A solid-state battery is an EV battery that uses a solid material inside instead of a liquid. The goal is usually more energy stored in the same space, which can mean longer range and sometimes safer operation.
Energy density is basically how much “battery power” you can fit into a certain size or weight. If it’s higher, the car can often go farther without making the battery bigger and heavier.
Federal tax credits are government incentives that reduce the effective cost of buying an EV. When those credits change or expire, EV demand can drop because buyers lose a major price lever.
The Tesla Model Y is one of Tesla’s most popular EVs. Because it sells in large numbers, changes in its sales can strongly affect Tesla’s overall standing in the EV market.
Market share means what fraction of total EV sales a company gets. If market share rises, it usually means the brand is selling more EVs compared to everyone else.
UAW is the United Auto Workers, a union for many auto factory workers in the U.S. When they strike or vote on a new contract, it can change how factories operate and what workers get paid.
Three Rivers, Michigan is a town in the U.S. where the labor action happened. The episode mentions it because the strike involved an automotive-related workplace there.
EV registrations are how many electric cars were newly registered for the road each month. It’s often used like a stand-in for sales because it shows how many new EVs are actually being bought.
The Tesla Model S is an all-electric car from Tesla. It’s one of their main models, and the discussion here uses it to talk about how Tesla’s sales and registrations are changing.
The Tesla Model X is an all-electric SUV from Tesla. The hosts mention it to illustrate how some Tesla models still drew buyers even while Tesla planned to stop certain versions.
Car
Ford Mach-E
The Ford Mach-E is Ford’s electric crossover. In this discussion, it’s the main reason Ford’s EV registrations weren’t as bad as the overall numbers, so it’s treated as Ford’s current EV sales driver.
The Ford F-150 Lightning is an electric pickup truck based on the F-150. The segment notes Ford ending production, which is important because it changes what EV model does most of the work for Ford.
In this context, incentives are manufacturer or dealer offers (like price reductions, rebates, or financing deals) used to make EVs cheaper or easier to buy. The segment specifically ties Toyota’s incentives to building momentum for its EV lineup even when federal tax credits aren’t available.
Solid-state batteries are a new type of EV battery. Instead of using a liquid inside the battery, they use a solid material, which could make the battery safer and allow more energy in a smaller/lighter package.
Lithium-ion packs are the batteries in most EVs today. They store energy using a chemical process inside the battery, and solid-state batteries are trying to improve on that approach.
Factorial Energy is a company working on EV batteries. They’re focused on solid-state battery technology and trying to move it from early development toward real production.
Mercedes-Benz is a car company partnering on battery development. Partnerships like this help a battery maker prove the technology and prepare it for real cars.
Stellantis is a large car company partnering on battery work. Their involvement can help ensure the battery meets the needs of real production vehicles.
“Mass market” here means widespread consumer adoption, not just limited pilot programs or niche vehicles. The segment frames geopolitical tensions as a factor that can affect timing and availability of solid-state batteries for broad EV production.
A SPAC is a “blank-check” style company that raises money first, then merges with an operating company to help it become publicly traded. It’s one way companies can go public.
This phrase means the hard step of taking a battery idea that works in a lab and making it in large quantities. It’s not just about performance—it’s also about making it consistently and cheaply enough for mass production.
Cycle life is basically how many times you can recharge and use the battery before it starts to wear out. A longer cycle life means the battery should last longer in an EV.
Temperature window means the temperatures where a battery still works well. If the window is wider, the battery can handle more extreme hot or cold weather without losing too much performance.
Gravimetric energy density means “energy per unit of weight.” If a battery stores more energy per kilogram, it can help the car go farther without adding as much mass. The speaker is using this to explain range improvements from better batteries.
Volumetric energy density just means “energy per unit of space.” If a battery is more energy-dense by volume, it can fit more range into the same battery size. That helps designers keep the car’s packaging efficient.
The Mercedes EQS is Mercedes-Benz’s top long-range electric car. In this discussion, it’s mentioned as an example of a premium EV that can already go around 800 kilometers on a charge. The point is to compare how better battery tech could push range even further.
