Plug-in hybrids are cars that use both gas and electricity. You can charge them like an electric car, but they also have a gas engine to drive longer distances.
The Nissan Leaf is an electric car that runs on batteries instead of gas, making it cleaner for the environment. It was one of the first electric cars many people could buy easily. The comment probably points out that even though Nissan made this electric car, some people still need to use gas cars sometimes.
An e-rev is a car that mainly runs on electricity but has a small gas engine that helps make more electricity when the battery runs out, so you can drive farther.
The '7' seems to be talking about a type of car made by Chinese companies like BYD and MG that use electricity or a mix of gas and electricity to run. These cars are becoming popular because they are cheaper and have good driving range. People talk about them because they are changing how cars are made and sold.
Solid state batteries are a new kind of battery that uses solid materials inside instead of liquids. This can make electric car batteries safer and last longer.
A solid state battery is a new type of battery that uses solid materials inside instead of liquids. This makes the battery safer, last longer, and charge faster, which is great for electric cars.
The 42 kilowatt hour battery is like a big rechargeable battery in an electric car that stores electricity to make the car go. The bigger the battery, the farther the car can drive before needing to recharge.
The Kia EV2 is a small electric car that can be used by families. It has batteries that store electricity to power the car and comes with the latest electric car features.
The Ford Puma is a small SUV, which means it’s a car that’s a bit bigger than a regular car and good for families or carrying stuff. It looks sporty and is easy to drive in the city. People talk about it when comparing small SUVs from different brands.
The BMW i3 is a small electric car made by BMW that uses batteries instead of gas. It looks different from most cars and is made to be light and easy to drive in cities. People mention it because it was one of the first electric cars from a big car company.
A platform is like the car's basic frame and parts that many cars can share. Polestar will use a new one made by Geely, the company that owns Polestar.
Software updates are like upgrades for the car's computer that make it work better or add new things. They can be sent to the car through the internet.
Some cars say they charge themselves without plugging in, but really they use the engine and braking to recharge the battery. They still need fuel to work.
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Welcome back to EV news daily today Renault attacks fake hybrids Norway's EV share recovers
and electrics becoming more affordable plus they tuned later in the show I'll tell you
why Italy now hosts the world's first official Porsche club only for electric cars on EV
news China today our spinoff podcast we talk about price cuts at expungation completing
their solid state line and neos seven year financing let's get into it the Renault CEO
still reasonably new in the post Francois Provost has taken aim at short range plug-in
hybrids calling them fake fevs PHEVs fake fevs fail to push drivers to charge overnight
and weaken the adoption of EVs he blamed short range PHEVs from German and Chinese competitors
for eroding consumer confidence in electrification Mr. Provost statement also says a lot about
his business Renault and where it's going they will explore range extended technology
and so using an engine only as a generator not coupled to the wheels you still drive on
electric power but there is a plug socket unlike for instance the Nissan e-power technology
which is quite shabby in my opinion because there's no plug socket come on Nissan what
are you doing you invented the leaf and yet you have to go to a petrol station for that
but it does move on electric power it's not for me it's also weird because the engine
just fires up when you're sitting at some red traffic lights to recharge the battery
but either way E revs are seen as perhaps a way for the established car makers to get
that last little bit out of their investment in combustion as long as they have a plug
socket on the side and as long as they have a big battery although there is no official
definition but it tends to be larger batteries and in China we're seeing 60 70 80 kilowatt
hour packs in e revs alone I mean you'd never ever put combustion fuels in the thing would
you anyway they are pitched at people who want to do 620 miles or a thousand kilometers or more
and Mr. Bravost challenged the mandate to go all be V in the European Union by 2035 saying
it's misguided and that he wants clearer rules that highly electrified long range
e revs would also be on sale I don't worry about that because the technology is going to move so
quickly we're only in 2026 what I mean I've been doing this podcast eight years but the battery
technology is going to move so fast that the engine is redundant now people get a bit stressed over
e revs I get complaints about talking about gas guzzlers because you still have to perpetually
in them if you want to go more than the battery and I understand that and I'm sympathetic to that
however it is a big part of the industry I cannot ignore it I just don't worry about it
this is a flash in the pan at best in my opinion I would hate to be an automotive CEO
writing big checks and betting on the future because they all are betting many of them are betting
on e revs as being their salvation I disagree also the EU standards are tightening and so it's
using real world not lab-based calculations for the efficiency of plug-in hybrids which is why
many car makers are adding double the battery size like Volkswagen doubling the battery size of their
gte and more of their cars as well to get closer to 100 miles of all electric range if you charge
them of course and there's China's push into Europe here in the UK plug-in hybrids last year
