EVU Report: EV is now king — Porsche Macan EV — Battery Report 2023

Hey, Jaan here.

I hope you’ve had an electric start for this year. I sure have.

We’re back with the regularly messy schedule where I send you a newsletter almost every week (and twice that if you’re a member).

In case you’re new here — there are 5,819 of us today 🤯 — you’ll find this feedback a reader left us last week sums up what we do in the EV Universe rather well.

Thanks, Sid, made me chuckle too. Let us know what EV you end up getting!

To-do: this week is the last chance to get your EV industry predictions in for 2024. I know, I know, we’re already a month in, but since I messed up the form input limits last time which blocked some of you from answering, here’s the one-question survey again:

We’ve got 58 answers so far already, but a 100 entries would be ideal! Sorry to all of you who got the error message when clicking last time. This shall be the last time ever that I use Typeform.

Anyway… you hungry? Let’s eat.

Words: 2,420 | Time to read: 11 minutes | Feeling: like rewatching The Office?

We’ve got something to celebrate!

For the first time ever,

the best-selling car in the world,

of any fuel type,

is an electric car!

Per preliminary data from JATO, these are the top 3 best-selling cars in 2023 on our whole planet:

Was it Tesla? Of course.

Does that mean we should ignore how important it is? Definitely not.

Don’t let our regular everyday media — either not reporting the milestone because it was a Tesla, or focusing on the FUD as always — and others keep you away from the fact that this is a monumentally important milestone for us all. I’m so happy.

Now, this left me wondering. Was 2022 the last year we saw an ICE car up top?

Feel free to leave your comment there too. We’ll go over what y’all think in the next week’s newsletter.

Whatever the case, one thing is certain

EV is now king. 👑 

PS, we’ve got plenty more Tesla news to report on, including its 2023 results, Model 3 refresh in the US, and the mass-market EV update. But I’m leaving it all for the Teslaverse special edition, coming your way on Monday.

The Rivian R2 launch will likely take place on March 7th. No official announcement yet, but we’ve got some clues. The company seeks approval from Laguna Beach City Council to park six vehicles for an upcoming event in front of its ‘brand awareness HQ’, the Rivian Theatre. Rivian states the event is a “worldwide product launch event”. (link, pdf)

There’s another tidbit that pretty much calls out what the event will be about, too: a diagram at the bottom of the planned layout for the cars reads “RIVIAN R2 LAUNCH v11.pln” (the yellow arrow I drew below). Oops?

Rivian has since withdrawn its plans of using the beach area (link) thanks to some local opposition, but I find it likely the event date/time will stay the same. The main question is… will they cancel the ice cream cart (the blue thing in the middle)?

Rivian R2 is a smaller-sized vehicle range compared to the R1, with the first product going to be a mid-sized SUV crossover. It is planned to go into production in 2026, so the debut timing would make sense. Scaringe has said the starting price might fall “in sort of the $45,000 to $50,000 price range”, and should be eligible for the IRA tax credit.

While we’re on the Rivian topic, the R1S and R1T are now available for leasing, with deliveries for select configurations in two weeks or less.

The German KBA is investigating BMW on suspicion of an unlawful defeat device in the engine control unit of an X3 with a 2L diesel engine. (link) Not guilty until proven, of course, but this follows a familiar path — the first ones to get caught (VW) are destroyed, then later turns out everyone was in it. Just stop the dirty business. Go electric.

BYD becomes the UEFA European Championship 2024 (soccer) exclusive e-mobility partner. (link)

What a great coincidence that this year's host is… Germany! Can’t be more “home turf” than that. BYD will be all around in the press videos, fan zones, etc. 328M fans watched the final match live in 2020. I think the European automakers should collectively do a quick facepalm for letting that happen.

Apple Car debut is pushed (yet again) to 2028, reportedly, with scaled-down ambitions to provide L2+ driver assistance instead of being fully autonomous. Read: it shall feature a steering wheel.

Akio Toyoda (of Toyota) says (link in 🇯🇵 ): “No matter how much progress BEVs make, I think they will still only have a 30 % market share. Then, the remaining 70% will be HEVs, FCEVs, and hydrogen engines. And I think engine cars will definitely remain.”

… who’s going to tell him?

USPS buys 6 Canoo delivery vehicles, to be delivered this quarter. (link) We’ve been reporting on the rumors and pics of the Canoo test vehicles near USPS facilities on our Pro Reports earlier on. I would love to see these replace the frugly Oshkosh vans.

Porsche debuted its new Macan (press release; 47-minute livestream):

• Two versions: Macan 4 EV and Macan Turbo

• Battery: 100kWh battery (95kWh usable).

• Range 516 – 613 km (320-381 mi) WLTP

• Architecture: 800V (first model on the PPE Platform), can split 400V on compatible chargers.

• Charging: up to 270kW DC, and 11kW AC

• Performance: up to 630 hp, 0-62 mph 3.3s, top speed of 161 mph (259km/h) aka Autobahn suitable

• Dual Motor AWD

• Rear steering up to 5 degrees

• Aerodynamics: 0.25 Cd

• Interior: free-standing 12.6 ” curved instrument display and 10.9″ infotainment display. Also features a head-up display with virtual reality. The new infotainment is based on Android Auto with Porsche Communication Management.

• Frunk: 2.9 cubic ft (82l); Trunk: 19 cubic ft (540l)

• Dimensions: L 4780mm, W 1940mm, H 1620. The wheelbase is 2890mm,

• Tows 2,000 kg (4,409 lbs)

• Pricing: starts at $80,450; Turbo version starts at $106,950 and maxes out at 163,290.

