DAILY: EV Brand Loyalty, GM Lease Incentives and Porsche Cayenne Has A Twin | 21 Sep 2025

Welcome back to the podcast.

Today, EV brand loyalty, GM lease incentives, and Porsche Cayenne has a twin.

Plus stay tuned.

Later in the show, I'll tell you which port is planning on spending 500 million to cope

with the influx of Chinese imported EVs.

Well, no EV news China today, it's the weekend, it'll be back tomorrow on Monday.

And join me later for a bonus show called Power Plays, predicting the next EV battery

breakthrough.

It'll be live tonight for patrons, all Patreon exclusives go into the feed after seven days

for free.

So, if you want the content first, have a look at the member benefits, if you don't

mind waiting, well then just get it for free.

An annual EV driver survey of 3,900 people across the UK and key EU markets finds high-reported

brand retention amongst EV drivers.

93% in the UK, 87% in Spain and 86% in Germany say they would be very likely to buy the same

brand again.

Tesla drivers reporting a fall though, now only 50% would be very likely to repurchase

a Tesla, a gap that persists despite the Euro sales dropping by almost half in the first

six months of the year for Tesla.

Interest in Chinese made EVs is rising, 59% of respondents say they would consider a Chinese

made vehicle for the next purchase, 24% very likely, 35% very likely.

Around three quarters of drivers in the UK, Spain and Poland express interest in Chinese

EVs, where interest is lower in Sweden and Norway, fewer than half indicate they would

consider a Chinese car.

Chinese entrants like BYD have had a great first half of the year, their growth outpacing

several established car makers, they are increasingly becoming an alternative option.

I wonder how that will change over time, the car dealers always tell me that EV buyers

until now have been a little more well researched than the average car buyer, so I'm not surprised

that people research a brand very well, they buy their first EV or second EV and then they

have high brand loyalty because they made a conscious decision and they like the vehicle.

I wonder how that will change over time as EVs become more mainstream and people walk

into a dealer and say, what have you got, surprise me, we'll keep an arm there.

General Motors next in the news, they'll let dealers apply the current lease incentives

to the orders even if the vehicle is delivered after September 30th, the key federal tax

credit expiry, a dealer bulletin saying that EV lease deals for Chevy, GMC and Cadillac

will be extended through end of the year, provided the buyer's order is signed on or

before September 30th, the existing GM incentive program let buyers lock in rebates for ordered

vehicles if rebates fell, but it excluded leases, the bulletin changes that for EV leases

once government subsidies end next week, well what are we, 10 days, 9 days away as of today,

some 2025 models meet purchase tax credit rules when requirements are satisfied like the Silverado,

EV, other models like the Hummer, too expensive, over 80,000 MSRP. The prior workaround let

manufacturers claim a commercial credit and pass it along, that also ends September 30th,

with the commercial credit route loophole if you like closing, lease prices will rise,

customers who want to lease, get the current lease incentives have got to sign a buyer's order

with a dealer that follows the program on or before September 30th, the vehicle must be

invoiced by GM and be in transit and the dealer must execute the GM or Cadillac financial lease

part of the contract, that makes sense, you know, the vehicle's built, it's got a VIN and then

that means that you've got another three months until the vehicle arrives in your driveway,

but it's not kind of indefinite as it were, the arrangement most directly helps people

leasing vehicles that are already in GM's pipeline but slated to arrive after 9 days time.

All right let's talk Porsche, the Porsche Cayenne has a twin, no it's not going to be,

you know, the equivalent from Audi, I'm talking digital twin, the Cayenne is coming before the

end of the year, 800 volt, SSP platform from the group Volkswagen, like the Electric Macan,

development from Porsche engineers they say today, relied heavily on computer simulations and AI

digital twinning, which cut the need for the early prototypes, the project was the first

for Porsche at least, which went directly from digital to vehicle testing in pre-series,

that's according to the deputy chairman Michael Steiner, by moving from digital twins to pre-series

production, they avoided early prototyping, they said about 120 prototypes they didn't have to

build, they saved 20% of the dev time and so you can do an awful lot now because as long as the

data correlates you can build the entire vehicle digitally with AI, a digital twin, a perfect

replica in a virtual environment. Now Porsche say of course at some point you then need to build

vehicles to do things like, well, hot weather, charge testing and validation is a huge part,

so not even extreme condition testing, just making sure that the data is validated and so it's going

to be really quickly coming soon, before the end of the year we should get a reveal, when it does

we'll be talking more about the 400 volts, sorry 400 kilowatts charging on the 800 volt platform,

