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Plus, stay tuned because later in the show I’ll tell you which car is one of the first to have Google’s Gemini AI so you can talk to your car like a human, and pretend you’re in Knight Rider.,
On EV News China today we’re talking about: BMW Banks On China, Mercedes Defies Market and Sunwoda Under The Microscope
GERMANY SUBSIDIES INCLUDE HYBRIDS AND CHINESE CARS
Germany will pay drivers to buy plug-in hybrids again. Berlin has widened its planned electric-vehicle support to include range-extender EVs and PHEVs, not just BEVs.
The scheme matters on three fronts: social, industrial and trade. Grants of €1,500–€6,000 ($1,700–$7,000) per new-car purchase target low- and middle-income households that still baulk at EV prices.
Environment Minister Carsten Schneider frames the package as both social and industrial policy, meant to help buyers who cannot yet afford EVs and to shore up Germany’s car sector.
The design could skew the market. Base grants start at €3,000 for BEVs and €1,500 for PHEVs or range-extenders, with support applying to purchases and leases of new vehicles regardless of list price, so long as recipients keep the car for at least 36 months. Brands ramping up cheaper models around the €25,000 mark, such as Volkswagen, Renault and Stellantis, stand to gain.
Berlin also offers limited support to combustion. Range extenders count as EV drivetrains, carrying a small engine generator to recharge the main battery on the move. PHEVs and range-extenders must meet tighter rules: either CO2 emissions below 60g/km or an electric-only range of at least 80km (50 miles). From 1 July the environment ministry will review whether newly registered PHEVs should qualify based on CO2 emissions measured in real-world driving, not just test cycles.
The policy stays open to imports, including vehicles built in China. That contrasts with Britain’s grant rules, which in effect screen out Chinese-built BEVs through manufacturing and battery-emissions demands, and with similar conditions in France’s “social leasing” scheme.
Berlin has set aside €3bn ($3.5bn) and expects to support about 800,000 vehicles through 2029, with applications allowed retroactively for new registrations from 1 January. The mix of generous scope and modest sums will show how much subsidy Europe still needs to push buyers towards plugs.
RIVIAN R2 MOVES FROM PROTOTYPE TO FACTORY TEST
Rivian has begun building “manufacturing validation” R2s at its Normal, Illinois plant, a step between prototypes and full-scale output. These near-production vehicles test whether the factory can turn out the model reliably and at volume.
The R2 matters more than most launches. Priced from about $45,000, with deliveries due in the first half of 2026, it is Rivian’s bid to move from niche upmarket player to mass producer. The R1S and R1T win praise but sell at an average price above $90,000, a level that caps volume and keeps economies of scale out of reach.
Validation builds mark a shift in focus. The question is no longer whether Rivian can build the R2 once, but whether it can build the same vehicle again and again, at consistent quality, on normal industrial rhythms. The phase is meant to expose weak points in processes and equipment before the firm ramps up.
The competitive target is clear. The R2 is aimed at the Tesla Model Y and similar mid-priced crossovers that define the current electric-vehicle market. To compete there, Rivian must show it can combine cost discipline, quality and scale in a way that has so far eluded many electric start-ups.
The stakes are high. Previous entrants have stumbled at this point, tripped up by bottlenecks, quality lapses and capital strain. Analysts see the R2 as a rare bright spot in a crowded and uncertain sector. If Rivian turns these validation builds into smooth mass production, it will move closer to the profitability
https://evne.ws/3NBfr33
PORSCHE HITS SALES BRAKE AS EV BET STALLS
Porsche’s global deliveries fell by a tenth last year to 279,449 vehicles, from 310,718 in 2024, its sharpest drop since 2009, when sales slid 13.7 per cent during the financial crisis.
The fall shows how even a high-margin sports-car maker can misread the pace and geography of electrification. It also gives new chief executive Michael Leiters, who took over at the start of the year, an early test: steady volumes while reshaping the line-up.
Porsche blamed “supply gaps” for the 718 and Macan, its bestselling model. It halted petrol versions of both in Europe after they failed to comply with EU cyber security rules, and chose not to develop compliant replacements. At the same time, it shelved plans for new electric models and shifted emphasis back to petrol and hybrids after weaker than expected demand for EVs.
