Tesla Launches Used Lease Scheme, Kia EV5 GT and China EVs Direct To Euro Buyers | 25 Aug 2025

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Welcome back to EV News Daily.

Coming up today, Tesla launches a used lease scheme,

Kia's EV5 GT and China EVs direct to European buyers.

Plus they tuned later in the show,

I'll tell you why vehicle to grid is having a moment

and gaining more traction in 2025.

Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening.

In fact, wherever you're listening around the world,

welcome to EV News Daily, your trusted source of EV information

for Monday 25th August.

I'm Martin Lee, and I go through every EV story,

so you don't have to.

Patreon supporters, do choose to fund this show,

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and join our list of legends.

Let's kick off with news of Tesla.

Started leasing certified pre-owned CPO vehicles.

These are Model 3s, Model Ys in California and Texas.

This lets drivers get behind the wheel for $215 per month

with no down payment.

There is a $700 acquisition fee,

and the first month's payment is due at signing.

This move comes just before the electric vehicle tax credits,

of course, seven and a half on new,

four grand on used, expiring on September 30th.

So Tesla has to push short-term demand

and obviously reduce any used vehicles

that have come back to them off lease.

Well, leasing used cars isn't really common

in the industry, it happens,

but Tesla is hoping it makes their vehicle scores,

sorry, their vehicles more accessible.

The company is now offering 24 month leases,

capped at 10,000 miles a year,

or 12 month terms at a 15,000 mile annual limit,

aiming to attract more buyers

with more flexible options.

Amid a 13% drop in global deliveries this year,

and around 50,000 global EVs sitting somewhere in inventory,

apparently in the UK they're having some storage issues

with how many Teslas they have here anyway.

Tesla's strategy reflects the pressure

from its slowing sales

while experts expect a bump in US sales this quarter,

and until the end of September,

I think most people agree

there will be a slowdown in Q4,

how much we don't know.

The new lease program is a good way

to keep Tesla's sales moving.

Tesla sales in Sweden aren't moving very well,

they just hit their lowest point in last month

since October 2022.

Well, last month in July,

only 163 Teslas were sold there,

which is 86% less than the same month last year,

and a big fall from June.

For 2025 so far,

the first seven months of the year,

Tesla has sold 3,774 vehicles in Sweden down 63%

compared to the first seven months of 2024.

Now to encourage buyers,

good news for potential Swedish Tesla buyers,

the boss there has announced

about US$4,000 equivalent on trade-in bonus

for anyone who orders a 3 or a Y

before the end of September,

taking delivery before the end of the quarter.

That's on top of a 0% financing rate

for those picking up a 3 or a Y long-range.

The Model 3 starts around US$50,000 equivalent in Sweden.

It's not cheap.

Model Y starts around US$58,000 equivalent in Sweden.

Now these incentives were meant to end in August,

but have been extended to the end of the quarter.

Across Europe, Tesla sales fell 44%

in the first half of this year,

hurt by some production delays,

change over to Model Y,

rising competition,

and controversy around their CEO.

Despite this,

Tesla's July sales were okay in Norway and Spain

if you pick out certain monthly figures,

but they're dropping in Germany and the Netherlands.

German sales are down 55% for instance,

and so possibly other countries could see

some of those good deals

that the Swedes are getting at the moment.

And finally, Tesla's cars in China

now run on Chinese artificial intelligence.

Now you might think why is that,

but doesn't Elon Musk own an AI company

in Grok?

Well, yes, but this is China,

and you have to play by their rules.

And so Tesla has had to go to a Chinese AI company,

even though they have their own inside the business,

as it were.

ByteDance's Dao Bao, a DuBao model,

powers tasks like navigation and music.

DeepSeq, which you may have heard of,

handles the AI conversations.

Of course, there are issues around

using DeepSeq outside of China,

some security concerns,

using DeepSeq is free to use by the way,

but there's some data handling issues,

which they process your data differently

to how other AI companies do it,

questions around where all of their servers are as well.

But in China, well, that's no concern

to Chinese central government.

And so DeepSeq is the one that is used.

These partnerships keep voice and AI data

totally within China's walls,

as required by the regulations.

DeepSeq's model was also picked up

by the rival automaker BYD for their system.