10 to 80 in 16 minutes and wireless charging 11 kilowatts an option. Now let's talk about

what subsidies and grants can do for a market, we've been growing in the UK as you know,

number one in Europe, flip-flopping with Germany in terms of Europe's biggest EV market and we've

had like zero incentives, there's some commercial stuff and some van stuff but really for the average

buyer we haven't had incentives for years, or subsidies. Now Renault has been asking

motorists in a new survey following the UK reintroducing the electric car grant ECG and

Renault found that 85% of respondents under 34 said they were most likely to replace their

internal combustion engine with an all-electric, now there's money off the vehicle. ECG came in in

July, it's up to £3,750 off the vehicle, not all vehicles get it, cars like the Puma from Ford do

get the full foreground off, respondents over 55 years of age were less likely to be swayed

by the £2,000 or £4,000 off the new vehicle. Those aged under 24 when they said why would your

first car not have been an EV, fast charging, range, they won longer range and more public

charging as the top three priorities for younger buyers, they want more fast charging, more range

and more charging in general. Following the application of the ECG, Renault's EVs are

all under £37,000, prices start from £21,500 for the Renault 5, £25,000 for the Renault 4,

the McGann and Scenic start at around £31,000 and £35,000 respectively. Now ERABS, extended range,

electric vehicles, what the heck are they? I don't know, there's an official definition

within the industry, there is an accepted definition that the Chinese are starting to use,

which is normally around a 1.5-litre engine, but it's an engine which is a range extender,

and so not tied in any ways to the traction wheels, although the BYD Shark does up at

highway speeds, no gearbox to speak of, but generally we say it's a range extender, like the

motorbike engine in that case, but in the EREV case it's a 1.5-litre turbo engine normally,

and that sits somewhere in the car operating in its optimal rev band and purely charging a battery.

The battery is very big, 40, 50, 60 kilowatt hours in some cases, which is why I've been saying,

then why are you sticking a bunch of oil and pulleys and catalytic converters into the car

if it's got such a big battery? The car makers themselves say, well, it makes EVs cheaper because

we can save on maybe half the battery cost, get the same range, stick an engine in which much

cheaper, and we've got the engine knowledge there already, so it makes sense to some buyers,

but it turns out a new report from Escalant finds actually consumers don't know what EREVs are,

they asked, do you know an extended range electric vehicle is, and everybody said no,

when asked about how EREVs operate, 6% said they run only on petrol, 55% believed they run only

on electricity, and to further confuse things, this particular report flagged the increasing EREVs,

like RAM, with their change of heart lately on their trucks, probably a good idea actually,

the RAM 1500 rev, which was the pure electric one, even though it says rev in the title of the car,

was not a rev, oh man, come on, that was cancelled, and the RAM charger, which was their EREV,

is going to be their priority, and this article says, well this report says, vehicles like that

and the Nissan e-power technology are forging ahead in EREVs, look, the Nissan e-power stuff

doesn't have a plug socket on the side, it has a range extender engine, but it will not move

unless you burn dirty fossil juice inside it, and that's not what I would call an EREV,

and yet this report which says no one knows what it is, well I've kind of proved their point,

I guess, I mean I'm not being spiky, tongue slightly in cheek here of course, but yeah,

I mean even the own report doesn't really know what an EREV is, automakers are expanding EREV

offerings as part of their electrification plans, and VW backed scout motors recently said that

they put both the all-electric and the range extended version of the scout motors out,

and I think it was like a two to one ratio, they certainly said considerably more deposits

for the EREV than its BEVs, McKinsey said the car buyers who are hesitant to buy an EV

could be tempted by an EREV if the manufacturers can clearly articulate what one is, well even

this report can't clearly say what one is, I think an EREV has a plug socket on the side,

you must be able to add clean green electricity to it to be at least zero emission capable,

the Nissan e-power stuff is a curiosity, but it's terrible technology if you just want to not burn

things, because well you have to, now if they put a plug socket on the side and a bigger battery,

well I think that'd be okay, but I don't see them doing that anytime soon, to realise the EREV

role in mainstream EV adoption, automakers have to explain why consumers should buy one,

I think the answer is they shouldn't by the way, I think that in a couple of years time,

because everyone's now starting to go wow we should do this, it's a whole amazing new avenue,

well BMW did it a long time ago, but let's put that aside, this is nothing new revolutionary,

it's because a lot of companies have got combustion technology in their locker,

in their IP, in their supply chains, and they really hate the fact that they were kind of

getting outflanked by pure BEVs, and so why fight with Tesla and Rivian for 400 miles of range when

by burning stuff, and if you've got to put a big battery in it as well, otherwise it's just a

plug-in hybrid, the traditional definition of a plug-in hybrid, and if you're thinking,

but isn't an EREV a plug-in hybrid, well yeah, I mean technically it is, and even then plug-in

hybrids are either series or parallel, oh is your brain hurting yet, I mean mine's a very tiny

brain so it doesn't take much to hurt it, we'll take a break, we'll come back two Tesla stories

in a Munich airport one, back in a mo. All right welcome back to the podcast, now a couple of

Tesla stories today, Dan Priestley who is head of the Semi project set a partnership with Uber,

and Uber Freight will help increase electric vehicle adoption and lower operating costs in

a post on X, Priestley wrote that the Semi can enter freight lanes with no compromises, yeah I

guess you've got that instant power haven't you, so you haven't got to worry about taking about

three minutes for a truck to get up to speed, the Semi pretty much gets on with it.

