ev.news

It's ev.news Briefly for Friday 04 September 2026, only todays headlines and nothing else, in just 4 minutes if you haven't got time for the full show.
Patreon supporters fund this show, get the episodes ad free, as soon as they're ready and are part of the ev.news Community. You can be like them by clicking here: https://www.patreon.com/evnews

BEVS BECOME UKS LEADING POWER SOURCE DESPITE INDUSTRY PUSHBACK
Battery electric vehicles took 30% of the UK car market in August, up from 23% a year earlier, making BEVs the largest single powertrain category ahead of hybrids at 29%, petrol at 22% and PHEVs at 14%, with plug-ins combined reaching 44%. The performance is comfortably ahead of the effective 24.6% target New AutoMotive calculates for this year, yet the government has opened a consultation on relaxing its EV rules under carmaker pressure — a move that could backfire, given Chinese manufacturers now hold 28% of Europe's PHEV segment, up 60% year on year, with PHEVs making up 60% of BYD's European registrations.

STELLANTIS SETS NOVEMBER JEEP, MID-APRIL RAM PRODUCTION
A supplier memo reviewed by Automotive News schedules electrified Jeep Grand Wagoneer production for November, six months later than the planned May start, and Ram 1500 REV production for mid-April, a nine-month slip from mid-2026 for a pickup originally due in 2025 as the Ramcharger. Stellantis maintains both extended-range models are on track — Jeep this year, Ram in 2027 — with the Grand Wagoneer built in Warren, Michigan alongside its petrol version and the Ram at Sterling Heights, delays that two supplier executives attribute to ensuring smooth launches.

PHEVS EMIT 4.6 TIMES OFFICIAL CO₂ VALUES
Plug-in hybrids registered in 2023 emitted 4.6 times their official CO₂ values in real-world driving, up from 3.5 times for 2021 registrations, according to an International Council on Clean Transportation study of nearly 920,000 vehicles that found longer electric range has coincided with less actual electric driving. The ICCT blames the EU utility factor formula, which assumes an 80% electric-driving share against a real-world figure of around 21% in 2022, with author Jan Dornoff arguing the rarely-achieved official values give PHEVs an unjustified advantage over combustion cars in manufacturers' CO₂ compliance.

FORD AIMS FOR 100,000 FATHOM SALES
Ford has set an internal target of 100,000 first-year sales for its Fathom electric truck, according to WSJ sources, a figure no non-Tesla EV model has ever reached in the United States. Production is expected to begin in Q1 2027 with a starting price just under $30,000, which would place the Fathom third among US single models if rivals' volumes hold steady.

BEVS OUTSELL PETROL AND DIESEL IN AUSTRALIA
Battery-electric vehicles outsold both petrol and diesel in Australia in August, hitting 27,078 units and 24.9% of a new-car market that grew 4.9% to 108,760 vehicles, against 25,824 petrol and 23,608 diesel cars, with BEV sales up 171% year on year. BEVs, hybrids and PHEVs together took 51.8% of sales, leaving combustion-only cars in the minority for the first time, and all eight best-selling EVs were China-built, including Tesla's Shanghai-produced Model Y and Model 3, the BYD Sealion 7 at 2,213 units and sixth overall, and the Geely EX5, up more than 385%.

BATTERY TRUCKS PROJECTED TO BEAT DIESEL COSTS
Battery-electric trucks are projected to undercut diesel on total cost of ownership across 70 to 90% of kilometres travelled in German heavy-duty freight by 2030, but that falls to a medium-scenario lower bound of 21 to 25% of economically feasible activities once daily range limits and charging availability are factored in. The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research study in Nature, combining cost forecasts with real-world use profiles from four million European trucks, finds small-battery electric trucks competitive on 91% of freight activity by 2030 versus 69% for large-battery variants, with drivetrain efficiency, energy costs, battery size and usage intensity driving the outcome.

MAN PARTNERS PLAN AROUND €400M FOR EUROPEAN SERVICE SITES
MAN dealers, service partners and importers plan to invest around €400m (about $464m) in European service locations, on top of MAN's own €300m (about $348m) network investment by 2030, with board member Friedrich Baumann calling the combined scale unprecedented in company history despite ongoing cost cuts and job reductions. Roughly a third of the partners' spending goes to electromobility and digitalisation, including high-voltage staff training, battery repair centres and public charging at MAN branches, while a separate E.On partnership announced in 2024 targets up to 400 charging points at up to 170 European locations, up to 125 of them in Germany.

