DAILY: Renault 5 Car Of The Year, Waymo Adds More Cities and Changan Tempts UK Buyers | 28 Feb 2026

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Closer to volume production of all solid-state batteries.

No EV news, China, it's the weekend, it's back on Monday, here we go.

Renault 5, all-electric, E-Tech won the 2026 car of the year here in the UK,

giving Renault the top prize for the first time.

It took 20 of the 33 judges' votes and won the small car category as well.

Judges pointed to retro-modern styling, driving dynamics and value.

The car also qualifies for the full grant we have here, which is almost 4,000 pounds,

5,000 US dollars equivalent.

A neat fit with its pitch as a compact EV for British roads and urban driving.

WLTP'd 250 miles, that's 400 kilometers.

The wider results carried a lousom, louder message about electrics than any single winner.

EVs took all four of the top overall positions.

Kiri V4, family car of the year, and finished overall runner-up.

Shkoda LROC, best medium crossover.

Joint third overall, alongside the Alpine A290, which won performance car category,

and finished joint third too.

Elsewhere, category wins for the Citroën EC3 Aircross, the Hyundai Onyc 9 for the large

crossover, the Audi A6 Avant, just because it's absolutely beautiful.

Not actually a category in the awards, but I think it is.

The organizers framed the spread as evidence that electric cars have shifted from niche

to mainstream, but you and I knew that already.

Okay, moving on.

Polestar has integrated Google Maps live lane guidance directly into the driver display

and claims it is the first automaker to do so.

It's rolled out the feature on the Polestar 4 in the US and Sweden.

The system uses real-time AI analysis, because everything's AI these days,

from the vehicle's forward-facing camera, and it identifies which lane the driver occupies.

It then gives visual and audio cues to guide drivers through complex

highway or interchanges.

Owners need the latest software.

Polestar previewed the function last year and said it would expand to more markets later.

The update also underlines how tightly Polestar is tied to Google.

That work started eight years ago when Polestar announced Android Automotive for the Polestar 2.

In 2020, it launched with Google Maps, Google Assistant, and the Google Play Store.

And in 2024, they showed off the route sent to car and Google Chrome in car.

Polestar confirmed Google's Gemini AI voice assistant is coming, like Volvo have said

as well, but only sometime this year.

Now, Waymo will be rolling out more of its fully autonomous Jaguar iPaces and, increasingly,

Ioniq 5s near its new RoboTaxi services, hitting four new cities, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio,

and Orlando.

The rollout started in all four cities at once, taking Waymo's operational footprint to 10

metro areas.

Access starts with users invited via the Waymo app, widening availability in stages.

Before this year, Waymo took nearly four years to move from Phoenix to San Francisco.

Now, it argues the groundwork's been done.

A generalizable driver system that serves as the base model and adapts to any new cities

that it goes into with minimal fine-tuning for local conditions, not a full retrain.

Waymo points to Houston's wide intersections or Orlando's tourist traffic traps.

As examples, the service runs on the sixth generation Waymo driver technology, operating

without safety drivers.

Waymo says it improves cost efficiency, performs better in extreme weather, something Tesla

can't do if it rains, and also reduces the sensor size as well.

Those comedically large, roof-mounted sensors from back in the day are shrinking all the time.

Now, Waymo reports over 200 million miles of full autonomous operation.

It reports 85% fewer crashes with airbag deployment and 73% fewer incidents compared to human

drivers, and it's on track to deliver 1 million rides per week by the end of the year.

Now, what's this all about Europe's wanting Europeans to buy cars made here,

and offering any kind of subsidies or incentives contingent on that?

China does it, US does it, I'm not surprised.

Well, the European Union Industry Commissioner, Stephanie Sojourner, has pushed back the unveiling

of the plan to the 4th of March, as I talked about recently.

So why the delay?

Well, it buys time, but it doesn't soften what the draft will do to at least Germany's

subsidies.

The draft sets strict Union origin rules for state-funded EV programs.

Any scheme that supports purchases, leases, or rentals of BEVs, plug-in hybrids, and EREVs

would need to hit European benchmarks for orange in things.

The batteries are exempted because there's so many bits that come through China, at least,

if not directly from, defined as minimum shares of European value.

The aim sits in plain view.

It's protectionism.

It's bolstering the European industry and cutting reliance on US and China.

The Union origin criteria is the assembly.

I think the battery pack is included somewhere in the BMS as well.

In phase one, programs could fund battery systems assembled in the EU using non-EU cells.

If the battery management system is local, that still leaves room for Chinese cells.

From year three, they're going to tighten it and it will require EU cells.

The regulation would apply to programs launched or updated six months after the act goes in.

Berlin could launch funding before the regulation bites though and adjust it later.

That choice cuts across Germany's policy goals.

Berlin's planned incentives on EVs is the social scheme,

using income limits to lower households to switch to electric.

The plan would avoid price cuts or origin requirements to include affordable models.

And all affordable models would be included.

It's about getting EVs in the hands of people who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford it.

If Germany has to abide by these origin rules, the affordable end of the market gets hit really

hard. Okay, let's talk a little bit about how the UK buyers are being tempted by yet another

Chinese brand and this time Chang'an are going to add the DPAL badge to the UK.

The DPAL SO5 launching tomorrow.

