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Plus, stay tuned because later in the show I’ll tell you why one community in America who are the last people to like new technology, can’t resist the lure of electrification.
On EV News China today we’re talking about: Zeekr Plan 900v 007, Mercedes-Benz VLE Van and Battery Afterlife.
MERCEDES SHIFTS ELECTRIC GLB TO LOW‑COST HUNGARY
Mercedes has begun building the all-electric GLB compact SUV in Hungary, betting a cheaper cost base will help it fend off tariffs and Chinese rivals as margins tighten. The model is now up for order at about €59,000 ($68,570).
The firm is shifting GLB production away from Mexico and concentrating output at its Kecskemet plant. Hungary offers lower labour costs and sits inside the European Union, a useful mix as policymakers toy with extra duties on imports and as Chinese EVs undercut European prices. By tying production to a lower-cost EU base, Mercedes aims to keep some pricing power in a segment where buyers have plenty of choice.
Battery packs for the GLB come from an on-site facility in Kecskemet, which Mercedes says cuts transport time and logistics complexity. Local battery assembly limits exposure to global logistics snags and trims the cost of shuttling heavy packs across borders. For a €59,000 SUV, those savings matter to both margins and future room to discount.
The shift comes as Mercedes slips further behind BMW in EV sales after a run of product missteps. That gap heaps pressure on the next wave of launches, including the GLC, CLA and now the GLB. Each must carry more than its own profit target: together they will show whether Mercedes can still shape the premium end of the EV market, or whether rivals set the pace and prices.
https://evne.ws/4b8SxKn
RENAULT GROWS MODESTLY AS ELECTRIFIED SALES SURGE
Renault Group lifted vehicle sales by 3.2% in 2025 to 2.34m units, with passenger cars doing most of the work. The volume gain looks modest but hides a sharper shift in the mix and geography of demand.
The home market barely moved. Europe, still Renault’s core, grew just 0.5%. Yet the group’s international business jumped 12%, helped by South Korea, Morocco and Latin America. Growth is edging away from its traditional base towards markets where pricing, regulation and brand perception differ sharply from those in the European Union.
The more striking change came in the powertrain portfolio. Electrified demand accelerated: hybrid sales rose 35% in 2025, while EV sales climbed 77% year on year. That pace far outstrips the group’s headline volume growth, pointing to a rapid shift towards higher-tech, regulation-friendly models and away from pure combustion.
https://evne.ws/4qzn4px
LYNK & CO 08 PHEV SETS 293KM EV-ONLY RECORD
Lynk & Co’s plug-in hybrid SUV, the 08, has run 293km in electric-only mode and earned a Guinness World Records certificate for the feat. Zeekr Korea says that makes it the production plug-in hybrid SUV with the longest EV-mode driving distance.
The claim matters because it presses on a common weak spot in PHEVs: short electric range that pushes owners back to petrol. If repeatable, a 293km run in EV mode suggests some buyers could treat the 08 as an electric car most of the time, with a combustion engine as insurance rather than crutch.
The record attempt took place on 22 December 2025 at Mexico City’s Centro Dinámico Pegaso race track, laid out to mimic real-world driving. Professional drivers ran the test for more than six hours at an average 50–60km/h, speeds that match the stop-go reality of many urban EV-mode trips. Independent data specialists measured the distance, while engineers inspected the car before and after the run to confirm that it stayed mechanically sound.
The result beat the 08’s rated 200km WLTP electric range by a wide margin. With typical urban commutes often quoted at 30–50km a day, the run implies that more than a week of routine driving could stay fully electric for some owners.
The 08 sits on Geely Automobile Holdings’ CMA Compact Modular Architecture platform. Its plug-in hybrid drivetrain pairs a 1.5-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine with a 39.6kWh ternary NMC battery.
The numbers come from a controlled test rather than the chaos of city traffic. Yet they sketch a future in which at least some PHEVs may spend most of their lives driven as EVs, and judged not on how they burn fuel, but on how rarely they need to.
https://evne.ws/4qzVdFE
TESLA TURNS KOREA INTO A PRICE WAR TEST BED
Tesla’s South Korean discounts now make the Model Y and Model 3 hard to beat on value for money, and the sales data back that up.
Local data show Tesla Korea sold 59,949 EVs in 2025, up 101.5% year on year, driven largely by the price-led Model Y. That model alone accounted for 50,405 sales in 2025, a 169.3% jump. It became Korea’s best-selling imported car and overtook Mercedes-Benz Korea’s long-dominant E-Class in the imported-car race.