Solid-state battery cells are a newer kind of EV battery where the “stuff that moves ions” inside the battery is solid instead of liquid. The goal is usually better safety and more energy stored in the same space. Here, they’re presented as the technology behind longer range.
A demonstration fleet is a small group of test vehicles used to prove a new technology in the real world. It helps the company learn how the cars behave outside the lab. Here, it’s mentioned as a step toward delivering vehicles in 2026.
Battery chemistry means the “type” of battery—what materials are inside and how it works chemically. The speaker is saying different car makers might use the same basic battery type, even if the final battery pack design changes. That could help reduce costs.
LIVE
Welcome to Daily Drive.
For Monday, June 15th, 2026, I'm Kellan Walker in Las Vegas.
Today on the show, EV registrations are still down, but the market is stabilizing.
The Dowke strike is officially over, and Tesla is under fire in Europe over its self-driving
safety data.
Plus, factorial energy CEO, C.U. Huang, says the company's solid-state battery technology
is closer to mass market than most people think.
With the reality that the solid-state has naturally a higher energy density, we can
either have the same volume with longer range or have the same energy with a smaller weight
and a lighter weight and a smaller pack.
Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up in the auto industry.
US EV registrations are stabilizing after last fall's loss of federal tax credits, but
the recovery is still a work in progress.
According to the latest data from S&P Global Mobility, new EV registrations fell 9.8% in
April compared to a year ago.
On one hand, that sounds like a big drop, but it's also the smallest year-over-year
decline of 2026.
Tesla led the way, its Model Y was up 61%, and its overall market share climbed to 51%.
But analysts say Tesla faces a challenge ahead without new models on the way.
We'll have more on this story in a moment with our own Lindsay Van Hully.
The UAW's two-week strike at Doubt Corporation's Axle Plan in Three Rivers, Michigan is officially
over.
Local 2093 members voted 704-173 to ratify a new four-year deal that boosts wages 36%.
Plus, workers get new paid holidays, a $2,000 ratification bonus, and no healthcare premium
increases.
About 1,000 workers walked off the job June 1st.
Doubt's largest customers include GM and Solantis, both of which said last week the
strike had not affected their operations.
Tesla is facing serious scrutiny in Europe over its push to expand full self-driving technology
across the continent.
Reuters reports that Tesla presented self-published safety data to regulators in Sweden and the
Netherlands that independent researchers say is highly misleading.
The data includes flawed comparisons to US crash statistics, inflated claims, and an
unrealistic assumption that every American vehicle would be replaced by an FSD-enabled Tesla.
The Dutch regulator approved FSD in April and is now seeking EU-wide approval, but a
European Transport Safety Watchdog is calling on Tesla to have its data independently verified.
Joining me now to talk more about those EV registration numbers is Lindsey Van Hully,
deputy editor here at Automotive News.
Lindsey, welcome back to Daily Drive.
Hi, Kel.
Happy to be here.
All right, Lindsey.
So it's difficult these days to get a clear picture of the EV market from the raw data,
especially after the end of federal tax incentives.
What are your big takeaways from the latest release from S&P?
I think the biggest thing really is just the smallest decline in April that they've logged
so far this year.
And I think what that shows is a sign that the market is beginning to stabilize after the
loss of federal tax credits last fall.
So for context, the registration data S&P Global Mobility provides monthly.
It's sort of a proxy for sales because not all EV makers, including Tesla, report US results
separately or sales monthly.
So it gives us a look at just the share of EVs that are registered each month.
And so in January, they were down 41% year over year.
In February, 37%.
In March, 25%.
In April, just 9.8%.
So as you can see, the decline is dropping each month.
And what that sort of signaling is that the number of new EVs registered in the US is at
its highest point so far this year.
And analysts I talked to said, it's showing the sign of a gradual inching up.
And that's likely what we're going to continue to see for a while as the market really finds
its footing.
There's a lot of news that we've seen over the last several months about some EVs leaving
the US market, some brands bringing new ones, a lot of emphasis on internal combustion vehicles
and hybrid vehicles.
And so there's been a shift in the mix that we're seeing that brands are focusing on.
