DAILY: VW Hits 2 Million EVs, Skoda Adds Powerful Plug-In and Canada Opens Books For China | 01 Mar 2026

Welcome back to EV News Daily. Today, VW hits two million,

Scodder adds a powerful plug-in hybrid,

and Canada opens the books for China.

Plus, stay tuned later in the show while I tell you why zero-emission ferry transport

just got a big boost.

No EV News China today, the spinoff podcast,

where we try and learn about what's happening in the East

and how it affects the global landscape.

That's back tomorrow morning.

Volkswagen just delivered its two millionth battery electric vehicle.

I'm glad someone was keeping count.

They say it was an ID3 handed to a customer at the factory in Dresden.

The milestone caps a run that started back in 2013.

The vehicle then was an E-Up, then grew to the E-Golf and today's ID family.

Volkswagen now holds one of the leading market positions in countries like Germany

and across all of Europe.

And it ranks among the world's highest-volume EV makers.

The ID4 leads the way for VW.

They've sold about 901,000 units across Europe, China and the US.

The ID3 follows at 628,000, and the ID3 mattered for timing

because it was the first MEB vehicle.

That's a platform that many of the Volkswagen group cars run on,

even some Fords, and in 2020 it pushed compact class mobility to the mass market.

At the top end, though, the ID7 and the ID7 Tourer, that's the looker,

has added about 132,000 units in the last two or three years in the upper-mid-range segment.

And some countries often see the ID7 as the number one car sold there.

Volkswagen now points to the next steps in the small car battle.

It plans a product upgrade for the ID3, then we'll get the ID Polo

and that family of vehicles like the Skoda Epic and the Coupre Reval,

more on Coupre in a moment, by the way, more on Skoda in a minute.

The ID Polo will be the first of four affordable small cars

in the compact segment to widen market accessibility.

Moving on.

And Skoda has unveiled a 200 kilowatt plug-in hybrid for the superb range.

This is the superb hatchback version, the most powerful combustion

battery electric version of a Skoda they've made.

So it's still the 1.5-liter engine.

They've now added it to 100, sorry, an 85 kilowatt electric motor.

And the battery size is almost 26 kilowatt hours.

Battery capacity, charging power and the charging times

stay the same as the lower powered version.

Skoda keeps the lower powered version plug-in hybrid on sale.

But the move lands as plug-in hybrids are taking a larger share of superb sales

for Skoda, one in four of them now leave the factory door

with a plug-in hybrid powertrain.

Since 2019, they've delivered more than 68,000 of the superb IV models.

In other words, they have a plug socket on the side.

Now, Canada is opening the books to Chinese made cars.

Now you have now begun accepting import permit applications as of today.

So these cars can be built in China, but not necessarily be Chinese EVs,

if that makes sense.

The move lets the first legal shipments enter Canada at the most

favored nation rate, which is 6.1 percent.

Now, that's 49,000 vehicles this year, this 12 months.

OK, so that marks a sharp cut from 106.1 percent

until now, when Canada followed the United States in 2024

by adding those tariffs in.

Importers only get the lower rate inside the permit quota.

No Chinese made EVs beyond the quota ceiling

get to clear Canadian customs in any given year.

Global First Canada will hand out the permits on a first come first serve basis.

The first try and shall be 24 and a half thousand for the first six month window.

And there's no cap per automaker, by the way, in the first six months.

Then the second quota, again, 24 and a half thousand vehicles

starts on September 1st for the next six months.

Plus, that includes any permits left over.

It's like mobile minutes rolling over, if you like.

Global Affairs Canada will consult the industry on whether to scrap

or retain the first come first served model.

So who has the permits in place, who has the paperwork in place

to bring vehicles into Canada that are made in China?

Well, at the moment, none of the Chinese brands,

which you might be excited about and which we have a spin off podcast

called EV News China, where I'm learning every day.

I'm far from an expert, by the way.

But we try and look at the news, analysis and insights

from what's happening in the East and decode it for the global landscape.

And hopefully, you know, if you listen to that spin off podcast,

even occasionally with me, we're on that journey together.

And I'm enjoying learning about it.

But so far, none of the brands that you might be excited about,

if my Canadian listeners hear about these fast charging EVs,

very high tech EVs, the X-Pungs, the Xiaomi's and the Neos of the world,

they can't come in at the minute.

The ones that do have all of the paperwork in place,

the likes of the Polestar's and Volvo's.

Obviously, Tesla make giga Shanghai vehicles.

They could not bring the Teslas in from Berlin, as they are at the moment,

into Canada, but bring some Shanghai vehicles in.

I dare say a higher profit margin on those vehicles.

And so maybe those those companies could be early winners.

Also, a plans to scale to 70,000 vehicles coming in from China by 2030.

OK, Cooper is next in the news, give them a little mention earlier.

Cooper will unveil the born facelift.

The Cooper born is the ID three, effectively.

So the end of this week, fifth of March, we get more details on that.

The update gives the Cooper a family look, a probably sharper look

from the Cooper from the Terramar and Taverscan, a new triangular rear lighting

and echoing the front end theme, hard edges, perhaps less curvy styling,

which it already was actually compared to the ID three and the ID four.

The VW brand vehicles are quite friendly, smiley.

If you like the Cooper styling is all a little bit more in your face, I could say that.

Cooper has yet to confirm technical changes.

It's promised interior quality improvements, more upmarket materials,

you know, infotainment touchscreen coming from Volkswagen, revised climate layout,

control, more buttons.

We would think that matters because VW Group realized the error of their ways

and retreating from just the one big screen and the capacitive buttons

on the on the steering wheel, which if you do brush them with your hand

as you're turning the wheel, all of a sudden, your dashboard starts scrolling

through something or something starts playing.

I'll bring back buttons.

The Bourne has sold nearly 30,000 units here in the UK alone in the last four years.

So Cooper has reason to keep it nice and fresh.

Whenever I see one, I do think they look very nice.

The Cooper Reval, though, is where I'm really excited.

It's the small electric hatchback along with the VW ID Polo, ID Cross.

What else is going to be the Skoda Epic?

These twenty three thousand ish vehicles.

Give me some monthly offer details on those.

But automaker financing, deposit contribution, that's, you know,

I'm talking that kind of language wouldn't be for me, by the way,

because we tend to buy used vehicles, older vehicles.

But the majority of people buy vehicles on finance, other new, certainly fleets.

Oh, by the way, I have a special podcast in your feed for patrons

and it's coming into the free feed in the next couple of days.

Oh, maybe it's Judy Wensdee all about the power of fleets

and why they're important in the rest of us buying used EVs down the line.

Check it out when that comes out on the free feed.

All right, moving on.

A Range Rover Velar prototype has surfaced in European winter testing

and the test mule looks like a clean break in shape from what many people might

think a Range Rover looks like cab forward, truncated bonnet and thick

camouflage over the rear quarters.

But we can tell that perhaps some of the boxy Range Rover styling

has made way for aerodynamic efficiency.

The roof line plunges at the rear, no more boxy shape, more fastback.

The splits roof spoilers, it's over the glass and beneath the rear window.

A secondary lip kind of mirrors the Porsche Cayenne and the tailgate.

Clamshell tailgate, obviously a nod towards Land Rover wanting cargo access.

The Velar Range Rover matters because it will be on Jaguar Land Rover's

eight hundred volt platform.

They say over 300 miles of range.

Looking forward to that.

Rivian has launched the Rivian Adventure Department RAD.

They've called it rad and I'm here for it.

The performance sub brand aimed at harder, faster off road driving.

Think Ford Raptor.

The rad says it will stretch the boundaries of electric off road

capability by developing existing future models.

This is the engineering team that did all the quad motor stuff for the R1 vehicles.

It's just kind of been formalized by Rivian, right?

Tesla is updating its guidance for Model Y owners.

They've actually just updated the Model Y owners manual, which does sound

like, I don't know, perhaps a bit of a dry topic, but it's actually interesting

because they've updated the battery advice.

The message stays simple.

Use the superchargers only when you have to.

Tesla is telling its owners to charge mainly at home on level one or two,

avoiding a daily charge limit of more than 80 percent.

That's not new for Tesla with NMC or any of the kind of non LFP battery

chemistries. I keep my Polestar at 50 percent.

Not because they've told me to just because I keep the cars at 50 percent.

It also pushes frequent top ups over running the pack low.

So don't run your and I did run the car down to two or three percent

at the weekend as a necessity and plugged it straight in.