WAYVE AND UBER OFFER LONDON AUTONOMOUS RIDES
Wayve and Uber have launched supervised autonomous rides through the Uber app across London's entire urban area excluding airports, using battery-electric Ford Mustang Mach-E vehicles running Wayve's AI Driver with cameras and environmental sensors, each carrying a TfL-licensed safety driver who can intervene. UberX, Uber Electric and Uber Comfort passengers may be offered a Wayve ride at no extra cost before their trip, with London the first of twelve planned markets and a Tokyo service using the Nissan Leaf and Nvidia Drive Hyperion due later this year, though no date has been given for removing the safety driver.

BARCELONA OFFERS FOUR MILLION EUROS ELECTRIC BIKE SUBSIDIES
Barcelona is launching four million euros of electric bike subsidies running from 2027 to 2030, with the first call scheduled for publication in 2027, offering up to 400 euros (about $465) for pedal-assisted city bikes and up to 800 euros (about $929) for freight bikes, capped at 40% of the pre-VAT cost. Registered city residents and companies with premises in Barcelona will be eligible, with the scheme intended to extend cycling distances and open up the city's sloped areas, though the subsidy rules still require approval.

XIAOMI SIGNS EIGHT GERMAN DEALER ARRANGEMENTS
Xiaomi has signed agreements or letters of intent with eight German dealership groups, including Emil Frey, Penske Automotive and the Lueg Group, ahead of a planned 2027 European launch that will add another Chinese entrant to an already competitive German market. The company, which has sold roughly 700,000 SU7 sedans and YU7 SUVs in China since March 2024 according to President William Lu, is raising its profile at Berlin's IFA show from Sept. 4 to 8 with around 380 products, promoting a "Human x Car x Home" ecosystem linking more than 1,000 devices to the car, though it has not said which models Europe will get.

Buying a used EV still comes with one major concern: what condition is the battery actually in?
A major new dataset from Austrian battery diagnostics company AVILOO, covering more than 500,000 battery-health tests across 20 popular EV models, suggests the picture is considerably better than many buyers might expect.
Even at 150,000 kilometres, median usable battery capacity across the models studied remained at roughly 87–94%.
But averages only tell part of the story.
Individual cars of the same model, age and mileage can have substantially different battery health, making traditional measures such as mileage a surprisingly poor guide to the condition of a used EV.
In this episode of ev.news Tech, I speak with Nathan Gore-Brown from TestEV, AVILOO’s distributor in Australia and New Zealand, about what actually determines EV battery ageing and how buyers can protect themselves.
TestEV is a Premium Partner of ev.news but this is not a paid promotion. I genuinely wanted to get Nathan's view on this as an insider.
The central conclusion is not a simplistic one: high mileage doesn't automatically mean a worn-out EV battery. Most batteries in this dataset appear to be ageing relatively slowly, but individual condition matters far more than the odometer alone.
For anyone buying a used electric car, an independent battery-health test may therefore be one of the most useful checks to make before money changes hands.

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POLESTAR 4 SUV LAUNCHES IN EUROPE https://evne.ws/nfwis

SCOUT REVEALS TWO TRAVELER CONCEPTS https://evne.ws/8tsmm

FRANCE BEV SHARE RISES TO 38% IN AUGUST https://evne.ws/8pl1x

MOST USED EVS RETAIN ABOUT 90% CAPACITY AT 150,000KM https://evne.ws/fb3mf

KIA OPENS CANADIAN ORDERS FOR 2027 EV4 GT https://evne.ws/fmhti

HONDA SEEKS 1.5 TRILLION YEN IN SAVINGS https://evne.ws/qr1fc

MNDOT OFFERS $41.2 MILLION FOR UP TO 40 SITES https://evne.ws/oc6b9

TESLA US SALES DROP 26% IN AUGUST https://evne.ws/cazzw

VOLVO GLOBAL SALES FALL 7.4% FROM JUNE THROUGH AUGUST https://evne.ws/cokv3

XPENG TAKES UK COMMERCIAL CONTROL https://evne.ws/v1ho8

35% OF SCREEN-EQUIPPED OWNERS NEVER USE THEM https://evne.ws/jrelr

It's ev.news Briefly for Thursday 03 September 2026, only todays headlines and nothing else, in just 4 minutes if you haven't got time for the full show.
Patreon supporters fund this show, get the episodes ad free, as soon as they're ready and are part of the ev.news Community. You can be like them by clicking here: https://www.patreon.com/evnews

POLESTAR 4 SUV LAUNCHES IN EUROPE
Polestar has launched the Polestar 4 SUV in Europe, its largest market, adding a more practical body variant with a linear roofline, vertical tailgate, conventional rear window and mirror, 25mm more rear headroom, standard roof rails rated to 100kg dynamic load, 1,665 litres of capacity with the 60:40 seats folded and a 15-litre front trunk. Rear Motor versions offer 200kW and up to 630km WLTP range while Dual Motor models produce 400kW and up to 600km, both using a 100kWh battery charging at up to 200kW DC for a roughly 30-minute 10-80% top-up, priced from €57,900 in Germany and £54,750 in the UK with first deliveries planned for Q4 2026 and Canada to follow Europe.