This shift matters because imported brands have long relied on premium prices and badge appeal to defend margins. Tesla instead leans on scale and sharp sticker prices. By making its mass models look like bargains, it pulls buyers away from both legacy import marques and domestic EVs that cannot match the headline numbers.
Tesla now wants to lock in that lead. It is running rolling discount campaigns focused on its two volume pillars, the Model Y and the Model 3. The latest offer on the Model 3 reportedly pushes the effective price below KRW 40m, or about $27,100, once subsidies apply. That moves the car firmly into the mainstream of the Korean market rather than the luxury fringe.
https://evne.ws/49QuihJ
LEASE COSTS FALL AS EV ENQUIRIES CLIMB IN 2025
Personal lease costs for new cars fell again in 2025 even as list prices rose. New data from Leasing.com show average personal lease payments dropped 6.3% to £301.50 a month, while average business lease payments fell 10.3% to £397.38 a month excluding VAT.
That gap between higher retail prices and lower monthly rentals now shapes how Britons access new cars. Leasing.com argues leasing offers a steadier route into a new vehicle than buying outright, softening the impact of higher list prices and tighter household budgets. For fleets, lower business rentals may help offset other cost pressures.
The figures sit inside Leasing.com’s 2025 Insights Report, which also charts a faster retreat from petrol and diesel. Petrol enquiries slipped to 41% in 2025 from 50% in 2024. EV enquiries rose to 34.1%, while diesel enquiries collapsed to 2.1% from 6.4%.
Within EV demand, the brand order is shifting. The Ford Puma topped electric-car enquiries with a 5.8% share, ahead of the Polestar 4 and Leapmotor C10, then the Tesla Model 3 and BMW i4. That mix blends mass-market familiarity with newer Chinese-linked and premium entrants, pointing to a more contested mid-market.
https://evne.ws/4sNQqSx
BRITAIN NEARS NORWAY-STYLE EV CHARGING DENSITY
Britain now has more places to plug in a car than to fill it with petrol. Yet the real shift lies ahead. On current trends, the public EV charging network is on track to match Norway’s charger-to-petrol-station balance within about three years.
The Electric Car Scheme reckons the UK’s charging-to-petrol-station ratio will rise from 10.5-to-one today to 15-to-one by 2027, roughly in line with Norway. That would move Britain from an early-adoption muddle towards a “chargers everywhere, petrol stations fading” equilibrium in about half the time Norway took to get there.
The numbers already point that way. The UK now has 87,796 public charging connectors across 45,033 locations, with the overall network expanding by about 23% a year. Rapid and ultra-rapid rollout is running hotter still at roughly 30% annual growth, shifting the system from “somewhere to plug in” towards “somewhere fast to plug in”. Charging locations overtook fuel pumps in May 2019, and the gap has widened since, a quiet milestone that now looks like a structural break.
Forecourts, by contrast, keep vanishing. Petrol stations are shrinking by about 3.6% a year, extending a long slide that has already cut the UK network by roughly 75% since 1967. Norway shows where this leads: in 2025, 96% of new car registrations were fully electric, supported by around 27,000 public fast chargers and only 1,800 petrol stations.
BRITAIN SWITCHES ON FIRST MEGAWATT HGV CHARGER
Britain has switched on its first megawatt charging system for electric HGVs at a depot hub in the East Midlands. The site, at East Midlands Gateway near the M1 and East Midlands Airport, went live on 15 January using Voltempo’s HyperCharger system.
Voltempo designed and installed the kit and leads the eFREIGHT 2030 consortium behind it. The hub has six DC charging bays fed by a megawatt-scale HyperCharger “pod” that shares power across the dispensers. Operators can split output across several trucks at lower power, or push the full megawatt to a single vehicle. Voltempo says that at full power an eHGV can recharge in about 30 minutes.
The set-up turns a well-connected logistics node into a real-world charging testbed. As the first of Voltempo’s planned megawatt-scale HyperChargers under eFREIGHT 2030, it starts a national rollout of 35 depot charging hubs. If the model works, large fleet depots could treat megawatt charging as standard rather than a pilot.
EU COOLS TALK OF HYBRID TARIFFS ON CHINESE CARS
Talk of fresh European tariffs on Chinese hybrids has run ahead of reality. The European Commission has pushed back on claims that it is weighing BEV-style duties on hybrid imports from China, after a report sparked another round of trade-war chatter.
That matters for both Chinese carmakers and European rivals. Hybrids remain a key profit pool as the Chinese market shifts from internal combustion to pure electric, and Europe’s response will shape where capital flows in the next investment cycle. Any hint that Brussels might widen its net beyond battery-electric vehicles sharpens the strategic choices for firms that straddle both technologies.