So if you want to get the second electric vehicle after the SO7, which came last year,

well, you can do so. The SO5 is a compact crossover, sub £40,000, and it'll face familiar names

like the Tesla Model Y, Volkswagen ID.4, Skoda ENIAC, and many more. The rear wheel drive is

£37,990, and that's 268 horsepower, good for most people. The all-wheel drive is nicely under the

40k tax limit. We pay more. It's called luxury car tax at £39,990, 70 kilowatt hour LFP pack,

303 miles, or almost 500 kilometers of range. Chang'an will build the right-hand drive SO5

compact crossover for the UK in Thailand as its right-hand drive. They've been operating in Thailand

since 2023. Now a new contract from Madrid's government, regional government, to develop and

operate a four-megawatt public EV charging hub is going in to the capital's M30 Ring Road. The site

repurposes a disused petrol station. I love this story. So it's going to be a huge charging site,

20 ultra-rapids at 400 kilowatts. I'm guessing it's the Alpetronic stuff, because that's a nice

number to fit in with their hardware. They say that one of the bays will serve heavy-duty transport

for trucking and things like that, maybe a pull-through, maybe if you're towing. The hub will

include battery swap stations for the Silents, electric scooters and motorcycles. And I love the

fact that it's built on an old petrol station, four-court, which is just the best news ever.

Brilliant. Now, let me talk to you about going electric with trucks. And Anders Gassadal is a

45-year-old test engineer who works for Scania. And he's driven a battery electric truck or tractor

unit across 21 different countries over the last few years. He's done over 45,000 miles,

that's over 73,000 kilometers in one of them. The truck worked as both a test bed and a rolling

proof of concept. And there is a YouTube channel as well called the Electric Trucker. He stopped

doing his English version of that, but it's still worth checking out. Just do the subtitles or the

YouTube thing where it does it in English. And he also drives all over Europe and just tells the

story about how he's charging up his truck. And it's still a pretty young industry. And so not

everyone else is doing that. Well, in terms of this Scania story, the work started in Germany

when they had to do the aerodynamic certification in the early days of Scania's EV truck program.

And he had no long-distance EV experience. He says the real-world numbers match the

engineering predictions from the very first time they drove the truck. So they've been

delivering this presentation about EV trucking, heavy-duty trucking, how it's very doable now

with pure bare-of-power trains done over 50 times so far. And rather than flying around

different parts of Europe, they just drive the trucks there because they can. The roadshow now

runs by invitation alongside engineering work that he does. And he does it as a passion as well.

And so the battery electric tractor is 450 kilowatts continuous, 500 peak. The battery

is 624 kilowatt hours. And they talk about on one documented tour, but they covered seven

countries. He did almost 2,700 miles. That's over 4,300 kilometers on this journey in mixed

conditions and driving about 56 miles an hour to match the other trucks on the road. And charging

was easy because he relied on what was already in the ground, not hunting down megawatt charging or

commercial installations. They're coming, by the way, and they are coming with plenty of them.

He just used car grade infrastructure for his semi truck. And okay, it's a 17-meter truck

and it doesn't really fit into passenger car spaces. And it did draw the attention of local

people talking to police officers and local authorities as well. However, obviously was

doing nothing wrong. Just had to squeeze the truck in to charge at public charging stations.

He also says he never waited to plug in. He always tried to avoid charging sites at peak hours.

He did one run from Sweden to Spain and saved, he says, over US$1,100 equivalent in fuel and

road tolls. Had they taken a Scania diesel truck on Sweden to Germany? He says he averaged about

28 cents per kilometer. That's 33 cents per mile and framed the numbers for trucks that do 150,000

kilometers a year. Working vehicles is absolutely achievable. Wait, take a quick break. We'll come

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Welcome back to the podcast. Let's talk solid state batteries.

Factorial says it's moved closer to volume production of all solid state EV batteries

after signing a partnership with Phil Energy, described as Korea's leading battery provider.

For equipment, the deal gives the US-based solid state maker access to manufacturing

and supply chain to scale Factorial's platform. For solid state cells, the hard part really comes

after all of the hard work, which is to get it in the lab working, and now you have to take it

onto the road. Factorial already tests their cells on the road with Mercedes-Benz cars,

DeLantis cars, Hyundai's and Kia's. Mercedes are driving a modified EQS with Factorial cells

around. They did a journey of 745 miles on one charge last September. Mr. DeLantis are verifying

the cells as well. Factorial pitches solstice, their platform, on the numbers and the practicality.

So energy density 450 watt hours per kilogram, that is equal to all the other solid state stuff

that's around, and it's about 80% higher than a conventional lithium-based, lithium-ion cell.

It also says their solstice platform maintains stability at warm temperatures, 90 degrees

Celsius, or 194 degrees Fahrenheit. The platform uses a dry cathode architecture that cuts

manufacturing steps and environmental impact compared to a wet coating process. There's

so many stories around of solid state batteries and cells. Some of them are further along,

some of them are for more established companies, some are from those that have seemingly popped out

of nowhere claiming the earth, and we track it closely and try and give everyone the right

kind of coverage. But Factorial have been doing this a long time, and just like the Chinese

batteries are now on the road. If you miss our spin-off show, by the way, EV News China, I do

have a spin-off podcast that looks at what's happening in the East. They're just bringing

solid state batteries out of the lab at 700 watt-hours per kilogram. Not commercialized yet,

by the way, but this is where we're going. It's new technology, and with any new technology,

the path of improvement is always steeper at the beginning before it matures after 20 or 30 years,

or I don't know, pick a number. And that means these incredible stats that we see at the beginning

of solid state are only the tip of the iceberg. Yeah, it really is the death of combustion cars.

And that's your podcast for today. Thanks for listening, and thanks so much to our premium

partners, National Car Charging on the US mainland and the low-high charge in Hawaii,

and Test EV, Avalos' trusted partner for independent EV battery health testing in Australia

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DAILY: Renault 5 Car Of The Year, Waymo Adds More Cities and Changan Tempts UK Buyers | 28 Feb 2026

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