DAILY: Next-Gen Chevy Bolt Debuts, Germany Commits To Incentives and NHTSA Probes 3 Million Teslas | 11 Oct 2025

Welcome back to the podcast. Today, the Chevy Bolt 2027 debuts, Germany commits to new incentives

and NHTSA is probing almost three million Teslas plus stay tuned later in the show. I'll tell

you how little EV batteries degrade over a year according to new data. Well, if I'm sounding

a little bit different, I'm on the road today away with the family this weekend. They're

offering a morning activity. So I'm using the time to get the weekend show done for you and get

you up to speed because big news this week Chevy reintroduced the Bolt. Now the Bolt previously

one of the cheapest, if not the cheapest EV you could get in the US, especially on monthly deals

towards the end of its run. And whenever I speak to a Bolt owner, generally they all really love

their vehicles. So the Bolt coming back is big news because this will be fighting with Nissan's

Leaf to be the cheapest EV on sale in the United States. Now it's a compact affordable EV and

it looks the same as the Bolt EUV except this is simply called the Chevy Bolt. There's no Bolt

EV or Bolt EUV. However, what under the skin is really different and that's what's important,

interior upgrades, styling on the front and rear and charging upgrades too. First of all,

we'll get this out of the way. It looks the same because they use the same stamping materials.

The sheet metal is all the same and GM says that brings the vehicle to market much quicker

than retooling and there's nothing wrong with the styling. The front and the rear, like I say,

have had some tweaks to bring it up to modern design language and family looks. But otherwise,

yeah, it's the same bits of metal. And honestly, I'm fine with that. The vehicle looks pretty cool.

Let's talk about the battery. Well, that's the same size as well. That is same 65 kilowatt hours,

but we moved to LFP. That's the chemistry. It stands for Lithium Iron Phosphate and it comes from

CATL, at least to begin with anyway. And it supports much faster charging, two and a half times

faster charging. 150 kilowatts plus, described as DC fast charging. And it's all about the curve,

as always, 10 to 80. If you're road tripping, 10 to 80, 26 minutes. It also comes with plug and

charge and is GM's first vehicle with a native J3400 connector and inlet. Otherwise, Naxx,

NACS, or just the Tesla plug, if you like. And that's really important because this vehicle

will be future-proofed. Bidirectional charging is standard. So it was all compatible with GM

energies, vehicle to home products, exporting 9.6 kilowatts, powering your home, all the

Altium technology does. This is not branded as Altium because, well, for a while, GM was

completely in with LG and they called the whole platform the Altium platform. But now they're

buying the batteries from CATL. Well, LG won't want that. And so the Altium thing is not dead

as such. This is an Altium vehicle because it's got the vehicle to home and all the Altium stuff

has, but they just don't, they can't use that marketing term. So it's all a little bit messy,

but at the end of the day, I mean, it's just all of internal politics, isn't it? But GM says the

range of this is bigger, but not wildly bigger. So it's 255 miles. Now, that is a small bump on the

outgoing Bolt. But it's, you know, it's a long way from 300, which I know some Americans feel that

300 and Tesla have said it's got to begin with a three. And I understand all of that. But, you

know, cars have use cases. And again, talking about owners of the original Bolt and how,

you know, woeful it was to charge, you know, an hour of charging on DC fast charger,

you know, they're all charged at home and so many EVs are. So yeah, I understand apartment

dwellers and, you know, living in flats and stuff like that. And you have to DC fast charge maybe

once a week and that'll get all your commuting done. You don't want to be sitting around for ages,

blocking a charger. So it's fantastic that they've sped this up super cruise. Well, that's optional.

And we'll include a route following feature that changes lanes and handles highway interchanges.

The cabin gets a much larger display in ambient lighting. Ray physical volume knob physical

HVAC controls cargo 16 cubic feet with the seats up 57 with them down matching the equinoxes cargo

space. The equinox is actually 20 inches longer, significantly bigger vehicle. Well, the drive

modes include a customizable my mode for steering weight, brake feel, acceleration,

even the foe motor sound toggle. So when does it arrive? Well, it comes with dealers at least

early 2026. So we're a few months away. Initial pricing is the RS. That's around $32,000.

