DAILY: Tesla Kills Off S & X, Ford Adds LFP In Europe and More Miles From Mini | 29 Jan 2026

Welcome back to EV news daily today, Tesla officially kills off the Model S and the Model

X Polestar updates its 2 for another model year and Ford gives its cheapest EVs more

range and more power.

On EV news, China today, our spin-off podcast, we talk about NIO pushing their updated ADAS

system to hundreds of thousands of cars, the X-Pung X9 and VW's China Platform Zonal

architecture rolling out on tens of vehicles over the coming years from Volkswagen China.

Let's get into it then.

Last night were the financial results for Tesla for the quarter and all of 2025 and

then there's always a call with the chief executive and investors get to ask the management

some questions.

So we'll try and avoid all of that chat but there's some product stuff that we get excited

about.

So there's plenty of financials that you can go find online, I won't talk about profit

and things like that.

However, in terms of what you and I get to go and buy, it'll be a lot less going forward.

Tesla will stop building its longest-lived cars.

Elon Musk told investors last night, well, night time, my time anyway, during the firm's

queue for earnings call that production of the Model S and the Model X will now officially

end in the second quarter.

The move ends a run that helped turn Tesla from a niche startup to global dominance.

It also marks a shift in where the firm sees its future away from high-end flagships and

towards high volume models and new projects.

The firm will turn Fremont, California that makes those vehicles into a factory that makes

robots.

It's humanoid optimus.

It marks a shift from car making to what Tesla calls physical AI because everything's AI.

My toothbrush is probably physical AI, I have no idea.

With capital moving from vehicles to its robots, 2025 still bought Tesla's first-ever year-on-year

revenue drop.

In the history of the company, it was down 3%, doesn't sound like a lot, but a couple

of years ago they were promising 50% year-over-year improvements.

Not so long ago, they were promising 20 million vehicles a year by 2030.

Well, they went down from 1.8 to 1.7 to 1.6 million vehicles over three consecutive

years.

Total automotive revenues fell 11% much more.

Other bits of the business are doing okay, things like their energy storage business

small compared to where they make all of their money, which is selling cars right now.

In many ways, Tesla has become analogous to the industry it disrupted.

The problems that the established companies have got is they still need to sell engines

to drive their EV plans.

The problem Tesla has got, it still needs to sell you a Model Y to make the money to

do things like energy storage and robots, which are taking up 20 billion a year in investment.

They have 44 billion in cash and investment, so they'll be around for a couple of years.

They make no money, but still it's the same problem.

They've turned into the establishment.

Tesla is now the legacy.

It's crazy, isn't it?

And so Musk didn't frame the move of killing off the S and the X with any kind of nostalgia

at all, just a broader effort to streamline, pushing down costs and shifting capital to

products that he wants to develop like robots and robot taxis.

The Model S and Model X ones central to Tesla have already been at the edge of their portfolio

for a long time.

And I've loved having them in the lineup and it's been fun to have them around.

They are their flagship brand cars.

They have been improved.

Last year, they got a liquor pain and some ambient lighting.

There wasn't much.

And so I think we knew the writing was on the wall.

That's a shame.

Now, Tesla's Robo Taxi claims are being analysed in the hours after the call.

Tesla said its Robo Taxis are working in places from Austin to San Francisco's Bay Area.

California, though, says no, they don't and they cannot because Tesla does not have a license.

Tesla stake much of its future yesterday on its call on autonomous vehicles and investors

track each hint of progress carefully.

It's a claim that already runs Robo Taxis in major American cities.

And so regulatory acceptance and commercial readiness are being watched.

If the claim runs ahead of the law, then the claim runs ahead of reality.

California's rules on autonomy are very clear.

You need very specific approvals to operate any kind of self-driving Robo Taxi on public roads,

especially for paid services.

And Tesla holds no such permission for Robo Taxis.

In their financial report yesterday, they intermixed the words Robo Taxi,

spelled with a capital R that signifies the internal Tesla brand of a Robo Taxi.

What they think is something that drives itself and the word Robo Taxi,

spelt with a lowercase R.

Now, those are just vehicles in Tesla's ride-hailing fleets, like an Uber.

You open your app and you can call a Tesla, but humans are involved along the way.

And Tesla very subtly mixed those two things up.

Yeah, Robo Taxis in California.

Investors shrugged off the gaps, though, between promise and permission with a very positive reaction.

