The Lucid Cosmos is a new electric car made by Lucid. It has a special design with the cabin pushed forward and is meant for families who like technology. It competes with other popular electric SUVs like the Tesla Model Y.
An induction motor is a type of electric motor that helps the car move by using electricity in a special way. It's used in the front of the Lucid Cosmos.
Mega casting means making big parts of a car's frame as one piece instead of many smaller pieces. This helps make the car stronger and easier to build.
The Leap Motor B10 is an electric SUV made by a company called Leap Motor, and it has modern features like software updates you get through the internet.
The EV1 was one of the first electric cars made by General Motors. Most of them were taken back and crushed, so the few left are very special.
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Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI.
They already deployed one.
It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping.
Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks.
It doesn't just help buyers find a car they love.
It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing,
and estimate trading value.
Advanced, intuitive, and deployed.
That's how they stack.
That's technology at Capital One.
Welcome back to EV News Daily.
Today in Lucid Shows, the Cosmos details.
Rivian's R2 Timeline and Polestar adds 800 volt tech.
Plus they tuned later in the show while telling why GM is helping to restore V212.
That is a rare surviving GM EV1 being returned to its original glory.
No EV News China today.
Our spin-off podcast as it's the weekend.
We do their weekdays back on Monday morning.
And join me later for a podcast bonus show.
One that I've called How an Oil Crisis Accelerates the Shift to EV Part 2.
It's live tonight for patrons.
And all Patreon exclusives go into the free feed after seven days.
So if you're listening to the ad feed, you don't miss anything by the way.
It's just delayed by a week on the bonus shows.
Not the topical news shows, that would be unfair.
But that's just as a thank you to the incredible Patreon people
who support me in this journey, this life change that I've been on giving up my career
and my work to spread the word about EVs and hopefully do something you find useful.
Check out Part 1, which was yesterday as well, made because,
and I think there are about 25, 30 minutes apiece.
That's probably an hour of oil chat, made because a lot of articles this week took the
kind of a headline and the essence of the article they were writing,
which now is the time for EV owners to kind of laugh at those at the pumps
and prices are going up 30, 40, 50, 60 cents a gallon.
Absolutely not.
Now is not the time to laugh at anybody who is having to,
through no fault of their own, spend more at the tank.
But if you do want to understand how even since 1973,
every time there's been an oil crisis, people buy energy-efficient cars,
how this is different to four years ago, after the lockdown,
there was a chip shortage, people couldn't get EVs at the right prices
in the right segments they wanted, and how four years later,
the market is primed to explode if this conflict continues.
And yeah, it's a kind of a deep dive, took me many days to write it.
And I hope you enjoy it and you don't have to check it out at all.
But if you do, drop me a note to how I know that at least one person listened
for a couple of days of writing.
But I enjoyed all the research about it anyway.
Let's get into it.
Lucid Motors gave a first look at the Cosmos,
its upcoming midsize SUV.
I mentioned this yesterday, the firm plans to production by the end of the year,
which is incredible.
Now, Kyle from Out of Spec described the Cosmos as younger and more modern
than the gravity, with a cab forward silhouette,
long aerodynamic tail, sharp lighting signatures in the rear end,
he called totally unique.
Lucid aims the Cosmos at upscale nurturers, whoever they are,
but it's a demographic they're aiming at,
which it describes as family oriented, tech forward EV adopters.
It places the car in the sporty, urban end of the lineups out there.
Okay, the competition, I'll assume Porsche McCann, Tesla Model Y, BMW iX3,
Xiaomi YU7 if you want.
Kyle also reported ample second row head room, he's a big fella.
And I know that because I was with him last year for the Goodwood
when he was over for that in the UK.
And extended glass roof, Lucid has pushed the A pillar glass really far forward
to improve visibility and blind spot.
Insanely large rear cargo space with loads of underfloor storage.
Lucid credit the small new drive unit.
They're calling the Atlas drive units to make that possible.
800 volt architecture under the skin permanent magnet rear motor,
induction motor at the front, both come with the Atlas drive units.
The charging port is going to be J3400, of course.
It's on the rear driver's side, which is great if you're going to be using
the Tesla Supercharger network and an all new centralized electrical architecture.
Lucid said this cuts wiring length, cost and connection points.
And they don't use mega casting, which is somewhat of a, not a trend,
but people have been picking up on this technology,
which Tesla were very early with when they bought that machinery in from,
I want to say a Korean company, but they don't use this.
