March 24, 2025
In January, BMW Group announced it continued its growth path in 2024, delivering 426,594 fully electric vehicles to customers and achieving BEV-sales growth of +13.5 %. Now that more figures are available of its all-time competitors at the premium home front, Mercedes and Audi, it’s clear that they sold more EVs than those two combined. […]
March 22, 2025
With the next one—the #5—hitting the market in a few weeks, Smart has grown up. With its 4,695 mm length, width of 1,920 mm, height of 1,705 mm, and wheelbase of 2,900 mm, it is almost double the size of the original Smart ForTwo, which saw the light of day in 1998. Mercedes’ little brother, […]
March 21, 2025
Contract builder Magna Steyr, which today still builds cars like the Mercedes G-Class, Toyota GR Supra, and BMW Z4 that share the same platform at its plant in Graz, Austria, is, according to a new report, closing a deal with Chinese Xpeng and GAC to build EVs for the European market. It would work on […]
March 21, 2025
A few days before first deliveries on March 29th, Chinese premium EV maker NIO started customers tests in China with its new flagship ET9 sedan that is to take on the ‘crème de la crème’ of the German premium competition. With a starting price of 788,000 yuan (€100,340), including the battery pack, it is Nio’s […]
March 18, 2025
Chinese EV maker NIO, known for its pioneering role in battery swapping, is joining forces with CATL, its major supplier, to set up a worldwide car-swapping network. CATL, the world’s biggest battery maker, puts its money where its mouth is by investing 2.5 billion yuan (€316 million) in Nio Power. Both parties signed an agreement […]
March 11, 2025
It mimics its predecessor, one of the first bikes with an auxiliary motor from 120 years ago, but it’s brand-new: the Belgian iconic motorcycle brand Saroléa’s first speed pedelec. It is fast, although legally limited to 45 km/hour, with two motors with 1,200 Watt peak output combined and a range of up to 130 kilometers. […]
March 10, 2025
The BMW iX has been the German carmaker’s longest-running fully electric model since 2021 and has sold over 130,000 units worldwide. It’s time for an update and the start of production at the BMW Group plant in Dingolfing. BMW promises 25% more drive power and improved efficiency, resulting in a 701 km (WLTP) range for […]
March 07, 2025
The world’s number one automaker, Japanese Toyota, is aiming its arrows on the world’s biggest auto market with the bZ3X electric SUV, introduced in China at 109,800 yuan or some 14,000 euros. The Chinese elbowed each other out of the way, crashing the server with more than 10,000 orders in an hour. It’s Toyota’s cheapest […]
March 06, 2025
Chinese battery and car giant BYD is adding a pair of extra ‘drone-eyes in the sky’ to its luxury off-roader Fang Cheng Bao Bao 8 to make venturing beyond the asphalt even more fun. The drone has a docking station on the car’s roof and can follow the vehicle at a speed of up to […]
March 05, 2025
Chinese tech giant Xiaomi’s CEO, William Lu, is currently in Spain, where he told the Chinese press Jiemian that he will tour Europe’s car markets in the coming days to prepare for the launch of its EVs on the Old Continent starting in 2027. He wants to see firsthand how Chinese EV makers are doing […]
March 03, 2025
Dutch fast-charging provider Fastned has opened its 37th station in Belgium in Hoeselt, midway between Hasselt and Liège along the E313 highway. It has two chargers, suitable for four charging bays, each with a maximum capacity of 400 kW. Fastned says electric drivers can charge their cars here with green electricity from the sun and […]
February 28, 2025
While European carmakers one after another slink off with their tail between their legs, abandoning their fully electric goals and pushing hybrid ICE instead, South Korean Kia goes straight ahead with its electric flagging zeal. At the brand’s 2025 Kia EV Day in Tarragona, Spain, it unveiled its latest weapons to conquer that part of […]
February 27, 2025
Peter Rawlinson, CEO and CTO of American electric carmaker Lucid and the ex-engineer who once stood at the cradle of the Tesla Model S, is stepping down after more than a decade to pass the baton to a new, yet-to-be-found manager. Rawlingson remains a strategic technical advisor to Turqi Alnowaiser, the board chairman representing Lucid’s […]
February 26, 2025
Lynk & Co, the Chinese-Swedish brand now majority-owned by Geely’s daughter Zeekr, is launching the 08 plugin-hybrid compact SUV in selected European markets in June, a year and a half after its release in China. The company says this version will have a 200 km WLTP pure electric range, the first to accomplish that in […]
February 25, 2025
CALB, after CATL and BYD, is China’s third-biggest battery maker. It has broken ground for a brand new factory in the Portuguese deepwater port of Sines, halfway on the Atlantic coast between Lisbon and Lagos. All three invest heavily in European battery factories, while the old continent is lagging with its own trumpeted ‘Airbus of […]
February 20, 2025
It‘s a bit like the butcher who asks, can it be a little more? The Black Badge Specter might be tempting if you’re in for a fully electric Rolls Royce: a four-figure torque output (1075 Nm), with a record 485 kW (659 hp) of power, makes it the most powerful Rolls-Royce in history. Unlike the […]
