EVwire newsletter #166: The EV industry roundup

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Ford incoming.

This is a render that Simon made for our article, based on all the breadcrumbs we’ve received about Ford’s affordable electric truck so far, camo photos and more:

That Ford electric truck now has a name and a starting price:

Ford Fathom, a midsize electric pickup starting at $28,350. (link)

It is the first vehicle on Ford's Universal EV platform. What we know so far is that every Fathom will be BlueCruise-capable, support bidirectional power, and Ford says it packs more passenger space than a Toyota RAV4, plus a frunk and a bed. Pre-orders are expected to open in early 2027.

So happens that the Fathom article also became the most-read article of all time for EVwire, with 16,936 article reads! 🥳

Now, on to another small truck which is completely reimagined from scratch, and I’m very excited about:

TELO raised the tow rating on its tiny MT1 pickup to 8,000 pounds, up from the roughly 6,600 first planned. (link)

Co-founder Forrest North credits the electric drivetrain with instant torque for pulling away on a grade and regen braking that can hold a trailer down a long descent without cooking the brakes.

The eye-catching part is the size: the MT1 is only 152 inches long, about the footprint of a Mini Cooper, yet it now out-tows, and has a capacity of, a midsize gas truck like the Toyota Tacoma.

🇨🇳 → 🇪🇺 Electric trucks are having a massive moment in China… and it’s now trickling into Europe, too:

Chinese electric truck maker SuperPanther began placing its eTopas 600 into commercial service across Europe. (link)

The first trucks rolled out of Steyr Automotive's plant in Austria on July 27, headed to customers including DHL Freight, with freight operations planned in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Poland and Czechia.

The truck claims up to 600 km (373 miles) of range and 20-80% charging in under 38 minutes on dual CCS2 plugs.

Volkswagen Group ordered 16 new 9,000-ton gigacasting machines from Swiss supplier Bühler, earmarked for front and rear underbody castings on the group's next-generation EV platform. The likely split inside the group: 8 for VW, 2 for Audi (plus 2 optional) and 2 for Škoda. (link) Almost surprising that VW has resisted for so long.

We picked this one up from our good friend Luca Greco, who tracks these orders machine by machine in his Gigacasting Database (look it up or find it in our article above).

In case you missed it, we launched our EVwire EVents calendar last week. It’s free to use for all, and we now have 61 events listed already. Thank you to everyone who contributed via the submit-event button and privately!

The three next events upcoming are:

Electrify Expo at Demo Days Festival
San Francisco, August 22-23 (tomorrow!)
…a great live expo for all EV geeks

icnc26: Intercharge Network Conference
Tempelhof Airport, Berlin, Germany, Sep 1-3rd
…probably the largest EV charging industry gatherings in Europe, b2b

THE EV:ent 2026: Charging Software Innovation Summit
Pionix HQ, Bad Schönborn, Germany, Sep 7-8th
…Pionix's summit, specifically for those in the charging software world

Lucid announced an "operational reset", a back-to-basics plan under new CEO Silvio Napoli meant to slow its cash burn, with a target to improve cash flow by $1.4 billion in 2026.

The quarter itself showed growth, $405 million in revenue, up 56%, on 3,953 deliveries, and Lucid says recent financing plus the cost moves give it runway well into 2027. "Potential is not performance," as Napoli put it.

One more Lucid note: Lucid's German arm filed for a preliminary injunction against the eletric-vehicles blog parent company Carba AI and its founder Afonso, whose bankruptcy-rumor reports set off that 55% stock plunge, asking a Munich court to bar four specific claims, with penalties up to €250,000 per violation (link).

This was the headline that caused it all and which Lucid denied:

The article is still up as of today. You can see the dip in this screenshot I took from our EV Stock Tracker on 17th of August:

The Saudi money was coming in too, right at the big dip: Prince Al Waleed bin Talal disclosed a new 5% stake in Lucid, just over 19.5 million shares, bought when Lucid's market cap had dipped below $2 billion in the bankruptcy-rumor selloff.

The stake sits outside the PIF, which has been Lucid's majority owner since 2018, so Saudi-linked ownership climbs higher still. I have speculated that PIF might take Lucid private at one moment and perhaps merge it with the national Ceer effort. I think that might still happen, although we’ve received no indication of that so it’s just in my mind for now.

The EV blog however, has stood by its reporting, and we take no sides here, just tracking the breadcrumbs of the saga live in our article above.

Additionally, not influencing our reporting as we keep it all observational, but still worth saying: Afonso is a friend.

Tesla announced it will unveil the European Semi's specs and launch details at IAA Transportation in Hannover, September 15-20. (link)

Now, that doesn’t mean sales start, nor does it mean immediate pilot programs, but it sounds likely they’re not too far away anymore.

I have also confirmed Tesla is actively recruiting for the Tesla Semi team in Europe, as EVwire recently broke the story on a new Business Development Manager, Jean-William Dubal, being hired specifically to launch Semi in the French market. We’ve seen a job posting also for Germany, and I’ve noticed Tesla is also ramping up a Megacharging team for Europe.