Just large castings because they say it makes the front and the rear more
repairable and insurers are increasingly looking at repairability.
Yeah, I know the first hand.
Like when I went to go buy a Tesla, the insurance was off the scale.
So we came home with a Polestar and my insurance was cheaper than my MGZS,
which is crazy.
Why is the Polestar so much less?
It's a all wheel drive fast car, but anyway,
Lucid even going to the, the lengths of ensuring the insurability
is part of the design process, which sounds like they've got a hit on their hands.
If they, if they get it right.
Also, another one of my friends was at the event in New York,
Tom Malogany, who has his state of charge YouTube channel has a video on that now.
If you want to go and watch it, just, I mean, just pause this podcast and that's
going to be more interesting.
And no doubt about the Lucid Luna because he was there and it's the RoboTaxi.
The Luna is the two seat vehicle with steer by wire, no steering wheel,
no pedals, like Tesla's own RoboTaxi, large central display to show things to the paying riders.
Lucid says it sits on the same midsize platform as the Cosmos and the other crossover,
the Earth, which I've not mentioned, apart from yesterday.
Luna has a smaller footprint than the gravity.
They aiming for six miles per kilowatt hour.
And that's important because the car will be a working vehicle.
800 volt architecture means that they'll be able to DC fast charge it quickly,
200 miles added in 15 minutes.
And if anyone knows anything about efficiency, Lucid are the best of the best at that.
Now, Uber says they're finalizing a deal with Lucid to deploy the upcoming midsize platform
as a RoboTaxi with volumes comparable to the 20,000 gravity SUVs already under contract.
Uber's president and COO, Andrew McDonald, made the announcement during the Lucid event in New
York on Thursday. He said the companies are closing the agreement to deploy the Lucid midsize
platform at a similar level of volume to the gravities the deal they've already done,
marking the first public confirmation that the Lucid Uber RoboTaxi partnership extends even further.
All right, moving on. Rivian have had a big week with pricing released for the R2.
Check out a special podcast episode in your feed.
All about the R2, midsize SUV. But as we get more information coming in,
the path to delivery is less clear than it was earlier in the week.
The launch trim is the R2 performance with launch package.
It starts at $57,990 with about $1,500 for destination and delivery.
It carries a limited launch package, but buyers can't configure the vehicles yet on Rivian's
website. Rivian said the online configurator will only open in the coming months. So reading
the forums, what I think is happening is Rivian's contacting existing reservation holders,
it's asking them to confirm delivery addresses, and what it's doing is kind of gauging interest in
the launch edition specs. That carries a $100 refundable deposit. So reservation holders
that have had their money in for a while are learning their estimated time to order, which is
at least June. Orders don't enter production until June, and the timing matters because Rivian's
been telling anybody and everybody that R2 delivers in spring. But they did tell the local
Illinois media outlet, WGLT, that customer deliveries would start in June.
The R2 performance at the moment says delivering spring. I mean, I've not technically looked
up the official definition of spring and summer, but it does sound to me like the majority of
even the early reservation holders should think about a mid or late summer delivery,
even if they get this one delivered on the 30th of June or something.
All right, so let's talk about Polestar 3. They are totally changing and upgrading the vehicle.
Market by market, I got my email this week because I think I must be on the Polestar
mailing list or marketing lists with all the Polestar 3 goodies and saying that I can now
go test drive it in the UK and also confirmed for Australia as well, of course, two right hand drive
markets there. They're not just revising it, they're totally changing the Polestar 3
just as it started landing with many people. So they are moving to an 800 volts electrical
architecture. They are upgrading the vehicle like they did with the Volvo EX90. That's also a
Geely family vehicle, of course. And then when they launched the ES90, that's the saloon,
the Volvo ES, that already came with an 800 volt architecture and Volvo and Polestar very quick
to go, oh, thanks for spending 80 grand, 100 grand on our premium car. We're now going to
make it a lot better. I wonder how early reservation, early buyers actually feel about the faith they
put in those vehicles because Volvo had the whole LiDAR debacle as well. It was going to come with
it and I'm enabled by an over the air update. So I guess early buyers at that Volvo EX90 have the
little taxi hump and then they pulled out the investment in the LiDAR company supplying it and
now it's just going to be a hump that sits on your car, I suppose. And so the new ones don't
have LiDAR at all. That's totally off their timeline, their roadmap I gather. So the whole
Polestar Volvo Geely thing has not been without problem, but they're doing the right thing because
they're moving to a high voltage platform. So DC fast charging 10 to 80 in 22 minutes on a 350
kilowatt charger. The rear motor variant gets a 92 kilowatt hour pack. The all-wheel drive ones get
106 kilowatt hour pack and they're moving to redesigned permanent magnet rear motors as well.
