EV Universe #151: Canoo is now bankrupt — Cable cutting problem solved? — 24 EVs driven until they died

A quick note before we kick off the newsletter: for the next month or two, you’ll find me in your inbox a little less often. Here’s why.

EV Universe is now in Building Mode 🏗️ .

Since you’re an EV geek like me, I believe you’ll love what I’ve got cookin’.

The core of EV Universe — me providing context and discovery of news in the EV industry in a somewhat entertaining way — will stay the same.

I’ve been slowly, step-by-step since when we started four years ago, moving towards this bigger idea to provide that core contextual EV feed, but on steroids.

We need a resource that every EV geek, owner, industry professional, startup, SME and VC can use to make sense of the EV industry on a running basis, without the $4k-$10k/year (or more) price tag on the reports that only the larger of the industry players can afford.

I can’t wait to show it all to you when we launch. I believe it’s ready to launch in two weeks about a month, perhaps two. I’m planning on giving early access to our Pro members.

I’ll still drop by here and there during this cookin’ time with the good old massive EV newsletters, just less often. And if you join the Pro version, you’ll get twice more.

If you want to support me in building the next generation of EV media that you yourself will love, now is the best time to do so by joining us through a membership (here).

Every person joining helps me in this journey tremendously. 

GLOBAL EV NEWS

US: Trump’s executive order titled “Unleashing American Energy” has in it a section called “Terminate the Green New Deal.” (link) This orders all agencies to immediately pause the disbursement of funds from the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. He specifically called out funding for EV charging infrastructure from the NEVI Formula Program and the CFI Grant Program. That would be the $7.5B that was to be spent to build the charging infrastructure in the US.

Here’s a great explanation of the details from Loren McDonald in what is likely to happen or not happen: (link) Trump definitely will not be able to walk back on all the charging infrastructure spending but we’ll likely see some cuts of the funds not yet used or allocated, I’ll be reporting back along the way.

All of this comes, of course, on top of the new Trump administration very likely removing the $7,500 federal tax credit for EV purchases.

While all this of course slows the EV uptake in the US, and the ‘drill baby drill’ attacks our planet in the other side, we luckily know that the EV transition is in fact unstoppable

United States, as per the early EV registration numbers from Cox Automotive, saw a 15.2% jump in the fourth quarter and a 7.3% increase in the full year of 2024 with 1,301,411 EV registrations. (link) In the second half of 2024, more than 700,000 EVs were sold, accounting for 8.7% of total new-vehicle sales. The best-selling EVs were:

• Tesla Model Y: 372,613 sold (-6.6% compared to 2023)

• Tesla Model 3: 189,903 (-17.4%)

• Ford Mustang Mach-E: 51,745 (+26.9%)

• Hyundai Ioniq 5: 44,400 (30.9%)

• Tesla Cybertruck: 38,965 (N/A, introduced in 2024)

EU: According to the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the European Union is working on a proposal for bloc-wide purchase incentives for EVs. (link)

Well, more precisely, Scholz is talking of “harmonized Europe-wide purchase premiums for e-cars”, which seems to be just another requirement set on member states (aka EU sticking its nose in countries’ business) rather than an actual funding mechanism.

Europe saw a -1.3% decline in EV registrations in 2024 compared to 2023. In 2024, there were 1,993,102 EVs sold in all of Europe (EU + EFTA + UK), per the ACEA. I’ll be launching a deeper sales analysis into what caused this and who are the leaders and laggers in Europe in February.

The median EV range in Model Year 2024 in the US reached a record high of 283 miles per charge, per the Department of Energy (link)

CANOO filed for bankruptcy. (link)

The company will cease operations “immediately”, and its tries to secure funding have been unsuccessful. Canoo said in its bankruptcy filing that it owes money to hundreds of creditors and that it has more than $164 million in total liabilities. It claimed around $126 million in assets.

We’ve reported on the rise and stumbles of Canoo from the start, and it definitely makes me sad to see them go. However, they were already a shell of their former self (especially as they lost the modularity platform with steer-by-wire technology along the way), it just looks like that even the tests with USPS and deal with Walmart could not save ‘em.

If this kind of news is important for you to know before it happens, you should really consider joining EV Universe Pro. Here’s a part of our Pro Report back in November:

In the report back then, I went over also how Canoo’s last remaining co-founder left, the company was facing lawsuits from suppliers and only had $4.51M in cash.

Anyway, let’s end this with a lesser-known fact — Canoo had a different type of vehicle it tested with Walmart in August as well (link):

If the van looks so much like the now-bankrupt Arrival, you’re not off here — Canoo acquired some of Arrival’s assets in bankruptcy in March. (link) I wonder if there’s an EV maker that will buy the assets of both here and pull through.

Elon did… this:

I’ll probably anger both sides of the opinions at once here, but this is how I see it:

No, Elon Musk did not do a Nazi salute. Obviously.