And then there's an LT at 29.9. But that's all in. That's the launch spec. There's also I think

a launch spec RS that doesn't have the extra package. So a little confusing around how they

described it. But either way, let's say around $29 or $30,000, they advertise their prices,

including destination, which is what I presume that car makers would do. But

that's such a common practice that we don't have that here. The price that we see advertised

is the price we have to pay. There's maybe on a small registration fee. We call them on the road

fees, but nothing like the US where I've seen Ford increasing their destination fees for

last six months, nine months or so. It was just over $1,000. And then it's heading towards $2,000

now. And well, that seems a little unfair to advertise an MSRP without it. The prices we

talk about destination included. $28, $29,000, $30,000, whatever it is around that point,

it will be the cheapest EV you can go buy. Brand new EV. Now, obviously,

lots of reaction by the internet, which did its thing yesterday. And people say, well,

if you wait a year and get a heavily depreciated Tesla Model 3, you get a much better car. But

let's stick to apples to apples, pairs to pairs on this one. Okay, so let's compare new car prices.

I understand the various arguments about the nearly new market, but for a new car, this really

is Nissan Leaf versus Bolt and around that price. And I'm really, really excited for this vehicle.

Okay, that's a big headline today. Let's move on. Germany's coalition government approved 3

billion euros and subsidies to help low and middle income households buy zero emission vehicles.

This is three 2029, the Chancellor Friedrich Merz and made the announcement yesterday in

Berlin after talks with the Social Democrat coalition partners, framing the package as

support for Germany's ailing automakers and boosting EV adoption. The government says that

the funding will expand EV access and support the industry's transition. And whilst also saying,

we love EV owners, the same Chancellor in Germany also arguing against any kind of 2035

ban on pure combustion vehicles. Now, in the US, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,

NHTSA just opened an investigation into 2.88 million Teslas. Now, it's nothing that you've

done wrong by the way. It's basically anything on the road with full self-driving. And this is

after more than 50 reports of traffic safety violations and actually some collisions and

crashes. The NHTSA describes full self-driving FSD as an assistance system that requires drivers to

pay close attention and intervene at any moment. However, it induced vehicle behavior that then

violated traffic safety laws. And so Tesla have got themselves in a little bit of a pickle with

their promises, their guarantees, their language, even the way they describe autopilot and full

self-driving because lots of people are taking them in some cases to court over that. But in this case,

the agency administration, I should say, are saying, well, Teslas that have been running the

ADAS systems have been running red lights. They've been moving against the direction of traffic.

They're looking at 58 reports in total, like 14 crashes, 23 injuries. And this is very awkward

for Tesla because they really want to position themselves as the experts on autonomy and the

future of the company. And now this huge investigation being opened to look into the safety

of their autonomous features. All right, let's move on. Kia in Europe is testing a new battery

passport scheme at cell level, cell level battery passports that upload real-time

condition and performance data for each cell in the pack. The EV3 trial evaluates continuous

cell monitoring across the battery life cycle to give, well, for one, dealers more detailed

battery performance data when talking about used EVs. Data from the cells gets uploaded

to a digital battery passport system so that users, technicians, and regulators can view

accurate state of health via the vehicle's infotainment system in your case. But where is

your data going? And do you have a say over this? EVs are inherently connected vehicles. And

there is certainly a large amount of people that feel very strongly about their personal data.

And that could even be down to not wanting to be tracked on your battery. Now, if that means

that they could perhaps diagnose something remotely or even potentially AI could spot

something in terms of a pattern that predicts when your car is heading towards an issue,

well, I would like that feature before it becomes an expensive big bill. But you might say, sure,

but why is all of my data going to the dealer, to the technicians,

possibly to the car maker, possibly to central government? And that becomes a big data issue

as well. The company plans to roll the feature out across all EV models in Europe by February

2027, ahead of the incoming EU battery passport rules. Audi is next in the news. They will reintroduce

the A4 as an all electric model in 2028. The combustion version of the A4 ended in 2024.

