DAILY: EV Overtakes Petrol In Europe, GM Adds Electrify America and IONIQ 6 N Pricing | 27 Jan 2026

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Welcome back to EV News Daily.

Coming up today, EV is just over to petrol in Europe.

GM adds Electrify America and some Ionic 6n pricing.

Plus, stay tuned, because later in the show, I'll tell you why Audi thinks the future

of premium might not be big screens.

Hey, have you been listening to this podcast?

I've been banging that drum for a couple of years.

We'll see what Audi have to say.

On EV News China today, we're talking about the Xiaomi Su7 beating the Tesla Model 3.

Just took its crown.

The BYD targets on premium foreign brands' backs.

And Tesla dangling some new incentive to try and shore up demand in China.

OK, let's kick off.

This is an enormous story.

It's almost worth making a special bonus show about, but I can probably wrap this up

in three, four minutes.

Battery electric vehicles.

Pure BEVs just outsold petrol in the European Union last month in December, a first for

the bloc.

They also beat petrol across Europe as a whole, if you add in the EU, plus Britain and Norway

and others.

While total car sales logged a sixth straight month of year-on-year growth according to

the ACEA, that's the Car Makers Association.

BEVs, BEVs, pure electric cars, took 26.3% of registrations across the EU, EFTA and

Britain in December against just 21.7% for petrol-only cars.

BEVs and plug-in hybrids.

That can be a distinction.

You might say, well, actually, if it's got a plug socket on the side, even if you never

add petrol to that plug-in hybrid, we should have a look at those numbers.

All right, let's do that.

I'm not a huge fan of plug-in hybrids, but if it's got a plug socket on the side, that

was a third of December's registrations, the same share as petrol-mild hybrids.

In Britain, BEVs took a third of December's sales, I've told you that already, 33%.

That's our country's 2026 target hit already in December just gone.

Now, okay, January will probably be below, 33%.

And the car makers went, oh, yes, but we've had to reduce the prices, so we can't do it

forever.

I understand.

Tesla missed the memo.

It's European sales down 37.2% in 2025.

That's the sharpest drop of any car maker in Europe, apart from, well, the really small

makers like Lancia, or the other one was Jaguar, and Jaguar didn't have any new cars to sell.

So what a record for Tesla.

Well, we were bigger than the company that weren't selling cars.

Wow, they have got a lot of work to do this week.

They'll have their earnings out, and their earnings call when their cheerleader in residence,

their chief executive, will no doubt try and drum up some more support from the faithful

who knows what he'll say, but the actual numbers of their car business do back up those claims

that we're not really a car maker so much, but we should think of them as robots and

AI, which doesn't interest me as much anymore.

But they've got some work to do, because the cars are good.

Now, the slide hurts more because Tesla sells only EVs in a market that was massively up

in EVs.

Petrol and diesel together, if you add them all, let's do that.

Let's do that game.

Petrol and diesel with no hybrids.

Well, that would be 35 share.

OK, 35%, let's call it a third of the market.

So a third of our cars, we sell a petrol and diesel combined combustion, no battery.

That's down from 45% a year earlier.

Along said, the death of diesel is going to be short and sharp.

It's people will just, the used market will obviously take a long time to change.

But new cars, people won't want to be exposed to it and range anxiety kicks in when all

those petrol stations start closing, because they're not charities, they're businesses,

and they will close the ones that aren't profitable and you can't fill up your car

with diesel.

Now that, my friend, is range anxiety and no one knows it's coming.

Well, you and I do because we talk about it every day, but that's coming and it's

coming really soon.

Now, let's talk a little bit about the Bev growth coming from four big markets, Germany,

up 43%, Netherlands up 18, Belgium up 12, France up 12 together, 62% of the European

unions, 1.88 million Bev registrations.

The markets turning electric as policy makers are brow beaten by car makers in December,

the European Union lawmakers proposed watering down the ban on emissions from 2035 under

pressure from the car makers that are struggling to make money in the face of cheaper Chinese

rivals.

