DAILY: UK Hits 33% EV, Tesla’s Euro Slump and Hyundai Elexio For Australia

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The end on a low and honk cheese solid-state battery.

Join me later for a bonus show called Encouraging EV Adoption.

The carrot or the stick after the UK, as you will find out in a moment,

ends the year on a really high note and the US winds back its emission standards.

We'll take a look at the global picture of which countries are coming

on top of the leaderboard for EV adoption incentives.

And what's better, the push or the pull?

Well, we'll find out.

It's live tonight for patrons and all Patreon exclusives go into the free feed

after seven days.

If you want the content first, well, check out the Patreon page

or just wait a week and get it for free.

Now, electric cars have reached a new milestone.

December 2025 marked a turning point in Britain's switch to EV.

Battery electric vehicles made up 33% of all new registrations last month,

according to Transport Research Group New Automotive.

More than 46,000 pure electric cars registered last month,

taking bevs from niche to mainstream in just a few years.

That monthly share is pretty much the zero emission vehicle mandate.

Not the technical term.

It's quite a dry set of regulations, but here we have effectively a mandate

for 2026 have done for the last two years as well,

with the percentages the car makers have to hit.

So the market effectively reached next year's benchmark a month early.

If you look at it that way and it capped a record year across 2025,

477,000 EVs were registered.

So bevs a 23.4 share over the full year.

Now that beats New Automotive's estimate of the real world ZEV target for 2025

and represents year on year growth of more than 20%, which frankly I'll take.

The pattern in the second half of last year was clear.

EVs are now the main source of growth.

Petrol and diesel both in terminal decline.

In December, 44% of new cars had at least a plug socket on the side of them.

That's almost half of everything sold in this country coming with a plug socket.

This is huge progress and yet you will still see from certain sections of the media

these negative headlines.

They're doing good business in clickbait.

I think of talking about the death of EVs.

The data is the complete opposite, but why let truth get in the way?

Bevs and plug-in hybrids together outsold petrol and diesel models.

So petrol registration is down by 12% year on year.

Diesel down 16% year on year, December to December.

The ZEV mandate is working and it's working at scale.

Since the summer, Bev uptake has run ahead of the path for regulations

generating a surplus of 60,000 credits.

Like I say, it's quite dry regulations.

There's things the carmakers do.

If they overachieve one year, they can roll them over.

They can sell vans, which count as two credits.

And so they'll all complain and all many of the carmakers are complaining very loudly.

Normally through their lobby organization, I must admit, but saying,

well, we can't do this for having to give discounts.

It's not sustainable.

And yet they are complying.

No one's paid any fines yet.

You can do deals with the carmakers.

I've got a surplus of credits like all EV makers like Tesla and Polestar, for instance.

They don't have to sell combustion stuff.

And so this buffer of credits from last year means no carmaker is going to face fines for non-compliance.

Some carmakers are even well ahead of their obligations.

VW, BMW, Renault, BYD, all posting Bev sales above their required levels.

Their results show that compliance with the rules is achievable in a way that is commercially sustainable.

But again, they are lobbying very hard to say.

We're not making enough money.

Make things easier for us, please.

It's a significant milestone here in the UK.

Like I say, a special podcast later on tonight for patrons in seven days.

It'll go into the free feed all about which countries are doing different things,

trying different techniques to, well, follow Norway all the way to 100% EV.

Now let's move on.

Tesla's European boom has been over for a long time,

but it well and truly halted in 2025 after years of rapid growth

during which the Model Y became the best-selling car.

Tesla hit what now looks like a demand wall registration data from the big European market.

So Tesla's volume falling from 326,000 cars in 2024 to just 235,000 last year.

That's a 30% drop year on year striking for a firm that had been adding tens of thousands of sales annually.

There was no stopping Tesla.

They were the leader and in many places are still the leader.

The year began weekly.

We talked about it all last year.

Tesla ramped up production of the new Model Y refresh,

but even with higher output later in the year,

registration has never returned to their expected levels

and the new refresh Model Y has not generated the order backlog expected.

Sales fell in every big European market.

The only market in Europe, not in the EU, but in the wider zone, Norway, it was up in,

but it's a small car market, although everything's EV there.

Relatively speaking, pretty tiny.

In the UK, Tesla's largest European market, registrations dipped, a decline of 10%.

France was down 37%.

Germany saw Tesla down 50%.

The downturn was even steeper in smaller markets that were once a stronghold.

