EVwire newsletter #156: 15 EVs from Mercedes — Tesla gives Elon $29B — Portugal breaks through charging block

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Tesla has just announced a $29 billion “interim” pay package for Elon Musk.

You know how the judge in Delaware rejected Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package from 2018 twice, even after >70% of shareholders (even excluding Musk and his brother Kimbal) voted for it again to confirm?

Well, Tesla Board (or rather a Special Committee of it comprising of two board members) has now rewarded CEO Elon Musk with a large restricted stock package, worth about $29 billion — an interim solution which will be forfeited/returned should the original $56B comp package go through.

This gives Elon the right to purchase 96 million restricted shares of Tesla stock, on the $23.34-per-share purchase price that is the same from the 2018 CEO Performance Award (aka the $56B pay package). It comes with some restrictions, and a requirement that Elon serve continuously in a senior leadership role at Tesla during the two-year vesting term and a mandatory five-year holding period.

Here is the full letter from Tesla to shareholders: (link).
The letter also says “The Special Committee continues our work to address a longer-term CEO compensation strategy, which we plan to put to a shareholder vote at the November 6 annual meeting.”

This comes as Musk has said several times, including on the latest Q2 earnings call, that he is concerned of activist shareholders potentially risking the company by taking over if Elon doesn’t hold about 25% of the shares (he currently owns ~12.8% without the comp package included):

“That is a major concern for me, as I’ve mentioned in the past. I hope that is addressed at the upcoming shareholders’ meeting. But, yeah, it is a big deal. I want to find that I’ve got so little control that I can easily be ousted by activist shareholders after having built this army of humanoid robots. I think my control over Tesla, Inc. should be enough to ensure that it goes in a good direction, but not so much control that I can’t be thrown out if I go crazy.”

🇺🇸 As expected: The US automakers will face no fines for failures to meet fuel efficiency rules dating back to the 2022 model year under a new law signed by President Trump this month, US regulators said. (link) The tax and budget bill approved by Trump ends penalties for not meeting Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules under a 1975 energy law.

Last year, Stellantis paid $190 million in civil penalties for failing to meet U.S. fuel economy requirements for 2019 and 2020 after paying nearly $400 million for penalties from 2016 through 2019. GM paid $128 million in penalties for 2016 and 2017.

“The biggest product launch program in the history of Mercedes-Benz.”

This is what Mercedes says is coming, including 15 new battery-powered models, in addition to the all-new CLA sedan and shooting brake that are already available in Europe. (link) Set to launch on the IAA Mobility in September. Hmm, feels like I should fly to München in a month?

Ford’s dedicated EV division, Model e, booked a second-quarter EBIT loss of $1.329 billion, compared to a $1.150 billion loss a year ago. (link)

Per the Cox Automotive sales roundup in the US, Ford’s EV sales were down by 31.4% in the US in Q2 compared to the Q2 last year, with 16,438 EVs sold. Year-to-date, Ford is also down compared to last year with 38,988 sales in first half of 2025, compared to 44,180 sales the same time last year. It’s share in the EV market in the US dropped to 5.3%, still third overall after Tesla (46.2% and Chevrolet (9.2%), but now very closely followed by Hyundai (5.0%).

Upcoming for Ford: On its Q2 earnings call, Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, announced that they have scheduled an event for Aug. 11 in Kentucky where they will “share more about our plans to design and build breakthrough electric vehicles in America.” He went as far as calling this the “Model T moment” for Ford. Big words, let’s see.

For some context, we actually already know what this is about. See what we wrote on our deep dive in Farley’s interview with Walter Isaacson (link, the one where he said they are bringing Chinese EVs to Europe to study the best). He already used the “Model T of EVs” there:

I really do hope that the big technological advancement they are going for here will be more than just adapting LFP. Considering what they’ve ought to have learned from bringing over all those Chinese EVs to Detroit on several of their runs so far…

A few of the topics in the Insider Report I sent out on Friday — join to read:

Where did FreeWire Technologies tech and staff end up? A surprising new player;

New York and San Francisco EV charging awards and fleet plans;

XPeng P7 incoming (the Datsun-like one on the pic above)

A 84-Supercharger off-grid charging site from Tesla with a massive solar park;

Dr. Dieter Zetsche taking driving in a certain Chinese EV model;

Jaguar CEO Adrian Mardell stepping down;

Another automaker announces going fully 48-volt electrical architecture;

Redwood Materials sign a surprising deal with General Motors;

and more:

We’ve got some wins — from our longtime friends and members of EVwire — that I haven’t shouted out here, but they absolutely fit our interests and it’s great to see the impact they make on the EV world. If you’ve been with us for a while, these names won’t be new to you.

Today, we’ll start with what the Cling Systems team achieved recently:

♻ Cling Systems and Farasis, one of the top 10 battery producers in the world, partner to sell second-life and unused batteries on the Cling S1 battery platform.

If you’ve been with us for a while, you’ve seen our reports on Cling Systems building out its unique platform right from the start in Sweden years ago. It is the first dedicated marketplace for idle batteries in the world, turning the batteries back into active assets.