Chinese brands are tightening the screws registrations of BYD in Europe, Britain and the EFTA, the

Freed Trade Association, up 230% in December.

Volkswagen and Stellantis in the region also did well, Renault is pretty stable, it was

mainly only Tesla that has been falling.

Analyst Mathieu Schmidt, well worth following on social media, notes that part of the drop

in petrol sales could be because some of the cars were reclassified into being mild hybrids,

which does a little bit for the emissions, targets and stuff for the car makers.

He reckons it will take five years before pure electric cars overtake all combustion

in the region, the power sector is shifting to last year wind and solar made more electricity

than fossil fuels in Europe, including Germany, despite, and here, really modest sunshine.

I mean, we're a lot of winds, we're very windy, not too sunny.

As grids get cleaner and Bevshare climbs, the link between cars and carbon emissions grows

tighter.

OK, let's move on.

This is great news.

This next story, General Motors has now added Electrify America's network into its own apps,

giving Chevrolet, GMC and Cadillac owners direct access to the 5,000 fast charging stations

without leaving GM's ecosystem.

The chargers are 350 kilowatt units and sit inside the bit called public charging in their

apps.

General Motors wants to strip friction from public charging as it scales EV sales.

Yeah, that's kind of an obvious thing that really should have been happening for a lot

longer, but that's good news that it's happening.

Drivers can now find the available stations, set your car to route to them, start a session

and pay all from within the app, no longer needing to juggle multiple apps and credit

cards and login systems and things like that.

The tie-up fits a broader push to ease the friction.

GM now gives Chevy, GMC and Cadillac owners entry to 250,000 public charging stations

across the US.

The network supports a growing EV lineup.

GM sold more electric vehicles in the US than anyone else, apart from Tesla last year, helped

by the Equinox and the expanding range.

The next volume test will be the bolts due at dealers, well I think now really, due with

customers certainly, GM says that the bolt will offer more range than any other electric

car in its price range, and there's only two.

I mean, it's the bolt and it's the leaf at 30K, a claim aimed at price-sensitive buyers.

GM is trying to do two things at once, make EVs cheaper and easier to live with and keep

their options open about how long to back each model and when to transition them over

to electric power.

Hyundai got some pricing out for the Arnick 6 in the UK, Hyundai Motor UK opening orders

for the new 6N, pricing the performance at £66,000.

First shown at Goodwood last summer in West Sussex, now arriving at their showrooms.

The Arnick 6 is all about Hyundai's technical prowess.

It builds on the Arnick 5, same platform obviously, or EGMP, with a more aerodynamic shell on

the 6, and new electronics.

Power comes from their dual-motor all-wheel-drive setup.

The N-grin boost mode, NGB mode, delivers 478 kilowatts of power, launch control will

do 0-62 in 3.2 seconds in the 6N, it's properly rapid.

Top speed 160 miles an hour, or 257 kilometres an hour.

Same battery pack, 84 kilowatt hour, 800 volts architecture, so turn up to a 350 kilowatt DC

fast charger, and actually 18 minutes, 10 to 80.

Hyundai adds some N stuff to the software, there's the fake gear shifts, they've shortened

the virtual gear ratios with some code, and the new active sound system is a bit different

to the 5 as well.

OK, let's talk a little bit about Rivian, narrowing down when we'll get the R2.

We now think month is June.

Rivian says the first R2s will be in customers' hands sometime this June, and that's as specific

as they've ever been.

They confirm the timing to a local outlet, WGLT, during a local media tour of their plant in

Illinois.

Tightening guidance it had only previously said was the first half of 2026.

Well, I guess the last couple of days of June still would be the first half of 2026.

Rivian's take much of its future on the mid-size R2, they've got to move to volume as quick

as possible, the company needs to start building saleable units.

That would be what, March, April, maybe May, depending on how quickly you get those vehicles

out to people, that's a hard task for a young car maker.