The new A4 will sit on Volkswagen's SSPE platform, no published specs, but you would think an A4,

that's got to be around 600 kilometers of range. It's got to be 300 kilowatts DC fast charging,

because it's going to be a vehicle in two, three years time. So you've got to hit those specs.

That's probably going to be a real bare minimum in a few years time. A more efficient, lower cost

single motor variant would come to Europe. Maybe the US, obviously the all wheel drive version would

be Audi Quattro technology as well. Now BMW Group sees plug-in sales rise in both Q3 and year-to-date

as well. BMW Group itself, that's Rolls Royce, mini BMW brand grew in Q3 with customer deliveries up

8.8%. First nine months of the year, they delivered about 1.8 million vehicles, and that's driven

by, you beat me to the punch again, their BEVs. Their electric business was up 10%. The BMW Group

up 15% for electrified, if you include plug-in hybrids as well. The BMW brand reporting

6% growth, 400,000 of their total BMW sold were electrified, is what it says here. So I think

that would be BEV and plug-in hybrid regionally. Sales rose in Europe and the Americas, and you

won't be surprised to hear China is struggling with anyone who's a western premium car maker.

Now we'll take a break, we'll come back, got some UK pricing for the new Nissan Leaf and

Formula E and their pit stop boost could help the cars that you and I drive. They say anyway,

I'll tell you more, stick around, back in a mo. Alright, welcome back to the podcast on location.

Actually, not far from a light aircraft airfield. So you might hear that in the background,

they've been flying over. I think I'm either on landing or takeoff, I'm on the circuit somewhere,

so I can hear loads of little light aircraft over me. So that might be picked up on the mic

and sorry if it is. Now, Nissan's Leaf is getting some attention at the moment because

the pricing is coming out on sale in Japan earlier this week, and now the UK gets our final starting

price, £33,000 and expected eligibility of the full government grant of £3,750, so that would

be a £3,000 premium and if you look at the monthly cost on that and maybe the bigger battery

makes sense for many people. Official range, 271 miles WLTP or 386 miles WLTP. DC fast charging,

105 kilowatts small battery, 150 on the big battery and you'll add about 273 miles of range

in half an hour. 11 kilowatt AC standard, 22 an option, vehicle to load up to 3.1 kilowatts

and vehicle to grid ready, they say. We keep hearing that. All right, I'm glad you're ready.

Can we get it sorted? That's great news. It'll be made in Nissan's Sunderland plant,

we knew that already. And so first deliveries in the spring, less than 30k for a new Nissan Leaf.

It is a competitive bit of the market, by the way, late 20s here in the UK. I mean,

the whole 20,000 something is very competitive. So I think that's really sensible pricing though.

Now, more than 200 executives from the EV and clean tech sectors are urging Germany not to waver

on their commitment to 2035 zero emission vehicles. The E-Mobility Europe group says

accelerated vehicle electrification is central to Europe's goal of becoming a global leader

in zero emission transport. It creates high quality jobs. It reduces the dependence on foreign

entities for oil and it delivers more affordable transport. And it's one of the things I always

and I say, look, the environmentally friendly thing is on my list, but it's quite a long way down

my list. Like I've got solar panels and a battery and it's important and we're committed to that.

But EVs are firstly just better vehicles and they just drive better and they're just easier

to drive and it's more stress free. But also it's just cheaper. Like even if I was called Mr

McDiesel from diesel town, I would still have a hard job thinking, well, why would I spend more money

voluntarily? Like we always charge it off peak or 7p whenever we can. And so really important

reasons to remember about going EV. It's not ideological. It's not political. Let's take

those things out of it. It's just because the tech is better and it's much cheaper. And so if you're

low or middle income family moving to EV, the purchase price of vehicles in Europe is really

coming down now. I've talked about this. I was looking at a new Dacia spring this week at $9995.

Now that was a pre-reg car. So it's registered in March and it's still on the dealer lot six months

later. But that's a brand new vehicle with a battery just under 30 kilowatt hours. It's small,

$9995. And so we need to get past this mental hurdle that we've got from a lot of us that

have been talking about this for a long time. Tesla's were 40, 50, 60 thousand pound car.

