2022 Nissan Leaf for $89/month | 03 Aug 2021

Episode 1166,   Aug 03, 2021, 12:00 AM

Today’s big EV stories:
• BMW sales of full battery electric cars nearly treble in first half
• EV Battery Price Competition Heating Up
• Volkswagen’s joint venture for software integration
• 2022 Nissan Leaf for $89/month
• Electric Vehicles: Chinese Automakers Turn to Influencers to Market EVs
• Tesla Model S Base Price Rises to over $90,000
• You Can Buy Tom Hanks’ Tesla!
• Nio delivered fewer cars than Xpeng and Li Auto did in July
• German Government To Aid Commercial EV Fleets

Show #1166.

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Good morning, good afternoon and good evening wherever you are in the world, welcome to EV News Daily for Tuesday 3rd August. It’s  Martyn Lee here and I go through every EV story so you don't have to.

Thank you to MYEV.com for helping make this show, they’ve built the first marketplace specifically for Electric Vehicles. It’s a totally free marketplace that simplifies the buying and selling process, and help you learn about EVs along the way too.

BMW SALES OF FULL BATTERY ELECTRIC CARS NEARLY TREBLE IN FIRST HALF

- BMW has reported a near trebling of sales of full battery electric cars in the first half of the calendar year, and overall sales of EVs, including plug in hybrids, more than double over the same period.

- BMW chairman Oliver Zipse said.
“In the first half of the year our sales grew by almost 150 percent. In our domestic market of Germany, nearly one in four BMWs and around 30 percent of Mini sold already have an electric drive train.”
  
The number of fully electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles BMW delivered in the first half jumped by 148.6% to 153,243 units in the first half, while deliveries of  all-electric models jumped by 183.9% to 36,087 units.

- “By the end of the year, we aim to have a total of one million fully-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles on the roads and, by 2025, two million pure electric vehicles,” Zipse said. “By then, we aim to deliver ten times the number of BEVs we sold in 2020.”

- The all-electric BMW iX has been rolling off the production line at our plant in Dingolfing since July. This will be followed in the autumn by the all-electric BMW i4 from our main plant in Munich.


EV BATTERY PRICE COMPETITION HEATING UP

- Chinese and Japanese electric vehicle battery manufacturers are enhancing their competitiveness with inexpensive products, and competition in the global electric vehicle battery market is continuing to intensify.

- CATL unveiled a sodium-ion battery on July 29. This battery is lower in price than a lithium-ion battery as it uses less expensive raw materials. CATL’s sodium-ion battery has an energy density of 160 Wh per kilogram and it can be charged by 80 percent in 15 minutes.

- Panasonic recently announced that it would more than halve the price of its battery. “We will halve the production cost by next year and by up to 70 percent by 2025,” it said. According to industry sources, the current manufacturing cost of electric vehicle battery packs is about US$100 per Wh and Panasonic’s goal is US$50 or less.

- At present, South Korean electric vehicle battery manufacturers are trying to lower the prices of their products by reducing the content of cobalt in their relatively expensive high-nickel lithium-ion batteries. LG Energy Solution is planning to initiate the mass production of cobalt-reduced and aluminum-added NCMA batteries in the second half of this year.


VOLKSWAGEN’S JOINT VENTURE FOR SOFTWARE INTEGRATION

- Volkswagen is seeking to grow automotive software integration and the digital customer experience as core competencies. The company has therefore established a joint venture with TraceTronic, a world-leading provider of solutions to test and integrate automotive software.

- Volkswagen aims to accelerate the development of digital functions such as over-the-air updates, which are provided to the owners of ID. vehicles every three months.

- Volkswagen can already leverage internal Group synergies in developing software for its fully networked vehicles. CARIAD, the Group’s software company, is developing a standard software platform for all Group brands. neocx is a further building block in transforming the Volkswagen brand into a software-based mobility provider and has the goal of integrating the digital functions developed by CARIAD into Volkswagen’s vehicles


2022 NISSAN LEAF FOR $89/MONTH

- The 2022 Nissan Leaf rolls into the new model year with a significant price cut for the shorter-range version.
The base price of the 149-mile standard Leaf is down to $28,375 with the mandatory $975 destination charge—so $20,875 effectively if you can claim the full $7,500 EV tax credit. Other state or regional incentives might make the Leaf even more affordable.

- he Leaf is shaping up to be the most affordable new electric vehicle in the U.S. market for the 2022 model year—undercutting the Mini Cooper SE, which had been the low-price EV leader.

