Hybrid markups, Chevy Silverado EV, Tesla charge ports, Lucid and Aston Martin: The Week in Reverse

Which automakers and charging companies committed to the Tesla NACS connector?

Which EV maker announced it’s filed for bankruptcy?

This is our look back at the Week In Reverse—right here at EV kind of cars—for the week ending June 30, 2023.

Much of this week’s electric-car-focused news related to the continued shift toward Tesla’s NACS EV charging standard, following Ford, GM, Rivian, and a long list of charging-related companies. Future Volvo EVs will get the NACS connector for North America, the Swedish automaker announced Tuesday, while Volvo EVs will gain access to the Tesla Supercharger network in 2024 via the Volvo Cars app and a CCS adapter. Polestar confirmed later in the week that it also plans to adopt the Tesla NACS charge port in its future EVs, starting in 2025. It will also allow access to Tesla Supercharger fast-charging, with a CCS adapter, starting mid-2024. 

VW Group’s Electrify America will be adding Tesla connectors to its charging network in the U.S. and Canada, it announced Thursday, amid news that VW itself is considering a shift to it. Although EA wouldn’t yet clarify whether it plans to support NACS in a way that will charge leading-edge 800V EVs at peak rate. 

Stellantis, the parent company of Jeep, Dodge, Ram, and others, is committing to the same charging aggregation and route-planning tools for all its brands, as part of a new business unit around energy and charging. But it doesn’t yet mean the company is building its own charging infrastructure or signing on to Tesla’s NACS connector.

Should the Tesla NACS connector become a proper standard? That’s what SAE International, one of the standards organizations for the auto industry, has announced that it aims to do. That would essentially allow other companies to manufacture connectors and ports and assure interoperability.

In EV product news, GM has effectively upped the base price of the Chevy Silverado EV WT—the fleet-oriented base model of its electric pickup—well before it’s actually being delivered. While pricing is likely to start around $60,000 versus around $40,000, It’s unclear whether the $40,000 model with a lower range and smaller battery will ever arrive. 

GM has also detailed the hardware needed to use upcoming EVs for home power backup. The Ultium Home V2H bundle and Enablement Kit will add an inverter and “dark start” battery to help with blackouts and natural disasters as well as solar integration. It’s teased that the Chevy Silverado EV will be one of the compatible vehicles although it hasn’t yet detailed which spec will allow it or which other GM models will permit bidirectional charging from the start. 

The Lotus Eletre SUV is arriving in Europe and the UK soon, and this big electric SUV sets out to challenge the Tesla Model X Plaid with some new performance benchmarks, including a 0-60 mph time under three seconds, four-wheel steering, and 20-minute road-trip fast-charges of its big 112-kwh battery pack. It’s due to arrive in the U.S. sometime later in the year. 

The 2024 Nissan Leaf starts under $30,000, and it returns for another model year mostly unchanged. It continues on with the CHAdeMO DC fast-charging interface that allows bidirectional charging plus more locations than the Tesla NACS interface.

Thousands of 2022 Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe plug-in hybrids are being recalled due to an issue that could trigger an engine shutdown. It’s a software issue but requires a dealership visit.

The Ohio maker of the Endurance electric pickup, Lordstown Motors, is going bankrupt and up for sale. The company has also confirmed it’s suing Taiwan’s Foxconn, which now has control of the former GM plant but according to Lordstown hasn’t followed through on its part.

Aston Martin and California’s Lucid Group on Monday announced a long-term strategic partnership in which Lucid will provide the UK performance-car market with powertrain tech for upcoming vehicles. With the deal effectively giving Lucid a 3.7% share of Aston Martin, it gives Aston access to Lucid’s drive units, battery tech, Wunderbox charging hardware, and support. 

Rolls-Royce sees its shift to electric propulsion as being a lasting one, although it might potentially turn to hydrogen fuel cells rather than batteries in the future, the CEO recently suggested. 

Recent dealer markups of popular high-mpg hybrid and plug-in hybrid models—including the Honda CR-V Hybrid and Toyota Prius Prime—can effectively cancel out the ownership-cost advantages of the tech. With the EV market stabilizing, will supply and demand even out for hybrids soon too?

A federal study out this week assesses U.S. charging needs by 2030 if we get the anticipated 30 million to 42 million EVs on U.S. roads by then, and it could be the basis for a lot of future state and federal policy. It anticipates the need for 182,000 publicly accessible DC charging ports by then, but more surprising perhaps is the need for a million public Level 2 charge points—to help include the needs of those who might not have dedicated home charging.

And the latest version of a longstanding annual assessment of the auto industry, from Bank of America, calls the EV strategies of Ford and GM “relatively solid,” while Tesla will remain the top EV seller through at least 2026. But with too many crossover utility vehicles for the market and the potential for product cancellations for other reasons—like regulation and politics—it called the next few years “some of the most uncertain and volatile for product strategy ever.”

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