EV Universe #150: No, the Cybertruck did NOT self-explode — Model Y refresh is here — 2024 EV sales

FUD FIGHTERS

I wanted to become one of the FOO FIGHTERS when I grew up.
I haven’t grown up, not really, but looks like I got to join the FUD FIGHTERS instead.

No, the Cybertruck did NOT self-explode, nor catch fire

I’m pretty sure you’ve heard about this one, no matter where on the planet you are right now. If you’re more vocal of an EV geek, you were probably already bombarded with messages from friends and family on how unsafe the EVs / Cybertruck / Teslas / Batteries are.

And who could blame them? Just at the some of the hundreds of headlines that popped up:

Associated Press was specifically cringe: “1 person dies when Tesla truck catches fire and explodes outside Trump’s Las Vegas hotel”

It is my strong belief that any important info left out in the headlines which leaves wiggle room in how people might understand what happened without reading it all, is done in bad faith. It’s crazy that we consider it “ok” in today’s world.

Can we bother you with The Truth?

I will not speculate on motives or politics here. Just what actually happened:

A person rented a Cybertruck from Turo and detonated explosives — firework-style mortars, camping fuel and gas tanks — in the Cybertruck while inside (hence the one death mentioned). I made this quick GIF to show the explosion for you:

In fact, the Cybertruck seemed to help contain the explosion thanks to its stainless steel body (1.4mm-1.8mm) which is roughly twice as thick asthe usual exterior of a car or a truck. Likely saving the lives of bystanders like that man there. The glass doors on the Trump Tower, which the Cybertruck was parked in front of for the blast, didn’t even break. Elon says:

“The battery pack never even caught fire and the tires are still inflated! Once we get this Cybertruck back to Tesla, we’ll buff out the scratches and get it back on the road.”

This is what was left of the Cybertruck:

Regarding the misleading news headlines, Elon apparently considers suing the outlets that framed the story harmfully towards Tesla, saying “Maybe it’s time to do so”.

Meanwhile, a lot of people around are instead hailing all this as an advertisement for the Cybertruck — on how tough it is. Happy to hear your thoughts in the comments.

I also made this small article from my pen, with sources linked for everything above, available on the Tesla Space for sharing: (link).

Context #2: No, the Tesla charging queue didn’t form in Sweden just because EVs don’t like cold

Beware of misleading info around this video that currently spreads of a Tesla charging queue in Sweden. The charging queue is real. But a big part of the reason why it happened however is something else.

Why this really happened: Tesla is waiting to energize 100+ built Supercharger stalls in Sweden, but the local energy companies, involved in the union IF Metall sympathy strikes, are denying the Superchargers to be connected to the grid.

While there are other charging operators available (Europe runs on CCS2 standard for other automakers and for Tesla), it’s likely these drivers navigated to this specific charger either just through Tesla navi, mostly use Tesla’s own brand for reliability and ease of use, or opted for a Supercharger so the battery would precondition itself. At any of these, this could be avoided if Tesla was allowed to pop up more Superchargers.

Talk about a creating a roadblock for EV adoption, huh? 
The strike against Tesla just entered the second year.

While I won’t go into specifics of Swedish unions and everything, you can read quite a bit of (some even angry) responses on the comments of my video there from proponents of the “kollektivavtal”, the common agreement with unions pushed upon Tesla.

I, in my infinite unwisdom, won’t pretend to know how the whole society in Sweden works. What we do know is that Tesla treats its employees well, significantly better than any baseline that would be established for companies to avoid mistreatment.

From Tesla’s side, there are reportedly 13 out of 64 mechanics on strike in Malmö and I haven’t found other Tesla instances involved, instead, it is the union-organized sympathy strikes that are affecting the work most.