Let’s address this one. I’ve seen a lot of internet buzz saying Tesla is “late to the European market” as so many e-truck makers already have products out. To that, I only have one answer:

Out of 156,608 heavy-duty trucks sold in Europe in the first half of 2026, only 4,424 were fully electric per ACEA data. In other words, today electric trucks make up just 2.8% of all heavy-duty truck sales in Europe.

Here’s something fun: on that teaser video from Tesla, I also noticed something… the truck outline in the dark shown didn’t have side mirrors! I’m actually a bit surprised others didn’t notice it, including no news sites… EVwire was first to the scene again (link):

In the US, Semi is carrying those huge mirrors still because the FMVSS 111 still requires physical mirrors on commercial vehicles. Petitions from Tesla, GM, Volkswagen, Toyota, and Daimler have been pending with NHTSA since 2014.

Europe doesn’t have that problem, as the UN R46 has formally recognized cameras and screens as replacements for physical mirrors since 2016.

The regulation requires systems to meet strict standards for image quality, field of view, display brightness, and latency under 200ms.

While I’m not sure how widespread the camera solution has gone across the fleets, all major truckmakers have that as an option for most of their current lineups.

Back to the IAA:

I will be present and will report back live, just like in 2024, when I just so happened to be among the first five members of the public to ride the Semi in the world.

Of course there’s quite a lot more to learn at the event, which is the largest such in Europe for commercial vehicles, especially as I’m about to start e-trucks a lot more (👨‍🍳!). I’m planning to get a similar over-2-million-eyeballs on the Semi content just as I did back in 2024, that was a fun buzz.

So if you’re around at IAA Transportation in Germany in September, let me know and I want to meet up!

By the way, back at that 2024 show, Semi program lead Dan Priestley told me Tesla would "never do CCS" for the Semi in Europe, pointing at megawatt-class charging instead. Two years later, you can see how the wild call back then can already work smoothly enough today.

This news just came in this week:

Einride will deploy 500 Tesla Semis across North America, the world's largest Semi deployment announced to date, serving Amazon and other customers across five states. The rollout runs in phases over 24 months starting this September, and will triple Einride's deployed electric truck fleet. (link)

Now, remember how I teased in the last issue that there is a whole new breed of EV charging businesses being built around Tesla's Supercharger for Business program?

Here’s one:

Anthony Tracey, a Tesla and Rivian charging alum, is now CEO of United Chargers Network (UCN), a CPO built specifically to develop, own and operate Supercharger for Business sites.

UCN says multiple sites are already in development across several states, with zero capital required from site hosts. (link)

UCN is not stopping at stalls either. They just unveiled UCN’s own EV Charging Lounges: prefab, glass-walled buildings with seating, workspaces and vending machines, manufactured in-house so they can drop next to a Supercharger row without a full construction project. (link)

I’m actually working on a little project around mapping out all these Supercharging for Business sites… stay tuned 😉

Meanwhile, there’s now someone else that is offering a similar deal as Tesla is with its Supercharging for Business program, and they’ve actually done it since 2010.

It’s called…

Powered by Electrify America.

(They just rebranded it from Electrify Commercial)

Powered by Electrify America just added Wawa as their white-label customer, with 8 Wawa-branded sites announced in Pennsylvania. (link)

Much like the Supercharger for Business program from Tesla, the chargers here are also owned by Wawa, not Electrify America. Costco, WS Development, the New York Power Authority and Rocky Mountain Power are among the customers that came before Wawa.

Wawa owns the network and sets the pricing, and Electrify America runs everything behind the badge. We asked EA to spell out exactly what that covers, and they so kindly did:

Wava is actually a very notable customer: it is already the single largest host of Tesla Superchargers in the US, roughly 2,115 stalls across 223 stores, and it opened its first Wawa-branded Superchargers through Tesla's program earlier this year.

That makes Wawa the first US retailer running two white-label charging programs at once.

And my favorite bit is how these programs are seeding a whole new generation of CPOs, really!

Retailers like Wawa are actually a prime target to work as a CPO, as we covered in the last newsletter around Walmart.

…and which US retailers take EV charging most seriously?
Electric Era's new Retail EV Charging Index ranks the top 50 chains by charging maturity, with Wawa in first place on the back of 275+ stations and its own increasingly owned network. (link)

I think the CPO didn't address the elephant in the room when designing this site…

Click on this image to see the video on what the momma elephant did right after it helped its kid get untangled… you’ll be surprised:

Posting this on LinkedIn, I didn’t anticipate it becoming by far the widest-reaching post I’ve ever made there. The video was watched for a total of 43 days’ worth, plus another similar run on X.

I lifted the video from my friend Syed and wanted to know the background, so I wrote a whole article on what actually happened: (link). Here’s the quick version:

Sadly nobody seems to be discussing how to use better cable management to not trap the users’ feet to the cables in the first place…