Weekly roundup: EVwire newsletter #152

We’ve got a new partner!

I think I’ve found the ultimate hack for all EV owners who go camping with a tent (I’m one). What if you could use that huge EV battery and AC you drove there with?

No more too hot, too cold, or too humid excuses to not go camping with the family, with this thing you can just connect a highflow kit to the dashboard (to AC vents) of your EV, run the hose right through the window unit and → straight to your tent, set your EV on the Camp Mode and control the temperature and fan speed all via the EV app.

The product is real and used by a lot of EV owners across the US and Canada already. It's from a startup called Campstream, and we’ve partnered up to bring this product closer to EV owners. I love products like this because they bring more real-life utilization of the EVs we already own.

If this fits your EV camping needs, use "EVWIRE80" for $80 off.
Currently available for Rivian R1S, R1T and Tesla Model 3:

2025 has started with quite a lot of promise in terms of EV sales despite the turbulent times in (geo)politics.

As per usual, most of the media, as well as some industry associations, want to downplay the EV uptake growth, but we’re here as always to look at the real picture.

Here’s the first quarter of 2025 (Q1 2025) data for the big three regions (link):

Here’s the fuel mix of all sales in Europe in Q1:

573,500 battery-electric vehicles were sold in Europe (EU+EFTA+UK) in the first quarter of 2025, growing 28% compared to the first quarter of 2024.

EV Market share in Q1 2025 rose to 16.95% from 13.2% a year ago.
In other words, every 6th car sold in Europe was fully electric.

Here’s the fuel mix of all sales in China in Q1:

1,640,000 battery-electric vehicles were sold in China in the first quarter of 2025, growing 55% compared to the first quarter of 2024.

EV Market share reached 27%, which is their best Q1 result ever.
Every 4th car sold in China in Q1 was fully electric.

China continues its pace in both domestic EV sales (which we’re covering here) and exports, the latter of which is significantly shown in many ‘Rest of World’ countries.

Now that the BEV import targeted tariffs from the EU have been implemented, Chinese non-pure EV makers, such as BYD, are increasingly importing PHEVs and HEVs to the European Union. This, in my opinion, is a huge blunder by European leaders, not even talking about taxing the imported BEVs, but the not taxing the hybrids there is what makes me shake my head.

Here’s the fuel mix of all sales in the US in Q1:

301,000 battery-electric vehicles were sold in the United States in the first quarter of 2025, growing 18% compared to the first quarter of 2024.

EV Market share reached 8%, which is the best Q1 result for US ever.
Every 12.5th car sold in the US was fully electric in Q1.

Meanwhile, sales of PHEVs declined -11% and sales of hybrids grew 47%.

In 2024, every 7th car sold in the world was fully electric. The growth continued last year, and we seem to be clearly heading in the same direction this year. Here’s the historical view from our previous report:

We’ve seen a few headwinds for our rEVolution lately, here’s a few o the latest:

Honda takes a major step backwards — it will scale down its investment in next-generation of EVs and software by 30% “considering the recent market slowdown” and expects the EV share of all sales in 2030 to fall below the 30% previously targeted, making up ~20% instead. (link) The new focus is hybrids. It is also pausing its $11B investment into EV and battery production in Canada for about two years.

European Union took a step backwards: EU voted in favor of softening CO2 fleet targets for automakers.

US will likely take a step back: The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a new bill introduced by House Republicans which has now passed the vote and moved on to Senate, will among other, including anti-renewables changes (link):

On this, the ICCT has put together an analysis on what effects could be expected across the EV industry in case the EV-related provisions in the IRA are successfully repealed. (link)

Meanwhile, 17 US states sued Trump administration over NEVI charging funding freeze (link).

In other news:

Here's everything I've confirmed you can expect from the Tesla Robotaxi launch in Austin in June (see all this in article form if you want to play the video too):

Tesla starts with 10 Model Ys in the first week.
And Elon adds "we'll probably be at 1,000 robotaxis within a few months."

The confirmed launch date is “June”,
although Bloomberg says it’s set for the 12th internally.

There is no safety driver in the vehicle.
Of course, remote assist will likely be there ready to take over if issues.

The Tesla robotaxi service will be geofenced (bound to a specific area only) at first, Elon says it’ll be the "parts that are the safest".

It will be invite-only, not public at first. This is from most reports, but we did get this hint that it might be public very soon after launch, from Elon just yesterday (link).