Meanwhile, in the US, Tesla drivers will be using

the GROC chatbot from XAI on all models

with an AMD chip.

So software 2025.26 or later.

Now Kia is launching the EV5 GT,

its high performance version of their midsize SUV.

It'll launch in 2026, early next year as well,

following the launch of the standard EV5,

arriving in Korea and Europe with customers very soon.

EV5 GT is also called Project OV1 GT.

It's been in some hot weather testing in Arizona,

spotted by the spy photographers.

The EV5 will be Kia's fifth purpose-built electric vehicle,

strong demand for midsize SUVs,

as we see from the, well, the Model Y

being the most popular vehicle in the world

for a couple of years running.

The GT badge, not GT line,

GT badge reserved for Kia's proper powerful models.

Putting the EV5 GT up there with the EV6 GT,

EV9 GT, I think 5N, for instance,

when they re-engineer the vehicles,

they actually do some decent stuff to it,

not just calling it a GT line.

So we think 450 kilowatts or so,

that's over 600 horsepower, dual motor, of course.

3.5 seconds, 0-60, is properly rapid.

Launch control, virtual gear shift, electronic control,

suspension, and all the good stuff.

Now, China's EVs could well be delivered

to European buyers directly.

Getting a Chinese EV delivered to your door in Europe

is getting easier.

Instead of handling customs or collection at ports,

buyers now have EVs and plug-in hybrids

delivered straight to them.

A new e-commerce platform,

which claims to be the biggest for Chinese EVs abroad,

actually sold 7,000 vehicles in the first half of the year.

Most of them are plug-in hybrids,

which aren't hit by the Europeans' extra tariffs

of 35% plus in some cases on pure BEVs.

Extended range models, E-Revs,

count as a BEV in terms of the tariffs,

since their gas engines charge a battery

and the gas engine doesn't drive the wheels.

Sales in the US almost stopped because of tariffs.

They had 30 Chinese vehicles I sold,

I think I saw sold there.

Meanwhile, Chinese brands reached a 5.9% market share

in Europe in May, more than double their previous share

and totaling over 65,000 reservations.

That's really interesting.

So it's called China EV Marketplace.

If you are interested, go and have a look online.

You'll find their website, which is giving you all the details

about their new door-to-door service for European customers.

So you can purchase a road legal, completely legal EV,

but it comes directly from China.

They look after all of the customs process

and no going to the port to try and find someone

with your keys walking around.

I think they did until recently ship to the US,

but with all the tariff conversations,

not worth operating their business stateside for now,

but focusing on any European customers

that want to order a Chinese Bev directly

from the factory in China,

according to Jacob Gersel, the COO of China EV Marketplace.

Go and have a look at that website if you are interested.

I'd probably still want to go through a dealer

and have some sort of level of support,

but hey, give it a go.

Now Nissan is working with their partners

on solid-state batteries and Lycap technologies,

teaming up with Nissan to make solid-state batteries for EVs

and to make them cheaper

by improving how the cathode electrodes are made.

Instead of the usual method that uses solvents

and needs drying, Lycap's dry electrode method

skips those steps, producing electrodes faster,

cheaper and with lower environmental impact.

This technology has struggled to work well at scale

until now, they say.

Their new activated dry electrode process changes all of that.

With Nissan's support, the two companies

hope to accelerate the rollout of solid-state batteries,

key, some say, to unlocking really big range

with sensible battery sizes.

In July, they made their first full-sized roll

of cathode material at a new plant in California

that has a 300 megawatt hour capacity.

Solid-state batteries are popular with car makers

and the energy storage sector.

They can hold more energy.

They can charge faster.

They are safer.

In theory, they're going to last longer as well.

And if this new manufacturing process proves successful,

it could cut costs and speed up the adoption of EVs even faster.

We'll take a break.

We'll come back.

We'll talk about UK Van Drivers,

NEO launching with a subscription option

and a bit of vehicle to grid chat.

Stick around back in a mow.

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Call 1-800-GRANGER, click Granger.com, or just stop by.

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I didn't realize I was wasting $415 a month

until I downloaded Rocketmoney.

I thought I had my finances under control

until the app laid out all my spending and categorized it for me.