- The price cut is all but confirmed as a reaction to the Chevrolet Bolt EV and its $5,500 effective price cut made for 2022, which came with significant updates and a new Bolt EUV model slotting just above the standard Bolt EV in the lineup. The standard Leaf continues with a 40-kilowatt-hour battery pack and a single electric motor rated at 147 horsepower

- The 2022 Nissan Leaf S may at launch offer the lowest-priced electric car lease available nationally. It's listed at $89 for 24 months, with $1,449 due at signing


ELECTRIC VEHICLES: CHINESE AUTOMAKERS TURN TO INFLUENCERS TO MARKET EVS

- Meng, or EV Emma as she’s known to her 700,000 followers, is among the swelling ranks of Chinese influencers blogging, vlogging, and flogging cars in the world’s biggest electric vehicle market. The money is so good that some like Meng, who graduated from Cambridge University in 2013 and worked as a regional business developer in France, were able to ditch their corporate careers.

- With all the competing models, carmakers are increasingly using influencers to cut through the clutter. Their preferred messengers: media-savvy young people who use social platforms to talk about and review EVs to legions of followers that stretch into the hundreds of thousands. That makes sense because, rather than dealing solely with a dealership, many EV buyers in China browse online, interact with an influencer, or perhaps go to a high-end mall to view the finished product in a boutique-like setting—all before visiting a dealer lot or ever getting behind a wheel.

- As well as being paid directly by automakers for appearances and test drives, influencers make money by charging for social media posts, with the rates they can command typically linked to the number of followers they have. One said he earned 10,000 yuan ($1,550) for posting four shots from the Shanghai auto show.


TESLA MODEL S BASE PRICE RISES TO OVER $90,000

- Tesla has been steadily increasing the base price of the Model S, and it has now reached above $90,000. The Long Range model, which previously started at just over $70,000 but has seen numerous price adjustments recently, now costs $91,190 to start according to Tesla's website.

- There's also a more powerful Model S Plaid model available, but its price has not changed since it increased by $10,000 back in June. It starts at $131,190


TESLA TO START DELIVERING MODEL YS IN HONG KONG AND MACAU

- Tesla will start delivering its Model Y sport-utility vehicle (SUV) in Hong Kong and Macau next month in line with mainland China

- By the end of last year, there were about 18,500 private EVs in Hong Kong and Tesla accounted for 80 per cent, according to data from the Transport Department.

- In Hong Kong, the government is targeting no new registrations of fossil fuel cars, including hybrids, by 2035 or earlier.


YOU CAN BUY TOM HANKS’ TESLA!

- He was one of a very small handful of buyers of the AC Propulsion eBox, a Scion xB converted to run on a 35-kWh electric battery and one of the first electric cars you could buy. And he also purchased a Toyota RAV4 EV back when Toyota was selling those. He has since kept up with the electric car cavalcade, including Teslas.

- Hanks’ 2015 Tesla Model S P85D is one of four vehicles that are being offered at the Bonhams Quail Lodge Auction August 13 at the Quail Lodge in Carmel Valley, California. The car has only 13,445 miles on it

- And it’s painted in British Racing Green, Hanks’ favorite color.  Bonhams estimates the car will go for between $70,000 and $100,000 when the hammer falls in two weeks


- Five different battery variants (40, 60, 85, P85, and P85+) were produced in 2012, with nine exterior color choices including Anza Brown Metallic, and Sequoia Green Metallic.  Then 2013/14 you could get ‘Green Metallic’. They actually did the 2008 Roadster in ‘Racing Green’.


NIO DELIVERED FEWER CARS THAN XPENG AND LI AUTO DID IN JULY

- By monthly deliveries, Nio came in last among the trio of U.S.-listed Chinese electric car start-ups with deliveries of 7,931 vehicles in July. Li Auto climbed to the top, saying Sunday it delivered 8,589 Li One SUVs in July, a monthly record. Xpeng said Monday it also delivered a monthly record of 8,040 vehicles, three-fourths of which were of its P7 sedan, rather than its other model, the G3 SUV.


GERMAN GOVERNMENT TO AID COMMERCIAL EV FLEETS


QUESTION OF THE WEEK WITH EMOBILITYNORWAY.COM

What’s the ideal location for a charging port on any EV? Petrol filler caps are usually in the same location and forecourts all the look the same. Is it time we encouraged EV makers and charging suppliers to standardize socket location and charger design?

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