Tesla has been preparing on these streets for months now.

Elon said on the Q1 call that "There’s just always a convoy of Teslas just going all over to Austin in circles," trying to fit years' worth of driving into just a few months. Elon also said “Once we can make it work in a few cities in America, we can make it work in any city in America."

In a video by Tesla in April, Tesla said employees had completed 1.5k trips and 15k miles in testing in Austin and the SF Bay Area.

Also, per a recent Business Insider article (so take this one with a grain of lithium salt), Tesla reportedly has 300 test operators driving around Austin, Texas, to prepare for the June robotaxi launch.

Yes, there have been robotaxi test vehicles seen in both Austin and San Francisco Bay Area now, which seems like the likely next city to launch in:

When will the Cybercab (built-as-robotaxi vehicle) launch into service?
Nobody knows.

There are quite a few Cybercab prototypes we’ve seen all around, which made their ways into the showrooms after being used on the 10/10 robotaxi event as actual autonomous chauffeurs. The Cybercab is scheduled to begin volume production in 2026, but we have already seen a wide array of Cybercab underbody gigacastings on the drone videos from Giga Texas:

Fun fact — per Elon, the Cybercab will be built 6x faster than the Model Y.
A Cybercab will roll off the production line every 5 seconds, vs the 33 seconds for the current Model Y.

Can the Tesla robotaxi be used for deliveries?
Certainly, at one point - both Elon and Tesla accounts have hinted towards the other-than-rides services of Tesla robotaxis.

What is an “Alicorn”?
Alicorn is a mythical creature, a unicorn with wings. It is also confirmed as the internal codename for the robotaxi service per the decompilation of its latest app code.

RELATED: Teslas now also drive themselves out of the factory in Giga Berlin, Germany, just like we saw in the US factories. (video)

Phoenix Contact developed a CCS2 connector that can go 1 megawatt!
The 1 MW (1,000 A at 1,000 V) is available only for a limited time in “Boost Mode” and at 800 kW (800 A and 1,000 V) continuously, thanks to the liquid cooling technology.

This is a huge technological feat for the connector, and what I found interesting was their answer to the question of “Will this make the Megawatt Charging Standard (MCS) redundant?”

Their answer basically says “yes” for buses and trucks, “no” for heavy off-road utility vehicles such as mining and construction vehicles. Read their full quote in our article.

I would also add another dimension to this question — a geographical one. CCS2 is the dominant standard in Europe, while the US is currently in CCS1 → NACS transition, and China is still strong in GB/T (and CHAdeMO seems to be losing ground even in domestic Japan which is slowly taking on NACS), so… will we see this development, albeit important, just change some of the game and solely in Europe?

Voltpost launched its first-ever public lamppost EV charger in Oak Park, Illinois, partnering with the Park District of Oak Park and the ComEd utility company. Voltpost retrofits lampposts into a modular and upgradable Level 2 EV charging platform powered by a mobile app. (link) Great milestone, we need a lot more curbside charging deployed all around.

IONITY secured financing of up to €600M in the largest such financing in the European EV charging industry to date. IONITY currently operates 5062 charging points in 753 locations (68 being built) and aims to more than double the number of charging points to ~13,000 and grow its network to more than 1,300 charging sites by the end of 2030. (link) Find this and 3 other funding news in our EV funding tracker, link in the resources section further below.

SparkCharge, the EV fleet Charging-as-a-Service (CaaS) company that is also the world's largest off-grid EV charging network, raised $30.5M: raised a $15.5M Series A-1 round led by Monte’s Fam and secured a $15 million venture loan.

Sparkcharge has already delivered 4,200,000+ kWh in over 120,000 across the US, Canada and Mexico for its partners. Customers can access a charging hub wherever, with no upfront costs and a set kWh price.

If you’ve been reading EVwire (then EV Universe) for longer, you might remember us covering SparkCharge’s early days as it started its CaaS journey by deploying mobile charging via the modules it developed. The offering has evolved quite a bit over the years, and 95% of their customers now use their 180-500kW off-grid power hub.

Location: Norrköping, Sweden.
Built by: Einride, the commercial vehicle operator.
Charging: 9 charging bays, including 4×400kW.
Built for: logistics property company Catena AB, but seems to be open for all.
Added info: " the site came to life in just five months, demonstrating what's possible when speed meets purpose."