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Welcome back to the podcast.
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Today, EV brand loyalty, GM lease incentives, and Porsche Cayenne has a twin.
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Later in the show, I'll tell you which port is planning on spending 500 million to cope
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with the influx of Chinese imported EVs.
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Well, no EV news China today, it's the weekend, it'll be back tomorrow on Monday.
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And join me later for a bonus show called Power Plays, predicting the next EV battery
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It'll be live tonight for patrons, all Patreon exclusives go into the feed after seven days
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So, if you want the content first, have a look at the member benefits, if you don't
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mind waiting, well then just get it for free.
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An annual EV driver survey of 3,900 people across the UK and key EU markets finds high-reported
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brand retention amongst EV drivers.
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93% in the UK, 87% in Spain and 86% in Germany say they would be very likely to buy the same
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Tesla drivers reporting a fall though, now only 50% would be very likely to repurchase
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a Tesla, a gap that persists despite the Euro sales dropping by almost half in the first
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six months of the year for Tesla.
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Interest in Chinese made EVs is rising, 59% of respondents say they would consider a Chinese
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made vehicle for the next purchase, 24% very likely, 35% very likely.
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Around three quarters of drivers in the UK, Spain and Poland express interest in Chinese
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EVs, where interest is lower in Sweden and Norway, fewer than half indicate they would
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consider a Chinese car.
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Chinese entrants like BYD have had a great first half of the year, their growth outpacing
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several established car makers, they are increasingly becoming an alternative option.
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I wonder how that will change over time, the car dealers always tell me that EV buyers
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until now have been a little more well researched than the average car buyer, so I'm not surprised
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that people research a brand very well, they buy their first EV or second EV and then they
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have high brand loyalty because they made a conscious decision and they like the vehicle.
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I wonder how that will change over time as EVs become more mainstream and people walk
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into a dealer and say, what have you got, surprise me, we'll keep an arm there.
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General Motors next in the news, they'll let dealers apply the current lease incentives
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to the orders even if the vehicle is delivered after September 30th, the key federal tax
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credit expiry, a dealer bulletin saying that EV lease deals for Chevy, GMC and Cadillac
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will be extended through end of the year, provided the buyer's order is signed on or
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before September 30th, the existing GM incentive program let buyers lock in rebates for ordered
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vehicles if rebates fell, but it excluded leases, the bulletin changes that for EV leases
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once government subsidies end next week, well what are we, 10 days, 9 days away as of today,
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some 2025 models meet purchase tax credit rules when requirements are satisfied like the Silverado,
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EV, other models like the Hummer, too expensive, over 80,000 MSRP. The prior workaround let
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manufacturers claim a commercial credit and pass it along, that also ends September 30th,
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with the commercial credit route loophole if you like closing, lease prices will rise,
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customers who want to lease, get the current lease incentives have got to sign a buyer's order
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with a dealer that follows the program on or before September 30th, the vehicle must be
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invoiced by GM and be in transit and the dealer must execute the GM or Cadillac financial lease
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part of the contract, that makes sense, you know, the vehicle's built, it's got a VIN and then
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that means that you've got another three months until the vehicle arrives in your driveway,
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but it's not kind of indefinite as it were, the arrangement most directly helps people
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leasing vehicles that are already in GM's pipeline but slated to arrive after 9 days time.
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All right let's talk Porsche, the Porsche Cayenne has a twin, no it's not going to be,
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you know, the equivalent from Audi, I'm talking digital twin, the Cayenne is coming before the
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end of the year, 800 volt, SSP platform from the group Volkswagen, like the Electric Macan,
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development from Porsche engineers they say today, relied heavily on computer simulations and AI
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digital twinning, which cut the need for the early prototypes, the project was the first
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for Porsche at least, which went directly from digital to vehicle testing in pre-series,
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that's according to the deputy chairman Michael Steiner, by moving from digital twins to pre-series
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production, they avoided early prototyping, they said about 120 prototypes they didn't have to
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build, they saved 20% of the dev time and so you can do an awful lot now because as long as the
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data correlates you can build the entire vehicle digitally with AI, a digital twin, a perfect
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replica in a virtual environment. Now Porsche say of course at some point you then need to build
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vehicles to do things like, well, hot weather, charge testing and validation is a huge part,
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so not even extreme condition testing, just making sure that the data is validated and so it's going
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to be really quickly coming soon, before the end of the year we should get a reveal, when it does
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we'll be talking more about the 400 volts, sorry 400 kilowatts charging on the 800 volt platform,
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10 to 80 in 16 minutes and wireless charging 11 kilowatts an option. Now let's talk about
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what subsidies and grants can do for a market, we've been growing in the UK as you know,
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number one in Europe, flip-flopping with Germany in terms of Europe's biggest EV market and we've
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had like zero incentives, there's some commercial stuff and some van stuff but really for the average
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buyer we haven't had incentives for years, or subsidies. Now Renault has been asking
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motorists in a new survey following the UK reintroducing the electric car grant ECG and
