EV Universe #139: 511 EV fires — Rimac Nevera R — Priority Supercharging

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AUTOMAKERS & GLOBAL NEWS

“Exciting opportunity - Do you want to bring the Tesla Semi to Europe?” 

…writes a Tesla recruiter on LinkedIn.

Tesla has posted a job listing for “Head of Business Development — Semi Truck EMEA”, gearing up for Tesla’s future Semi Truck deployments in Europe. Graham Carroll, Head of Business Development of Tesla Semi Program, confirmed this on a post and closed it off with “Let the wild rumpus begin.”

Nearly 350 mayors from across the US – the members of the Climate Mayors group – pledged to make 50% of their municipal fleets electric by 2030. (link)

They estimate this will put between 80,000 and 100,000 new light- and medium-duty EVs on the road by 2030. The agreement also committed to increase charging infrastructure in their cities by 500% by 2035, with at least 40% of the benefits going to disadvantaged communities.

Hertz is to sell off its Teslas even more aggressively after another loss quarter. Hertz said last week that it will sell “tens of thousands” of the EVs this year and the overhaul will be complete by the end of next year. (link) 

Meanwhile, I’ve found you can grab a 2023 Tesla Model 3 with 51,878 miles on it from Hertz’ car sales website for just $22,927. Applying the federal $4k used EV credit, that would be just a little over $18k. Several similar versions available here.

Honda and Nissan have agreed to develop a joint platform for next-generation software-defined vehicles, collaborating on batteries, electric axle drives, vehicle portfolio, and energy services. (link) Mitsubishi (which is 34% owned by Nissan) plans to join the alliance too. Meanwhile, the former chairman of Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, calls this a disguised takeover by Honda.

Tesla has been granted a license to sell its vehicles in Kentucky, after being previously barred from certain sales due to its direct-to-consumer model being in violation of legislation requiring vehicle sales to be made through a franchised dealership. (link)

Thank you, Gary, for clearing it up in our member community — turns out I miswrote last week when I said Kentucky is changing the state legislature to allow direct EV sales (which would also benefit the likes of Rivian and Lucid.)

Sadly, it is not, and Tesla was instead able to secure the license through a “public interest” clause in the existing KY state law that is similar to how they won the right in Virginia. I’ve already found Tesla hiring more people for the Louisville, Kentucky service center, presumably to start deliveries through the center now.

Amazon has now deployed over 15,000 electric delivery vans from Rivian across the US. (link) Related watch tip: a delivery driver has used the Rivian van for a year and talks through the good and the bad, during his work day (video).

The fully electric Giga Train arrives in Giga Berlin, set to carry about 3,500 employees daily from and to the factory. (link) It’ll be free of charge both for workers and for the general public. The train is a Mireo Plus B battery-electric train from Siemens.

Boston is getting a battery electric train too, by the way. Fairmount Commuter Rail Line. (link)

EV SPOTLIGHT: Rimac Nevera R

Rimac unveiled the Nevera R yesterday. It’s the ‘Radical’ hyper-GT version of the all-electric Nevera.

Mate Rimac says “many were looking for a car that really emphasized the Nevera’s cornering ability, using all the advanced technology on-board. We responded with the Nevera R: all the DNA of the record-breaking Nevera, but lighter, faster and more focused.”

Some specifications with my humble additions:

• Modest starting price of $2.5 million, with rather limited 40 units available (probably all sold already anyway, sorry)

• Barely noticeable 1.74 seconds from 0-60mph. You would perhaps notice the 0-186mph (0-300 km/h) of 8.66s but it’s probably long out of view by then.

• A somehow-fit-into-this-thing 108 kWh next-gen battery pack;

• Casual 2,107 horsepower (1550 kW);

• Autobahn speed to catch: 256 mph (412 km/h), which is ‘only permitted under supervision of the manufacturer’.

• Enhanced cornering ability;

• Quarter mile: 8.23s (8.23s)

Here’s the full press release, and here’s a full video tour with Mat Watson from carwow.

Quick takes:

• Video: VW vs Tesla, which software is faster? Live comparison on how long it takes to start playing a song.