Cling has created the full platform for connecting the vetted buyers (manufacturers, owners of used batteries, dismantlers, workshops, and such) and sellers (recyclers, repurposers like BESS developers) of both used and unused EV battery components.

Buyers can get direct access to pre‑qualified OEMs and producers with live inventory and off‑the‑shelf agreements. Sellers can list their unused or second-life battery cells and modules and manage the complete process, down to shipping the components, online. Cling also automates compliance and shortens transaction cycles for cells, modules, and packs.

The platform even includes a Dealroom, so the full negotiation process can be done right from the platform.

I’d go as far as to say true circularity can only be achieved with platforms and partnerships like this. Read a longer deep dive on the news and what they’ve built in my article. And congrats to William, Eden, Axel, Rasmus and others at Cling for making this happen. 🤜 ⚡ 🤛

More of such next week!

Tesla robotaxi ride-hailing service is now available in California, the San Francisco Bay Area, and it covers a large area from north of the Golden Gate Bridge all the way south of San Jose, roughly around 400 mi² and an area where ~7 million people live.

Here’s the comparison on Tesla’s service area with the service area(s) that Waymo currently has there:

The service starts again in an invite-only phase. Also, currently Tesla has a safety driver in the driver’s seat, which is why Tesla is calling it a ride-hailing service rather than a Robotaxi service. Seems that when Tesla gets the appropriate permit, the driver will hop over to the passenger seat to do pretty much the same safety observing job, and then soon enough it’ll be gone from the car completely.

Per these “Vehicle Operator, Autopilot” job postings from Tesla, it seems that Tesla plans to launch in 9 more cities in California, NY State, Texas, Arizona, Nevada and Florida quite soon.

Tesla also expanded its robotaxi geofence in Austin (estimated to around 80 mi², it started out at ~20 mi²) and reportedly is also now expanding the actual vehicles on the road (used to be ~11).

Musk said, in an interview before the rollout, that they “want to deliberately take it slow. I mean, we could start with 1,000 or 10,000 on day one, but I don’t think that would be prudent. So we will start with probably 10 for a week, then increase it to 20, 30, 40.”

Now, the ride prices are no longer fixed at $6.9/ride but dynamic, on what seems to be around $1/mile on top of a $1 ride start fee.

Elon has recently said that he expects half of the US population to have access to Robotaxi by the end of the year. And when answering to the question about robotaxi coming to Chicago, he gave us a good tidbit on how Tesla thinks around the operating areas:

“Not sure what the status of Illinois is. A pretty good guide is that if Waymo is operating somewhere, then regulations allow robotaxi in that city or state. Tesla will operate there as soon as we reaffirm safety testing in that locale and receive a license to operate.”

For context, Waymo currently officially operates in Arizona, California, Texas, Georgia and Florida. It is already testing or planning services in Nevada, Washington, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and New York. It also has ~1,500 robotaxi vehicles in operation as we speak, so Tesla does have some catching up to do.

Meanwhile, A jury has ordered Tesla to pay $329M for a 2019 fatal crash on Autopilot in Key Largo, Florida for being partially liable. The driver dropped his phone and was fishing for it, taking his attention off Autopilot. Elon says they’ll appeal. (link)

Also, from last week’s Insider Report: Waymo crashed (at low speed) into another Waymo in a Phoenix Airport parking lot this Wednesday. (video)

General Motors shared some teasers for the next-gen Chevy Bolt EV, will be released in 2026, starting production by the end of this year.

We dont have much information on it yet, except that it has a NACS port instead of CCS, and the spy photos hint at a similar size/shape of the car. It’ll be produced in the Fairfax Assembly plant in Kansas City, Kansas.

Meanwhile, the Chevy Equinox EV has done rather well, as GM said it has sold 19,000 EVs in July, up 115% from the year before, with 8,500 of it the Chevy Equinox EV. They claim (I haven’t verified yet) that it is the best month of sales for any non-Tesla EV ever.

I bet we’ll see a few more of those ‘records’ in August, as the $7,500 federal tax credit ending in the end of September will get a lot of EVs moved in the US, both new and used (which get $4k credit).

In the first half of 2025, Chevy sold 47,639 EVs, up 130.5% from the same time a year before, and made up 7.8% of all EVs sold in the US. Equinox EV made up 58.2% of those sales with 27,749 units, per Cox automotive data.

These results also put Chevy in second place after Tesla in the first half of 2025 (44.7% of the EV market) and ahead of Ford (6.4% of the EV market).

While we’re talking about the US market, there’s been a huge drop in hydrogen vehicle sales in the US in the first half of this year:

There are some surprising numbers for Honda CR-V fuel cell vehicle that I saw pop up with 75 sales in California’s dashboard for the first half of this year, but I haven’t got the national information for now, as Cox auto for example didn’t report on it at all.

BMW has released some new details for the incoming vehicle built on the Neue Klasse platform, the iX3 SUV (rather a rebuild/refresh, as the iX3 did exist 2021-2024 too).

We’ve been talking about Neue Klasse for a long while now, so it’s certainly great to see some of it popping up in real life.

