EV Universe #112: Ford will adopt Tesla NACS — Best-selling car in the world is an EV — Africa stuck with our gas-guzzlers
Hey, my favorite EV geeks.
Jaan here.
Here's what's been up in the EV industry in the past week:
- Ford will adopt NACS
- The best-selling car in the world is now an EV
- Jim Farley says focus is on efficiency
- While we go electric, Africa imports our gas-guzzlers with extra emissions
Words: 2,228 | Time to read: 15 minutes | Feeling: keep your frenemies close
— Jaan
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DEEP DIVE: FORD + TESLA
Ford will adopt Tesla's NACS , aka the North American Charging Standard ( link ). Starting early next year, Ford will begin offering adapters that allow its current, CCS1-equipped cars to use the Tesla's Supercharger network.
But that's not all.
In 2025, Ford will offer next-generation electric vehicles with the NACS connector built-in, eliminating the need for an adapter to access Tesla Superchargers. Then, the cars will need an adapter to charge in the CCS stations.
Here is the 28-minute Twitter Space, the audio stream of Musk's platform, where Farley and Musk announced the deal ( link ).
Marin Gjaja, Chief Customer Officer of Ford Model e said:
“Tesla has led the industry in creating a large, reliable and efficient charging system and we are pleased to be able to join forces in a way that benefits customers and overall EV adoption. The Tesla Supercharger network has excellent reliability and the NACS plug is smaller and lighter. Overall, this provides a superior experience for customers.”
Here's a layout of what popped into my head the news:
- This is the first major win for Tesla's NACS, in addition to (currently a bit smaller win of) Aptera designing their port to the NACS standard.
- This will be a massive upgrade to Ford EV user experience on charger access and reliability.
- This will influence the other charging operators and I'd assume Electrify America will be the first to feel it. To put it frankly, if I were Ford, the EA experience is exactly what I'd try to not give to my customers.
- This potentially increases the peak charging capabilities for Ford's next-gen EVs. CCS1 currently has ~250kW max output (if I'm not mistaken), whereas NACS should be able to do 1MW+ (which we're yet to see in action).
- Ford essentially doubles the available charging network for its customers, adding Tesla's 12k to its current 10k DC chargers it is roaming through the BlueOval Charge network. Take into account that the uptime and average charging capacity installed are significantly higher with the Tesla SCs.
- What will this mean to Tesla's plans of making its charging network public in the US, like it's largely done in Europe and dabbling with in China? I count only 11 Superchargers in the US open to non-Teslas today. ( link )
- Speaking of non-Tesla Supercharging — for the non-Tesla owners, charging is done via Tesla app, while Ford will be able to let their drivers charge through Ford app, thus owning the experience (and maybe not nudging people to buy a Tesla?)
- Will there be more takers for NACS? This came a bit sooner than I expected. Who's next?
- Also, now I know why Farley and Musk have low-key complimented each other for a while now. I do like the healthy competition/cooperation.
The size of the impact of the Ford → Tesla deal also depends on how well will Ford do in the EV transition.
We do know Farley has stuck with his 2M-by-2026 plans as recently as last week, which came as a surprise to many in the industry. For context, Ford sold 61,575 EVs in the US in 2022.
I'll write about Ford's latest lithium deals in this week's Pro Report.
The Connector Wars (as we coined back in December here ) will be very, very interesting to see being played out. Stay tuned and I'll report back.
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🌌 AROUND THE 'VERSE
For the first time ever, an electric vehicle was the best-selling car in the world. Of any fuel type. This is in the first quarter of 2023.
The car was, of course, the Tesla Model Y. ( link )
Who could've seen this coming, huh?
The rest of the top five is occupied with Toyota:
- Tesla Model Y: 267,200 sold
- Toyota Corolla: 256,400
- Toyota Hilux: 214,700
- Toyota RAV4: 211,000
- Toyota Camry: 166,200
I haven't seen where the Model Y placed in China yet, but we do know it took the place of best-selling vehicle of any fuel type in Europe in Q1.
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Signal: China surpasses Japan as the world's top auto exporter in Q1, with 1.07M cars imported over Japan's 950k ( link ).
380,000 of these exports were New Energy Vehicles (BEV + PHEVs), with Tesla counting for around 90k of these, followed by SAIC at 50k and BYD at 30k.
Why it's important: you've got the world's largest EV producer, world's largest car market and now the world's largest car exporter, all as a country that is going fully electric at a breathtaking speed.
Every 5th car sold in China last year was fully electric (21.4%). Last month, every 4th was. Do you see where this is going?
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Good to know: this is the document Toyota sends its dealerships, to explain the focus on PHEVs instead of BEVs (link). It outlines the three barriers to BEV adoption in the US as critical mineral sourcing; lack of charging infra; and affordability. Toyota strategy in a meme format: (tweet)
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Eight European countries have united against the proposed Euro-7 emission standards set to come into effect in July 2025 by the EU, saying the limits are unrealistic: Czech Republic, Bulgaria, France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. ( link )
The main argument here and through some carmakers we've seen, is that the new emission standards are expensive to implement when all focus should go towards going fully electric anyway.
Meanwhile, the ICCT says "The technologies to make the last generation of cars with ICE even cleaner are not prohibitively expensive" and Anna Krajinska from T&E says "the Euro-7 proposals for cars are so weak, the auto industry might have drafted them themselves and despite enjoying record profits, carmakers have sold the Commission a lie that an ambitious Euro 7 is unaffordable." ( link )
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IVECO plans to buy out the Iveco-Nikola electric truck joint venture in Europe for $35M, along with buying 20M shares of $NKLA . ( link )
Nikola will "focus on its US activities." It also seems that Nikola is stepping out the BEV truck game and will make these only 'to order', while focusing on the FCEV trucks.