There are signs of progress though, validation builds of the R2 have been rolling off the

line this month, maybe it was December, a key step between prototyping and customer units.

A blog post last Friday said that production begins in the spring.

Is June spring?

Early summer?

I don't know.

It's all around then, the firm admits that the calendar, not the tooling, is going to

be the greatest strain.

Rivian's VP for production, Tony Sanger called maintaining team motivation and the pace of

execution, his biggest challenge in meeting the timetable, the comment points to the human

limits of running at launch pace for month after month after month.

We hope that they obviously get the vehicle out when they can and that it's as good as

we all think it's going to be.

Lots of people excited about R2.

Right, we'll come back, we'll talk about Amsterdam and used EVs, one of my favorite

topics, and Volkswagen, building EVs in America.

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Welcome back to the podcast.

Let's go to Amsterdam.

I'd love to.

Amsterdam plans to scrub its streets of meat and fossil fuel adverts from this May.

The city claims a global first.

No other capital has banned advertising for things that cause emissions.

Amsterdam itself tried in 2020 to remove fossil fuel adverts, but settled for a somewhat

narrower deal on metro stations.

The new rules go further.

They target outdoor advertising for anything like a petrol car or a diesel car, anything

like a flight or cruises for EV makers.

It narrows the public platform for combustion technology and high carbon travel while leaving

space for electric mobility to be advertised.

Yet the immediate commercial impact is probably going to be modest because fossil fuels account

for 4.3% of outdoor advertising in the area.

Legal and practical snags are also on the horizon.

The deputy mayor has warned that the start date might be too early because of existing

contracts and advertising, and advertisers will probe any legal weak spots.

But how interesting that if you see a car advertised in Amsterdam from 1st of May, it's

going to be an EV.

Now, let's talk about more than 850,000 electric vehicles coming off lease this year.

That's according to CDK Global.

Most of those, almost million used EVs, will flow to franchised dealers, and they say they

still lack a completely settled way to value them at scale.

The volume shift is sharp, CDK says off lease EVs will go from 200,000 coming into the network,

the system, the market, in 2023, 600,000 last year, 850,000 this coming year.

And that surge will put pressure on used car pricing, on things like reconditioning bays

and dealer training.

CDK's analysis shows that many early EV leases assumed very high residual values, and falling

new EV prices and heavy discounting push down used values, leaving some leases underwater,

as they say, and some lenders now worry.

Dealers risk overpaying when they bring the cars in, stock has to sell, obviously they

got to turn over stock, that's the whole business.

Most of the returning EVs come from big brands, not startups, so high volume models, Tesla

Model 3s and Chevy Bolts and Mustang Mach-E's and things like that.

So they're all pretty rock solid, degradation is modest, buyers coming in still worry about

battery life, about charging, about software, and about price of course, CDK argues that

dealers who now build specific EV appraisal rules, information about charging, specialized

diagnostic bays with people who train to work on the high voltage stuff are going to be

better off.

I love this face, this is something that we've been talking about coming for years.

As more EVs were entering the new market, which we always talk about, they absolutely

are going to transform the cars that we drive, I nearly always buy, I think I bought one

new car.

Did I?

Yes, one of our Renault Zoe's, I always bought used cars, and so that's the used markets

where all the juice is for me.

OK, let's move on.

Volkswagen Group has scrapped plans to build an Audi factory in America.

Oliver Bloom, the carmaker's boss, says fresh US investment is not feasible, while 25% tariffs

on Europeans are in place, the numbers back him up.

The tariffs that hit Germany alone cost VW 2.1 billion euros, that's 2.5 billion US

dollars.

In the first nine months of the year, last year, with that burden, large investment can't

be funded.

If that wasn't there, they would have spent money building factories to employ Americans

on US soil, but maybe the tariffs are also a good thing for the country, I'm no economist.

The move follows a very muddled spell in Washington, where policy has at times whiplashed from

one direction to another.