Evie adoption will accelerate as operators realise the cost and maintenance benefits

that Semi's offer, he said. Now Tesla has reached confidential settlements in two more lawsuits

tied to the 2019 California in deaths involving company's autopilot software court record show,

Tesla famously boasts that they have a hardcore, I'm doing air quotes now because that's how the

CEO describes them, a hardcore legal team which never settles a case when they think it's unjust,

well they just settled two more so well you can decide yourself if they thought okay maybe they've

got a point and settled it, the agreements came weeks after a Florida jury ordered them to pay

$243 million in compensatory and punitive damages in a separate fatal crash, the Florida verdict

and the two California settlements are notable because much of Tesla's valuation depends on

the CEO's promise to solve full self-driving software at scale and this would well any kind

of negative publicity derail it, I say that this isn't a financial podcast but I did look back at

the stock price when this news came out and the stock went up so I don't think anyone's paying

attention to Tesla news anymore, if bad news comes out then I think people just shrug it off and

do what they do. Now Munich Airport is opening a 275 point EV charging network,

it's AC charging, it's Bavaria's largest charging park and one of the biggest in Germany,

passengers can use the spaces on level four of the P44 car park, there you go, rated up to 22

kilowatts AC and 7216 PV panels were installed, not on top of the car park but in a big field

somewhere near with a combined output of three megawatts so they can all be charged on renewable

energy as well, funded with 5.2 million euros of the airport's own capital of money, Munich

Airport's got a big zero emission plan so that anything under their control, obviously not the

jet planes taking off on their runaways but everything else, they want to be zero emission

in the next 10 years, this is a big step towards it. Now electric commercial trucking

is starting to scale, creating challenges for operators and planning, charging and grid limits

is a really interesting conversation because you can charge a few cars in certain places,

you can't charge a few trucks in a few places because it's megawatt charging and you have

five or six trucks turn up at the same time, you need a big juicy connection and sometimes that

can be difficult to find, only a few thousand EV trucks are operating in the US right now,

EV Realty is a company that's currently raising funds and just did a big funding round actually

and what they use is unused grid capacity, so their algorithm, I imagine what they have is

finding places, they do this with data centers as well because data centers, AI stuff is always

really thirsty on the grid and so what they're doing with EV trucking is what's been happening for

a while already with data centers is that you plot where the grid has spare capacity and you plot

that against where trucks need to charge and they just raised another 75 million dollars in a funding

round to pay for more californian hubs a 76 stall fast charging site in San Bernardino, California

with four pull through stalls each rated megawatt charging using the mcs plug while operating the

hub will charge more than 200 class 8 trucks a day they say their proprietary software finds the

ideal sites by mapping where the grid has capacity where the vehicles need to charge and land use

as well. Spain's doing pretty well with EVs seeing a marked rise in EVs this year

after taking a while to catch up hey it's all right everyone does it at their own speed the

head of smart mobility it to iberdrola describing this year as the perfect year they've been waiting

for the growing EV presence in Spain raises demand on power systems though the key question is whether

Spain's grid will need some investments they say that past network investments mean that Spain is

more or less okay this is iberdrola saying that so there the grid's fine look the UK

national grid has been working on this far longer than you and i've been thinking about it by the

way and they're a lot smarter and and the national grid have always said there will no doubt be some

highly localized cases of where investment is needed if you're talking about certain bits of

EV infrastructure on a on a macro scale don't worry about it like you can plug your your EVs in

and charge them the grid is not going to collapse we won't have rolling blackouts current high

power charging sites have capacities of up to three megawatts electric trucks and heavy duty

vehicles are scaling up all over europe and so charging sites in maybe rural places or away

from the big network nodes will be needed but that's very expensive iceland is next in the news

a new passenger vehicle registrations are going up in iceland as you can imagine it's a pretty

small car market uh however what's driving the change ah you beat me to the punchline even in

iceland everyone's going EV only 20 of the market now in iceland is petrol and diesel combined

the rest is what they call new energy and unfortunately they do wrap shabby mild hybrids

into that they don't have plug sockets on the side but the rest are pure bears and plug-in

hybrids as well for the 80 of the new car market electric field vehicle demand in the

united states is rising but growth of the charging networks is not going as quick as

in previous years according to a new index published by here technologies and spd automotive

the report saying that the u.s added 37 000 ev charges in the last year rolling 12 months

june to june uh 24 to 25 at 19 increase in actual charging points and 52 increase in total

charging power compared to the previous year uh but they say a survey found 53 percent of

u.s respondents say there is still a perception of insufficient charging access being the main

barrier to broader ev adoption and finally which port is going to spend half a billion

on getting ready for the chinese invasion well that would be the port of south hampton

whichever look out the window next to me oh it's a stone's throw in that direction i mean i'm in