a quarter of them were Chinese BYD CLU DMI JQ7 MGHS and many more all offering
decent this range and some of them like the new Geely one there's the Geely star ray I think
that's going to come in two battery sizes as well and so they will be offering again near 100 miles
of all electric range if you charge them hopefully overnight when it's cheap then you'll get the best
out of them okay let's move on Norway's EV share recovered last month in February it sold 7,272
cars passenger vehicles last month in February 7272 the total number of bevs pure bevs 7127
all right if your mental agility listening to a podcast is is the same as mine I'll do the math
145 is the difference so that's non fully electric cars let me split it out bevs over 98%
diesel was 0.92 and that was the second second biggest and I think that's because if you live
somewhere rural or you need a very specific use case you're probably going to go diesel if electric
doesn't suit if you're towing a massive trailer up elevation I mean it's in Norway you will be
and it's going to be cold you will be then you'd probably go diesel for today petrol plug-in
hybrids 0.55 petrol mild shabby hybrids like the Toyota hybrids and stuff 0.28 and pure petrol
0.17 none like a couple of cars so following two months of turbulence where many purchases were made
at the end of 2025 to take advantage of expiring tax rules the OFV there said that the market's
stabilizing similar to a period when there were some VAT changes back in 2022 our second
Norway story today Norway's BEV fleet just crossed a million that's a third of the vehicles on the
road the Norwegian public roads administration just revealed they have over 951,000 passenger bevs
and over 50,000 light commercial bevs on the road and that puts it at just shy of a third of all
the cars in circulation Norway has about three million vehicles on the road in vans and other
light commercial vehicles bevs were just 10% but in passenger cars a third now there's been
consistent policy long-standing planning certainty consistency is wonderful when it comes to that
national level of politics things haven't changed for decades and so the transition can accelerate
and also there is a bit of a gap between the commercial vehicles that are on the road right
now so there's a job to do in Norway still and it varies by region look don't get me wrong Oslo
is at 50% pure bev let's go rural you know maybe in the north a rural fin mark it's at 12% so still
work to do Norway's milestone though of a million bevs on the road looks less like the finish line
and more like a reminder even at 98% new vehicle sales pure bev
old gas guzzlers are going to take time to die now let's talk about EV adoption in England no
longer tracking wealth as closely as it used to research from charging firm Chargy and new automotive
say uptake has spread into poorer areas narrowing a gap that favored richer communities they looked
at the shift using the index of multiple deprivation IMD which measures relative poverty in English
neighborhoods so back in 2020 EV uptake pretty closely mirrored wealth levels with early adopters
being able to get an EV at a slightly higher price because they wanted to for whatever reasons they
had however now in 20 at the end of 2025 we now see that that link has broken so EV uptake is now
converging across most neighborhoods of England the 10% most deprived areas still like slightly
behind in EV uptake but otherwise it's pretty normalized and so that affluence issue which
we had five years ago has now largely gone beyond early adopters the remaining hurdle is perhaps the
most disadvantaged areas and also reliable affordable on-street charging new automotive CEO Ben
Nelms pointed to the market where used bev transactions were up almost 50% last year lifting
used bev market share to 3.5% of the used car market still a fraction really most cars bought
here are used anyway and so Q1 in 2025 use bev transactions were up almost 60% that's the best
data I could find we'll try and update that the electric vehicles UK CEO Tanya Sinclair said that
there are now more than 2 million plug-in vehicles in the UK but priority should be given to those
who need accessible charging yes if you haven't got a driveway that's incredibly important now
quantum scape has spent more than a decade on solid state batteries they were founded in 2010
and it now points to over 2 million tests done over 200 patents and applications more than 1.5
billion dollars in funding and yet it still has no product revenue in February the firm unveiled
a new production line in California called the Eagle line not to use it to manufacture millions
of cells at scale but rather to show off the blueprint that its customers can then copy that
change matters because it's more of a strategy shift for quantum scape now focusing on licensing
the process of making solid state batteries compared to making them all themselves the pitch
aims at automakers that want to test prep and produce solid state Volkswagen has been a big
investor over 300 million dollars in quantum scape over the years and Volkswagen scaled back its
involvement through powerco three years ago after quantum scape missed some of the timelines around
commercialization the timing also reflects the wider squeeze and the current moment is a critical
inflection point for solid state we see in China true solid state not semi-solid state or not a
percentage being a liquid electrical electrolyte but a true solid state battery is now in many of
the automakers medium term plans and some of them have test cars on the road right now with
commercialization due end of 2026 and mainstream in 2027 so we are around a year to 18 months away
from a lot of Chinese cars having a big conversation around true solid state not being at the million
rmb plus uh levels but much more affordable Chinese manufacturers catl byd and more accelerating
their plans and quantum scape ended last year with another 850 million in liquidity so they've got a
of a runway but they're burning through 100 million or more annually in operating cost and
