EVwire newsletter #153: Full Self-Delivery

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I did a little trip to Gothenburg, Sweden last week — to visit the Electric Vehicle Symposium 38 (EVS38). It was great to put a face to the names of a lot of the EV geeks from the industry that I’ve met online over time, with quite a few of them reading these words here too.

And the streets of Gothenburg are fun to walk around for an EV geek like me as well — with Sweden taking the 5^th spot in the world in EV adoption last year, 35% of all cars sold being fully electric.

Here are three insights I gathered from the event:

Oh, and I watched Scania launch the MCS solution for its e-trucks, 750kW capability for start and up from there, available commercially from 2026.

Resource tip for the charging geeks among us:

One thing I directly went to this event for was this charging standards poster from Pionix.

This one will be hanging in my office, what a great resource. It’s designed to show a clear roadmap through the evolving landscape of EV charging requirements and innovationn; Covers standards like ISO 15118, OCPP, AFIR etc; and is designed for professionals across the EV charging, automotive, and energy sectors.

You can now download it for free through their page here.

Some of our Insiders might remember me sharing the fascinating findings Pionix-initiated EVerest project a few years ago. EVerest is essentially an open source firmware stack for EV charging stations. It’s all come a long way since, Pionix shares the scale of both currently:

There’s a large tax bill about to go to the President’s desk for signing in the US, which, as we know, will end EV tax credits (the latest Senate draft states September 30th as the cutoff date) and many other incentives related to both light- and heavy-duty EVs. Not to mention the $250 annual EV registration fee…

Sadly, the impact will be even larger as they’re going to make renewables, batteries and sustainable supply chain development in the US a lot more difficult. I have a large piece put together with every way we’ll be impacted that I’ll share with you once the final bill is all confirmed and signed.

Meanwhile, a group of US dealerships and EV associations signed this letter to send to Senators asking for a gradual sunset of the EV incentives instead of an abrupt stop.

And this bill and its surroundings has even turned Elon Musk completely against the political system in the US right now, going as far as promising to publicly shame every politician that promised to reduce spending yet voted for raising the debt ceiling. Their public feud with Trump, by the way, seems to continue as well.

…I don’t want to go deeper into politics, but it seems like the guy is heading straight back into politics, now from another angle. Maybe even a new party angle. Elon wrote just today: “If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day.”

🇺🇸 For the first time in the world, an (electric) car just delivered itself to the customer straight from the factory. This fresh out of the production line Tesla drove itself from Giga Texas across town and at up to 72mph on highway to its new owner's home ~30min away. Nobody in the car. (video)

🇦🇺 Australia: The last diesel bus to ever be manufactured in Western Australia has left the Volgren bus production plant in Malaga, a suburb of Perth. Everything coming out next from this 26-year-old plant is all-electric, and aims to replace the fleet across the state over the next decades. (link)

🇨🇳 → 🇪🇺 NIO signed distributor deals to enter ten new European markets within two years: Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Hungary, Luxembourg, Poland, and Romania. (link). It is already present in Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark.

What’s notable here is also that NIO has abandoned its D2C model and goes the dealership route.

Firefly will be brought with it as well and honestly I can’t wait to see those bugs on our streets.

You can buy CANOO prototypes at an auction. Canoo, the now-bankrupt EV maker, is auctioning off assets and even vehicle prototypes from its EV engineering lab in Justin, Texas facility, the auction is set for August 6th, 2026. (link) You can even pick one of the Canoo vans with a Walmart logo still on the side, or the Canoo Bulldog pickup prototype:

🇺🇸 EVs are now nearly in price parity with used fossil cars on average in the US with $36,053 average EV listing price, compared to the $34,205 for an ICE car. In May, Teslas made up 49.6% of used EV sales, and the Tesla Model 3 was the top-selling used EV in May, averaging an $23,160 price tag. (link)

Meanwhile, used EV sales are breaking records this quarter:

I wrote a whole deep dive with all the nerdy details — both good and the bad — as a deep dive article:

Here’s the very short TL;DR version in case you don’t really want to dig deeper. I encourage you to go see the online article above though, the videos and images give a much better understanding.

Core details:

Most of the ride videos I’ve watched through have been smooth and uneventful, with some notes of well handled edge cases (like avoiding running over a peacock or pulling aside for ambulance) and some notes of poorly handled cases (like a case of not realizing an UPS backing up, navigation error that the car self-corrected by briefly driving in the opposite lane, or driving over a curb at a parking lot). Ultimately - we actually want it to be fully uneventful, don’t we?