Bournemouth and pool on the south coast south hampton's the next city along and it's where the

big cruise ships go from it's where the teslas come in so i think teslas do come into bristol

don't they over here uh but i'd see them when i'm at the top floor of ikea have me veggie meatballs

you can look down from the big blue ikea box and look right down on teslas facility at south

hampton well now associated british ports are spending 500 million pounds on building a new

terminal at south hampton targeting to open by the end of the year sorry the end of the decade

that would be a hell of a that's china speed by the end of the year by the end of the decade

they say so three or four years time um shipments of chinese cars through south hampton have grown

from pretty much a rounding error negligible negligible levels really um to now tens of

thousands of chinese EVs a year uh they're gonna forecast a rise again and last year germany was

one of the largest sources of uk car imports china was second and uh increased sales of models from

the likes of byd jku a moda maxus expung you name it they're all coming to the uk or here already

actually china's early investment in the EV industry accelerated their global exports

and they have to export by the way they have to export from china because that's the only way

that they can carry on growing at the rates that they need to and if you will forgive me a moment

for being um slightly self-promotional uh check out the special podcast in your feed which went out

on oh it was thursday or friday uh which is all about the chinese over capacity problem it was

thursday night at eight p.m by the way for the patrons so that'll go live next thursday so the

25th of september um because the patrons get exclusive access for seven days then it goes

into the free feed so if you're not on patreon give it a couple of days next thursday that one

will flick over to the free feed and so i titled that podcast um china's perfect storm of deliberate

over capacity and well you know the reason i did that was because um this was a 20 year plan

which they enacted perfectly to have a kind of Darwinistic survival of the fittest

situation in china where they may end up with and they could never beat detroit and the germans on

combustion they knew they were never going to be the the world's greatest superpower in in combustion

but 20 years ago they said well we can do it with EVs and they made it part of the national plan

provinces got a completely around the idea hence it's china and so now it looks like we're

going to shake out to between six or eight or ten maybe less actually global chinese superstars

making incredible vehicles profitably but only five minutes ago well as of now there are hundreds

of chinese EV makers not quite going bust by the day but there's been plenty of big names

that have gone by the wayside plenty of cars that were bought by chinese citizens

from manufacturers which have gone to the wall and that's not great with connected vehicles and some

of those brands have kind of been moved on and want to be resurrected wm motors is one of them

they've been you know bought by another company and they want to bring them back and there's

all sorts of service with existing owners it's fascinating it's not an accident it's over capacity

which is a problem you know they could make they could sell about half as many more EVs again

no let me rephrase that china is selling 50% of the EVs that it can make they have a huge

over capacity in terms of their factories the price was a brutal and central government in china

said stop it and that's that's one thing but unlike when they did this with the nationalized

steel industries a few years ago or solar panels um the EV companies were privately owned and so

they will fall in line because like i say it's china but it's not happening very quickly and

suppliers are taking up to half a year to be paid so the supply industry is effectively the bank of

the chinese EV makers it's like free money that they're borrowing from them by not paying their

bills for months at a time it's a crisis situation that no one's talking about anyway so i made like

a ridiculously long was it 42 minute documentary style program looking into what's happening in

china um for patrons go have a listen or not of course and it'll be in the free feed next week so

huge issues around china um and why they have to export they have to start exporting um to try and

sell some vehicles and and get rid of some vehicles and also sell them two to three times what they

can sell them for at home even with the import duties and the extra uh now subsidies uh tariffs

that's the word it's been a long week the tariffs they can still sell them profitably right that's

your podcast for today thanks to our premium partners Porsche of the village in Cincinnati

Audi of Cincinnati east and Volvo cars of Cincinnati east national car charging on the

u.s mainland and the loha charging hawaii and octopus electroverse global public charging

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

a lie down have a good in cinema and remember there's no such thing as a self-charging hybrid

Porsche Cayenne

Chevrolet Silverado

Porsche Macan

Ford Puma

Renault 4

5 Renault 5

Byd Shark 6

Tesla Semi

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