SCOUT REVEALS TWO TRAVELER CONCEPTS
Scout Motors has revealed the Mountainside and Trail-ready concepts based on its Traveler electric SUV, debuting at the Jazz Aspen Snowmass Labor Day Experience, with the rugged Trail-ready wearing Galvanized Steel paint, a Canvas roof, full-metal bumpers, elevated roof rack with trail lights, front winch, 18-inch beadlock wheels, 35-inch off-road tyres and a brick-red leather Denim District interior, while the refined Mountainside uses Morning Dusk charcoal-brown paint with gold flakes, 22-inch dish wheels, light-brown leather, grey fabric and recycled walnut trim. Scout has not confirmed whether either will be sold as a package or which features are optional; Traveler production starts next year with deliveries from 2028, and the range-extended Harvester, using a four-cylinder generator and 63kWh LFP pack for a claimed 500 miles, launches before the battery-electric version.

FRANCE BEV SHARE RISES TO 38% IN AUGUST
Battery-electric vehicles took 38% of France's new-car market in August 2026, up from 35% in July, with registrations climbing 113% year on year to 36,159 units according to the CCFA. Chinese brands took 7,070 registrations or 7.5% of the market, led by BYD on 2,195, MG on 2,003 and Jaecoo on 1,987, but were outsold by Renault alone on 13,128, ahead of Peugeot on 11,716 and Tesla on 5,038, of which 4,622 were the Model Y, France's best-selling BEV.

MOST USED EVS RETAIN ABOUT 90% CAPACITY AT 150,000KM
An Aviloo study of more than 500,000 battery-health tests across 20 popular models in North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia between 2022 and 2026 found most used EVs retained about 90% of usable battery capacity at 150,000km, with median state-of-health scores ranging from 87% to 94%, led at that mileage by the Mercedes-Benz EQA at 93.97% and Hyundai Ioniq 5 at 93.79%, and trailed by the Nissan Leaf at 86.67%, Mini Cooper SE at 87.11% and Renault Zoe at 87.33%. Chinese models were excluded for lack of data, air-cooled and smaller batteries such as the Zoe and Leaf degraded faster, the Leaf ZE1 showed a 13.5-percentage-point spread between individual cars, and with warranties typically covering eight years or 160,000km and requiring replacement below 70%, the findings strengthen calls for mandatory battery-health certification since identical age and mileage can mask very different treatment.

KIA OPENS CANADIAN ORDERS FOR 2027 EV4 GT
Kia has opened factory orders for the 2027 EV4 GT at certified Canadian dealerships from CA$58,595, its third "affordable" EV to get GT treatment, replacing the standard car's front-wheel drive with a 288-horsepower dual-motor all-wheel-drive system paired to an 81.4kWh battery for an estimated 431km of range. The GT adds GT-exclusive neon-accented brake calipers, 20-inch alloys, suede and synthetic-leather seats, a GT instrument cluster and a steering-wheel GT boost button, sitting above the standard EV4 that launched in Canada in late 2025 from CA$38,995 as what Kia called the country's most affordable EV.

HONDA SEEKS 1.5 TRILLION YEN IN SAVINGS
Honda is seeking 1.5 trillion yen ($9.4 billion) in savings by 2030 to improve its car business, expecting cumulative EV-related losses to exceed $12 billion and shifting towards hybrids while under pressure from Chinese manufacturers including BYD, which are taking share in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Europe on software, battery technology and the industry's lowest prices. Honda briefed major suppliers on the plan in spring and, according to internal documents, is targeting a 30% cost reduction in pressed and forged components, electrical parts and software-defined-vehicle parts, with individual targets issued to suppliers afterwards.