They still are. And there was nothing cheaper apart from Leafs and Zoys. And the world is

different in a really short amount of time. Now the CEO of ABB has been talking about this as well,

Michael Halbhair, warning policymakers not to waver on the commitment for 2035 saying it's

important for many reasons. Industry needs clear targets, not things that change with the wind

and each different political cycle. Now talking of ABB, they're a big supporter of Formula E,

always have been. Formula E's new pit boost is where you add 10% of the energy of the battery

in about 30 seconds time at 600 kilowatts charge speed. It's not megawatt charging,

but it's very interesting. And their VP of sustainability been talking with BBC Sport

about how Formula E believes that this fast charging technology will eventually work its way

onto road cars beyond racing. And the minute it's a lack of infrastructure is a barrier to EV

adoption, but that mainstream fast charges within the next five years will be charging things as,

you know, as quickly as that usual plug for China on this one, where they already are.

Now this week has seen bus world in Brussels couldn't make it to bus world this year. What a

highlighting the shift and to going electric only. Now electric only urban buses have been around

ages, long time. Not new news, it's a solved problem. But what about long distance electric

coaches? Well, this year's bus world, we saw more and more of that. Diamond the buses revealed a

series production coach with two 207 kilowatt hour battery packs 500 kilometers of range LFP

technology from CATL. We saw the same from MAN launching their three axle coach with six battery

packs Scania introducing a modular battery electric platform for high floor buses and other medium

and long distance electric buses on display from China as well BYD and CRRC, which is a new one to

me now. Time magazine has named Volvo cars and their first multi adaptive safety belt

as part of their best inventions of 2025 list. It will debut in the new EX 60, which we get to

see in January next year. Volvo's new seat belt adapts restraint behavior to the traffic

conditions and the individual occupants in that seat using real time data inputs from the interior

and exterior sensors and it will adjust the protection based on your height, weight, body

shape and seating position. Performance enrolls through over the air software updates over time

as they learn more about how to make these seat belts even safer. Now the UK public EV charging

network has been growing. How's it doing this year? Well, we've got some data from Q3 coming in up

22%, almost 4,000 new charging devices in the last three months added to the UK. Ultra rapids led

the expansion up 51, rising 51% to 9,290 units, ZAPMAP recording new charging hubs nationwide,

126 new hubs since the beginning of the year. Now we'll finish off with news about how EV

batteries degrade. Real world data shows modern EV batteries lose about 1.8% capacity per year

and failures occur below 0.5%. This report by GeoTab called How Longed EV Batteries Last?

EV Battery Health Insights from over 10,000 vehicles were studied of in-use electric vehicles

finding most retain over 90% of their original capacity after years of driving,

implying service lives of 20 years or longer on a real world condition. And after 20 years,

vehicles are pretty much ready to be recycled for many cases. That's not to say that some don't

go on for a lot longer, but 20 years of real world use before those batteries become second

life home storage or grid support. Researchers tracked state of health alongside charging behavior

and the environmental conditions. Across a broad range of vehicles and note that charging between

20% and 80% state of charge in most cases helped extend battery life. We have ours in fairness

stuck at 50% because we don't need to do long journeys spontaneously and so I leave the pole

start at 50% and on the Octopus app I just say charge 50% and it looks after it and that does us

and the battery is not being stressed in the slightest. So what's the average service life

of a gasoline car in the United States? Now we see a lot of old cars rolling around, don't we?

What's the average service life? It's 14 years of a combustion car and this is US data or this

is batteries lasting 20. Yeah, that whole thing about batteries going in the skip after five minutes,

another myth disproven and that's your podcast for today. Thanks to our premium partner's

Porsche of the Village in Cincinnati, Audi of Cincinnati East and Volvo cars of Cincinnati

East. National car charging on the US mainland and the Low Heart Charge in Hawaii and Octopus

Electroverse Global Public Charging made simple with one app and one map. Have a good and sit

tomorrow and remember there's no such thing as a self-charging hybrid.

DAILY: Next-Gen Chevy Bolt Debuts, Germany Commits To Incentives and NHTSA Probes 3 Million Teslas | 11 Oct 2025

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