Expected to start at $55k-$60k and go on sale in US in Q2 2026. The production version of the iX3 will be unveiled in Munich in September. Which reminds me… perhaps I should pay the IAA Mobility a visit there?

The iX3 will have an EPA range of over 400 miles (644 km), or as much as 800 km WLTP (497 miles) according to the CEO Oliver Zipse. And the efficiently will be at 15 kWh / 100km.

Notably, it can charge at up to 400kW, on a 800V architecture as well. 400kW charge levels would mean adding ~350km (217 miles) in just 10 minutes. Oliver Zipse said in an interview that it’ll be “the benchmark of the industry” and that “it will show the world that BMW can build superior electric cars, and the rest of the market will have to answer.”

Big words. We’ll see.

What’s promising is that the new models on this platform have ~20x the compute of their current lineup.

On the Bloomberg interview, Zipse also says BMW says its Neue Klasse SUV will reach its break-even point on carbon emissions with a comparable ICE model after less than a year for the typical owner, once their odometer crosses 21,500 km. (link)

This is interesting, given that the latest ICCT report has determined the break-even point in emissions from EV vs comparable ICE comes at ~17,000 km. 🤷

At least BMW seems to recognize who their true competition is:

"For all the potential upside Neue Klasse brings, the success of the project ultimately will depend on where it leaves BMW in an increasingly brutal competition with Chinese manufacturers that are undercutting the rest of the auto world."

Starting next year, Neue Klasse model production will initially run parallel to current ICE cars, but from the end of 2027, BMW’s flagship plant will be the first existing site in its global production network to exclusively manufacture all-electric vehicles. The Neue Klasse hardware is also going to be used in the next generation of MINI and Rolls-Royce EVs.

Leapmotor International launches B10 electric SUV in Europe, starts from €29,900 ($34.2k). The five-seat BEV offers a WLTP driving range of 361km (224 mi) or 434 kilometres (270 miles) depending on the trim, can charge at 168kW DC. (link)

For context, Leapmotor and Stellantis announced in June that it had opened up sales in seven additional European markets, now also present in Ireland, the Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia, and Bulgaria. This brings the number of sales and service points on the European continent to 600. Its previous markets included France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Greece, and Romania.

Lucid has s signed a multi-year partnership with Timothée Chalamet for him to become Lucid’s first-ever Global Brand Ambassador. (link)

Meanwhile, Tesla gets on the Sydney Sweeney jeans trend, saying their robot also has great jeans, calling it Seatney in this (actually rather old) video.

Tesla has removed the Model S and X design configurators from European site. It will now bring up available inventory for those two vehicles instead of allowing you to build your own configuration. I wonder if this is sunsetting the vehicle completely or just considering the refresh of the S/X that took place in US.

Major win for EV charging in Portugal: a new legal framework (Regime Jurídico da Mobilidade Elétrica – RJME) was approved, which no longer requires users to hold contracts with energy suppliers. (link)

The charging networks are no longer obliged to be connected to a centralised national system such as Mobi.E, and are now free to develop independent business models, including the use self-generated energy like solar power.

Max de Zegher from Tesla Charging comments (link): “The right decision by the Portuguese government, which aligns with European law. Excited to build the overdue charging infrastructure Portuguese EV drivers urgently need.”

Tesla immediately announced 7 upcoming Supercharger sites in the country.

Tesla also announced its next Supercharging location vote winners globally (here), started the next voting round, and Tesla also launched its very first Supercharging site in India (love the milestone wraps):

EVgo has closed a $225 million oversubscribed loan from a syndicate of global banks, with an option to increase it to $300 million, to fund the rollout of 1,500 additional DC chargers in the US. (link)

Context: EVgo currently operates more than 1,100 fast-charging stations in 40+ states. It also holds a separate $1.25 billion DOE loan guarantee announced last year, set up to deploy 7,500 public charging points.

Madrid has launched one of Spain’s biggest EV charging hubs, with 40 public fast chargeers now by Iberdrola | bp pulse and Tesla now available at the renovated Nuevos Ministerios metro station. (link)

India: Tamil Nadu green energy corporation to set up 500 EV charging stations in the state. (link) Context: Tamil Nadu currently has 847 public CCS2 charging points deployed (and another 218 Type 2 plugs), with the latest data from our friends at EVInfra.BI. The state is ranked 4th in electric passenger vehicle sales in India, with 8,533 sold in 2024, up 24% and makes up 8% of all EVs sold in India.

V2G Research: The Mobility House Energy and RWTH Aachen University studied the long-term effects of charging cycles, with a focus on V2G. (link)

They tested a selection of representative automotive cells under three different 11kW charging scenarios, and found that bidirectional charging had only a minimal negative effect due to the additional charging cycles. After ten years, the additional aging from V2G was between 1.7 and 5.8 percentage points. This corresponds to a capacity loss of 0.9 to 3.1 kWh or 5.8 to 19.2 km of WLTP range.

TMH claims that the (lost) value of this capacity today is approximately 100 to 300 euros in investment, but V2G delivers over 600 euros per year to compensate.

I’m very interested to see what real-world studies from actually built-EVs will show over time on battery degradation in common V2G use vs not. This will determine the uptake of the technology for a lot of EV owners.