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Renault found that 85% of respondents under 34 said they were most likely to replace their
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internal combustion engine with an all-electric, now there's money off the vehicle. ECG came in in
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July, it's up to £3,750 off the vehicle, not all vehicles get it, cars like the Puma from Ford do
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get the full foreground off, respondents over 55 years of age were less likely to be swayed
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by the £2,000 or £4,000 off the new vehicle. Those aged under 24 when they said why would your
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first car not have been an EV, fast charging, range, they won longer range and more public
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charging as the top three priorities for younger buyers, they want more fast charging, more range
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and more charging in general. Following the application of the ECG, Renault's EVs are
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all under £37,000, prices start from £21,500 for the Renault 5, £25,000 for the Renault 4,
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the McGann and Scenic start at around £31,000 and £35,000 respectively. Now ERABS, extended range,
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electric vehicles, what the heck are they? I don't know, there's an official definition
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within the industry, there is an accepted definition that the Chinese are starting to use,
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which is normally around a 1.5-litre engine, but it's an engine which is a range extender,
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and so not tied in any ways to the traction wheels, although the BYD Shark does up at
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highway speeds, no gearbox to speak of, but generally we say it's a range extender, like the
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motorbike engine in that case, but in the EREV case it's a 1.5-litre turbo engine normally,
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and that sits somewhere in the car operating in its optimal rev band and purely charging a battery.
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The battery is very big, 40, 50, 60 kilowatt hours in some cases, which is why I've been saying,
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then why are you sticking a bunch of oil and pulleys and catalytic converters into the car
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if it's got such a big battery? The car makers themselves say, well, it makes EVs cheaper because
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we can save on maybe half the battery cost, get the same range, stick an engine in which much
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cheaper, and we've got the engine knowledge there already, so it makes sense to some buyers,
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but it turns out a new report from Escalant finds actually consumers don't know what EREVs are,
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they asked, do you know an extended range electric vehicle is, and everybody said no,
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when asked about how EREVs operate, 6% said they run only on petrol, 55% believed they run only
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on electricity, and to further confuse things, this particular report flagged the increasing EREVs,
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like RAM, with their change of heart lately on their trucks, probably a good idea actually,
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the RAM 1500 rev, which was the pure electric one, even though it says rev in the title of the car,
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was not a rev, oh man, come on, that was cancelled, and the RAM charger, which was their EREV,
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is going to be their priority, and this article says, well this report says, vehicles like that
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and the Nissan e-power technology are forging ahead in EREVs, look, the Nissan e-power stuff
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doesn't have a plug socket on the side, it has a range extender engine, but it will not move
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unless you burn dirty fossil juice inside it, and that's not what I would call an EREV,
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and yet this report which says no one knows what it is, well I've kind of proved their point,
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I guess, I mean I'm not being spiky, tongue slightly in cheek here of course, but yeah,
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I mean even the own report doesn't really know what an EREV is, automakers are expanding EREV
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offerings as part of their electrification plans, and VW backed scout motors recently said that
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they put both the all-electric and the range extended version of the scout motors out,
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and I think it was like a two to one ratio, they certainly said considerably more deposits
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for the EREV than its BEVs, McKinsey said the car buyers who are hesitant to buy an EV
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could be tempted by an EREV if the manufacturers can clearly articulate what one is, well even
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this report can't clearly say what one is, I think an EREV has a plug socket on the side,
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you must be able to add clean green electricity to it to be at least zero emission capable,
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the Nissan e-power stuff is a curiosity, but it's terrible technology if you just want to not burn
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things, because well you have to, now if they put a plug socket on the side and a bigger battery,
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well I think that'd be okay, but I don't see them doing that anytime soon, to realise the EREV
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role in mainstream EV adoption, automakers have to explain why consumers should buy one,
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I think the answer is they shouldn't by the way, I think that in a couple of years time,
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because everyone's now starting to go wow we should do this, it's a whole amazing new avenue,
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well BMW did it a long time ago, but let's put that aside, this is nothing new revolutionary,
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it's because a lot of companies have got combustion technology in their locker,
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in their IP, in their supply chains, and they really hate the fact that they were kind of
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getting outflanked by pure BEVs, and so why fight with Tesla and Rivian for 400 miles of range when
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by burning stuff, and if you've got to put a big battery in it as well, otherwise it's just a
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plug-in hybrid, the traditional definition of a plug-in hybrid, and if you're thinking,
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but isn't an EREV a plug-in hybrid, well yeah, I mean technically it is, and even then plug-in
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hybrids are either series or parallel, oh is your brain hurting yet, I mean mine's a very tiny
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brain so it doesn't take much to hurt it, we'll take a break, we'll come back two Tesla stories
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in a Munich airport one, back in a mo. All right welcome back to the podcast, now a couple of
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Tesla stories today, Dan Priestley who is head of the Semi project set a partnership with Uber,
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and Uber Freight will help increase electric vehicle adoption and lower operating costs in
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a post on X, Priestley wrote that the Semi can enter freight lanes with no compromises, yeah I
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guess you've got that instant power haven't you, so you haven't got to worry about taking about
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three minutes for a truck to get up to speed, the Semi pretty much gets on with it.