The regional pattern jars with Porsche’s pitch as a global luxury brand. North America, despite higher US tariffs announced in 2025, was the best-performing region, slipping only a few hundred units. Sales in Germany fell 16 per cent and in Europe as a whole 13 per cent. China was worse: deliveries dropped 26 per cent to 41,938 vehicles, less than half the 2022 level, as local rivals attacked premium segments.
Porsche has responded with a restructuring plan to trim production capacity and is in talks with German trade unions over further savings. Sales chief Matthias Becker has warned against hopes of a quick bounce in 2026, citing the production phase-out of the combustion-engined 718 and Macan. Instead, Porsche will push a “value over volume” strategy and widen customisation, gambling that pricing power can offset a thinner order book.
https://evne.ws/49uOB5q
MERCEDES QUIETLY RESTARTS EQ EV SALES IN AMERICA
Mercedes has quietly reopened orders for its EQ electric cars in America, ending a six-month halt that baffled dealers and rivals. The pause, imposed in July and blamed on “market conditions”, came during a record quarter for overall EV sales in the country.
Those conditions have now shifted, at least in Stuttgart’s telling. The firm had warned that the EV market would suffer disruption from shifting tariff policies; it now says those have settled enough to restart sales. The move matters because Mercedes, unlike some mass-market brands, sells most of its EVs to buyers who do not qualify for federal tax credits. Leasing softened the blow, but the brand still chose to stand aside just as the market hit a new high.
Back in showrooms, the 2026 EQ line-up returns with more power and faster acceleration. The EQE Sedan, EQE SUV, EQS Sedan and EQS SUV are now on sale in American dealerships. All gain access to Tesla’s Supercharger network through a NACS adapter, a practical nod to where charging standards are heading.
Mercedes also plans what it calls its largest product offensive this year. Centre stage is the new CLA EV, now beginning to arrive in American showrooms and aimed at pulling more buyers into the brand’s electric range.
For now the company offers no fresh incentives or pricing twists, only the assurance that orders are open again. Interested buyers must still ring or visit local dealers to find out which 2026 EQ models and CLA EV variants they can actually get.
https://evne.ws/3LMwGhg
GEELY’S £20K EX2 TAKES AIM AT EUROPE’S SMALL EVS
Last year’s best-selling car in China, the Geely EX2, reaches Britain this summer. Sold at home as the Geome Xingyuan, it shifted over 500,000 units in 2023, helped by a local price of about £7,000.
The British price will be closer to £20,000. That puts the EX2 in direct competition with the Citroën e-C3 and Renault 5, with more rivals coming fast. Volkswagen’s ID. Polo is due from about £22,000 and Kia’s EV2 from about £25,000. Above them sits BYD’s larger Dolphin, which starts at over £30,000 but can be discounted through the Auto Express Buy A Car service.
The EX2 will fight on space and kit as much as on price. At just over 4.1 metres long it counts as a small EV, yet it offers ample rear legroom and a 375-litre boot, larger than that of the Renault 5. The cabin looks surprisingly polished for a budget champion. A 14.6-inch touchscreen and 8.8-inch driver display dominate the dash. The car inspected in Europe still ran much of its software in Thai, a sign of how fast Geely is repurposing a global platform for Britain.
In China the EX2 offers 30kWh and 40kWh battery packs, with quoted ranges of up to 193 miles and 255 miles on the CLTC cycle. On more conservative European metrics, the UK version is expected to manage roughly 150 to 200 miles, depending on battery size.
Geely does not plan a one-off experiment. It aims to launch at least seven models in Britain by 2028, among them the EX5 electric SUV and a new plug-in hybrid SUV. If it can repeat the EX2’s value story at around £20,000, Europe’s small-EV incumbents will find themselves squeezed from below by a car that sells for about £7,000 in China.
https://evne.ws/4sIZIzj
BRITAIN PITCHES ELECTRIC CARS AS SIMPLE THRIFT
On 19 January 2026 the Department for Transport (DfT) launched “Get that electric feeling”, a national push to steer British car buyers towards battery power for their next purchase.
The offer leans hard on the wallet. The Electric Car Grant cuts up to £3,750 off a new EV. Ministers add claims of up to £1,400 a year in fuel and maintenance savings, and home charging costs “as little as 2p per mile” on suitable tariffs. The pitch is electric as everyday thrift, not green luxury.
The media plan matches the scale. Ads will run on TV, radio and digital channels, backed by heavy out-of-home placement at petrol stations, shopping centres, motorway service areas and roadside digital displays. DfT wants to catch drivers at the pump and on the move, not just online.