February 18, 2025
In China, new car specs tend to go public before the official release, as all have to be approved by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), which publishes the regulatory filing in advance. So it’s clear now that NIO’s Firefly subbrand will get a 42.1 kWh (swappable) battery pack and offer a CLTC […]
February 18, 2025
French carmaker Renault has decided to make its ‘Fireman Access’ patents, developed with professional rescue services to extinguish an EV’s battery on fire in a few minutes, freely available to the entire automotive industry. A process that otherwise can take hours by immersion of the whole vehicle in a container with water. Renault says car […]
February 13, 2025
A University of Cambridge scientists team, led by professor Erwin Reisner, has created a solar-powered flow reactor that can capture C02 from the air at night and convert it into fuels like diesel, methanol, or ammonia during the day with the help of the sun. If scaled up, it would theoretically allow people to generate […]
February 12, 2025
China and, by extension, the world’s largest battery maker, CATL, is lodging its filings with regulators to go public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Reuters says. The company aims to raise some 5 billion dollars (€4.82 billion). It will be CATL’s secondary listing, as it has been on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange since June […]
February 11, 2025
China’s most significant EV carmaker, BYD, has launched its newest advanced driver system, ‘God’s Eye’. It will be available in all its models in China, top-down, from the luxury Yangwang U9 supercar to the modest cars under 100,000 yuan (€13,278) like Dolphin or Seagull. It comes in three flavors, À-B-C, with or without LiDAR, to […]
February 10, 2025
It looks like it is further going downhill with American hydrogen truckmaker Nicola, following a The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg report that the company is considering Chapter 11 to propose a plan of reorganization to keep its business alive and pay creditors over time. Last week, Nicola (NASDAQ: NKLA) shares tumbled as much as […]
February 07, 2025
Chinese premium EV brand NIO has set a new battery-swapping record by performing 136,748 swaps in a single day in its 3,106 swap stations in China, an average of 44 changed battery packs per station. The brand, a clear leader in swapping technology, has already performed over 65 million of these swaps. As travel peaked, […]
February 05, 2025
It sounds like a ‘contradictio in terminis,’ an exhaust system for fully electric vehicles that are supposed to have no emissions at all. Still, Stellantis Group, parent company to Peugeot, Jeep, and Fiat, among others, has filed a patent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for a system that would evacuate dangerous […]
February 04, 2025
The year 2024 wasn’t the best for the European car market, with a slowdown in growth that the industry began to see signs of in 2022, resulting in only a 0.9% growth, where this still was 28% in 2023. New detailed figures from JATO Dynamics show a clear trend toward ‘cheaper’ hybrids driven by Toyota’s […]
February 03, 2025
Looser Low Emission Zone (LEZ) in Flanders allows the Antwerp Classic Car Event (ACCE) to return to its roots at the Cockerill Quay on the borders of the Scheldt River in the Antwerp city center on 3 and 4 May of this year. Some 15,000 car enthusiasts are expected to come and see some 1,000 […]
January 29, 2025
While 2,900 employees will lose their jobs on February 28th, 2025, when the last Audi Q8 e-tron will be made at Audi Brussels, Belgium’s only remaining car factory, Volvo Car Gent is looking for 350 new people to start building the EX30 in Europe. Volvo announced in October last year its intention to build the […]
January 27, 2025
A day before the deadline, three Chinese EV makers, BYD, Geely, and SAIC, and the China Chamber of Commerce (CME), filed challenges at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Luxembourg against the tariffs the EU is imposing on electric cars made in China. At the last minute, BMW and Tesla joined […]
January 24, 2025
Dutch U-Boat Worx launched its upgraded ‘Super Sub,’ a luxury three-passenger electric submarine water toy it claims is now faster than a dolphin. According to Wikipedia, the company, based in Breda (Netherlands), is recognized as the foremost manufacturer of private submersibles globally, with over 60 submarines in operation. The Super Sub resembles an ultra-streamlined, suppository-like […]
January 20, 2025
Yet another EV startup that has to throw in the towel: American ‘lifestyle’ EV-maker Canoo. Once hopefully mentioned as the potential savior of Dutch VDL Nedcar in Born, it announced last week it had filed a voluntary petition for relief under Chapter 7 of the US Bankruptcy Code and stopped all activities on the fly. […]
January 17, 2025