Remember the story I shared a bit back of how Tesla Sweden had to resort to hand-drawn license plates because the mail was also not being delivered to Tesla due to the strike? (link)

Best way to show Tesla’s side of things on the charging and how this was to be expected is this quick explainer from one of Tesla’s core Charging team members, Max de Zegher:

This isn’t helped by the fact that the Model Y became the best-selling vehicle of any fuel type in Sweden in 2024 for the second year in a row, with 18,293 sales. Tesla grew 7.5% in registrations while the overall EV market declined 16%.

To finish this section up, here are two pictures from Tesla’s side

The hedgehog there — a Tesla mascot you’ll recognize if you ever ordered a Tesla — wearing a high-visibility vest has become a symbol of Tesla employees supporting their employer during the ongoing strike.

If you want to follow along this specific topic, I recommend following Nicklas from Sweden on X here.

EV SPOTLIGHT

Oh, I have plenty for you today — I’ll go over some new EV launches here and will keep a bunch for the Pro Report this week as well.

Tesla Model Y Refresh / “Juniper”

Welp, I had a piece written here yesterday with a leaked non-camo version of the Model Y, saying how we might see Tesla launch the Model Y Juniper as soon as this week… only to wake up to the news that yes, that happened.
So here’s the new stuff instead (RIP my time spent):

So the world's best-selling car got a significant upgrade. (link to Tesla’s MY page in Australia)

This newsletter has too little space to show you everything that is new so I’ll just refer to my post on LinkedIn here for the full list: (link)

Here’s what I’d bring out as notable about the new Model Y:

• New front light bar, obviously, very Cybercab-esque.
  I wonder if the new M3 might get that component refresh soon as well.

• New tail light, Tesla says: “Our single, cross-car lamp is the first indirect reflective body panel taillight of its kind.";

• Front camera in the bumper;

• ~11lbs lighter, drag coefficient 0.22 (down from 0.23),

• Range +3% (up to 719km/447mi CLTC)

• Peak charging rate still at 250kW

• updated suspension, wheels and tires for smoother and quieter ride;

• Enhanced connectivity (improved car key range, clearer phone calls, faster WiFi connection)

New in the interior:

• Ventilated seats & ambient lighting

• Power Recline for the rear seats

• 15.4” front touchscreen with smaller bezels; now also 8’’ rear touchscreen

• INDICATOR STALK IS BACK (Tesla says it is "precision-engineered") — let’s see if this will be in all markets or just China

• Frunk now has a drain hole to empty liquids.

• has 16 speakers (instead of 14)

It comes in five colors, with Glacier Blue as a new introduced color with this model.

Tesla also launched a Launch Series Model Y which will come with extra badges and wordmarks, vegan suede for black interior and AWD version comes with Acceleration Boost.

All this is launched in China today, deliveries begin in March, and also available to order in the markets supplied by Giga Shanghai (like in Australia, May delivery).

It seems likely Europe gets it in April-May (not confirmed), depending on Giga Berlin retooling, and the same goes for the US.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the redesign in the comments of this newsletter or on the LinkedIn post. Will this refresh be enough to make the Model Y again the best-selling vehicle of any fuel type in the world? The car achieved exactly that in 2023, and 2024 standing is yet unclear but possible.

NIO launched the Firefly

On its annual NIO Day 2024, the automaker unveiled the first model from the new cheaper global EV brand called the Firefly EV. And you can’t mistake it with any other brand easily because I mean look at those eyes:

The compact, high-end electric cars will officially be launched from April 2025 in China — preorders already started and the pre-sale price is 148,800 yuan ($20,294) and also in Europe in Q2 of 2025, and eventually hits the streets in the Latin American and Southeast Asian markets. (firefly.world is the official website for info)

This seems like the price range and capability the Honda e should’ve hit to be successful, not discontinued.

We don’t have too many specs on the car yet, all we learned is that it (surprisingly) has a 92-litre frunk with a drainage function, and a 9.4-meter turning circle.