Tesla relaunched its referral program in the US ( link ), including a chance to win a free Cybertruck ( link ).
NIO CEO William Li said in an interview, that one of its sub brands bound to Europe is aimed at the large legacy brands at lower, <€30k prices. ( link ) Li claims China has a 20% cost advantage over Europe and the US to help it.
"As far as the price is concerned, we are attacking Volkswagen more than before. The new brand will target European countries with mass-market cars, starting with France, Italy, and Spain."
Ford will keep the AM radio after all, including in its EVs. ( link )s. I wonder if other EV makers that have already cut the 'feature' will follow suit. I'd guess they won't.
Atlas e-mobility group plans to produce Africa's first locally-engineered and -designed EV in Morocco, starting production in 2026. ( link )
The USA and Canada are creating an 870-mile (1400 km) cross-border charging corridor between Kalamazoo, Michigan and Quebec City in Canada. At least one CCS fast charger will be installed every 50 miles (80 km), with the majority - 215 stations - being built along Canadian highways. ( link )
Meanwhile: Charge+ plans to put up 45 DC charging hubs across a 5,000 km (3,100 mi) EV charging corridor in five countries: Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. ( link )
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SETBACKS
Stay vigilant out there... Here are two edge cases for EV ownership:
A fully-electric Mercedes EQA-250 owner in Australia was charged $445 for 'an engine oil and filter change'. ( link ) The dealer says they accidentally selected the wrong job code.
This Rivian R1T was hit from the back by another car at a low speed in Ohio. The Rivian-certified body shop ended up dismantling the truck's bed and even the rear window, and reportedly billed the customer a whopping $42k for the repairs. ( link )
You can see why both of these would make headlines easily... and not leave the EV adoption in the best light.
The change to Renewable Fuel Credits which we've talked about possibly coming into effect and offering extra incentives for EV makers (e-RINs), are reportedly dropped from the agenda for this period by the Biden administration. ( link )
German authorities are investigating a potential data leak by Tesla, as the German newspaper Handelsblatt has reportedly acquired 100 gigabytes of confidential leaked data. ( link ) If real, this dataset would be rather damaging for the brand, as it is said to include "tables containing more than 100,000 names of former and current employees, including the social security number of Tesla CEO Musk, along with private email addresses, phone numbers, salaries of employees, bank details of customers and secret details from production."
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CHART OF THE WEEK
In 2011, the median range of EVs in the US was 68 miles.
In 2022, the median range of EVs in the US was 257 miles. ( link )
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WATCH THIS
👀 This new tool allows you to ask a question and receive answers from the Tesla user manuals (some 300 pages in each), powered by GPT ( link ).
I've been waiting for the latest advancements in AI to drip into the EV world. Expect more of this.
👀 Elon Musk's interview for the WSJ. (1h34m video ) Among other things, Musk says Tesla's sixth gigafactory will be announced before the end of this year. We know he or his executives have been visiting with France, South Korea and India officials recently...
👀 The only XPeng P7 in the UK reviewed by Jack from Fully Charged. A great way to understand where the Chinese EVs stand against the locals.
Also, here's Jack taking a tour of Aehra SUV ( video ).
👀 Yes, this is an official cybertruck-inspired cardboard cat box from Tesla's merch line. The new 26 "Tesla Life" products in China also include a skateboard, for example. ( link )
READ THIS
📚 As the world goes electric, Africa is importing the old gas-guzzlers. ( link ) Here's the UN environment program's 108-page overview on the global trade in used vehicles ( pdf ).
Nothing wrong with giving the cars a second life, right? The bad part about this is that the catalytic converters are often removed before shipping (you know, platinum = money), which means these cars will pollute even more when they start driving in Africa.
I do wholeheartedly hope we can create the EV transition in a way that doesn't just shift the emissions elsewhere in our planet.
📚 Northvolt's insightful article on "why Europe needs to minimize the reliance on Russia for battery minerals." ( link ). I wasn't aware Russia supplied 39% of Germany’s raw nickel in 2020, and remains a key supplier of lithium and cobalt.
📚 GreenPeace published a report estimating how the foreign automakers are at risk of losing market share in China due to not focusing on EVs enough. ( link , 8-page pdf )
I'm... actually surprised about this move from Greenpeace. In a good way — while it will by default be biased to make a point, it is indeed making a point here. And most of what we've seen can confirm the trend is exactly that.
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QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Jim Farley, in a Q&A session of Ford's Capital Markets Day ( link ):
"I have no idea what’s going on in this industry right now.
All I hear is all these announcements of 450-mile range, a 500-mile range, there was another one today about a three-row crossover, it's going to go electric. [...]
There’s a bit of an arms race in the industry to shove bigger and bigger batteries into large EVs to try and make them like ICE vehicles. But the real battleground in electrification is about efficiency. Efficiency is like God’s work. When we really understand the physics around energy loss in an EV, we optimize it rather than compromise it.
[...] We're not going to go to 600-mile range.
We're trying to make the smallest possible battery for competitive range.
Note that this comment came out on the same day GM announced it will create an electric Escalade IQ .
Jaan's comment: as you might know, I am a sucker for efficiency. Seeing Farley increasingly talk of efficient design makes me think there's hope for the traditional auto. We can see the way GM has moved with the massive packs of Hummer EVs (212kWh) and Silverado EVs (similar). Refreshing to see the opposite.
Ford's Doug Field also shared some new details on incoming Ford EVs, with a 3-row Expedition-like family SUV coming in 2025 with a 350-mile range. It'll be based on its new EV architecture and go the range at ~100kWh LFP battery pack. (link)
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— Jaan