Tesla now says 1.1 million people worldwide use full self-driving.

That's a big number.

I'm so pleased they updated it.

It's been a long time since we got a number on FSD.

Of course, these days called FSD supervised in parentheses.

And 1.1 million is a lovely number to see, especially for fans of the brand that do use

that system and some people claim extraordinary mileages with no interventions.

Yet this first public figure blurs as much as it clarifies.

Unfortunately, today's podcast does have a bit of a theme running through it.

You see, that tally folds together.

Anyone who bought FSD from back in the day and anyone who now subscribes to it.

But it was presented in the graph as active subscribers.

The firm hasn't split the two out and won't do, apart from using the word subscribers

to describe people who paid the lump sum to buy something.

In its Q4 shareholder deck, Tesla reported 1.1 million active FSD subscriptions.

Unless it was up from 800,000 in 2024, 600,000 in 2023, and 500,000 at the end of 2022.

However, in early 2023, Tesla said that they had been roughly 400,000 FSD purchases in North America.

Now, that new figure that they've given is a global one and it mixes everything together.

After the initial release, Tesla added crucial detail.

70% of that 1.1 million are people who bought it.

Only 30% actually pay monthly.

That mix points to a large legacy base of people who were committed back in the day and willing

to pay a very high one-off price, believing that Tesla would deliver what was being promised

and the disclosure puts Tesla's talk of future robot taxi networks, I think in context.

Because if just over one in 10 cars sold to date carries full self-driving,

Tesla must either, which is kind of where they are, Tesla has to massively improve the take-up

of FSD or get more money from the existing users.

Yet the absolute figure, 1.1 million subscribers, is huge by any competitive set, by the way,

any advanced driver assistance system.

On EV News China today, we're talking about NEO's big upgrade.

They're rolling it out to their fleets like $400,000.

NEO's, everything says 2021, I think with the RNX chips or something, so they can all be updated.

Now, from February the 14th, in a couple of weeks time, Tesla will end FSD purchasing and you'll

have to do a monthly subscription. The chief executive, Mr Musk, has a performance-based

pay package now in place and he will get the money with a long-term milestone of 10 million

active FSD subscriptions. Will his future stock reward be granted on the definition of a subscriber

being people who paid up front to buy something? Doesn't sound like a subscriber to me.

Hey, we'll finish off talking about the call last night with Tesla

having a solution to the Cybertruck problem. They didn't acknowledge that nobody wants to buy a

Cybertruck anymore, that they built capacity to that truck is probably 10 times more than

they're selling. Say, if you're being generous, 25,000 Cybertrucks last year, the line can build

250,000 massive, massive waste of money, which they've never been really held to account on by

their shareholders. On its fourth quarter earnings call, Mr Musk floated a new use for its

unsold and unwanted Cybertruck units, intra-city autonomous deliveries. The idea sounds neat,

it runs into the same basic issue though, that has dogged the Cybertruck from launch,

it's a terrible vehicle because of the shape. Tesla pitched the model as its hyper-utility

workhorse. It didn't kill it off like the S and the X. No, it's sharp-angled stainless steel shell,

they say, and the tapering bed makes it perfect for commercial use. No, it makes it very ill-suited

to the task. It's a very boring task moving urban logistics around, standard-sized boxes,

and standard-sized pallets, none of which fit. Urban cargo is all about rectangles and right

angles. Vans and box trucks use vertical walls and flat roofs to maximize cubic capacity,

and keep loading simple. I'm an idiot, and I know that. Palettes, roll cages, parcel totes,

all slot in, they stack and they strap down. The Cybertruck's profile trades usable volume

for the styling whim of the chief executive. Odd corners, wasted space, sloping panels,

none of its any use. Musk's answer, sorry, Mr. Musk's answer, hints at soft demand for a model

that was once going to sell 250,000 units a year. In its first year, before it ramped up,

Tesla can clearly write new software at whim. It cannot rewrite shapes. Oh, and finally,

I must mention that Elon Musk told investors last night that not a single,

optimist robot is doing any kind of useful work at its factories. That jars with two years of

claims now that Tesla's humanoid machines will be taking on real tasks. The climb down, not that

it was admitted as a climb down, of course, matters less for the reaction, which was very positive

by the stock market. They increased their company value hugely last night in the after hours.

Musk has cast Optimus as Tesla's next act. He called it the biggest product of all time again.