they will want to start generating some revenue and also for the Chinese not to get a massive
head start on solid state we'll take a break we'll come back we'll talk kia bmw and royal
end field on the podcast stick around back in a moment all right welcome back to the podcast
kia in the uk will run a nationwide weekend of first drives from april to june over 190
strong dealer network here they will host sessions from thursdays to saturdays allowing you to go
along and drive the new kia rev2 the cars will have the 42 kilowatt hour batteries and allowing
there'll be four of them at each kia location across the uk and so you get a one-to-one walk
around with an ev specialist to learn all about evs then you get a half hour test drive to go and
see what you think of it this program aimed i think being so structured uh about uh first time
buyers of electric vehicles perhaps um with a clear eye on people who want to learn more the ev2
is a small vehicle just over four meters or 13 feet long it's got up to 362 liters of boot space
almost 13 cubic feet so useful as a small family car with either the 42 or the 61 kilowatt hour pack
underneath has the 400 volt version of egmp and the dc rapid charging doesn't need to be good on
it it's going to be somewhere um around 100 kilowatts or so 10 to 80 in 30 minutes they did say
it's also engineered for things like colder temperatures not to lose any more than maybe
10 percent of its capacity in really cold weather and it's really high specced as well the kia rev2
has the three screens over the air updates digital key plug and charge vehicle to load
vehicle to grid capable oh man what does that mean these days vehicle to grid capable i mean
so am i at this stage all right i mean and remote start parking assist entry pricing i think would
be below 25 000 pounds probably below 20 by the time dealer offers really kick in for the small
battery ev2 long range variants will be well below 30 and that should get the uk government's
almost 4 000 pounds plug-in grant as well we'll see what the pricing ends up versus reno five per
joe e2 008 for puma gen e and more bmw released a video of its new m3 the electric m lapping the
nir burgering in full camouflage so they haven't even begun series production of the i3 they have
begun pre-series production of the i3 that's the sedan version that started last month um with full
series production in the second half of this year so m3 is going to come early next year
they say four motors 100 kilowatt hour plus pack on that and a very high performance with bespoke
engineering for their first m car okay moving on now recently poll star surprised many people with
four new cars in the works and replacing the poll star two which wasn't necessarily part of the plan
that's coming next year and thanks to new details coming from their design chief we get to know more
about poll star's plans so uk sales open next summer pricing below 50 000 pounds and the current
kind of jacked up stance will be shifted to a lower sportier saloon according to design chief
philippe romers um the man behind the audi e-tron gt over a volkswagen group before he joined
poll stars and so it'll keep the poll star front end the dual blade headlamps and not have a
traditional grill but it'll get bigger by almost 10 centimeters addressing a concern of many poll
star two owners that there's not enough room in the rear seats and it'll be more of a performance
car than the current one although mine's plenty quick enough to be honest with you under the skin
they'll move to a new geely platform the parent chinese company they'll also have platforms
running at volvo lotus link and co and zika the poll star ceo michael washla says software defined
vehicle capability and advanced central computing are at the heart of the new poll star two which
has been designed in china speed which means 30 months from sign off to market now we'll finish
off by talking about italy they now host the world's first official Porsche club only for electric
cars it's called the and i'll try and do this with enough italian flair um registro italiano
emotion it's one official recognition from Porsche it began as a chat group back in 2021
post lockdowns when the club formed for italian ticon owners to compare notes on charging their
cars and software updates and with backing from Porsche italia they've now formalized into an
official Porsche club i love that uh registro italiano emotion had their first convoy their first
tour and it wasn't about going quickly or doing a particular distance but 131 participants and 73
vehicles obviously all tycons and mccanns at this stage drove from the across the alps from the
Porsche experience center in northern italy uh to salzberg in austria to a very historical place the
hands peter porsche tramwork museum the convoy had 42 tycons and 31 mccanns and a couple of the
tycons were even the tycon turbo gt vizac package with no rear seats and some bone shaking front
so they did well and that's your podcast for today thanks for listening and thanks to our
premium partners national car charging on the us mainland and the loha charge in hawai and testy
v have a lose trusted partner for independent eb battery health testing in australia and new
zealand have a good and see tomorrow and remember there's no such thing as a self-charging hybrid
About this episode
Renault's CEO criticizes short-range plug-in hybrids as 'fake PHEVs' that hinder EV adoption, while highlighting Renault's focus on range-extended electric vehicles. Norway's EV market shows strong recovery with BEVs making up nearly a third of all vehicles, though rural areas lag behind. In the UK, EV uptake is spreading beyond affluent areas, with used EV sales rising. QuantumScape shifts strategy to licensing solid-state battery production amid growing Chinese competition. Kia launches a UK nationwide EV test drive program targeting first-time buyers, and BMW teases its upcoming electric M3. The episode offers insights into evolving EV tech, market trends, and manufacturer strategies.