• Xpeng plans to launch a ‘highly competitive’ robotaxi in two years time, but unlike Tesla doesn’t plan to operate them. (link)

• Polestar has started production of the Polestar 3 at its US plant in South Carolina (link).

• Dodge Charger Daytona, its first all-electric muscle car, will start at $59,595 and will be eligible for the $7.5k tax credit when leased (link).

• In the US? You can now book a Cybertruck test drive through Tesla: here. If you go for a ride, let me know.

Also, contrary to the news headlines, no,

• Tesla did not go through the 1M+ Cybertruck reservation list already.

• Tesla did not cancel the entry-level RWD Cybertruck

• Tesla did not raise the price of the Cybertruck to $100k.

It just opened the Foundation Series orders, the extra $20k version that nobody actually reserved in the first place, to everyone in North America.

Once that demand runs out, they’ll start producing the next ‘regular’ Cybertrucks in line, returning to that reservation list. If you ask me, it’s even surprising they managed to get over 20k of those +$20k FS series trucks sold.

The RWD entry-level truck? It didn’t have a Foundation Series version to begin with, which is what they only show in the configurator right now. This is also why the ‘Tesla raised the price to $100k’ isn’t the right take.

BATTERY (FIRES)

EV fires. Easy to make headlines with each incident, but what’s the larger story?

EV FireSafe team is the only one in the world I know of so far, that gathers actual global data about EV fires, and investigates it (I’m grateful). EV FireSafe is an Australian company funded by the Department of Defence, and they provide EV fire trainings globally for emergency responders. Here’s their full story.

I like the idea of them being the ones putting together the studies, as the incentives are aligned — they have no reason to minimize the findings, nor make them look more significant than they are.

Their latest report (8-page pdf) says it has verified 511 incidents of thermal runaway in fully electric and plug-in hybrid car batteries — aka EV battery fires. Total. From 2010 to 30th of June, 2024.

Now, of course, there are some - perhaps even double more - incidents that aren’t possible to find records of, but consider this: we’ve got 40,200,000 EV+PHEVs on the roads on Earth. That’s a 0.0013% chance of an EV fire based on these findings. In other words (numbers), one in 78,669 EVs. You’d think it’s every tenth EV out there that catches on fire if you read the news though.

I’m afraid I don’t have reliable-enough numbers for combustion engine vehicle fires to give you a comparison on the 0.0013% chance, but as far as we’re playing with the rough numbers, this view of 2013-2017 US car fires would put the chance of a car fire at 0.4%.

Which future would you opt for if you could —
4 out of 1,000 cars catching on fire (ICE), or
1.3 out of 100,000 cars catching on fire (EV)?

Anyway, back to the battery car fires.
In the past 12 months, the main causes of these battery fires have been:

• 119 from road traffic collision or impact with road debris;

• 45 from a battery fault (as in recalled batteries)

• 28 from submersion in a body of water and

• 22 from external fire spreading to the EV.

51% of the incidents have an unknown cause, mainly because it was not investigated. The analysis also shows the places of the battery fires: 117 in underground/enclosed spaces; 173 outside & parked, and 155 outside & driving.

489 cases had the more common ‘jet-like' flame’ reported in the incident, while in 22 cases, a vapor cloud explosion was recorded.

In the past year, ~15% of all incidents occurred while charging, a drop from 18% a year ago. In 80 cases, the EV was connected to energized charging, and in 10 cases it happened within an hour of the incident.

If you’re looking for some more data in “this niche”, I stumbled upon this great overview of the EV fires in the Netherlands (53-page pdf, shorter factsheet).

We’re adding over 10 million battery-electric vehicles on the roads just this year. This, by default, means the total numbers of battery fires will go up.

Luckily, the battery technology will only get safer over time (with some bad apples still likely in the mix forever), so it will be interesting to see what will it all look like in a few years.

Share this deeper dive as a standalone article here.

On this topic,

the industry — or, at least, us — suddenly got a big data transparency win.
We now see all EV models and which batteries they use on the Korean market.