Yes, it was obviously dumb of him to do anything even remotely similar. 🤷‍♂️ 

In case you have only seen the media images and not the actual video, you might want to do that before going with the flow. Here is the moment on video.

And what you won’t see on the news headlines, of course, is that Elon says “Thank you. My heart goes out to you." while doing this.

A large part of the negative sentiment is of course created, then sensationalized and just overblown by our dear mainstream media houses. All this did cause some graffiti on Tesla signage (link) and ‘heil Tesla’ projection on the Tesla Giga Berlin already (link).

Meanwhile, Michael Lohscheller, now Polestar’s CEO, said he’s told salespeople to target disgruntled Tesla owners for potential business: “It’s important to listen closely to what they say. And I can tell you, a lot of people have very, very negative sentiment.” (link)

I would be seriously surprised if all this — Elon being weird and supporting some parties that a bunch of people don’t like or doing dumb moves on stage — translated into even a significant amount (say… a 100?) of people worldwide buying a Polestar over Tesla for this specific reason.

Oh, how I wish we could build the whole EV industry and transition without politics getting in the way.

Here is the full talk from Elon on the Presidential Parade (video). Really too bad about the hand gesture optics, Elon seemed really fired up on that speech, worth a listen.

Quicker takes:

• Myth-busting: How long can you “idle” your EV in the freezing temperatures and keep yourself warm in the cabin? This experiment from Canada with a Tesla Model 3 left the car “running” for 12 hours at -28°C (-18.4°F) with a rather warm cabin temp, not even conserving energy. The charge dropped 66%→30%, so used about 24.4kWh. Good (video) for some winter emergency EV myth-busting. Also find some great personal experiences in the comments.

• Rivian gets its loan: The US Department of Energy approved a $6.57B loan to Rivian New Horizon LLC to finance "Project Horizon," its 400k EV/year factory in Stanton Springs North, Georgia. The first R2 SUV’s should start production there in 2028.

• BYD is the latest (nearly the last?) of the Chinese auto giants to start looking into gigacasting — tests in R&D with 9,000t and 5,000t Giga presses (link), great reporting from our friend Luca, the OG Gigacasting guy. If you’re a geek about all this like me, check out his newsletter on gigacasting here.

• Amazon makes its largest e-truck order to date: more than 200 electric Mercedes-Benz eActros 600 trucks for middle-mile logistics in the UK (140 of these) and Germany. Amazon will also install 360kW chargers at key sites. Amazon also ordered eight Volvo FM e-trucks for its UK fleet.

  

  Amazon recently announced it has more than 20,000 Rivian delivery vans in its US fleet, and we now learned it has “more than 600” such vans also in its fleet in Germany. (link)

• Reading tip: our friend Liz from Recurrent launched the latest version of the Used Electric Car Prices & Market Report (link). These offer always an unique glimpse into the used EV market in the US. “The fear of missing out on EV rebates wasn’t limited to new vehicles — used EV sales also reached record levels in Q4. Year-end numbers showed an increase of 62.6% percent over 2023 numbers, and the used EV market share hit a record-setting 1.9%.”

Oh, and do you know what I and Mate Rimac have in common?

We both love the Rivian R3X:

EV SPOTLIGHT

The Norwegians held their Winter Range Test “El Prix” again, with 24 EVs driven in the same road and conditions until they die.

This is something they do twice a year with all the new EV models available in their market and we report back on their findings every time (love this data). Since it’s obvious EVs lose some range in the below-freezing temperatures, the idea of this test is to find out just how much they do, and which models perform the best.

One way they look at the winner is as the car that loses the least range compared to its promised WLTP range figure (a testing cycle that is used as a standard in Europe, which of course has its own flaws).

This year, the Polestar 3 recorded the test’s second-best result ever with just a 5% in range decrease, covering 330 miles (531km) before it died (348 miles is the WLTP figure). BYD Tang came in second with 9% deviation, covering 300 miles (483 km), compared to the 329 miles advertised.

Surprisingly, Tesla’s refreshed Model 3 surprisingly finished 21st with a 24% difference, with covering just 330 miles (531 km) instead of 436 miles (702 km) in WLTP. The three worst results were from the Peugeot E-5008, the Voyah Dream, and the Peugeot E-3008.

See all the results and compare the performance per model on their site here: (link)

The New Tesla Model Y is now also available in the US and in Europe. Here’s a carwow review (video). Oh, and here’s why the broken-up front lightbar is actually great: the lightshow is that much cooler (video).

The picture above is the very first one off the line in Germany (video), which all the employees involved signed. L o v e this tradition.

Quick bits:

• Don’t Can’t try this at home: BYD YangWang U9, at 120km/h, jumps over consecutive obstacles of up to 6m in length. (video) You know, in case you want to jump over potholes or rainbows with your hyper EV or something.

• TELO Trucks, my favorite electric (mini-)pickup maker, plans to offer rooftop, bed cover, and camper shell solar paneling in cooperation with Aptera Motors (link).