Nio also launched its flagship ET9 on the NIO Day 2024 event, which it brought 22,000 users to see by the way 🤯, and in my opinion created one of the biggest “frunk you”s for the legacy auto they could: they had Herbert Diess, on video, testing out the insane suspension in the ‘champagne tower challenge’ with the NIO ET9 (video). More on NIO ET9 in our next Pro Report.

If not a statement from NIO itself, imagine the statement this is by Diess who was kicked out of VW for his EV plans. Oh, and remind me again what state VW is in today?

Honda

Showed concepts production prototypes for the “0 Saloon” and “0 SUV”, to go on sale in 2026 (link):

If you had told me as a kid in the 90’s (I’m pretty young okay), that the above saloon is what Lamborghinis will look like in 2025 and be electric, I think I would have believed you.

Quick takes:

• Microlino launches the “anti-pickup truck” for the US market, as golf carts are used more and more there for residential areas and everyday trips. I felt you have to see this picture:

• The year is 2025 and electric cars can jump six meters over potholes (video of BYD’s latest). I hope it has a ‘turbo boost’ button just for that.

• Tesla Cybercab will be shown in Italy, Belgium (Brussels Motor Show this and next week), and Spain. (link)

• The guy who bought one of the Arrival Vans (which went bankrupt), tears down the battery pack: (video)

• Our friends at Sheeva. AI and EV Connect demonstrated their first activation and payment for an EV charging session in the US done from inside the car cabin, via just one touch of the infotainment screen. (link | video) They can now enable these in-car EV charging transactions at over 50k chargers across North America. No apps, credit cards, smartphones or scanning QR codes needed.

EV SALES 📊 

Note: as usual, if not specified, when I write “EV”, I am talking of only battery-electric vehicles (BEVs). We never include plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) into the data by default around here.

I'll put together my yearly EV sales analysis for 2024 soon. Last year I tracked down over 99% EV sales for you and mapped them out per country (link), and in the analysis I made at the half-year mark for the first half of 2024 (link).

This is where we were at in the middle of 2024, growing globally +12.4% compared to the first half of 2023:

I’m curious where we’ll end up for full year of 2024.

I will make it free to access to everyone, but if you want to get the analysis, complete with graphs and spreadsheets of course, a few weeks before everyone else, join the EV Universe Pro: (link). You’ll also be supporting the making of this resource.

Meanwhile, let’s look at a few countries and automakers that we already have info on:

COUNTRIES

🇬🇧 United Kingdom — 381,970 EVs sold in 2024, up by 67,283 units or 21.4% compared to 2023.

Nearly every fifth car sold in the UK in 2024 (19.6%) was fully electric. UK has come a long way since 2018, when every 143rd car sold was fully electric.

Now here’s something fun — the UK has now officially passed Germany in overall EV sales, and is now #1 EV market in size in all of Europe!

🇩🇪 Germany — 380,609 EVs were sold in 2024, down 27.4% compared to 2023 and the EV market share ended up at 13.5%.

In the first half of 2024, Germany was down -16.4% while the rest of the European countries carried the region, even with the largest auto market failing, still to a slight growth (+1.6%, would’ve had 7.17% without Germany) — once I get the numbers for all of Europe we’ll see how it ended. This is the chart I made in the first half, I expect to see something similar for the full year:

Germany suffered a double-whammy in 2024 from the sudden mid-month incentive cut in December 2023 ($7k incentive drop in total per EV), and the “gap year” in automotive legislation towards emission rules. Add in the troubles of legacy auto itself… perfect storm. Will 2025 bounce back splendidly for EVs? I hope/think so.

🇮🇳 India: 4-wheeled EVs grew 19.91% to 99,055 registrations, making up 1.99% of the market share. (link, shoutout to our friends at Tesla Club India)
Tata here took the lead with 61,551 units (62.1% of all sales) and MG thanks to its Windsor EV got to 21,529 units and 21.7% market share.