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Evie adoption will accelerate as operators realise the cost and maintenance benefits
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that Semi's offer, he said. Now Tesla has reached confidential settlements in two more lawsuits
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tied to the 2019 California in deaths involving company's autopilot software court record show,
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Tesla famously boasts that they have a hardcore, I'm doing air quotes now because that's how the
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CEO describes them, a hardcore legal team which never settles a case when they think it's unjust,
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well they just settled two more so well you can decide yourself if they thought okay maybe they've
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got a point and settled it, the agreements came weeks after a Florida jury ordered them to pay
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$243 million in compensatory and punitive damages in a separate fatal crash, the Florida verdict
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and the two California settlements are notable because much of Tesla's valuation depends on
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the CEO's promise to solve full self-driving software at scale and this would well any kind
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of negative publicity derail it, I say that this isn't a financial podcast but I did look back at
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the stock price when this news came out and the stock went up so I don't think anyone's paying
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attention to Tesla news anymore, if bad news comes out then I think people just shrug it off and
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do what they do. Now Munich Airport is opening a 275 point EV charging network,
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it's AC charging, it's Bavaria's largest charging park and one of the biggest in Germany,
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passengers can use the spaces on level four of the P44 car park, there you go, rated up to 22
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kilowatts AC and 7216 PV panels were installed, not on top of the car park but in a big field
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somewhere near with a combined output of three megawatts so they can all be charged on renewable
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energy as well, funded with 5.2 million euros of the airport's own capital of money, Munich
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Airport's got a big zero emission plan so that anything under their control, obviously not the
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jet planes taking off on their runaways but everything else, they want to be zero emission
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in the next 10 years, this is a big step towards it. Now electric commercial trucking
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is starting to scale, creating challenges for operators and planning, charging and grid limits
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is a really interesting conversation because you can charge a few cars in certain places,
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you can't charge a few trucks in a few places because it's megawatt charging and you have
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five or six trucks turn up at the same time, you need a big juicy connection and sometimes that
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can be difficult to find, only a few thousand EV trucks are operating in the US right now,
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EV Realty is a company that's currently raising funds and just did a big funding round actually
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and what they use is unused grid capacity, so their algorithm, I imagine what they have is
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finding places, they do this with data centers as well because data centers, AI stuff is always
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really thirsty on the grid and so what they're doing with EV trucking is what's been happening for
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a while already with data centers is that you plot where the grid has spare capacity and you plot
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that against where trucks need to charge and they just raised another 75 million dollars in a funding
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round to pay for more californian hubs a 76 stall fast charging site in San Bernardino, California
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with four pull through stalls each rated megawatt charging using the mcs plug while operating the
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hub will charge more than 200 class 8 trucks a day they say their proprietary software finds the
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ideal sites by mapping where the grid has capacity where the vehicles need to charge and land use
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as well. Spain's doing pretty well with EVs seeing a marked rise in EVs this year
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after taking a while to catch up hey it's all right everyone does it at their own speed the
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head of smart mobility it to iberdrola describing this year as the perfect year they've been waiting
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for the growing EV presence in Spain raises demand on power systems though the key question is whether
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Spain's grid will need some investments they say that past network investments mean that Spain is
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more or less okay this is iberdrola saying that so there the grid's fine look the UK
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national grid has been working on this far longer than you and i've been thinking about it by the
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way and they're a lot smarter and and the national grid have always said there will no doubt be some
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highly localized cases of where investment is needed if you're talking about certain bits of
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EV infrastructure on a on a macro scale don't worry about it like you can plug your your EVs in
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and charge them the grid is not going to collapse we won't have rolling blackouts current high
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power charging sites have capacities of up to three megawatts electric trucks and heavy duty
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vehicles are scaling up all over europe and so charging sites in maybe rural places or away
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from the big network nodes will be needed but that's very expensive iceland is next in the news
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a new passenger vehicle registrations are going up in iceland as you can imagine it's a pretty
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small car market uh however what's driving the change ah you beat me to the punchline even in
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iceland everyone's going EV only 20 of the market now in iceland is petrol and diesel combined
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the rest is what they call new energy and unfortunately they do wrap shabby mild hybrids
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into that they don't have plug sockets on the side but the rest are pure bears and plug-in
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hybrids as well for the 80 of the new car market electric field vehicle demand in the
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united states is rising but growth of the charging networks is not going as quick as
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in previous years according to a new index published by here technologies and spd automotive
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the report saying that the u.s added 37 000 ev charges in the last year rolling 12 months
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june to june uh 24 to 25 at 19 increase in actual charging points and 52 increase in total
