As you get all your ducks in a row for the upcoming holiday celerbrations, check out some of this week's top EV headlines below or get the full scoop here. At the very least, you’ll be the smartest person at the water cooler when it comes to major headlines in the industry and at best, you’ll win one of our free prizes!
Bio: John is the COO at EPG, a company focused on helping electric and autonomous vehicle companies hire the best talent. In addition to these services, EPG puts out an informative weekly newsletter that is cleverly titled Electric and Autonomous Weekly. You can sign up for the newsletter here.
One Million Electric BMW’s
Admittedly, I’m a BMW guy. All my friends had e30’s in high school and I’ve always wanted an e30. My dad chose an Audi 5000s instead and I will spare you the stories with the 5000s. Maybe an electric e30 conversion one day.
Anyhow, BMW hit a huge milestone with its one-millionth mark for its EV sales, and it's shooting for two million purely electric vehicle sales by 2025. Around 70% of the 1,000,000 EV sales were hybrids. BMW aims for around 50% of global sales to be electric by 2030. In honor of BMW’s one-millionth electric vehicle sold, check out the Tesla-swapped E30. Does anyone know someone at BMW and how they can resurrect the e30 body and convert to electric? Have them reach out. Thank you.
A New Neighbor in the Tar Heel State
Toyota is building a $1.29 billion battery factory in North Carolina as it has plans to invest around $13.6 billion in battery tech including $9 billion in production. Production will begin in 2025 and will create around 1,750 jobs. NC’s Economic Investment Committee approved a $438.7 million tax incentive package to encourage Toyota to set up shop in the state.
Toyota has also partnered with China’s BYD to build an affordable electric car, expected to launch in 2022. By late next year, Toyota will launch a small sedan, powered by BYD’s blade battery cells with LFP chemistry. Toyota expects its first fully electric BZ4X to be released in the middle of next year.
Gallery: Project Maybach
Concept Maybach
Ever dream of taking your Maybach off-road? Probably not, but Mercedes is at least thinking of the idea with the new Maybach concept. The automaker created this concept in homage to the late designer, Virgil Abloh. The inspiration for the vehicle came from the great outdoors and comes in the form of a two-seat, battery-powered, off-road machine. Did we mention that it’s around the length of a Chevy Suburban? Yup, that’s correct. We hope to see one of these crawling up Webster Pass one day.
1,822 Chargers for Nevada
One big topic in the EV world is the availability of enough charging stations while keeping up with EV manufacturer growth. We hear a lot of talk about plans, and Nevada is putting its money where its mouth is with the addition of nearly 2,000 EV chargers.
Nevada approved a $100 million effort to build 120 charging sites with 1,822 chargers over the next three years. This historic approval marks one of the state’s largest investments to expand charging infrastructure. The Public Utilities Commission of Nevada authorized the plan on Nov. 30, and NV energy can own and operate some of the proposed charging structure, with host customers or 3rd-party providers operating other chargers.
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