MNDOT OFFERS $41.2 MILLION FOR UP TO 40 SITES
MnDOT is offering $41.2 million in its third and largest NEVI round for fast-charging sites across Greater Minnesota, expecting to award up to 40 locations across 74 eligible areas with no more than one station funded in each, now able to go beyond I-35, I-90 and I-94 after the federal government certified those routes as fully built-out corridors. Funded sites must provide at least four NACS and four CCS1 connectors delivering a minimum 150kW per port with all ports in simultaneous use, be open during the host business's hours, and include an ADA-compliant charging space, adequate lighting, security cameras or staff, and snow removal within two hours of storms exceeding an inch — even though most earlier interstate sites have yet to open.

TESLA US SALES DROP 26% IN AUGUST
Motor Intelligence estimated Tesla sold 40,816 vehicles in the United States in August 2026, down 26% from 55,500 a year earlier and its largest year-over-year monthly decline of 2026, with demand appearing to stabilise around 40,000 units a month, below the 47,000 monthly average of the first half of 2025 and below tax-credit-inflated third-quarter volumes. Ending Model S and Model X production, extending Model Y and Model 3 offers, starting Model Y L deliveries, expanding a certified pre-owned programme from $20,600 and fully claiming California's MyFirstEV allocation within days did not materially change the trajectory.

VOLVO GLOBAL SALES FALL 7.4% FROM JUNE THROUGH AUGUST
Volvo Cars sold 148,239 vehicles globally from June through August, down 7.4% year over year despite a 13% rise in electrified sales — fully electric up 27%, plug-in hybrids down 1% — which made up 53.5% of global volume, with the decline blamed on China's continuing downturn and weaker US demand for electrified models. The company expects a significantly stronger second half as EX60 deliveries ramp up from Gothenburg production that began in spring at around $60,000 in the US, alongside European growth and continued US recovery, while shifting more output stateside to cut tariff exposure with XC60 production starting in South Carolina later this year and global Polestar 3 production consolidated there.

XPENG TAKES UK COMMERCIAL CONTROL
Xpeng is establishing its own UK national sales company, taking ownership of its UK operations and responsibility for strategic and commercial development while retaining International Motors — the Subaru and Isuzu importer that originally handled its UK shipping and retail — as a provider of operational infrastructure and local distribution expertise. Having entered the UK last year with the G6, delivering 1,800 units through 48 dealers in England, Wales and Scotland, Xpeng plans to add the X9 MPV as an ID Buzz rival and the L03 coupé-crossover, sold as Mona in China, though no UK launch date or pricing has been announced and an entry price below £40,000 would pitch it against the Skoda Enyaq and Ford Explorer.

35% OF SCREEN-EQUIPPED OWNERS NEVER USE THEM
JD Power's 2026 U.S. Tech Experience Index study, surveying 68,084 owners of vehicles with passenger screens, found 35% had never used the screen and only 6% used it every drive, even as the feature spreads through new vehicles. Smart ignition, climate control and driver-preference settings scored highest for satisfaction with the fewest problems while added complexity in driver-assistance features lowered scores, suggesting owners prefer predictable technology and that a screen — a cheap, simple way to make a plain dashboard look advanced, useful for passenger HVAC control or films on long trips — improves appearance rather than the ownership experience.

Can you help me make more podcasts? Consider supporting me on Patreon as the service is 100% funded by you: https://EVne.ws/patreon

You can read all the latest news on the blog here: https://EVne.ws/blog

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LI AUTO LAUNCHES MEGA HOME AT $75,846 FOR MPV LUXURY https://evne.ws/min9i

BYD OVERSEAS REVENUE EXCEEDS CHINA https://carnewschina.com/2026/09/01/byd-made-53-revenue-overseas-as-chinas-sales-crumble/

BYD LAUNCHES SEALION 08 IN CHINA https://evne.ws/tusrk

NIO POSTS THIRD NON-GAAP PROFITABLE QUARTER https://chinaevhome.com/2026/09/02/three-straight-profitable-quarters-is-nio-finally-out-of-the-woods/

CHINA CO2 FALLS 1% AS OIL USE DROPS https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-fall-in-q2-2026-due-to-plummeting-oil-use

FORD TO SHIP 1,000 CHINA-BUILT ELECTRIC VANS TO EUROPE https://evne.ws/pbtch

CHINA PUTS CARS FIRST IN CONSUMPTION MEASURES https://evne.ws/guguy

CHINESE EVS EARN EURO NCAP FIVE STARS https://evne.ws/lm35e

IEC STARTS CHINA-LED SOLID-STATE EV STANDARD WORK https://carnewschina.com/2026/09/02/china-pushes-global-solid-state-ev-standard-as-domestic-pilot-lines-scale/