Takeout, shopping, and unused subscriptions were quietly draining my account.

And as a result, my savings took a backseat.

But Rocketmoney doesn't just tell you what you're wasting money on.

It takes action to save you money.

First, the app looks at your income and monthly expenses

and calculates how much you can safely spend each day

to stay under budget.

Rocketmoney also finds and cancels unwanted subscriptions for you

and even negotiates better rates on your bills,

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All right, welcome back to the podcast.

All right, in part two today,

let's kick off by talking about South Korea's government

looking at new EV purchase subsidies after years of reductions.

The Environment Minister said at the National Assembly

that officials are aiming for around subsidies

that would be equivalent to about US$3,000.

They'll start next year up from the equivalent of about US$2,000.

Four years ago, you get US$5,000 equivalent, that's $7,000,000 off an EV,

but they've been cutting them.

The cuts were meant to spark competition.

But high EV prices and slower sales than expected

are leading to a policy rethink.

Stricter rules are also coming starting this year.

Only EVs that share state-of-charge data

with charging stations and have product liability insurance

will get the subsidies.

These changes follow last year's apartment garage fire.

Destroyed 80 cars and there was a lot of scrutiny

around electric vehicles.

Let's move on.

Three out of four UK van drivers now think fully electric

could be right for their business, rising from 67% last year to 75% this year.

And most saying those that have vehicles for work,

you won't be surprised here, it's the cost savings

that are the main draw.

Over 60% of van drivers say running an electric van

would be cheaper than their diesel,

but some doubts remain, some worry about charging times,

that's natural.

Four in 10 have range anxiety, that's natural.

Even so, nearly seven in 10 drivers who haven't switched yet

are going to look at an electric van for their next purchase.

That's a huge number, by the way, 70% EV consideration.

You don't see that very often.

Volkswagen wants to make the move easier

with their charge anytime offer for commercial vehicle buyers as well.

So charging your commercial vehicle at home,

saving money, giving you some free miles in there as well

to help get you into an EV van.

Now let's go to one of the Chinese names, Ito.

Not one of the massive names that we talk about all the time,

the likes of BYD's vehicles,

but Ito's new M7 has actually moved the LiDAR inside.

So a joke about it being the taxi cab light on top,

because it is just like a little hump on top of the,

at the minute, the middle of the roof of the car,

and you can't really get away from seeing it.

It does look like the taxi light's about to come on,

but that's the best place to put it, the engineers say.

And so that's what LiDAR is really good at,

if you give it good vision.

Now Ito moved it inside the cabin, placing it behind the windshield

and new setup the first time in a mass market car

that uses an in-cabin LiDAR system.

It scans the road by firing out laser pulses

and combines them with camera footage

to build a complete 3D map of the road,

giving the car a clearer sense of its surroundings

and seeing stuff that the human eye can't see.

Safety features like emergency steering, very good at night,

spotting odd hazard small hazards that other sensors don't miss.

That's where LiDAR is really good.

And they can pick out obstacles just 30 centimetres tall at night.

And even if you're doing, they say 62 miles an hour,

can bring the vehicle to a complete stop

and miss the obstacle that's 50 metres ahead of you.

Now, because it's behind the windshield though,

it's not as powerful and as effective

as when they put the big LiDAR lump on top of the roof.

And so they're focusing on highway aids.

So navigation crews assist and are not using it

for all things like city self-driving,

which is another way of doing it.

It certainly improves the aesthetic

of the outside of the vehicles.

NEO is next in the news,

opening pre-sales for their new large SUV,

the big one, it's called the ES8.

The starting price of about US$58,000 equivalent.

This is a really nice vehicle, by the way,

the NEO ES8.

It's a very conventionally styled SUV.

And so a very tall roof line

that runs all the way to the back of the vehicle

and then goes straight down.

That's good for aero.

It's good for a third row of passengers as well.

So very, very conventionally styled, big SUV.

Exactly what you think the box shape would look like.

And you can now also get it as a battery as a service plan.

So the base price comes down to about US$43,000 equivalent.

And then you lease the battery.

First deliveries in China before the end of September.

ES8 comes in three versions,

including a six seat 2 plus 2 plus 2 luxury executive version

with battery as a service.