Netherlands down 50%, Belgium down 53%,

Portugal ease down 22%,

Denmark, Sweden all down as well.

I think Sweden obviously there's the sort of the issue that Tesla has fallen out with Sweden.

Sweden is a country that's very strong in terms of its labor markets

and unionization and collective bargaining.

That's the antithesis to the way Tesla does business.

And so very publicly fell out with Sweden's unions down 67% in Sweden.

Across this group of countries,

Norway did break the trend after the Model Y became Europe's best selling car

for the last few years,

whether 2025 is a pause before they return to renewed growth

or whether that has now been the peak of Tesla in Europe.

Only time will tell.

We'll wait and see.

Tesla has also had a bit of a bad day.

They've at the minute lost their efforts to secure branding for the name Cybercap

for their RoboTaxi project hitting a legal wall.

The US Patent and Trademark Office, the USPTO,

refused Tesla's registration of RoboTaxi as being too generic

and formally told Tesla they couldn't use the name Cybercap.

RoboTaxi failed because it was a common descriptive name

rather than a distinctive brand.

Cybercap failed because, well, somebody else has got it.

You see, Elon Musk and Tesla unveiled the Cybercap RoboTaxi.

When you call it what you will,

they can't call it Cybercap anymore on October the 10th.

But before October the 10th, nobody at Tesla had filed the trademark.

Now, this can obviously with early trademark filings give away the big reveal

as it were.

So although people are having a bit of a heyday with this,

the sort of the anti-Tesla lot calling it, you know, Mickey Mouse time

and they don't have to run a company.

You need to be careful with registering things because it's public

and it gives the game away and Tesla relies a lot on hype and the big reveal.

But even after that, nobody bothered to register it.

So a rather large firm came along and did that.

Unibev submitted their trademark within a few weeks.

They've also got trademarks like Tesla Keeler.

Now, the earlier Unibev application is the reason why Tesla can't use it

because they have to do this in chronological order.

Of course, I'm sure there is a deal to be done with the world's richest individual

who's not just worth billions, but hundreds of billions.

And so maybe Mr.

Musk will have to get his checkbook out and buy that or at least make

this whole thing go away.

Nice earner for whoever thought about just checking

an awkward performance review for the person at Tesla,

whose job it is to make sure trademarks are all lined up.

I'm sure people are saying, oh, Tesla can't call it a cybercap.

I'm sure that they will because these things will be resolved out of court

and I'm sure there'll be a payment made to make the whole thing go away.

But maybe some egg on face.

Now, Hyundai Australia will launch the Alexio.

It's a mid-sized SUV this year.

And it's going to be launched in the first quarter of the year,

expanding their EV range between the Kona and the Anik 5,

targeting families who want a roomy, affordable battery electric car.

Not the best specced car in the world.

It's a single variant at 60,000 Aussie dollars.

Front-mounted motor, 160 kilowatts, 88 kilowatt hour lithium-ion pack.

And Hyundai claims a range of 546 kilometers on WLTP,

88 kilowatt hour pack and an efficient front motor.

Are we going a long way to that big mileage?

With its timing, though, specification and pricing,

it fills the gap between Hyundai's compact Kona and the larger premium Anik 5.

Hyundai gains a clearer EV ladder for Australian buyers choosing between size,

price and range.

Not the cheapest of vehicles, though, at 60,000 dollars.

Could it find an audience, I wonder.

Now, Ford's business in America expanded last year,

as its electric ambitions have well and truly been put on the back burner.

The company sold 2.2 million vehicles in the US, up 6%.

Battery electric vehicles were the weak spot, though.

Of the total, 84,113 were fully electric, down 14.1% from 2024.

December, just 5,500 EV sales about the same as November,

but again, really down year on year as the tax credit expired.

Those incentives were distorting demand, sales more than doubled in July

and topped 10,000 in August and September as people rushed to get the vehicles.

After its strongest quarter of the year for EVs, Ford then reported its weakest.

In the fourth quarter, it sold a few electric vehicles in America

and that was probably what led to the cold water being poured on their EV ambitions.

You would have to say they fortunately cancelled the F-150 Lightning program

and they continued to improve the Mustang Mach-E,

but otherwise had nothing new to sell you for a couple of years.

We'll take a break, we'll come back in a minute and talk about Europe's EV charging and Nvidia.

Stick around, back in a moment.

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All right, welcome back to the podcast.

Now, the European Union's retreat from the strict CA2 rules

and carmakers' slower electrification plans

are causing some problems for the EV sector.