Officials also lean on visible kit. The campaign points to more than 87,000 public charge points now in place across the UK, aimed at easing worries about range and access. More than 50,000 drivers have already used the Electric Car Grant, which the government says has delivered discounts of up to £3,750 per vehicle.
Ministers stress behaviour as much as hardware. They claim that once drivers switch to electric they “don’t go back”, a line echoed in the campaign’s use of real-owner testimonials. Auto Trader’s Ian Plummer says almost two-thirds of buyers are considering an EV, but argues that repeated, practical messaging is needed to turn that intent into sales. He cites survey data suggesting nine in ten EV switchers say they will not return to combustion.
For Dominic Phinn at Climate Group, the battleground is trust, not technology. He backs the campaign as a counter to “myths and misinformation”, and warns that perception, not hardware, now forms the main bottleneck to fleet and wider market electrification.
BYD’S TURKISH FACTORY STALLS, BUT ADVANTAGE HOLDS
BYD has yet to turn a sod in Manisa. Yet local officials insist the Chinese carmaker’s planned electric-vehicle plant in western Türkiye remains “on track”.
The $1 billion investment, formalised in July 2024, is meant to deliver annual capacity of 150,000 vehicles and about 5,000 jobs. The factory was due to start construction roughly six months ago. The chair of Manisa’s organised industrial zone says the timetable has slipped as geopolitical and economic uncertainty has risen. But officials still cite end-2026 as the start of operations, the same target they gave at the outset.
For now, the deal matters less for its bricks and mortar than for the way it rewires the local market. Under the agreement, BYD counts as a local producer. That lets it sidestep customs tariffs of up to 30% and gives it a clear pricing edge in Türkiye. The result already shows up in the sales data.
In 2025 BYD topped the country’s EV charts with 45,537 units sold, ahead of domestic hopeful Togg and American rival Tesla. The numbers show how regulatory treatment, not just product, can tilt the field. They also raise the cost to BYD of any rethink. The Manisa accord comes with state backing and legal obligations, which local officials say would make it hard for the firm to walk away without fuss.
Ground may not have broken, but the political and commercial concrete has set. BYD has locked in tariff relief and market share; Ankara has tied its industrial policy to a single large investor. A factory that exists only on paper has already helped BYD sell 45,537 cars and forced Türkiye to bet on seeing that paper turn into steel by end-2026.
FASTNED SHIFTS FROM EXPANSION TO MAKING SITES WORK HARDER
Fastned ended 2025 with 406 fast‑charging sites across nine European markets, 60 more than a year earlier, with 50 of the new locations in Germany. Yet the more important change lies in how hard each site now works.
Revenue from charging sessions in the fourth quarter of 2025 reached €38.1m, up 44% year on year, matching the growth rate Fastned had flagged in earlier 2025 updates. For the full year, revenue from charging sessions came to about €123.9m, compared with a reported €86.3m in 2024, again implying roughly 44% growth.
The more telling figure sits below the top line. Average revenue per site rose to €335,000 in 2025, a 25% increase on 2024. Fastned says that far outstrips its estimate of 8% growth for the broader market. If the firm is right, it is gaining share not just by building more sites, but by extracting more turnover from each plug.
Fastned credits a mix of larger sites and busier ones. Newer locations tend to be bigger, while existing ones benefit from higher use as the EV parc grows. Expansion, in other words, now means adding capacity as well as new dots on the map.
In the fourth quarter alone, Fastned increased capacity at 35 sites through expansions, repowering and upgrades to higher charging power to cope better with peak‑time queues.
KIA BETS ON A HALO EV TO AVOID BLANDNESS
Kia now sells enough electric cars to justify a halo model. Its planned flagship will set the tone for design and technology, much as the Stinger once did for petrol. This time the focus is the Meta Turismo Concept, first shown late last year as a digital-only study and now reworked as an early glimpse of a production-intent EV.
The point is less the show car itself than the role Kia wants it to play. The brand sees a risk that electric cars drift into bland, commodity status. A flagship with more emotional pull, without straying from Kia’s core values, is its answer. The car is meant to shape design language, interior philosophy and the feel of performance across the range, not merely sit at the top of a price list.
Jochen Paesen, Kia’s head of advanced design, says the Meta Turismo is more than styling theatre. His team uses it as a live test bed, trying ideas that can flow into future road cars. That includes obvious cues, such as proportions and lighting, and less visible themes in interface design and cabin layout.