Olof Gill, the EU’s trade spokesman, said there is no ongoing investigation into Chinese hybrid exports to the bloc, speaking at a press conference in Brussels. Commissioners may raise such issues politically, he added, but that does not create a formal trade case. Under WTO rules, the Commission must first run a defined investigation before any tariff measures can follow.
https://evne.ws/49KtA5w
MAZDA PUSHES OWN-BRAND EVS TO 2029 AS HYBRIDS DOMINATE
Mazda’s first dedicated, in-house battery-electric vehicle will now arrive no earlier than 2029, at least two years later than planned, according to Automotive News. The delay underlines its choice to lean on hybrids and partnerships rather than rush a full EV line-up of its own.
Mazda once told investors that EVs could account for 25%–40% of global sales by 2030. It now says 25% or lower looks more likely, as both governments and carmakers trim spending on charging networks and battery-electric programmes. The firm already sells EVs such as the EZ-60 crossover and EZ-6 sedan, but these ride on platforms developed with its Chinese partner Changan rather than Mazda’s own architectures.
https://evne.ws/4sOcf4j
CHINA’S CARMAKERS MUSCLE INTO EUROPE IN DECEMBER 2025
Europe’s new-car market ended 2025 across the EU, the U.K., Iceland, Norway and Switzerland rose 7.6% year on year, capping a full-year gain of 2.3%. Yet the headline number for December masks a sharp shift in who sells what.
Chinese brands drove growth. Their December volumes surged 127% to nearly 110,000 units, taking 9.5% of the market. For 2025 as a whole, Chinese EV makers almost doubled sales, up 99% to about 811,000 units. SAIC, via MG, stayed the volume leader among them, rising 28% to 34,549 sales and ranking as the top Chinese brand for 2025 in 16th place, just behind Volvo.
Electrified powertrains set the pace as tougher emissions rules bit. Battery-electric vehicle sales jumped 52% in December and 30% for the year. Carmakers could average emissions across 2025–27 and many reportedly leaned on EU-approved pooling in 2025 with BEV-rich partners such as Tesla and Volvo. But participation beyond 2025 looks uncertain, which may test weaker BEV line-ups.
Plug-in hybrids staged an unexpected comeback. PHEV sales climbed 37% in December and 34% over 2025, suggesting buyers and manufacturers still see value in transitional technology even as regulators push pure electric.
The growth reshuffled winners and losers. Tesla’s sales dropped 20% and Toyota’s fell 9.2%. For 2025 group share, Volkswagen remained dominant at 27%, followed by Stellantis at 14% and Renault at 10%, with Hyundai/Kia and BMW behind.
WAYMO HITS LONDON STREETS AHEAD OF UK DRIVERS
Waymo’s Jaguar I-Pace SUVs already circle London without drivers, months before private Britons may legally do the same. The American firm has begun testing fully self-driving, specially modified I-Paces in the capital as part of a government-backed pilot to push autonomous technology.
Here’s why the timing matters. Current UK rules bar personal driverless cars until the latter half of next year. Yet a new regulatory framework lets companies such as Waymo and, from the spring, Uber, deploy their systems sooner. The government wants the UK to look like a natural home for autonomous mobility, not a late adopter.
Waymo will not have the streets to itself. Uber plans to join the pilot with its own autonomous fleet, using maps from Wayve. Nissan is also testing self-driving functions on UK roads with a fleet of Leafs.
AMISH E-BIKES SHOW HOW ELECTRIFICATION QUIETLY SPREADS
In Ohio’s Holmes County, e-bikes now grind up hills once left to horse-drawn buggies and tired calves. The terrain is steep and pedal power is hard work. That simple fact is tugging at one of America’s most conservative religious communities.
Amish groups guard tradition tightly, yet each district sets its own rules. Those rules are starting to bend around e-bikes. More progressive groups have widened bicycle allowances to include electric assistance, treating e-bikes as a tool rather than a cultural breach. In a labour-intensive, low-margin world, a faster trip to market or a job site is not a lifestyle perk but an economic gain.
This matters for the wider EV industry because it shows how electrified transport reaches new places. Amish leaders frame the issue less as “technology is bad” and more as “technology reshapes community”. The question is not whether a motor turns a crank, but whether that motor alters how far people travel, which jobs they take and how much time they spend at home.
The stereotype that Amish life rejects all modern tools never quite fit. Many use modern medicine and work alongside mainstream industry when it meets church rules. Living off-grid does not mean living without electrons either. Some households use limited power, often solar, for lighting, pumps and small appliances—and, increasingly, e-bike charging.
https://evne.ws/4qEqTda
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