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charging power compared to the previous year uh but they say a survey found 53 percent of
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u.s respondents say there is still a perception of insufficient charging access being the main
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barrier to broader ev adoption and finally which port is going to spend half a billion
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on getting ready for the chinese invasion well that would be the port of south hampton
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whichever look out the window next to me oh it's a stone's throw in that direction i mean i'm in
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Bournemouth and pool on the south coast south hampton's the next city along and it's where the
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big cruise ships go from it's where the teslas come in so i think teslas do come into bristol
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don't they over here uh but i'd see them when i'm at the top floor of ikea have me veggie meatballs
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you can look down from the big blue ikea box and look right down on teslas facility at south
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hampton well now associated british ports are spending 500 million pounds on building a new
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terminal at south hampton targeting to open by the end of the year sorry the end of the decade
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that would be a hell of a that's china speed by the end of the year by the end of the decade
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they say so three or four years time um shipments of chinese cars through south hampton have grown
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from pretty much a rounding error negligible negligible levels really um to now tens of
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thousands of chinese EVs a year uh they're gonna forecast a rise again and last year germany was
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one of the largest sources of uk car imports china was second and uh increased sales of models from
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the likes of byd jku a moda maxus expung you name it they're all coming to the uk or here already
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actually china's early investment in the EV industry accelerated their global exports
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and they have to export by the way they have to export from china because that's the only way
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that they can carry on growing at the rates that they need to and if you will forgive me a moment
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for being um slightly self-promotional uh check out the special podcast in your feed which went out
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on oh it was thursday or friday uh which is all about the chinese over capacity problem it was
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thursday night at eight p.m by the way for the patrons so that'll go live next thursday so the
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25th of september um because the patrons get exclusive access for seven days then it goes
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into the free feed so if you're not on patreon give it a couple of days next thursday that one
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will flick over to the free feed and so i titled that podcast um china's perfect storm of deliberate
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over capacity and well you know the reason i did that was because um this was a 20 year plan
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which they enacted perfectly to have a kind of Darwinistic survival of the fittest
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situation in china where they may end up with and they could never beat detroit and the germans on
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combustion they knew they were never going to be the the world's greatest superpower in in combustion
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but 20 years ago they said well we can do it with EVs and they made it part of the national plan
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provinces got a completely around the idea hence it's china and so now it looks like we're
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going to shake out to between six or eight or ten maybe less actually global chinese superstars
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making incredible vehicles profitably but only five minutes ago well as of now there are hundreds
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of chinese EV makers not quite going bust by the day but there's been plenty of big names
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that have gone by the wayside plenty of cars that were bought by chinese citizens
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from manufacturers which have gone to the wall and that's not great with connected vehicles and some
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of those brands have kind of been moved on and want to be resurrected wm motors is one of them
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they've been you know bought by another company and they want to bring them back and there's
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all sorts of service with existing owners it's fascinating it's not an accident it's over capacity
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which is a problem you know they could make they could sell about half as many more EVs again
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no let me rephrase that china is selling 50% of the EVs that it can make they have a huge
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over capacity in terms of their factories the price was a brutal and central government in china
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said stop it and that's that's one thing but unlike when they did this with the nationalized
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steel industries a few years ago or solar panels um the EV companies were privately owned and so
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they will fall in line because like i say it's china but it's not happening very quickly and
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suppliers are taking up to half a year to be paid so the supply industry is effectively the bank of
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the chinese EV makers it's like free money that they're borrowing from them by not paying their
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bills for months at a time it's a crisis situation that no one's talking about anyway so i made like
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a ridiculously long was it 42 minute documentary style program looking into what's happening in
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china um for patrons go have a listen or not of course and it'll be in the free feed next week so
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huge issues around china um and why they have to export they have to start exporting um to try and
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sell some vehicles and and get rid of some vehicles and also sell them two to three times what they
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can sell them for at home even with the import duties and the extra uh now subsidies uh tariffs
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that's the word it's been a long week the tariffs they can still sell them profitably right that's
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your podcast for today thanks to our premium partners Porsche of the village in Cincinnati
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Audi of Cincinnati east and Volvo cars of Cincinnati east national car charging on the
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u.s mainland and the loha charging hawaii and octopus electroverse global public charging
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made simple with one app map with one app and one map i told you it's been a long week i'm off for
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a lie down have a good in cinema and remember there's no such thing as a self-charging hybrid