Dutch fast-charging provider Fastned temporarily slows down in its expansion push as EV acceptance sputters in some parts of Europe. It forecasts “that development time lags will be longer than previously anticipated.” In its updated 2025 guidance, Fastned aims to have 400 to 425 stations operational by year-end, more than €325,000 in revenues per station, […]
January 16, 2025
Volvo has set a new sales record in Belgium, selling 24.221 cars, a growth of 13.6% compared with 2023, and lifting the brand to sixth position in the top ten most popular brands. That growth was ‘fueled’ primarily by its electric cars, with fully electric BEVs accounting for 69%. Adding the plug-in hybrids, the figure […]
January 15, 2025
Even though electric cars are omnipresent at the popular Brussels Motor Show (BMS), one of the few remaining in Europe, Belgians are getting more cold feet about buying an EV. Deloitte’s Global Automotive Consumer Study, which is to be published on February 6th, shows that 45% prefer a car with a pure combustion engine (ICE), […]
January 14, 2025
Swedish Scania Trucks veteran Christian Levin was elected chair of the Commercial Vehicles Board of ACEA for 2025. He sees a monumental challenge for the European truck and bus sector—one that requires the complete reimagination of an entire ecosystem: the transition from ICE to zero-emission vehicles. And that is a transition of “a magnitude unprecedented […]
January 13, 2025
One of the most miniature cars at the Brussels Motor Show, somewhat lost in the vast exposition hall occupied by Belgium’s most significant car importer, D’Ieteren, is a world premiere: the Swiss Microlino Spider. Still a concept, this roofless version, with open side panels and no doors, is meant to recall the simplicity and functionality […]
January 10, 2025
Traxio, the Belgian Federation of the automotive service sector and Mobility organization, has a new—old-hand—president: Henri de Hemptinne (66). He is former vice president of Traxio and president of GDA, the subdivision representing Belgian car dealers. Henri de Hemptine succeeds Didier Perwez, who held the chairmanship for the last six years. With Henri de Hemptine, […]
January 09, 2025
Zeekr, the Swedish-Chinese sister brand of Volvo under the Geely umbrella, first appeared in April 2021 with the 001 shooting brake. Now, it is ready to show the world a second one: a ‘touring’ version called 007 GT, based on the 007 electric sedan that only sells in China for now. To avoid any confusion […]
January 08, 2025
Czech Škoda Auto, Volkswagen’s daughter and one of the first to follow the group’s advanced EV strategy is introducing the new Enyaq family, what it calls “one of Europe’s most successful all-electric model series.” Both the Škoda Enyaq and the Škoda Enyaq Coupé now feature the brand’s new Modern Solid design language and offer enhanced […]
January 08, 2025
In its latest update of the ‘Chinese military companies’ list, the US Department of Defense (DoD) mentions the Chinese battery giant CATL for the first time, along with Tencent, another Chinese giant in gaming and communications. CATL is the world’s biggest EV battery maker, with nearly 37% market share. It is way ahead of the […]
January 07, 2025
You’ll probably not have to use it very often unless you have the habit of being chased by a police car: jump over a 3.5 cm high spike strip at 120 km per hour. But we must admit, it’s a marketing stunt that stands out for BYD’s Yangwang U9 electric sportscar to demonstrate its DiSus […]
January 06, 2025
D’Ieteren Automotive, Belgium’s largest car importer of all Volkswagen brands, with branches in energy services, is merging its charging business (EDI) and solar production and battery storage solutions (Go Solar) into one single unit, “D’Ieteren Energy.” The group is also active in other mobility sectors related to cycling (Lucien, Joule), shared mobility (Poppy, TaxisVerts), and […]
January 03, 2025
Chinese Chery Automotive is expanding its dealerships for its Omoda and Jaecoo brands in Belgium to Wallonia by signing up Stellantis dealer Groupe Ricco, which has footholds in Arlon, Libramont, Marche, and Rochefort and now also adding Groupe GSL. The latter covers the region of Nivelles and Charleroi. However, Chery has swallowed its EV ambitions […]
January 03, 2025
The world’s number one EV carmaker, Elon Musk’s Tesla, delivered 1,789,226 cars in 2024. That is 1% less than the 1,808,581 in 2023, and it is the first time that Tesla’s growth has stalled in a decade. In 2023, growth was still 38% compared to 2022. That’s a huge difference. On the other hand, Chinese […]
December 30, 2024
Mirai (未来 or 未來) is a Japanese given name. It means ‘future,’ but in the case of Toyota’s pioneering fuel cell (FCEV) passenger car on hydrogen, a gloomy one as global sales plunged to a record low of 134 units in November and only 1,702 since January 2024, of which 661 in Japan. That’s a […]
December 27, 2024
China is firmly on track to sell more ‘electric’ cars—that is, EVs and plug-in hybrids—than pure traditional gas cars with internal combustion engines (ICE) in 2025, reaching its 50% electric target a decade before the deadline the government had set by 2035. According to The Financial Times (FT) analysis, so-called New Energy Vehicle (NEV) sales […]
December 27, 2024