Fleets of robots out earning their car business. And yet now, none of them perform any useful work

inside Tesla's own plants. The timeline is now hazier than ever. The gap between claims

and reality is nothing new in Silicon Valley. I'm not picking on just Tesla, nor in Mr.

Musk's back catalogue, may I add. It's all very common stuff in the world of tech bros to

boast about things that are coming. But robots pose a much tougher test than sending out an

over the air updates or adding a new paint color to your design studio on the website.

Factory work is probably the easiest setting of anything because you can do it in a controlled

layout. In fact, most factories these days are controlled by robots anyway. And China has talked

about there being dark factories by the end of the year. So China have these humanoid robots

doing useful work. Everybody thinks Tesla's in the lead on this. And yet China is now talking

about by the end of the year, the first car factory that has no humans in turn the lights out.

They call them dark factories. And so there's repeatable tasks. They have a captive customer

when it's when you are the owner and you are making the robot. And you have your own engineering.

Optimus has yet to even do that. And they're doing it in China, which is the inconvenient

truth for Tesla. Although last night, the chief executive did

hint at the biggest problem Tesla has. And he said that is China. Mr Musk promised 12 months ago.

It was actually a year ago that there would be 1000 optimist robots doing useful work inside

Tesla's factories by the end of 2025. Fast forward to year. And he made exactly the same

claim, not the thousand, just that there would be some doing something useful by the end of the

year. He said it's really hard to build humanoid robots, by the way. That's really good to know.

Investors already juggle Tesla's twin identities as a car making business that makes all the money

and its new tech bets. The admission on the earnings call nudges the balance back and forth

for now towards the firm's more prosaic role, designing, building and selling model threes

and whys while its most ambitious plans remain idle. Let's take a break because I didn't intend

to do so much of the podcast on Tesla's earnings call, but it's nice to check in with how they're

doing once every so often. We'll come back and we'll talk about some actual cars,

poll stars and fords and minis and they're all getting better. And why the bolt is better

than a used Toyota Corolla on the used market. Got some data on that back in a moment.

Alright, welcome back. Let's talk about the Polestar 2 getting better for 2026. They've reworked

their original electric car once again and it just keeps getting better every year. If this was an

internal combustion car, it would get one mid-cycle refresh and that'd be your lot. It's been on the

road since 2020 and the change has been brisk. The two launched as Polestar's second model,

of course, after the plug-in hybrid Polestar 1 dual motor long range. I still think pretty high

tech and mine's one of the original launch additions and so long in the tooth now. Then they

broadened out the range. First a shorter range car, then a single motor version, then the BST270.

That was a limited run performance tuned flagship. Occasionally look at the one auto

trainer. Don't tell my wife. Most petrol cars charge change less over many generations than

Polestar have updated the two. In 2023, they changed the look of the car. There's that new

slick front of it, which you can get by the way, if you didn't know, if Polestar owners, as a paid

aftermarket thing from the Polestar website. It was on the other day and it was a lot of money.

But if you want the front of your Polestar to look the same as new ones and you've got an old one

like me, you can actually pay to have it refreshed next time you're in one of their lovely black

square dealerships. And so the single motor versions went from front to rear wheel drive.

They became way, way more efficient. Mine is awfully inefficient and notable gains in day-to-day

usefulness. The lineup now looks really simple on paper. The new 2026 model year here, standard range

or long range. And the latter is dual motor four wheel drive and power steps from 268 horsepower in

the Polestar to standard range all the way to 300 horsepower in the long range single motor

and 500 horsepower with the performance pack or wheel drive options. Pilots add driving assist.

The plus is the kit and the dual motors obviously is the performance bit with more power. They'll

lower the suspension, even get the one with the O-Line dampers that you can manually adjust.

So more improvements on the spec sheet for 2026, which is a great thing. Ford has done exactly the

same thing. Maybe not quite the cadence is the same, but they're two cheapest electric vehicles.

I don't think they're very cheap. Of course, the Ford Puma Gen E is sits like kind of mid-20s.

Now it gets the full UK grant, but otherwise, Ford's Capri and Explorer now go further and faster

for the same price. So what's not to love? Thank you, Ford. The entry level versions of the Capri

and the Explorer get LFP batteries and a stronger motor. Standard range pack goes from NMC to LFP,

which means the official range goes up by 45 miles. So WLTPs 243 to 288. The Explorer

goes from 233 to 276. It's slightly less of an aero shape than the Capri. The Capri's a bit of a

brick, but anyway. Ford also fitted a new drive unit. So you now get 187 brake horsepower in those

again. And the 0-60 time drops by about a second. The shift to LFP brings some benefits that matter

to things like fleet buyers and the used market as well. More thermally stable, less likely to

catch fire if they are punctured. Although if your battery gets punctured, you've probably got

bigger things to worry about than the chemistry of your battery. Just get out of it either way.