ROLLS-ROYCE PLANS ELECTRIC CULLINAN SIBLING FOR 2027
Rolls-Royce will launch an all-electric “high-sided vehicle” in 2027, to sit alongside the Spectre coupé rather than replace the Cullinan. It will target the same markets that have embraced the petrol SUV, notably the United States and the Middle East. But a new generation of V12 Cullinan now looks unlikely.
The new model will stretch the brand’s electric line-up both upwards and sideways. It will use BMW’s Neue Klasse architecture, with an expected range of 300 to 400 miles per charge and a twin-motor set-up delivering more than 500bhp. A Black Badge version should clear 600bhp, with the focus on smooth, silent shove rather than outright speed. A third all-electric Rolls-Royce, likely a Phantom replacement, is pencilled in for 2028.
Spy shots suggest a shape very different from the current SUV. The car will sit lower and look sleeker than the Cullinan, with a wagon-like profile, a shallower glasshouse and a length of about 5.3 to 5.4 metres. That would place it between the Ghost and Phantom, and above the Cullinan, which already exceeds 5.3 metres. A long bonnet, upright front end, short front overhang and long rear overhang will keep the stance traditional, as will rear-hinged “coach” doors and Spectre-inspired tail-lights.
https://evne.ws/4t2EpZE
SOLAREDGE BETS ON SMARTS OVER SPEED FOR NEW EV CHARGER
SolarEdge’s One EV Charger Pro has reached European driveways, with early units already running in homes and thousands of pre-orders logged. The firm is betting that tight integration, not raw power, will sway buyers in a crowded wallbox market.
The charger bolts straight into SolarEdge’s ecosystem. Its Smart Energy Management System aims to send as much direct solar power into the car as possible, matching charging in real time to surplus PV output. That should cut kilowatt-hours drawn from the grid and reduce the need for users to tinker with schedules and limits.
The hardware handles both single-phase and three-phase charging and switches between them automatically, a nod to Europe’s patchwork of domestic connections. A new cable-locking system permanently secures the charging cable to the unit, aimed at cutting cable theft and removing daily faff for users who dislike coiling and uncoiling leads.
SolarEdge also labels the wallbox as “bidirectional-ready”. Vehicle-to-home and vehicle-to-grid functions will sit dormant until standards catch up, at which point the firm promises to unlock them via software. If regulators and carmakers align, that could turn parked cars into part of household and grid balancing, with SolarEdge in place as the control layer.
For now the pitch rests on solar integration, a neat physical design and the promise of future flexibility. In a market full of smart chargers and half-implemented V2G schemes, whether SolarEdge actually switches on those bidirectional features will decide if the One EV Charger Pro becomes standard kit in its
VOLVO BETS ON GEMINI TO DRIVE ITS NEXT EV
Volvo will unveil its all-electric EX60 medium SUV on January 21st 2026 and wants drivers to focus less on screens and more on a digital co-driver. The EX60 will be the first Volvo to ship with Google’s Gemini AI assistant built in.
Anders Bell, Volvo’s chief engineering and technology officer, calls the EX60 the firm’s most intelligent car so far. It sits on a new platform, HuginCore, which pulls together Volvo’s own software with technology from Google, NVIDIA and Qualcomm. The aim is to add computing power while keeping the cabin calm and the tech discreet.
Gemini sits at the centre of that plan. The assistant supports natural, multi-turn voice requests, so drivers can hold a conversation rather than bark commands. Volvo says Gemini will handle tasks such as pulling hotel addresses from email and planning road trips, all while cutting the need to glance at the central display.
The EX60 follows the “software-defined car” template. A new electrical architecture and over-the-air update capability should let Volvo refine functions after delivery, rather than wait for a facelift. Under the skin, Qualcomm Snapdragon platforms and NVIDIA’s Drive AGX Orin system-on-a-chip deliver more than 250 trillion operations per second to run both the cockpit and driver-assistance features.
None of this will matter if the car lacks range. Volvo claims up to 810 km on a single charge. With a 400 kW fast charger, the EX60 can add 340 km of range in 10 minutes.
Volvo will livestream the full reveal on January 21st 2026. By then, buyers may care less about peak kilowatts than about how politely Gemini answers back.
https://evne.ws/3NzaUOE
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