And the it's a, you know,

there is an outgoing model that this replaces.

This one is noticeably bigger.

It's 5.3 meters long, 2.

Just over two meters wide

and a 3.1 meter wheelbase as well.

So a big, a big vehicle.

Nice design on the outside.

Like I say, very traditional looking actually.

This is nothing crazy and weird about this,

just a big three row SUV

that I think looks pretty conventional.

It's got high product,

high definition projection headlights with lane tracking.

It's got those concealed door handles that disappear into the car,

which China's having a look at, by the way,

not these particular door handles, but generally,

you know, those flush door handles

that are motorized in and out.

Yeah, China's having a good old look at that.

We'll discuss maybe more on a future podcast

about why they're doing that.

And that's not an EV thing.

You can put motorized door handles on a combustion car,

but is perhaps more popular with EVs.

We'll update you on that when we get some news from China.

A hidden rear wiper on this vehicle

and a big light bar across the rear.

Now finally, vehicle to grade is having a moment in 2025.

Lots of coverage about this, lots of new hardware coming up.

And EVs with vehicle to grid balance the grid

by acting as mobile batteries.

One of the most famous names in lithium-ion battery development,

Dr. Jeff Dunn says vehicles that can charge when renewables are high

or when prices are high feedback into the grid

is where EVs come into their own.

They absorb surplus solar power or wind power for instance,

and you can even run your home off your car at night

when the sun goes down.

Particularly if overnight you are literally

maybe just doing the washing or the dishwasher

or it's a very low load.

You can run your whole car quite easily from your house,

from your car rather.

Now owners set the conditions,

how much charge your car goes down to,

how to do your energy trading and things like that.

There's an interesting case that Ampere,

which is Renault's bit,

Ampere's been doing with 500 customised Renault Fives

using smart scheduling and controlling.

Vehicle to grid in that case, the Renault case,

didn't affect the battery health.

Cars driven 20,000 kilometres a year would keep

about the same battery capacity as not using vehicle to grid.

Over 10 years that would be 5 megawatt hours a year.

That's about 1500 battery cycles.

And so with no real damage done to the battery,

if you give it, I don't know, 20 cents a kilowatt hour,

it's a lot more in some places, a bit less in some.

But that could earn you 10 grand over the course of that period.

The trial participants in this trial with the Renault Fives

earned about 230 pounds a year.

But yeah, over 10 years in optimal conditions,

10 grand in your pocket for doing some energy trading.

Now Dr. Jeff Darn believes scaling vehicle to grid

in North America has the potential to be huge

as each EV can store and release about a megawatt hour of energy per year.

A million cars and you get into terawatt hour territory here.

And this is properly exciting.

Decentralized storage, keeping the grid stable

and making you some money.

I'm not surprised even the experts like Jeff Darn

are getting so excited about vehicle to grid in 2025.

Let's see what comes.

That's your podcast today.

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And you know that when the first problem of the day

is a clanking blower motor,

there's no need to break a sweat.

With Granger's easy to use website

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everything humming right along.

Call 1-800-GRANGER,

click granger.com or just stop by.

Granger, for the ones who get it done.

Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI.

They already deployed one.

It's called Chat Concierge

and it's simplifying car shopping.

Using self-reflection

and layered reasoning with live API checks,

it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love.

It helps schedule a test drive,

get pre-approved for financing,

and estimate trading value.

Advanced, intuitive, and deployed.

That's how they stack.

That's technology.

That's how they stack.

That's technology at Capital One.

Capital One's tech team isn't just talking

about multi-agentic AI.

They already deployed one.

It's called Chat Concierge

and it's simplifying car shopping.

Using self-reflection

and layered reasoning with live API checks,

it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love.

It helps schedule a test drive,

get pre-approved for financing,

and estimate trading value.

Advanced, intuitive, and deployed.

That's how they stack.

That's how they deploy.

That's how they stack.

That's technology at Capital One.

Tesla Launches Used Lease Scheme, Kia EV5 GT and China EVs Direct To Euro Buyers | 25 Aug 2025

Kia EV5

Tesla Model 3S

Tesla Model 3

Tesla Model Y

Kia EV6

Kia EV9

Nio ES8

ES8 Neo Es8

About this episode

Original notes