EV Universe #144: Rivian's Halloween car costumes — Tesla Robotaxi experience — EVA Global bankruptcy, EVBox shuts down

DEEP DIVE: Tesla Robotaxi event

You’ve seen some headlines.

Some of you I know were there.

Most of us only get a chaos of random details on the Tesla robotaxi event, most of it strongly opinionated and just surface level details.

The official program of Tesla’s robotaxi event was huge on vision (and proper party), but a little light on the details. We’ve heard that the two separate emergencies delayed the event, leaving the presentation shorter than planned. So I did what I always do — set out to find every single noteworthy detail from the livestream, from the people who were actually there at the event, and their chats with the Tesla engineers.

I’ve added everything we’ve learned since the event via Tesla team members on X too, and sprinkled some entertainment in it for you.

You are hereby guaranteed to find something new in these 25+ pics, 10+ videos and 2,000 words that I put together for you:

PS, if you want to get earlier access to stories like these, join the EVU Pro — as the Pro members got access to this deep dive last week.

AUTOMAKERS & GLOBAL NEWS

While Fisker’s plan to liquidate its assets has been accepted by its bankruptcy court, its landlord of the former HQ says it needs to spend "tens of thousands of dollars" to clean up after Fisker left its HQ a total mess after bankruptcy. (link)

Is it weird if I go in and tell them I'll clean it all out for free? I mean, the statement says there are also ~20 automotive sized batteries left on the site, and look at ‘em clay models… 👀

BloombergNEF latest estimates show we’ll see plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) reach 5.5M sales this year (growing ~31% from 2023) and battery-electrics (BEVs) reach 11.2M sales (growing ~15.5% from 2023). (link)

Quick takes:

• Poland has received approval from the EIB for subsidy programs totalling 6 billion zlotys ($1.51B). The funds are to be used to build fast-charging infrastructure and to support the purchase of heavy-duty electric vehicles. (link)

• Lucid 🤝 Four Seasons to offer guests driving experiences, complimentary Lucid rentals, chauffeured Lucid house cars and feature chargers in participating properties. (link) Starts in the US and will be rolled out in Europe, Middle East in the months following. Sounds expensive. Is this Lucid just trying to create demo drives with the demographic that is able to buy one?

• Martin Daum, the outgoing CEO of Daimler Truck, calls for a surcharge of 10 cents per liter of gas every year to incentivize a shift to EVs — “At some point, this will bite you so much that you’ll never think of buying a combustion engine car again and directly go for an EV instead.” (link)

• Watch tip: an excellent interview from Imogen of Fully Charged with Peter Rawlinson, CEO & CTO of Lucid Motors (43min video)

EV POLICY

Wants EU to keep the 2035 ICE ban:

“If others are not ready, you should ask them why, even though they have known the regulations for many years. What have they done in the past five years?
Are you sure they will be ready next time if you give them more time? No. So I expect the European Union to continue to protect competition for the benefit of the consumer.” — Carlos Tavares (link)

Wants EU to abandon the 2035 ICE ban:

“A correction of the 100% BEV target for 2035 as part of a comprehensive CO2-reduction package would also afford European OEMs less reliance on China for batteries.” — BMW CEO Oliver Zipse (link)

Meanwhile, if you know this — how legacy US and German automakers are failing hard in China as the country shifts to all-electrics — you'll see a lot of their overall decisions in a different light:

On an unrelated note, Stellantis has now confirmed Carlos Tavares will retire as CEO in 2026. (link)

Reading tip: ICCT finds manufacturers need 28% BEV share to meet CO₂ targets. (link) Here’s how some of the larger automakers are doing:

On average, the whole fleet needs to drop their average gCO2/km by 12%, from about 16% in 2023 to ~28% in 2025. Ford and VW have the most work to do, by dropping their average by about 21%. Here’s a more detailed look from the analysis per automaker, if they’d try to achieve the targets by increasing BEV share:

In case you missed it last week, here’s a deeper dive on why I call the European auto association’s (ACEA’s) call to delay these 2025 targets bullsh*t: (link).

EV SPOTLIGHT: Rivian’s Halloween costumes

Rivian is also going all out for Halloween this year, with “car costumes” for your Rivian, spooky accent lighting, eerie lock sounds and some 3D surprises in the infotainment screens (witches, pumpkins and the like). (link)

Yes, you can now turn your Rivian into K.I.T.T. Your interior display system will also feature K.I.T.T.’s diagnostics on screen and play the original show intro music.

For Gen 2 owners, the exterior lightbar will also cascade a red beam just like K.I.T.T. and exude its iconic scanner sound effect. They even got David Hasselhoff for a “it’s good to be back” video.

Same approach for the Back to the Future “costume”. Here’s a video from Jenna showcasing all these: (video). Looks frunking awesome, hopefully we’ll see some of these options as usable interactive “skins” rather than animations one day.