Chinese battery maker CATL (Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd) launched a new skateboard called ‘Bedrock’ the day before Christmas that should be as hard to crush as the name suggests, the safest EV chassis so far. What’s more, is that it promises a range of over 1,000 kilometers and supports Level 3 and 4 autonomous […]
December 23, 2024
China’s top EV seller, BYD (Build Your Dreams), is on track to sell 4.25 million cars this year. It has never masked its high ambitions to become a top-ten carmaker worldwide. According to the Belgian importer Inchcape, BYD is preparing an essential European first for the Brussels Motor Show in January. Eventually, there were no […]
December 23, 2024
The day before Christmas, at Nio Day 2023, the Chinese premium EV maker took off the wraps of its new ‘executive flagship sedan,’ the ET9, which has to play in the highest luxury car segment like the Mercedes-Maybach or EQS, or the BMW i7. Exactly a year later, the ET9 launches in China for 788,000 […]
December 18, 2024
With Carlos Tavares pushed out, the Stellantis car group is burying the hatchet and soothing the Italian right-wing Meloni government with new models to keep all Italian factories open until 2032. It won’t apply for government support, but it has committed to investing 2 billion euros next year and purchasing 6 billion euros from Italian […]
December 18, 2024
The German Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) has given Mercedes the green light to launch an updated version of its conditionally automated driving system, Drive Pilot, in 2025. This system allows the driver to watch a movie or read the newspaper while driving on highways at up to 95 km/hour. Mercedes was the first to […]
December 17, 2024
Last year in October, we wrote that it “sits and feels like a Porsche, is utterly powerful, and blazing fast on the water, yet silent as a sailing boat, but it will cost you more than twice the price of the most expensive Taycan”: the Frauscher x Porsche 850 ‘eFantom’ Air. Now it gets a […]
December 16, 2024
Never in automobile history, and 125 years after the electric car had to surrender to the internal combustion engine car (ICE), has the yawning gap between believers and non-believers in electrification been so wide. Still, only 1% of today’s EV drivers want to return to a pure ICE car, and 4% would switch back to […]
December 12, 2024
Chinese premium EV brand NIO has opened its first battery-swapping station in Belgium, at the Hotel & Congress Ter Elst center, at the Kattenberg 1 in Edegem, parallel to the E19 highway. That might sound bizarre, as the brand hasn’t officially been sold in Belgium yet, and no launch date has been communicated so far. […]
December 11, 2024
A year after the California DMV suspended Cruise’s robotaxi services in San Francisco following a series of incidents with pedestrians, General Motors is killing off its robotaxi daughter. It dispatches its engineering teams to the motherhouse to focus on more common driving aid systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving for passenger cars. “GM will no longer […]
December 11, 2024
French-Italian-American car group Stellantis is joining forces with the world’s biggest battery maker, Chinese CATL, to build a new factory at the Stellantis’ Zaragoza site in Spain to produce low-cost lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. For CATL, it will be its third battery factory in Europe. “Targeted to start production by the end of 2026, […]
December 10, 2024
Belgium’s 218-year-old and most significant ‘car importer,’ D’Ieteren, has officially checked and approved its net-zero greenhouse emission targets for 2030 and 2050. These targets align with the scientific criteria for achieving the climate goals of the Paris Agreement. The targets were ratified by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). That includes a 42% reduction by […]
December 09, 2024
In Belgium, employers must reimburse their employees with an electric company car for the actual cost of EV charging at home. So far, determining this ‘real cost’ has proved daunting, as electricity prices are ‘blurry’ and vary between employees and among regions, and digital meters aren’t widespread yet. To prevent confusion, the resigning Belgian Minister […]
December 09, 2024
Carlos Tavares has hardly closed the door after leaving Stellantis and the French-Italian-American car manufacturing group is eager to rejoin ACEA, the European carmaker lobbying federation based in Brussels, to which Tavares waved goodbye at the end of 2022. It looks like Stellantis wants to make the best of a bad job now and join […]
December 06, 2024
There are no longer any fully electric winners in VAB’s ‘Family Car of the Year’ election this year. The gold medal goes to a hybrid (HEV) from the Chinese brand that sells the most EVs in Europe: the MG3. The other gold winner in the more expensive category is a mild-hybrid Hyundai i30. It perfectly […]
December 05, 2024
Dutch fast-charging chain Fastned is partnering with Transport for London (TfL), the local government body responsible for most of the London transport network, to establish 25 fast-charging plazas in and around the British capital by 2030. Fastned is setting up a joint venture with Places for London, TfL’s real estate daughter, to invest £16 million […]
