This Week in EV: Foreign Volts?

This week kicks off with the sad news that the UK based battery manufacturer Recharge Industries has fallen into administration. It had been struggling for a while and narrowly avoided administration back in November. Most of the staff have been made redundant and we wait to see if anyone comes in for the business and assets. Britishvolt had been a poster child for the government's levelling up agenda and they had promised ￡100 million in funding. However the funding never materialised due to not hitting milestones. If the UK is going to keep a car manufacturing industry it needs battery manufacturing and without strong government industrial policy EV manufacturers will build elsewhere.

A report from the FT this week expects Chinese consumers to buy between 8 to 10 million EV’s this year, up from last year's 6.5 million EV’s sold in 2022. By comparison the US and Europe combined 5 million EV’s were sold. The increase forecast in 2023 means that 70% of all electric cars sold are sold in China. China EV makers are starting to expand internationally with the largest Chinese manufacturer 比亚迪 expecting to sell 3 million vehicles globally. China shows what can be done with strong industrial policy that focuses on EV’s.

The big headline over last weekend though was Tesla ’s price cut to all its Models. The Model Y price cuts were particularly eye-catching with the Model Y Performance seeing a ￡9,100 price cut and the entry level Model 3 now starting at ￡42,990. It makes the Model Y and Model 3 look incredibly competitive with them now costing less than the likes of Kia EV6 and Polestar 2’s. For those who have the benefit of getting an EV on salary sacrifice it means you can now get a Tesla from around ￡400 a month. However Tesla also raised the price of it’s home charge points by 20% which just re-enforces how fluid Tesla can be with pricing. Whilst prices changes are the norm in retail it’s new for the car market but with more manufacturers selling directly expect to see pricing changes occur more frequently. The price changes seem to have had the desired effect with reports of Tesla seeing unprecedented demand, it's worth remembering that Tesla doesn’t spend any money on traditional marketing and given everywhere reported on the change including mainstream news this is a great example of pricing as marketing.?

We might need more chargers in the UK but there are some great charging network operators doing their best to roll out more as quickly as possible. Now if you want to visit one of the 7 wonders of the world you can now get an ultra-rapid charge to go with your visit as GRIDSERVE have announced a charging super hub with eight 350KW chargers just a few minutes from Stonehenge

Chargepoint manufacturer Tritium? has received its largest ever order with BP ordering 1000 chargers for the UK, Australia and New Zealand. bp has ordered a combination of 50KW and 150KW chargers. With BP moving away from their own hardware hopefully that will improve the reliability of their network, but it’s a bit worrying that they still think 50KW is worth installing when everyone else is moving to faster speeds for charging.

Battery Chemistry is advancing all the time but until now I’ve never come across a carbon-oxygen battery, but that’s just what Noon Energy are developing. The battery doesn’t need lithium or cobalt and is designed for long term energy storage. It’s got a long way to go to full commercialisation but it’s a promising technology for grid and home energy storage.

#electricvehicles #ev #evcharging #electriccars #tesla #britishvolt #china