• Deliveries: second half of this year, preorders open now.
  Configure here.

Here’s a great walkaround review of Macan by Kyle from Out of Spec (1h23m video).

US: EV tax credits update

VW confirmed that the ID.4 will be able to get the $7.5k tax credit for now. (link)

Context: VW is the only foreign automaker that currently fits the criteria, thanks to sourcing its battery components from SK On in Georgia.

The current models that are eligible for the $7,500 are: Bolt EU&EUV; F-150 Lightning, Model 3/X/Y; and VW ID.4.

The Rivian R1S and R1T models are eligible for $3,750 of the credit.
Note that trims of different trims of those models might not be available, eg Model 3 LR doesn’t qualify but Model 3 Performance does.

In case you’ve missed it, from the start of this year, the tax credit can be “transferred to the dealer” at the spot, who then takes it off the final purchase cost, and the dealer gets reimbursed by IRS. Essentially, it is now a point-of-sale tax credit, and since dealers don’t need to verify if you’re eligible, if you don’t fit the IRS criteria for the tax credit you’ll have to reimburse IRS yourself (as written here).

The Battery Report 2023 is out!

These 294 slides give the best overview of the global battery industry that muggles like us (sorry, that’s me at least) can ever find.

Great job, Volta Foundation and all contributors across the industry. No sign-up required, check the report out: (BATTERY REPORT 2023 (294 slides))

Here’s a taste of some overviews you can find there:

I’m going to go ahead and not post more battery news here this week, so you could focus on this one above. But if you want more, see the 14 battery news bits and one deeper dive on recycling rates in this week’s Pro Report.

BMW 🤝 Figure to use its humanoid robots in BMW’s Spartanburg, South Carolina factory. “They will be integrated into the manufacturing processes including the body shop, sheet metal, and warehouse in the next 12-24 months, after being trained to perform specific tasks.”

So far, the automaker with the clearest path to having humanoid robots run a wide array of tasks is clearly Tesla and its Optimus program. The latest improvements with the Optimus Gen 2 have been significant. If you’re knowledgeable in the humanoid space and think you could share with me, please reach out — I’d love to pick your brain.

Ford will cut F-150 Lightning production (again), reducing production to just one shift at its Michigan Rogue EV Center, starting from April 1, says “demand in December was lower than expected.” (link)

Context:

• This puts the production rate at around 1,600 F-150⚡️’s per week.

• Which would be around half of the 150k production rate Ford planned as recently as August.

• In 2023, Ford sold 24,165 F-150⚡️, which was just ~3.2% of its all F-150 sales.

• Ford said it’ll instead add a third shift to make more Broncos, Rangers, probably because it doesn’t lose $36k per every one of those it makes for now.

2023 EV SALES

Let’s take a look at some of the larger EV sales numbers that we’ve got for 2023. Naturally, when I say EV here, I do not count plug-in hybrids.

All-electric vehicles in 2023:

🥇 China: 6,685,000 EVs
This includes 6.258M passenger EVs (up 24.3% YoY) and 427k commercial vehicles (up 28.9%). Data: CAAM

Out of all passenger vehicle sales in China (23,272,000), the EVs made up 26.7%. Very, very significant market share.

🥈 Europe: 2,019,401 EVs (Europe here =EU+EFTA+UK):
This includes just passenger EVs. The European EV growth year-over-year is +28.2%. EVs made up 15.7% of all cars sold in Europe. Data: ACEA

🥉 US: 1,189,051 EVs
This includes passenger EVs and light-duty commercial vehicles. The US EV market grew 46.3% year-over-year. And EVs made up 7.6% of all car sales in the US. Data: Cox Automotive

Now, as I’ve done in the past couple of years, I’m putting together an EV Sales Tracker spreadsheet that lists all EV sales per carmakers and per countries. I reached about 98% of all sales listed there last year. This is what it looked like for 2022.

There are plenty of services our there ready to charge you quite a few kilos for this data, but this is what we do in the EV Universe instead:

1. I’ve started the Sales Tracker already and will be sharing it through constant updates to our EV Universe Pro members as I build it.

2. Once it’s getting ready, later in February, I will publish it for all readers here for free.

Chargemap, the roaming service and plugshare-type EV charging community platform published the top 10 European CPOs, based on 390,000 ratings by over 112,000 unique users on their platform (link). Tesla, Fastned, and Electra took the top 3. See the top for ‘value-for-money’ and ‘reliability’ metrics too (link).

A gas station chain, which deploys DC chargers too, is offering the same €0.081 discount per liter and per kWh in this ad. (link) I found this a great sign of the times.

Mercedes me Charge (roaming) network has now access to over 1.5M chargers worldwide, across more than 1,300 CPOs. (link)

State of Michigan is getting $1.8M in federal funds to fix or replace 172 inoperable EV chargers in 105 locations across the state. (link) Context: this is a part of the nearly $150M gov program through NEVI, to replace ~4,500 chargers in 20 states. (link, slides)

Croatia: GreenWay plans to install 300 chargers of 100-400kW in Croatia over the next three to five years. (link)

Canada’s first bi-directional EV charging hub for electric buses has launched in British Columbia (link)

Electra, a France-based ultra-fast EV charging network provider, raised $331M in Series B funding led by PGGM. It is the largest funding round for the charging sector in France and the second-largest in Europe. It has nearly 1,000 chargers deployed so far across 8 countries in western and southern Europe. (link)

That’s it for today! This report went out to 5,819 subscribers.

See you soon.

— Jaan