Levies on auto parts and vehicles abroad then doubled, then completely dropped, applying

rates to various countries and individual countries that did or didn't back things

like a spat over Greenland, if you weren't following the news.

And frameworks on deals being announced and the tariffs being dropped, large companies

can't operate that way, let alone automotive companies that invest in the tens of billions

of euros and dollars and do it over decades, it's simply not sustainable.

OK, let's talk a little bit about Audi's design and something that I've been talking

about for a while.

The new design boss at Audi, Massimo Fracella, the designer behind the Land Rover Velar and

the Land Rover Range Rover, beautiful vehicles, new chief creative officer will restore the

visual identity that they say has made the Audi brand wobble over years.

Since arriving last year, he's boiled Audi's design language down to conveniently four

different pillars, clear, technical, intelligent and emotional, which is lucky because there

are four rings in the Audi logo.

And so that's convenient.

Concept C was a prototype of a vehicle.

And so that vehicle that had some fancy light shows was quite a cluttered vehicle.

Who really knew where Audi was going design wise?

They say that that now heads off into the Audi archives.

And if you look to Audi's history, the original TT, the 90s, A6, auto union racers, there's

timeless design in some of these vehicles.

They weren't photocopied the old hits and it won't be a greatest hit set, but they certainly

will be inspired by what's they what's come before where Audi's been really good at and

they won't redesign the current range.

They're not going to suddenly facelift everything.

That's a bit of a halfway house.

They say instead that as they move to electric, this is the time to get back to their Audi

design philosophy.

They talk about display areas being much smaller.

He says that in his opinion, the new design boss at Audi, that giant screens are hopefully

a phase that he can't wait to be over.

Small display areas, tactile materials, precise metal parts, the things that you touch, the

famous Audi click, all these things have taken away from the feel of owning an Audi.

Now, that final point about touch screens.

Has he been listening to this podcast because I've been banging that drum for a little while

now. I've nothing against a big screen.

I've got a big screen in the Polestar and I quite like it actually.

But if I were to be buying a Rolls Royce or even something, not a roller, like a Bentley

or the new Jaguar, that's going to be 140 grand or maybe one of the more premium Teslas.

So spending money that I haven't got.

But so I'm spending money on a premium vehicle.

OK, here's a good example.

Mercedes-Benz EQS.

They had what's called a hyper screen, which covered the entire width of the dashboard

with glass and flashing lights and icons and look at me, look at me things.

Well, we hope I hope that phase, much like the new head of designer Audi and who knew

that my design sensibilities could have got me a job leading Audi's design.

I'm not a man of taste, if you can see what I wear most days, but this big screen era

on premium vehicles, I'd love it to be over.

Hey, on small vehicles, it means that you don't even have to have your own software.

You can just plug your phone into it.

And my phone has got, I can tell you, better software than some cheapest chip CV.

Just give me a big screen, a tablet, and I'll plug my phone in and an Apple Carplay.

We're good to go.

But in a premium vehicle, I've long said, is the big screen thing not a little bit

downmarket, the sprawling touch screens that dominate modern EVs.

Let's say it's very premium.

I don't know if it is.

I think it rather lacks understated elegance that one would expect from premium motoring.

They feel more like a hasty subservience to the bros of Silicon Valley or Tesla, which

find early EVs or Chinese high tech rivals, rather than considered design, whilst manufacturers

presented them as futuristic, as minimalism, only essentially just cost cutting, dressed

up as sophistication, creating interiors that risk dating as quickly as last year's smartphone

feels outdated, whilst proving genuinely less safe and way more distracting than a nice,

well-machined tactile control, which they've been replacing.

I don't know.

Just just wondering what do I know, nothing at all.

That's your podcast for today.

Thanks to our premium partners, National Car Charging on the US mainland and the

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DAILY: EV Overtakes Petrol In Europe, GM Adds Electrify America and IONIQ 6 N Pricing | 27 Jan 2026

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