They also promise a longer service life as well. And you can charge LFP to 100%. They want to be

charged and balance the pack at the top. LFP has a cost in weight. Lower energy density means

like for like pack weighs more. But they didn't say how much that the Capri and the Explorer

have added around the waist. But we all have after Christmas, you know? A lot of cheese.

And so we're all carrying a bit of extra weight in January. Nor has it said whether it will pass on

any of those LFP savings for now. Price is staying the same. But that's good news. And Mini

have done the same. Mini found some more miles kind of out of nowhere, actually.

They say they haven't changed the battery pack, but they have added 25 miles to the Countryman E.

Is it just new official testing numbers? The gain is modest until you look at the class. The

Škoda LROC is 355 miles. The Explorer can't really put it in the same class as the Mini.

374 miles. So the Countryman, which is actually quite a big vehicle. I always think Mini's a Mini,

but Mini's aren't Mini anymore. That's 311 miles now, which keeps it at least competitive.

New silicon carbide inverter is what they've used to cut the losses when it turns DC to AC.

So 66.5 kilowatt hour pack. But the motors and the onboard systems all run on AC.

That conversion is more efficient now. Low friction wheel bearings on the front axle.

Just little efficiency gains like that. Also made the pack more usable. They're giving you

less buffer. So you can actually use more of the energy. And the tweaks reach across the range.

The four-wheel drive Countryman E. All four now does 290 miles. That's up from 267,

which is still trailing its competitors. But you know, they're very stylish vehicles.

And the inside and the interior, really, if you like it, you must really love it. I think it's

very unique and big circular dials and bags of personality. So in that case, you don't need to

win, you know, the spec sheet wars on paper, do you? Now, the support props up one of Mini's core

products. The Countryman made up a third of its brand sales last year with 93,000 registrations

globally. And Mini hadn't updated that in, as far as I know, a while since launch. And so

that's a good thing. Hey, you should buy a used Chevy Bolt if you want the best bang for your buck.

A used Bolt EUV is cheaper than Toyota Corolla on the used market overall. According to research

from University of Michigan School of for Environment and Sustainability, they say,

going used Bev costs you the least over the lifetime of ownership. This is America that

they've done the data on and they've ruled out anything like federal tax credits and state

subsidies. The work compares 14 vehicles, which were model year 2024. They looked at combustion

and they compared it to plug-in hybrid and pure Bev and three years of ownership and two mileage

profiles, nine thousand or 15,000 miles a year. They tallied the purchase price that you would

have paid. They factor in depreciation, financing costs, fuel maintenance repairs, insurance and

taxes as well. Substract that from the resale value or rather the resale value from the overall.

So all added together, the headline results come from mainstream models.

For typical drivers, a used Chevrolet Bolt EUV now delivers the lowest three year cost

followed by a used Hyundai Arnick 5. For heavy users, the order shifts slightly, new EVs fare

better. Fuel and maintenance swing the numbers across the sample. Battery electric models cut

energy costs by up to 70% than the energy that you have to pay to put inside your petrol cars

and maintenance by 40%. What is that 40% like that should be like 100%. You know, obviously

the EVs do go wrong. All machines go wrong. Never cost me any money. Ever? I mean servicing.

I've always kept my servicing up at main dealers. But I've had to just for the warranty. And when

I sell them on, I want to make sure they've got, you know, every stamp in the book, which is a pain

in the backside. But still, because you paid money for someone to go, yeah, yeah, car looks good,

mate. Thanks for that. Now I'm not saying I want oil changes, just something for my money.

Let's move on. Jku has found another thousand buyers for their EV, the J5, the Chinese brand

extending their launch financing offers. And so drive away price staying the same free premium

paint for the next thousand customers and the order books opened in December. So this is in

Australia, this story. So the J5 in Australia, $37,000. So that's a stellar deal. And they will

quickly fill those order books every single time at that pricing. And the price matters more than a

coat of paint because 37,000 Aussie drive away, the J5 is the one of the cheapest EVs in Australia.