Why? Well because there was a fire of a Mercedes-Benz EQE on 1st August in Korea, and the public started voicing the need. Government held an emergency meeting. After the first OEMs started reporting, on 13th of August, the government decided to recommend OEM to disclose information of battery supplier (voluntarily).

The ALEXEC Consulting team gathered all the OEM announcement into a pdf, accessible through their post here.

Government is now also discussing incentives for safety:

• Additional subsidy ~300k Korean won (~$222) per vehicle to OEM that disclosed information of the battery. (plan to implement from 2025);

• Additional Subsidy for EVs with high safety measures;

• Prohibition of parking of EV charged >90% in an underground parking lot;

• Software update to limit charging up to 90%.

It’s as if the government had been waiting for that one fire to jump on it full steam… or is this how things are done in Korea? Either way, transparency = good.

CHARGING

Tesla creates priority charging spots.

Tesla has silently launched the first designated priority Supercharging stall in the world – in Finland. (link) They deployed it with no fuzz and no media except ours has reported on it so far. The spot was shared with us on X by a local, Harri Lehmuskoski.

We can see the stalls have extra room and are located at the edge of the station for easier access. The signage there shows Priority Charging, and it seems to be meant for wheelchair access, elderly and young families. Will we see Tesla roll this out as a standard solution soon?

Eleport acquired TurboVolt, expanding now into Croatia and Slovenia. (link) The largest EV charging operator in the Baltics and the fourth largest in Poland, Eleport’s network will now cover six countries.
In the first phase, Eleport will launch 12x300kW chargers in 17 EV charging hubs at both Supernova and SES shopping centers in Croatia and Slovenia.
Congratulations to all our friends on the Eleport team 👏 

Activating and paying for charging from the car infotainment screen?
Sheeva.AI partners with EV Connect to enable seamless in-vehicle charge session initiation and payment for EV chargers using the EV Connect platform. (link)
Congratulations on the milestone to our friend Trevor, Director of Partnerships at Sheeva. 👏 

Numbat, a German CPO, filed for bankruptcy. (link) The company, founded in 2021, offered battery-buffered DC fast chargers (from ADS-Tec) and had their latest €140M funding round just in October 2023. The company had 130 employees and had deployed chargers in 70 locations so far.

Meanwhile, Tritium, which went bankrupt in April, finds a buyer: the India-based EV charger and energy management solutions provider Exicom, which says it will keep Tritium’s US factory open. (link) No word yet if Exicom will also honor the existing warranties for the ~13,000 charging stations it has sold, and if it’ll accelerate the supply of parts to the Tritium stations that have been waiting for … a while now.

ChargePoint has introduced the Omni Port, combining the J1772, NACS and CCS1 connectors into a single system. (link) (video) This way, the charger will deploy the correct connector based on the EV (if it is added in the ChargePoint app, can also be selected manually) allowing Tesla and non-Tesla drivers to charge without their own adapters. These will be integrated into new and existing ChargePoint stations at no additional cost.

Quick kW ⚡️ 

• In a recent test, the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) wirelessly charged a Porsche Taycan at 270 kW. (link)

• Reading tip: A (rather rare) look into the Chinese EV charging market and how it compares to the US. (link) Do note that this is from the end of last year, not sure how I just discovered it now.

• Nio has now done 50 million battery swaps, providing users a cumulative 2.62 billion kWh of electricity. (link) That’d be 2.62 TWh. Nio completed its first battery swap station in Shenzhen on May 20, 2018, and today has 2,464 swap stations in China.

• Podcast tip: one of our members, Chris Willis, covers the insights from their report on software-defined vehicles and goes over barriers of EV adoption. (video)

• Webinar tip: one of our partners, Voltera, is hosting a webinar on September 5th on “From Theory to Reality: What Bus Fleets Must Know About Deploying EV Infrastructure”. Voltera also just announced securing $100M in debt financing to accelerate the expansion of EV charging sites for ride-hailing services, port trucks, and other key sectors (link).

• Read 31 more charging infra news in this fresh Pro Report #139.