Rivian’s latest software update also introduced Gear Guard Live Cam (view your vehicle cameras from the Rivian mobile app); Dynamic Headlamp Leveling; updates Climate settings for three zone controls (driver, passenger, rear); new Drive Mode animations. (link)

While we’re on the topic, here are Rivian’s Software and Design teams giving a deep dive talk about the art and development process behind how they use the Unreal Engine to power Rivian's User Experience. (video)

Quick takes:

• Fiat USA advertises the Fiat500e by comparing it to Cybertruck (video). I especially liked this part:

• Tesla Model Y is now available as a seven-seater in Europe (video of it from Paris Auto Show)

• North America’s first 100% electric tow truck, from Lion Electric, is launched in Quebec, Canada for the CAA-Quebec service. (link)

• BYD presented the Sealion 7 at the Paris Motor Show for Europe, confirmed that it will go on sale in Europe. (link)

• Leapmotor unveiled the B10 electric SUV at the Paris Motor Show, will come to Europe within the Stellantis joint venture as the third EV. (link)

• Reading tip: A deep dive into what makes Cybertruck’s audio system so great (with dismantling the system).

EV SALES & PRODUCTION 📊 

Of all the EV sales in 2023 in the US, 40.4% were small SUVs (& 12.2% standard SUVs), 21.2% midsize cars, 11.7% small station wagons, 8.3% large cars and just 3.4% pickup trucks. (link)

I expect the pickup truck category change significantly in 2024 numbers, here’s why 👇️ 

According to Cox Automotive, an estimated 346,3091 EVs were sold in the US in Q3 2024, a 5% increase from Q2. The EV share of sales in Q3 hit 8.9%, the highest level recorded and an increase from 7.8% in Q3 2023. (pdf)

I crunched the numbers and the real interesting bit is this quarter’s top-selling vehicles cue the clickbaity “the third spot may surprise you”:

1. Tesla Model Y: 86,801 sold

2. Tesla Model 3: 58423

3. Tesla Cybertruck: 16,692

4. Ford Mustang Mach-E 13,392

5. Honda Prologue 12,644

Okay, to be fair, Cybertruck’s success was not a surprise to me (receipts from last year here), but Honda Prologue reaching fifth place did surprise me quite a bit.

CHARGING INFRASTRUCTURE

EVBox is being shut down

EVBox, the Dutch charger manufacturer with both European and US operations, is being shut down by the French parent company Engie which acquired it back in 2017.

Per the latest EVbox statement (link), it is now in the process of selling the DC business arm, to be continued by EVTronic, which will take over the site in Bordeaux, France, and all its employees (100 in Bordeaux and 34 from other EVBox entities).

On the AC charging & Everon side, "EVBox would continue to meet its contractual warranty and after-sales service obligations for its product portfolio."

We can also assume its Libertyville, Illinois factory will shut down (or acquired by another maker that wants to get the subsidies for local production? Remains to be seen.)

This is no small news — founded in 2010, the company has sold 500,000 charging points worldwide, from AC to up to 480kW in most recent deployments, and has “more than 20,000 business customers”.

We’ve seen the consolidation — also through (or due to?) the inevitable commoditization of the charging hardware — coming for a while in this maturing industry, and we’ve witnessed quite a few of the early players go under this year. Tritium, Freewire Technologies, EnerCharge, Enel X Way (maker of Juicebox), to name some. 

Some others are being rolled up through acquisitions, which would probably be the case even here in other economic times (if not assets, the people are of value as well here).

If you’ve been with us long enough, you probably also remember EVBox also went public during the peak SPAC cycle with TPG Pace, a deal they terminated in the end of 2021.

Here’s a comment I found from Robert van de Vegte, the co-founder of EVBox (link):

EVA Global files for bankruptcy.

The EV charging support service handled around 120,000 cases per month in 39 countries, and was connected to over 1 million charge points. (link) It offered customer support, management of the infrastructure and remote diagnostics, and had partnered with a lot of the large players in the industry (IONITY, Fastned, Allego, has·to·be gmbh, AMPECO, etc)

How many clients in our EV charging industry are now left scrambling for an alternative? We've already seen Monta say they moved all support in-house and are thus unaffected.

• EVA Assists: "provides 24/7 multilingual customer support to ensure a seamless charging experience for EV drivers.

• EVA Assures: "includes real-time statistics, remote charging management, and troubleshooting tools.

Interestingly, EVA's latest partnership news came in May by partnering with... EVBox. That’s an issue because, well, check above.

Very curious to learn more on why EVA Global business model didn't pan out (considering the massive reliability challenges depending on region, great support is much needed in the industry), and what we can learn.

🇯🇵 Tesla installed a milestone 60,000th charger globally! Next to it is the 600th Supercharger in Japan, and also the first V4 deployment in the country.

🇨🇱 Tesla installed its first Supercharger in South America, in Chile. (link)

🇦🇺 And Tesla also launched its first pre-fabricated charging site in the APAC region, in Bordertown, Southern Australia. (link) Quick explainer on pre-fab: all the hardware (posts and cabinet) is fitted to a steel base offsite which is then easily slotted into place on site and wired into the grid.

🔌 read no less than 47 charging infrastructure news in this week’s Pro Report. All you need to do is become a Pro member with just a few clicks through here: (upgrade)