And a lot of that has still kind of created sort of an uncertain time as far as where EVs
are ultimately going to go.
But I think what that's showing is that there's an improvement in EVs that are being registered
month to month.
And one of the things that S&P pointed out is that Tesla actually had a good month and
it was a big contributor to that.
Registrations of new Teslas were up 13%.
Its volume leader, the Model Y, was up 61%.
But even the higher end Model S and Model X that Tesla has said it's going to discontinue
had higher registrations in April.
And S&P Global Mobility pointed to a lot of the metrics around Tesla over the last year
have begun to recover and seen some strength there for sure in April.
Now, Ford was down sharply while Toyota and Subaru were surging.
What's driving that swing and what does it tell us about where the EV market is headed?
So it's interesting.
Other brands were mixed into your point that there were some that were down sharply,
there were others that were up.
And I think that gets to what analysts were talking about as far as that unsettled landscape.
So Ford, their registrations overall were down 27%.
But registrations of the Mach-E crossover were up 17%.
So the Ford story I think is sort of around the Mach-E now really being its main consumer EV model
after Ford said it was going to end production of the F-150 Lightning pickup.
And so the Mach-E is sort of doing a lot of the work in Ford's EV portfolio right now
while it's still continuing to work on future models.
Toyota, Lexus, Subaru had some new models that are on sale.
They've been an interesting story because they are bringing new models into a market
without a federal tax credit for over a year helped offset those upfront prices by about $7,500.
Toyota has put a lot of incentives on those new models when they launched to really help build
momentum around their EV lineup.
But we're seeing a lot of momentum there, at least in the month of April,
having these new models on the market that are kind of helping drive that consideration.
Perfect. Lindsey Van Hully, always great to have you.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thanks, Cal.
Solid-state batteries have been the great promise of the EV industry for years.
Lighter, safer, and potentially cheaper than the lithium-ion packs powering today's vehicles.
C.U. Huang is the founder and CEO of Factorial Energy,
which recently went public on Nasdaq under the ticker FAC,
and is developing solid-state battery technology in partnership with Mercedes-Benz,
Stellantis, Hyundai, and Kia.
She joined her own Molly Boygon on the Shift podcast to explain how the technology works,
why it makes EVs lighter and potentially less expensive,
and how geopolitical tensions are shaping when and whether solid-state batteries reach the mass
market. Here's a piece of that conversation.
C.U. Huang, founder and CEO of Factorial Energy, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you, Molly. Great to meet you.
So Factorial recently announced that it completed a business combination with the SPAC
and has begun trading on Nasdaq. So why is now a good time for Factorial to go public?
Well, we're very excited. We were public on Monday and we're trading under the ticker FAC
and FACWW right now. Become a public company definitely supports our next phase of technology
development, customer qualification, and manufacturing scale-up. And this is a very critical
moment for Factorial to be able to commercialize our first technology and be able to scale
tremendously over the next few years.
When you speak about that commercialization strategy, battery startups have in the past
struggled to sort of get from the lab to manufacturing scale. So how do you think
Factorial is different?
Well, as you are very familiar with the battery industry, there are a lot of noise and hype
there. And it's really difficult to tell technology from one versus the other.
Some are claiming higher energy density, higher cycle life, and great temperature window, etc.
But on the other side, it's also very easy to tell. It's all about validation. I think automotive
validation is probably one of the most portable validation you have because automotive customers
have been one of the most demanding customers in the battery space. So I would say looking at
customer validation is definitely paramount in differentiating a battery company versus others.
You know, for Factorial, we not only have a track record to deliver a high-performing
solid-state battery, which comes in with higher energy density compared with lithium-ion,
was up to 80% higher, which means it's lighter, smaller battery pack that goes for longer range.
And at the same time, we also have substantial validation and backing from automotives.
Hyundai, Kia, everywhere are our first investors in the company. Mercedes, the one,
tasted like the $200 million investment into the company a few years ago as well.