AUTOMAKERS

Let’s start with the #1 in the world for 2024:

Tesla

In Q4 2024, Tesla delivered 495,570 vehicles and produced 459,445.
In all of 2024, Tesla delivered 1,789,226 vehicles (-1% compared to 2023), and produced 1,789,225 vehicles. There are now over 7 million Teslas on planet Earth.

Very close second in terms of units was:

BYD sold 1,764,992 all-electric vehicles in 2024 (and another 2,485,738 plug-in hybrids). In the fourth quarter, it also passed Tesla significantly with 514,809 sales (against Tesla’s 495,570).

We can likely expect BYD to pass Tesla in overall sales in 2025, but not on BEV revenue & profit (BYD plays smaller segments & China (91% of BYD’s sales) more than Tesla for now). Half of BYD sales were of products like the Seagull or Song priced under $23,000 (link). Not that it is a bad thing, just to compare.

We’re not yet sure who pushed itself to the third position in the EV world this year, but here’s a selection of the automakers we do have data for:

Volkswagen brand (not the Group) sold 383,100 EVs globally in 2024, which is 10,600 less than in 2023 (-2.8%). EVs made up ~8% of all its sales.

Volvo sold globally 175,194 EVs in 2024, up +53% from 2023. This brought the EV market share in the total mix to a (rather respectable?) 23%, up from 16% in 2023, and the brand reached its overall record at 7633,389 cars sold (+8%). Notably, ¾ of its EVs were sold in Europe where it grew +76%.

In China, Volvo sold just 4,349 EVs growing 33% (and fully electrics were just 2.8% of the sales there, no wonder overall sales in China are down -8%), in the US Volvo’s EVs are down -59% to 5,608 units (yet PHEVs +69% so overall sales -3%), and in other markets Volvo grew its EV sales by 53% to 32,167 units.

Kia, in the US, sold 43,732 EVs in 2024, more than doubling its sales from 2023 (+118,7%), mostly thanks to EV9's introduction (sales split almost half between EV9 and EV6). EVs made up just 5.49% of all Kia sales in the US (up from 2.56% in 2023).

Hyundai, in the US, sold 56,664 Ioniq 5s and Ioniq 6s in the US, increasing +20,77% from 2023. Ioniq 5 continues to do well recording 44,400 of these sales (+31%) while Ioniq 6 dropped -6% to 12,999 sales. Hyundai fails to show the mix of electric Kona sales so I can’t count that in yet.

Ford, in the US, sold 97,865 EVs, growing 34.8%. EVs made up 4.7% of its overall sales (up from 3.64% share last year). Notably, the electric Mustang Mach-E (51,745 sales) beat the gas Mustang (44,003) in sales for the first time. Ford also sold 33,510 F-150 Lightning’s and 12,610 E-Transits.

General Motors, in the US, sold 114,432 EVs, up 50%, with 43,982 of it in Q4 (up 125%).

BMW, in the US, sold 50,981 EVs, up 12.3% from the year before. The i4 accounted for almost half of that with 23,403.

Rivian delivered 51,579 vehicles in 2024 (+2.9%), right in line with expectations. Rivian also noted the component shortage is no longer an issue.

Xiaomi surpassed its 100k EV target for 2024 and delivered over 135,000 SU7s, plans 300k units for 2025. The SUV version, called YU7, will be launched in the summer.

Lucid Motors delivered 10,241 (and produced 9,029) EVs in 2024, growing 21.5%. Will the Lucid Gravity change the game in 2025? We’ll see the guidance on the earnings call on the 25th of February.

Honda and Acura, in the US, sold 40,408 EVs, and the Honda Prologue was the surprising EV-rise of 2024 for the US, selling 33,017 units despite going on sale at around mid-year. This (GM-based) EV outsold all GM’s models (Equinox EV had 28,874) and seems to have made it to the top 5 best-selling EVs in the US for the year.

*Jaan flies off and will bring you EV geeks more EV sales numbers next week.