All this and more is linked to details. images and videos in my article, so go check it out and share with your friends. Remember — Friends don’t let friends be exposed only to the negative mainstream media ;)

Meet Xiaomi YU7, the second EV from the electronics giant Xiaomi.

I’ve shown you their first, the SU7 sedan, very successfully hit the market previously. Over 200,000 have been delivered so far, and did so well that even Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, admitted in an interview that he had been driving the Xiaomi SU7 EV in Chicago for six months, and doesn’t want to give it up.

The second Xiaomi, YU7 SUV came, saw, and immediately broke records: Xiaomi YU7 secured 200,000 firm pre-orders in the first 3 minutes of opening the books.

So why are the Chinese buyers going wild for this one?

I think it is because the YU7 is one of the best showcases of how the EV revolution has succeeded in bringing a significant level of technological innovation (not just on changing to an electric powertrain) down to an affordable level. The thing with tech innovation is that if you get it absolutely right, it actually creates premium features that are suddenly available for all.

It is also one of the few real EVs out there that I think has really gone down the software-defined vehicle path and come out as a winner on the other side. If you read on - and I haven’t even put everything in here - you’ll find numerous examples of how this car has been built deeply around software.

The Xiaomi YU7 starts at 253,500 yuan, or $35,340, and the top spec at ~$46,000. Do note that EVs are cheaper domestically in China by a large margin compared to the same model for us. Importantly, this undercuts the Tesla Model Y in China by ~$1,400, nearly 4% cheaper.

Here’s what you get to choose from with the Xiaomi YU7 trims:

Note how the entry-level trim gets 519 miles of range! Now, the CLTC tests are slightly more generous than the EPA in the US or WLTP in Europe, but this is still one of the most range-per-buck EVs out there now.

I’d also like to point out that their NMC battery from CATL and the 800V architecture let this car charge at 5.2C for a peak charge power of 528kW. That’s 10% to 80% charge ~12 minutes. Another spec that is insane considering that we’re not talking about a $100k+ car here.

Let’s take a quick look at the other features the car offers (see more details on their page here, there’s so much interesting there):

Interior:

What’s cool is that although Xiaomi is in direct competition with Apple on their phones, they still went and enhanced the ownership experience for iPhone owners, from Apple CarPlay support to actually ensuring you can pin it, and use your phone as a part of the car’s screen too.

An unique way that Xiaomi has approached the car ownership already with the first vehicle is that it will offer the vehicle in a plain minimalistic form (e.g just the large screen), but will offer you a lot of small add-ons you can buy to make the vehicle your own — from adding physical buttons that work with the touchscreen, to even a magnetic tissue box that pops in place behind it.

Did I mention the option 4.6-litre drawer can cool up to 6 cans?
There’s also a drawer below the rear seats for additional storage:

Built into the rooflining behind the rear seats is another practical innovation for the YU7, a powered magnetic rail (up to 144W), capable of storing items such as power docks, track lights, and other third-party devices via 1/4-inch screws, with units also being programmable in the system as needed, such as activating an attached track light when the rear doors or the boot is opened. (link)

Then, there is this real Software Defined Vehicle type of marvel:

These buttons are movable (you can literally pick them up and place them along the interior and exterior on different magnetic spots like b-pillar, armrest etc), and can be programmed with up to 12 features, which you can access in the settings. This way, whatever the button ‘does’ when tapping depends on which part of the car its placed on.

I recommend checking the moment our friends at Inside China Auto showcase how these work here (timestamped for ya).

You can even take one of the buttons back to your home and have it programmed to cool the cabin of the car before you head out with a tap of a button.

Exterior:

Deliveries start within months.

See a walkaround review of the car from our friends at Inside China Auto.
I can not wait for the YU7 thing to land in Europe and test it out in real life.

I could introduce it to my Xiaomi hand soap dispenser and my Xiaomi water kettle at home 😂. Honestly, those items actually give me a lot of faith in the company actually delivering smart, high-quality products.

PS, if you want to share this Xiaomi YU7 overview with others, find it all as a deep dive article on EVwire here.

PS, yesterday I added 14 more EV industry events to the EVent calendar — from the Electrify Expo tour across US for great ride & drive festivals, to industry events globally, including in Brazil, Dubai, and Africa.