The dual motor versions disconnect the front motor for more efficiency and the power balance has
shifted rearward to the chassis changes. Polestar fitting the revised suspension that they've got
and updated steering software. They have said that the new vehicles also get the Nvidia Drive
AGX Xavier chip and so they're replacing that with the orange chip and they will do that for
existing owners. So the compute goes from something like 30 million tops or trillion operations per
second, that's it, from 30 to 254. And not really understanding what that means, I can kind of infer
that that's a really big gate. I mean, on the EV news China, I talked about some of the Chinese cars
with up to 2,000 tops of compute. But anyway, this one's going to have more than 254. So you know,
it sounds a lot. And Polestar saying that they will upgrade those processes for existing owners.
But yeah, but you can't upgrade the architecture. You can't get the 22 minute charging.
Those buyers are stuck with that now. So what does that do to residuals? And yeah,
it's a whole big issue, isn't it? Should they have even held the vehicles back until it was right?
Or get the car out and make some money and get some cars and customers hands? I'm sure you've
got an opinion on that. We'll take a break, we'll come back, we'll talk Stalantis and Volkswagen
2 stick around back in a moment. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI.
They are already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping,
using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks. It doesn't just help
buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre approved for financing,
and estimate trading value, advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack.
That's technology at Capital One.
Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They are already deployed one.
It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping, using self reflection and layered
reasoning with live API checks. It doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule
a test drive, get pre approved for financing, and estimate trading value, advanced, intuitive,
and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.
That's technology at Capital One.
Volkswagen Group next in the news. They missed their CO2 targets last year over here in Europe,
but they won't pay any penalties. The European Commission's three-year compliance system
gives car makers wiggle room. Volkswagen's annual reports came out and it shows that
Bev deliveries were up 32% in 2025 compared to 2024, approaching one million Bev's last year.
Even so, the fleet average of CO2, this is the fleet average of cars they sell,
for passenger cars at least, averaged 100 grams of CO2 per kilometer.
That's the EU 27 plus two big markets last year. That's a big improvement on 2024,
but it falls short of the requirement. The EU targets required a 15% reduction of CO2 across
their whole fleet versus 2021. For Volkswagen, that would be 95. They're five grams per kilometer
above its limit. Under the EU's mechanism, though, of compensation over three years,
car makers can bank any overperformance in future years and offset last year's miss.
The task now shifts to 2026 and 2027, but will they do it with the new urban vehicles?
Well, they've got the Cupra, Revalche, got an Epic, VW ID Polo, ID Crossall coming as well,
those small urban cars which should sell at the right price in big numbers,
and that will help them hit their targets. Now, Leap Motor has pushed a major over-the-air update
for their mid-range B10. So here we can buy in right-hand drive with Leap Motor,
a Stellantis dealerships, either the T3, a tiny city car for about $13,000 with offers,
or the B10, which sits mid-20s, which is a mid-size SUV, nice car, 0% finance on that, by the way,
or the big C10, which is a low $30,000 car, but again, with 0% finance. The deal's really good
with Leap Motor. They're not like, bite your hand off good, you'd be stupid not to get one, but
they're very, very competitive, and now the B10 gets a new over-the-air software update
after six months from launching, which gives one-pedal driving and true one-pedal driving,
so much heavier regen when you lift off the accelerator, and so many EV owners, that's now
a non-negotiable. My wife hates it, she just uses creep mode like a diesel would do in an
automatic car, but for many EV drivers, that is a must-have, much like Apple CarPlay and Android
Auto, and again, because the Polestar that I run has Android as an operating system,
I just never plug my Apple iPhone in, but many people, again, it's a non-negotiable,
because they use Apple CarPlay all the time, so it's wired or wireless, and this comes with an
over-the-air update, also new split-screen navigation, new settings, new more control over
how you assign buttons on the steering wheel, full customization, driver assist toggles and
drive mode changes as well, adaptive cruise lane centering updates, and improvements,
wrist seats, occupant and pet detection, all improved for a car that starts at, well, 33,000
euros in the style trim, I think is the official starting price, but you'll get some offers,
some good deals on that. And finally, General Motors is helping to restore V212. That is one
of the only surviving GM EV ones in the world. It was VIN212. The car sold at auction recently
after being discovered for more than $100,000. It was discovered in a Georgia Impound Lotz,
and a chap called Billy Caruso bought V212, and then went to a YouTube channel called
Questionable Garage, and together, they're restoring it. The project now has a degree
of factory support, and I'm completely here for this. I'll tell you why at the end of the story.