• Scout Motors has reportedly secured over 50,000 reservations for its upcoming electric Terra pickup and Traveler SUV. Here’s a new Out of Spec review video of both (video).

• Cadillac introduced the LYRIQ-V, the fastest Cadillac ever (link).

CHARGING

As we wrote years ago, we expected the high-power DC chargers to become more and more a commoditized area — with a heavy price decrease for each charger from the earlier days and a lot more competition pushing it even lower — and the actual differentiator between the CPOs will be the customer experience. Which just includes choosing great hardware & software but doesn’t end there.

This is now indeed true for both AC and DC charging, and if we were talking about 50kW to maybe 150kW charging when we started the EV Universe about 4 years ago, we’re now talking of the very ‘normal’ segment of 300-400kW chargers and how the price for the hardware is dropping. What a wild time to be alive!

BloombergNEF’s latest survey of industry participants found that the price of a 300-to-400 kW charger averaged $58,100 in 2024. That’s $163 per kilowatt of power, a 26% drop from when the survey was last completed two years ago. (link)

BNEF’s survey found, as we’d expect, that Chinese companies (like Zerova, Autel, and Starcharge) are selling chargers at dramatic discounts to the average global price, and many are looking to expand in the US and Europe.

Cutting cables

We’re not talking of wireless charging this time… spotlight for that is yet to come, sooner than most think I’d reckon.

Instead, in case you’ve missed it, cutting and stealing charging cables from the fast charging sites by vandals has been an increasing problem both in US and in Europe for a while now.

Seems lucrative for the thiefs, but it seems to me we must be dealing with new and new groups here since the value of the copper in the thin wires in a DC charger cable… should be just a few bucks.

For the charging operator to replace it, however, it is sure to cost hundreds of dollars per cable, and even more in the revenue that they haven’t been able to earn while the charger is down.

In the UK, EV charging cable thefts reportedly more than doubled in 2024. (link) As a specific example, between Nov 2023 and July 2024, Instavolt has reported 174 cables stolen from 27 sites. And it is estimated to cost the industry over £500,000 based on the cost of replacement, repair and lost income.

The fix?

So, naturally, the charger hardware makers have been trying to come out with a solution. Cameras can help, but not always. Speculation for a retractable cable that only appears after authentication have been around, but it seems overly costly and complicated.

Now, ChargePoint did something — whether it’s worth it or not still unsure to me — and launched a cut-resistant charging cable designed to be harder to vandalize while remaining user-friendly, and a built-in alarm system ChargePoint Protect that detects tampering in real-time, also using the existing speakers, screens and lighting system.

ChargePoint intends to make its cut-resistant cables available for all of its commercial and fleet charging stations (cost not specified), as well as to selectively license the cable design, from mid-2025, to other charging station manufacturers.

The alarm system will be available this month as a free software upgrade for select charging stations, offering features like SMS alerts and law enforcement notification capabilities. Love that they’ve done with a free OTA update.

The only problem with all these solutions? They’ll add more cost to each charger and cable built. If only we could fix the people instead…

Also, I guess 2025 is the year where we’ll see the less dumber of the thieves (although… cables for a few bucks, seriously?) start identifying the charger manufacturer by the looks and steer clear of the ones with the alarm/anti-cut systems specifically?

Some overviews on charging infrastructure growth in 2024:

The US, as of the end of 2024, had 144,823 available L2 chargers across the nation, 49,604 available DC Fast chargers, 9,790 unavailable L2 and 898 unavailable DC Fast chargers. This means that available L2 chargers have grown from the same time in 2023 by 23,510 charging points (+19.4%), and by 2406 DC Fast chargers (+32.6%).

Canada added fewer public charging stations in 2024 than it did a year earlier: 6,764 new charging ports were added 2,291 stations across the country last year, down from 7,068 ports at about 2,500 locations in 2023. (link) Ontario led the way with 811 new installations (for 4,480 total), Quebec came second with 666 and B.C third with 440.

The UK recorded incredible growth for its ultra-rapid charging hubs in 2024, growing the 150kW+ charger count from 3,825 to 7,021! (link)

80 out of 114 (70%) motorway service areas in the UK now have at least six rapid chargers (link).

Tesla Supercharging roundup: In all of 2024, Tesla opened 11k+ Supercharger stalls, reaching 65k+ Superchargers worldwide; delivered 5.2+ TWh of energy (growing ~30% YoY), and added three new countries where you can Supercharge.

As an interesting point of view, this also makes Tesla Charging one of the fastest-growing tenants and real estate dealmakers in the world, while also becoming one of the largest corporate energy users. (link)

Chargetrip launched a new (free) tool to see an EV’s real emissions on any route. Their emission model accounts for energy mix and embedded, operational, and end-of-life emissions. Just plan a route on their site and you can see it for yourself (link). Here are the results for a sample trip I put in through the Netherlands: