EVU Report: Honda Prologue EV — IndiEV bankrupt — UK is OK

POV: You are at Oktoberfest.

You order a Paulaner beer because you saw it was brought there by this… all-electric 16-tonne Volta Zero truck.

You turn to your friend and say:

“It feels good to live in 2023.”

Hey, Jaan here.

I’m back with your mostly-weekly newsletters that get you up to speed with the EV industry news. We’ll cover all the fun bits. And the important bits.

Reminder: click the read online link up top for a better experience in your browser, where you can see more images and play videos directly inside the newsletter. Shall we? ⚡️ 

Let’s talk about hybrids!

Just kidding. I don’t want to talk about hybrids.

However, here are the poll results from the Plug-in Hybrid question I asked in our last newsletter.

21 of you (33.9%) voted for “PHEVs are best of both worlds”. I’ll highlight two comments:

41 of you (66.1%) voted for “PHEVs are worst of both worlds”. I’ll highlight two comments:

I recognize it’s a rather loaded question and I didn’t leave too much room there for the in-between. But I’m very glad it sparked quite a lot of conversations and 18 comments.

Since I can’t fit them all here, I uploaded your 18 thoughts as quotes on our blog for you to read here: (link). Thank you for sharing your views!

I wrote the above about IndiEV, on our deep dive on Sept 30th, 2022 (here). I am glad the EV Universe is still around.

Already then, I used the words that a naive-little-me usually hadn’t before: “The two years I've been writing the EV Universe so far now makes an alarm go off in my head for this…”

Fast forward to today: IndiEV files for bankruptcy.

Always sad to see another EV startup fail. Besides being an EV, the Indi One was supposed to have a literal computer under the hood, meant for “high-end gaming” in the car.

IndiEV, as we reported back in the story, was also one of the startups that relied on Foxconn to build out its EV in the Lordstown, Ohio factory.

Indi One now joins the ranks of Lordstown Endurance and Byton M-Byte — which also were set to use Foxconn’s manufacturing experience and/or production, but went out of business. I wrote in a Pro Report a few months ago, how Byton had accused Foxconn of malpractice and the latter pulled out of the deal where Foxconn already came in as a ‘lifeline’. The pattern repeated with Lordstown. Do you think we will hear the same from IndiEV?

Unless Foxconn is milking these EV startups somehow, I would assume it will stop partnering with the “small struggling ones” rather soon.

Let’s hope things turn out differently for the Fisker Pear, set to start production in the Foxconn’s Ohio factory from July 2025 (link).

The EV incentives in the US will change from next year: instead of waiting for the tax season, qualifying buyers can get their $7.5k (new) or $4k (used) credit as cash in hand on the day of purchase, no matter the size of their tax bill. (link)

NIO and Mercedes-Benz have reportedly had talks of the German automaker investing in Nio and get R&D capabilities in return (link).

This come as a big exclusive story by Reuters. Yet we have already confirmed back in April, with photos, that the CEOs Ola Källenius (circled below) and Willam Li have been in a lengthy private discussion in a NIO House in Rotterdam, Netherlands (link) 🤷‍♂️ 

We’ve seen several German→←Chinese auto deals recently, with the latest being VW investment in XPeng and them collaborating on EVs (link). I would not be surprised if Mercedes and NIO come out in a partnership here as well.

European Commission has now officially launched its anti-subsidy investigation against the Chinese EV imports. (link)

“The investigation will first determine whether BEV value chains in China benefit from illegal subsidization and whether this subsidization causes or threatens to cause economic injury to EU BEV producers.” The decision to impose tariffs or not should arrive within 13 months.

Is it just me or does this look like a pre-determined outcome already? Also, the Chinese EV inc “flooding” Europe currently do so at 2x the price they go for in China. So far.

In the EV Universe Pro Report last week, I wrote about France doing their own version of protectionism in addition to all this:

And now, Italy is reportedly considering similar EV subsidy conditions as France. (link) I would assume a little lobby from Stellantis and its CEO Tavares, the one that has sounded the alarm bells against China EV Inc. the most, is behind this to some extent.

Update on UK: while the ICE ban got pushed from 2030 to 2035, well kind of, the government did now confirm the ZEV mandate will go into effect next year. (link). This means automakers in the UK must reach Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEV) these sales targets set for passenger cars and commercial vans:

I’m rather positive about UK increasing in EV adoption speed. Why?

I agree with Colin McKerracher’s great writeup on this topic in BloombergNEF’s Hyperdrive, who says unlike the not-clearly-defined 2030 phaseout target, the ZEV mandate has real teeth. I mean, the 22% target is set for next year.

Especially as carmakers will have to pay up to £15,000 ($18,300) per each vehicle they miss targets by. This is, however, lowered a bit as the automakers ahead of these ZEV targets can trade (sell) their surplus to the poor little ICEmakers.

Numbers: 45,323 all-electric vehicles were bought in the UK in September (+18.9% year-over-year). This means all-electrics made up 16.6% of all vehicle sales (down from 16.9% same time last year). So far this year, 238,544 BEVs have been sold (+14.5% YoY).

While BEV sales recorded their 41st consecutive month of growth, what is perhaps worrying is that private buyers choosing BEV has gone down 14.3% YoY in September. This means that under 10% of the private buyers chose BEVs in September. (link) The only electric vehicle in the top 10 sales so far this year is the Model Y, sitting on the fourth overall place.