And last year, we built the world's first solid-state electric metal vehicle
with Mercedes together. And Mercedes, after months of testing, they actually took on historical drive
from Stuttgart all the way to Malmo, Sweden, with 1,205 kilometer range and made history
for Mercedes. And that's only one small part of our journey. And we have an even broader
and more exciting cadence coming up. And not only for automotive, we also received strong
validation from our drone customers, which is a new area we're expanding recently.
You mentioned these development agreements with Mercedes-Benz,
Stellantis, Hyundai, and Kia, and that the auto industry players are so demanding relative to
other industries. How do you manage the competing priorities and timelines of these different
automakers? Because you hear that list and they're very different.
Oh, absolutely. Some are premium automakers, some are mass market players. And we also recently
received the first production program from a US supercar maker called Karma Automotive.
They're even higher in premium brand than a lot of the major mainstream premium brands out there.
The beauty of our batteries is that this is a foundational layer for energy,
across mobility, across energy storage, and even for the future of the space exploration,
it's a foundational layer. There are a lot of synergies, especially when it comes to
high performance, high energy, high power batteries. And when it comes to high energy density,
it has both a definition of high energy on a volumetric and gravimetric perspective.
So it basically means the energy that's housed under the same volume or the same weight.
If you have a higher volumetric energy density, this means that with the same space you're having,
you can extend the range of the vehicle substantially. So this plays into the story of
a lot of this premium vehicle fleet. And for example, the Mercedes vehicle, they had
like 800 kilometer range with the EQS that's being a flagship vehicle in our fleet.
And with our vehicle, we're able to extend that to 1,205 kilometers with the vehicle
that Mercedes built. It was powered by factorial batteries, solid-state battery cells. However,
when it comes to like a mass market vehicle, they could very well take in a different approach.
For example, we launched a demonstration fleet with Solantis last year. We made a press release
last year that we're going to be on track to deliver a vehicle in 2026 as part of the demonstration
fleet. So this could come into a completely different design with the same energy we could
deliver a lighter pack, which eventually will be able to drive down the cost of the vehicle.
And this is really important for our customers to not only reduce the cost for our end consumers,
especially for those heavy pickup trucks and big large SUVs, but also be able to create value of
our OEM customers. And we can also share the value creation with our OEM customers.
You were saying that those smaller packs will eventually lower the cost for mass market vehicles.
What about in the meantime, how are the partnerships for those mass market
manufacturers delivering lower cost of vehicles than the premium manufacturers if,
as you say, there's sort of this foundational energy layer with commonalities across manufacturers?
So the battery chemistry could be the same. Biking 24, we shipped the large-format cell
to Mercedes. That was one of the first B sample shipment among all the solid-state players.
That cell came in with 390 Watt or per kilogram energy density. It's more than 100 MPH cell
in capacity as well. And the slanted cell they released last year were 375 Watt or per kilogram,
and it's a little bit smaller. So it's around 80 MPH in terms of capacity.
And however, the chemistry are very similar to each other. It doesn't demand a different chemistry,
just based on different cell design, different dimension, and especially in a different pack
dimension. The chemistry is actually the same, but with the reality that the cell has naturally
a higher energy density, you can either have the same volume with longer range or have the same
energy with a smaller weight and a lighter smaller pack. And this is actually
one stone for two birds. And you can play in a premium sector, or you can play in the mass
market sector. And even when it comes to air mobility, for example, we have the drone players,
and it can even go in for the extreme, that we can even take out cycle life requirement,
can building even more aggressive energy density and with much higher payload and much longer range
as well.
Battery technology and everything happening in the auto industry at AutoNews.com.
We'd love to hear from you. Let us know what you think of the show and the topics we covered
today. Send us an email at dailydrive at autonews.com or leave us a voicemail at 313-444-2774.
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About this episode
EV registrations are stabilizing after the loss of federal tax credits, with S&P Global Mobility pointing to the smallest April decline so far this year. Tesla remains a standout, with Model Y registrations up 61% and Tesla’s overall market share reaching 51%, while the company faces serious scrutiny in Europe over its push to expand full self-driving. The show then pivots to Factorial Energy, where CEO C.U. Huang argues solid-state batteries are closer to mass market than most people think.