Yet electric lorries are close to launching on scale really

and fast-charging infrastructure is expanding quickly.

In this landscape, the head of Alpetronic sees opportunity

but also some risk.

Their hyperchargers began as the brand for its high-powered DC units

and become a kind of a shorthand really for rapid charges amongst many.

A few years ago, ABB, EVbox, Tritium, EFSEC.

Don't see many of those around anymore.

And Siemens are all jostling for space today.

If you turn up at a large charging station

and you see the Alpetronic hardware all lined up,

you know you're in probably for a good charging session.

They are almost the standard bearers these days for good charging hardware.

And the chief executive, Philippe Sainonet,

arguing that physical infrastructure is not the bottleneck.

Interesting to hear what he has to say actually.

He says, and I quote,

Simply put, we need more electric vehicles per charging point, end quote.

So public debate, he reckons, should shift from the culture wars

to dense city charging, using parking spaces better

and filling in coverage gaps.

What the sector lacks in his view is certainty.

Carmakers, fleets, charge points, investors, he says, plan on the long term.

While politics moves in increasingly shorter cycles,

calling for a reliable framework.

The shift by several manufacturers from EV only strategies

to either rolling them back or now mixed powertrain roadmaps

has complicated demand for Alpetronic.

He says the answer is really clear, though, we need breadth.

They're pushing into megawatt charging to account for heavy duty trucks.

The ramp up that the EU's fleet CO2 rules

will make incredibly likely that we'll have all of our groceries

and goods delivered by pure electric trucks.

Alpetronic say that's the big opportunity now

because there is clear regulations around that.

He's wary of overreacting to the political mood swings

or temporary dips in EV registrations.

For him, he says tightening climate policy, corporate decarbonization

targets and improving cost of ownership still point to one direction.

The question he says is not whether Europe electrifies road transport

but how quickly and efficiency it efficiently it does.

Isn't that interesting?

One of the big names in charging talking a lot about certainty.

I've echoed that for a very long time.

I'm a nobody.

I'm selling out the CEO of a big company.

But the political swings, whatever they may be,

wherever your alliances lie politically.

I do think that if one lots promise something,

the next lot should stick with it, even if they don't agree with it.

But you've told the industry one thing.

Otherwise, every four years here, it's five years our election cycle.

She's going to swing wildly one way or the other.

And that's there's no way to run a business.

No way to run a country.

But what do I know?

I know nothing.

Right.

Nvidia will finish us off.

They have introduced their take on artificial intelligence in cars.

Alper Mayo, the chief executive of Nvidia.

Jensen Quang calling it the world's first thinking and reasoning AI in a car.

And obviously this got the attention of Tesla fans and even the chief executive

himself because Tesla really dominate the conversation in terms of this.

And now Nvidia want a slice of that.

The first production deployment is during American roads this year

in Mercedes Benz CLA showing the system meant for near term use.

Alper Mayo is a vision language action architecture.

All right.

What's that mean?

Then that sounds full of jargon instead of perception, prediction

and planning modules all being separate.

They said that these models fuse things like seeing, reasoning

and acting in a single loop the way they're thinking about autonomy

is different to others.

The system is trained end to end mapping camera input directly to vehicle control

similar to Tesla's approach.

He also had very good words to say about Tesla system as well.

They wasn't combative in any way was full of praise effusive for full self-driving.

Alper Mayo marries large reasoning models with simulation tools.

The Bombard the system with edge case scenario designed to work with open

datasets for training and validation.

The initial model is called Alper Mayo one.

It works on 10 billion parameters.

If that means anything to you, it's outputs driving trajectories and detailed

reasoning developers can look at both the chosen path and the logic

that led to the car going in that direction and auditing it as it were.

The company is pitching Alper Mayo as a foundation as a platform as not

ready to go yet, but will be this year and taking the fight ready to Tesla

in terms of the conversation around self-driving and autonomy.

These days the buzzwords of course AI and on that bombshell.

I'll leave you.

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DAILY: UK Hits 33% EV, Tesla’s Euro Slump and Hyundai Elexio For Australia

About this episode

electric cars

battery electric vehicles

BEV

plug-in hybrid

ZEV mandate

Polestar

Volkswagen

Renault

BYD

BMW

EV

Tesla Model Y

Hyundai Alexio

Hyundai Kona

lithium-ion pack

WLTP

Ford F150 Lightning

Ford Mustang

CA2 rules

electrification

Alpetronic

DC fast charging

Mercedes-Benz CLA

autonomy

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