So versus what BYD Ato 2 and Ato 3 versus obviously the MGs like the MGS5, the Geely EX5,

they get the GAC Ion V, don't they? Little compact Chinese high riders that the Jku sits

against. That's really, really competitive pricing. They also sell the midsize J7 and the J8,

that's a big SUV, the J8 in Australia. It's hard to keep up with so many Chinese cars around the

world and you know, obviously right hand drive. So I pay a bit more attention to Australia because

you know, they get cars before we do. Now the UK wealth fund is pumping more money into EV charges

and batteries. Britain's national wealth fund will channel more public money into EV charging and

domestic battery production, betting that manufacturing in the United Kingdom and hardware

to charge EVs will scale our industry. Ministers have ordered the fund to step up backing for

both sectors. Private capital has been cooling a little bit recently without faster build out of

high speed charges and the bigger investment of cell production itself, Great Britain could

fall a little bit behind, the national wealth fund will target public charging and ultra rapid

charging on key trunk roads and urban hubs where utilization rates look uncertain for public,

for private money rather, to do all of the work itself on battery production, looking at large

scale domestic sell and pack production tied to UK assembly lines, the aim to anchor supply chains for

EV vans, company cars, last mile delivery, things like that. Yet the fund can't do everything,

local planning, grid reinforcement, clear long term consistency of policy and CO2 standards

matter as much as just writing a check. Now how many countries tell the United Nations,

the UN, that they have a plan to go EV? What's the number? It's a big one by the way,

a total of 104 countries now tell the UN they plan to expand into electric mobility.

EVs are in the national discourse and climate contribution conversations in over 100 countries.

The numbers matter more than simply making a promise to the UN. Of those 104 countries,

66 countries around the world have hard concrete expansion targets never before have so many places

moved from vague support for environmental support and clean transport. All sounds nice,

doesn't it? There's now 66 countries with explicit numbers on timelines and goals to go EV.

And that breadth gives EV mobility huge momentum and political backing. Climate diplomacy once

centered on power plants and smokestacks now, we're talking national plans for EVs. When

countries codify their EV ambitions with the UN, that gives investors, car makers,

grid operators, the direction of travel for the next 10, 15 years. The split between intent and

detail stands out though. 38 countries talk about more EV mobility without a hard line in the sand.

They add to a sense of global momentum but not as much as the 66 countries that have a hard

target. Yet even this mix of firm and loose pledges moves the baseline as more national

climate contributions come up for revision. EVs are increasingly getting that specific

role in national policy. Governments that have already set numbers face pressure to raise them

and those that have not find it hard to sit on the sidelines. The UN process will not install

things like charges. It's not the job of the UN to do that and put charges in the ground but

it can be there to act as a scoreboard for electric mobility as it goes from a niche concern 20

years ago to a test of climate seriousness. You listen to this podcast that we do together

every single day and we know that the move to EV is not only happening at such a crazy pace

but it happens around the world at different speeds. One of the countries

moving will have some catching up to do when political climate change is the United States

but because so much media comes from the US. So many headlines written by US journalists or

there's so many vested interests in the US, the oil industry that wants to knock EVs back so you

get a lot of media stories about EVs in cold weather or there's an accident and the needy's

on fire. That gets spread far and wide. Very dark forces spreading that but equally just like the

friendly media as well are printing things that are affecting the US market and that's really

important and it will never be irrelevant to this podcast because the United States is incredibly

important. So much innovation. Companies are based there and you know some of the world's

cleverest EV people are working on US soil but in terms of the actual share of people buying EVs

it is a little bit behind some other countries at the moment. There is going to be some catching up

one day. There's no doubt about that but if you believe the headlines that come from there you

might think the world is moving EV at a slower rate than what it actually is. Everyone will run

their own race but it has an outsized impact on the narrative if you like and so I'd bring you

that bit of news at the end to remind you that it's happening whether people like it or not

and we are right at the forefront of it talking about it every single day. Thank you for your

company as always. Thank you to our premium partners who put the show on the air, National

Car Charging on the US mainland and the Low Heart Charge in Hawaii and Test EV, Avalu's trusted

partner for independent EV battery health testing in Australia and New Zealand. Have a good and

sit-amara and remember this no such thing as a self-charging hybrid.

DAILY: Tesla Kills Off S & X, Ford Adds LFP In Europe and More Miles From Mini | 29 Jan 2026

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