company from Germany that makes many different types of cars. They are now focusing on making electric cars and improving their technology.
The Tesla Cybertruck is an electric truck that looks very different from regular trucks, with a sharp, futuristic design. It's made to be tough and powerful, but Tesla has been having some trouble getting enough people to buy it. This truck is important because it's trying to change how we think about pickup trucks.
SpaceX is a company that builds rockets and spacecraft. They work on sending things into space and are famous for their ambitious plans to explore Mars.
Lifetime ownership costs are all the money you spend on a car from when you buy it until you sell it. This includes the price you pay, how much you spend on gas or electricity, and repairs.
Octopus Electroverse is a company that helps electric car owners find places to charge their cars easily using an app.
LIVE
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.
About this episode
Car manufacturers are pushing back against proposed EU EV targets, arguing for more flexible regulations to accommodate market conditions. The Ford F-150 Lightning sees price cuts to regain its status as the top-selling electric pickup, while MG introduces the MGS-6, boasting impressive safety ratings and competitive pricing. The episode also highlights the rising issue of EV charge cable theft in the UK, which poses a threat to the confidence in EV infrastructure. Insights into Tesla's new standard versions and incentives for EV buyers in Texas round out the discussion.