Honda launches Prologue, the midsize SUV that one could call its first real effort in the EV universe, next to the small Honda e. (link) (5min video) (specs).

• Range: up to 300 miles (483km) EPA at 85-kWh battery,

• Architecture: GM Ultium, very similar to Chevy Blazer

• Charging peak: 155kW

• Has both RWD & AWD versions (single/dual motors)

• Doesn’t’ have a frunk?

• Deliveries set for spring 2024 in the US

• Price: between $45k-$50k

• John Cena: is the one readng in the Honda Prologue commercials so don’t you dare not buy it.

And here are some walkaround reviews on video from Autoblog, TheStraightPipes, Edmunds. You pick your poison, but I’d go with the pipes.

Must watch: Jay Leno hauls the Tesla Semi with… a Tesla Semi: 43 minutes on YouTube or on X.

Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen and Tesla's Senior Manager of Semi-Truck Engineering Dan Priestley go over a bunch of details of the Semi with Jay Leno. More about the Semi in our Teslaverse newsletter next week!

Lucid Motors launches their cheapest model yet, the Air Pure RWD. It starts at $77,400, gets a 410-mile range on a single EV motor and goes 0-60mph in 4.5s (link)

Lucid also just delivered its first five Lucid Air Sapphires at an event at the Sonoma Raceway. The $249k tri-motor model that goes 0-60mph in 1.89s. (link) Here’s, Doug DeMuro’s 28-minute review video on it.

Extra Watts

• Volvo sets the starting price of its small SUV EX39 in the US: $34,950 (link). With top trim, it’s $46,600. To compare, in Europe, the EX30 will start at €36,590 ($38.5k).

• Tesla livestreamed off-roading the Cybertruck in Baja (7min video).
  I also find it amusing they’ve embraced the emoji “📐” to describe the CyberTruck. 

• Love to see it: U2 is leaving the Las Vegas Sphere in a Rivian R1S convoy (video). Also, if you’ve missed what the Sphere is, it’s definitely worth checking out. It might just be the coolest venue ever built. Start here.

Tesla announced its Q3 results (link):

• Model S/X: Produced 13,688 and delivered 15,985

• Model 3/Y: Produced 416,800 and delivered 419,074

With the total of 435,059 Teslas delivered in Q3 and 1,324,074 so far this year, it surpassed its total of 1,313,851 sales for the whole of 2022. The company leaves its volume target of 1.8M vehicles for the year unchanged.

Although the companies and offerings are different in many ways, it seems BYD is catching up with Tesla’s in terms of all-electric sales, with 431,603 deliveries in Q3 (link).

Rivian Q3: produced 16,304 vehicles and delivered 15,564. So far this year, Rivian has built 39,691 EVs, and the company didn’t change its target of 52k vehicles for the full year. (link) Earnings call will take place on Nov 7th.

Now since the 52k target would mean Q4 would only need 12,309 Rivians built, are they planning some factory downtime or just underpromising hoping to overdeliver?

Rivian also announced it would issue $1.5B in green convertible senior notes due in 2030 as a private offering, and with it said the Q3 sales would be ~$1.31B.

See our Pro Report (free this week) for Q3 sales of: Polestar, Fisker, BMW Group, Ford, Mercedes-Benz.

“I expect Kia, Genesis and Hyundai to announce joining NACS within a week. Why, you ask? Just look at the photoshoot someone stumbled upon at the Tesla Supercharger station in San Clemente:”

This is what I had written in the newsletter draft already last week. And this is exactly what happened. KIA announced it will adopt NACS in Q4 2024 (link), and the same goes for Hyundai (link) and Genesis (link). The press release images are from that exact spot.

Something fun came out of all this too. I’d caption this “no bro don't worry, no one will notice it" (link):

A few more kW for the road?

• The first Tesla V4 Supercharger station in North America is under construction in Oregon. (link)

• PlugShare reports that the — likely first-of-its-kind — third-party chargers with NACS and CCS combo have been installed in the US by ChargePoint (right next to its HQ in California) and XCharge. (link) via Electric Avenue.

• EVgo makes the per-kWh pricing available in all of its network (link). This also means the Time-of-Use component is included, where drivers can charge for less during off-peak hours.

• Germany opened a €300M grant fund for EV owners or EV order holders to help with the purchase and installation of solar panels, a battery storage device or a home charging system for their EV, providing up to €10,200 per applicant. 33,000 people applied and this drained the fund within hours. For those left out, €200M is earmarked for the same kind of gone-in-hours deal, in 2024. (link) via Alex’s Su$tainable Mobility.

• Stumbled upon this, too:

The Dutch company is called Flatpower, with a cable made in Italy. This image is apparently from a city initiative of Noordwijk, ND (link).

108.2 grams of CO₂ per km
average for the new passenger cars in Europe (in 2022)

10.8 grams of CO₂ per km
average for the new passenger cars in Norway (in September 2023)

That’s what having a 87% all-electric market share does to ya. (link)

Quote? Well, that was just from yours truly this time.

That’s it for today! This issue went out to our 4,327 subscribers.

Thank you for the kind feedback from the last time. I love reading these and it keeps me going! See you next week ✌️ 

— Jaan