After the restoration gained attention online, GM's president, Mark Reus, invited the team to
GM's Global Tech Center in Warren, Michigan. GM is now supplying some of the parts needed
from a donor EV one, and sharing the technical documentation which only they had to support
the rebuild. Questionable Garage, the YouTube channel, released a new video
in their series with the footage of the GM invitation, because GM's EV one is, well,
there's none of them left. GM launched the vehicle in 1997, as its first modern mass-produced
all-electric passenger vehicle. And the early owners, who leased them, because you could only
lease the things, absolutely adored them. The company had built electric trucks in the past,
and had experimental EV programs, but this was a new phase, a funky-looking aero vehicle
that they first showed off in 1990. But when they came to make the thing, many people really,
really liked it. However, after building a thousand cars, it later recalls all of them,
and stuck them in the crusher. Only a handful of non-drivers remained. They stripped the guts
out of them for one to the better phrase, and allowed them to sit in museums and universities
for study and things like that. So V212 stands out as exceptionally rare as a survivor in the
early movement to electric transport. Mr. Caruso and the YouTube channel will finish the restoration
before the end of the year. There's the 30th anniversary of EV one in 2026, and if they succeed,
it may well run again, and this will be a neat twist. And well done, General Motors,
because at the time, many people couldn't understand why they were being crushed, and
and then over the years as well, they seem to want to only talk about future products,
and this is where the company is now. But I love the fact that GM is leaning into
their early support of EVs, and becoming proud of their history and heritage, and to the point of
supporting officially this project. I love it. I've mentioned before, a long time ago actually,
I would love to see Tesla rebuying some of the old roadsters. There was a famous case of some of
the roadsters were bought for China, sat in a shipping container that was then held in China,
or maybe even the US side. I think it was China side, it sat in this container for like 10,
15 years because of unpaid fees and whatnot. And when they cracked open the container,
there's three Tesla roadsters inside, and then they were coming back and being auctioned off
in the US, and Tesla Elon Musk has got unlimited money. I said at the time,
I would love Tesla to have bought them back for whatever the cost was at the auction,
and put one in the reception of Fremont, put one in the reception of GigaTexas,
put one in the reception of GigaBerlin, hang them from the ceiling, just let kids see them,
and this is where Tesla started. Someone I know who lives freakishly close to me has one in his
garage, he calls it his retirement. In fact, he takes it to the shops. He's got bigger cahooners
than me. He loves it, he drives it. And that thing's worth, well, I mean, there's ones on
AutoTrader for well over 100,000 now, because the price is going up. It's where Tesla started,
and I would be, I love it when companies are proud and show it off, and so many companies,
and I get it, they want to move on. Here's the next thing, here's the Cybertruck, here's the
robot or what not, you know, wherever Tesla doing now these days. And it's like, oh man, I just,
it's a shame, I get it, I totally get it. You've got to move forward, look forward, not look back,
but I quite like looking back sometimes. That's your podcast for today. Thanks to our premium
partners, National Car Charging on the US mainland and the Aloha Charge in Hawaii,
and Test EV, Avalu's trusted partner for independent EV battery health testing
in Australia and New Zealand. Have a great weekend, might see you around tomorrow for a quick Sunday
update. If there's stuff going on, I've got things in my inbox, I need to get out on the podcast,
I might do, it's about to stay here in the UK, so we'll wait and see, I may be busy,
I probably will be. Have a great weekend, whatever you're doing, see you tomorrow. Remember,
there's no such thing as a self-charging hybrid.
About this episode
Lucid Motors revealed details of the Cosmos midsize SUV, highlighting its modern design, 800V architecture, and spacious interior aimed at tech-forward families. Rivian's R2 pricing and delivery timeline remain uncertain, with production starting mid-year. Polestar 3 is receiving a major upgrade to 800V tech and improved performance, raising questions about early buyers. Volkswagen missed EU CO2 targets but avoids penalties due to compliance rules. Leap Motor released a significant OTA update for its B10 SUV, adding one-pedal driving. GM supports restoring a rare EV1, celebrating its electric heritage. The episode also touches on AI in car shopping and industry updates.