I didn't want to leave it because I haven't got big miles to do over the next few days.

I don't want to leave the car sitting at two percent because that can

that deep discharge speed up long term degradation.

Now, time spent near the extremes matters to Tesla avoids any prolonged

periods of your battery being at zero or 100 percent in the Model Y

and defining battery health as the percentage of original energy

capacity that remains 85 percent health would be 85 percent of original driving range.

Tesla saying in the new manual update that lithium ion batteries degrade over time

through repeated charge and discharge cycles with charging habits and time spent

near the extremes affecting the rate of decline and saying only use the super

charges when you really have to on a road trip.

In fact, Tesla taking the approach now that if you can store your vehicles

at 50 percent for a long period of time, if you're leaving the vehicle for whatever

reason, leave it plugged in, set the charge limit to 50 percent and let it

trickle charge when it needs to and warns a little bit about what it calls parasitic drain.

Century mode, dog mode, USB connected devices can drain the battery.

Isn't that interesting? OK, we'll take a break.

We'll come back. We'll talk Volvo and cells and electric trimerans back in a moment.

OK, welcome back to the podcast.

Volvo Group wants to speed up its move to battery electric heavy trucking

and with electrification at the heart of its decarbonisation plan for the long haul,

it starts from a position of strength because Volvo holds almost 20 percent

share of the heavy truck market in Europe and has done for the last two years.

Their latest hardware is the Volvo FH Aero.

That is 780 kilowatt hours of batteries and a new axle integrating motors

and transmission at the rear, which frees up chassis space for more cells,

373 miles of range.

The FH Aero electric supports megawatt charging 20 to 80 in 45 minutes.

And that lines up nicely with mandated driver rest periods under European rules.

Volvo says megawatt charging less fleets run longer electric routes

without cutting utilisation rates.

Lytton has closed its acquisition of Northvolt.

Northvolt is one of the most well funded European battery hopes.

It didn't work out for a variety of reasons.

Northvolt at Northvolt expansion and Northvolt labs in Sweden.

Now, under the ownership of Lytton, the deal covers assets with a book value of

five billion dollars.

The portfolio brings 16 gigawatt hours of battery manufacturing capacity,

395 acres of land and the largest battery

R&D centre in Europe under Lytton's control, the CEO and co-founder

Dan Cook says the company operates one of the largest campuses in Europe.

Now, Northvolt did make cells.

It's not like it was a well funded business

that couldn't get it off the ground.

They had many issues, particularly around yield and quality.

Europeans found out that what the Chinese were doing with cell making

wasn't maybe as easy as some had thought.

I'm sure they didn't underestimate the size of the challenge,

but it didn't work out in the end, even though plenty of cells were made,

by the way, that were good enough to go in vehicles on batteries.

Lytton's going to restart the Northvolt at facility

to make NMC cells, lithium ion NMC cells for automotive, mobility

and energy storage, targeting commercial sales in the second half of this year.

Northvolt labs will continue lithium ion cell development

and industrializing their lithium sulfur battery technology.

They're going to hire 600 more people across its Swedish operations

over the next 12 months.

And finally, the Oslo based tourism and tech firm Brim Explorer

has signed contracts to build two fully electric trimerans.

These deliveries are going to happen in 2027.

And Brim Explorer says the pair will become the most efficient,

battery powered maritime vessels out there.

Brim builds itself as a provider of silent ocean excursions.

The new boats will run emission free for sightseeing trips totally silently

and experienced cruises along Norwegian coastlines

and environmentally sensitive areas.

Brim Tech, the firm's in-house technology division,

has designed these new trimerans, which will carry 180 people,

be 24 metres long with an 11 metre beam, battery only range of about 115 miles.

That's 100 nautical miles at up to 20 knots.

The Brim Explorer business operates five vessels already,

three are hybrid electric and two battery only.

The two new trimerans join the fleet early next year,

increasing the firm's exposure to battery only electric operations on the water.

And that's your podcast for today.

Thanks to our premium partners, National Car Charging on the US mainland

and the Low Heart Charge in Hawaii and Test TV,

Avalos Trusted Partner for Independent EV Battery Health Testing

in Australia and New Zealand.

Have a good one.

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

DAILY: VW Hits 2 Million EVs, Skoda Adds Powerful Plug-In and Canada Opens Books For China | 01 Mar 2026

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