This past week was perhaps one of the least newsworthy weeks in terms of big EV news – that is until Monday with the Lucid Motors and Xos Trucks SPAC deals were announced. Following are a number of EV-related developments of interest.

Automaker/EV Models

Ford Europe EV Plans – Ford committed that by mid-2026, 100 percent of Ford’s passenger vehicle range in Europe will be zero-emissions capable, all-electric or plug-in hybrid, and will be completely all-electric by 2030. Similarly, Ford’s entire commercial vehicle range will be zero-emissions capable, all-electric or plug-in hybrid, by 2024, with two-thirds of Ford’s commercial vehicle sales expected to be all-electric or plug-in hybrid by 2030.

The news comes after Ford reporting, in the fourth quarter of 2020, a return to profit in Europe and announced it was investing at least $22 billion globally in electrification through 2025, nearly twice the company’s previous EV investment plans. – Feb. 17, via Ford press release

VW’s next electric SUV, the ID.5 coupe, will go into production in 2021 – Volkswagen confirmed that its next electric vehicle, the ID.5, will start production in Germany in the second half of 2021. The first pilot series of the ID.5 has already started production, the automaker confirmed in a recent tweet.

The ID.5 will be a coupe version of the ID.4 compact SUV, which went on sale in Europe and China in late 2020. The ID.4 is the first vehicle built on VW’s modular MEB electric architecture to be available in North America. Its predecessor, the hatchback ID.3, is only being sold in Europe. – Feb. 19, via The Verge

VW will overtake Tesla in EV sales by 2025, analyst says – Tesla’s global EV market share is expected to slip from more than 20 percent in 2020 to about 10 percent in 2025, with VW Group’s growing from less than 10 percent to more than 15 percent, Pete Kelly, LMC managing director, said last week in an online forecast event. Ford, Toyota, GM and Mercedes could also see their EV shares surge. – via Automotive News (subscription required)

Karma Announces Pricing On GS-1 PHEV, Teases SUV BEV Availability for 2022 – Karma Automotive on Monday revealed pricing for its more affordable plug-in hybrid luxury car, that its GS-6 PHEV luxury car would be available beginning this month with pricing starting at $83,900. A fully electric version, the GSe-6, arrives later this year and starts at $79,000.

Karma also teased a GX-1 Series, an SUV to be built on a new global platform, in both battery electric and extended-range EV versions and with deliveries expected in 2022. – Feb. 22, via GreenCarReports

Daimler to move-up combustion vehicle phase-out? – Daimler, parent of Mercedes-Benz, is apparently considering an early end to the combustion engine. German publication Handelsblatt reported that Daimler CEO Ola Källenius has hinted that the interim targets for Mercedes-Benz electric vehicles could be revised upwards. According to story which cites unnamed sources, Mercedes could offer only new cars with electric units as five or eight years earlier than 2039, the previous target to end production of diesel- and petrol-powered vehicles. – Feb., 19 via Electrive

Funding/IPOs

Lucid Motors to Go Public in Merger with Churchill Capital Corp IV – Lucid Motors and the Churchill Capital Corp IV (NYSE: CCIV) announced Monday, that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement. CCIV, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), and Lucid are combining at a transaction equity value of $11.75 billion.

The transaction values Lucid at an initial pro-forma equity value of approximately $24 billion at the PIPE offer price of $15.00 per share and will provide Lucid with approximately $4.4 billion in cash (assuming no existing CCIV shares are redeemed for cash at closing). – Feb. 22, via company press release

Electric truck maker Xos to go public via $2 billion SPAC merger – North Hollywood, California-based Xos, an electric commercial vehicle maker, on Monday agreed to go public through a SPAC merger NextGen Acquisition Corp, in a deal valuing the combined entity at $2 billion. The company rebranded itself from Thor in 2019, builds electric trucks designed to replace equivalent diesel vans. Its customers include package delivery United Parcel Service Inc and cash-handling firm Loomis.

The deal will provide Xos with $575 million in gross proceeds, including a $220 million private investment led by Janus Henderson Investors and a consortium of truck dealers led by Thompson Truck Centers. Reuters reported earlier this month that Xos was nearing a deal to go public with NextGen. The combined company will be listed on Nasdaq under the symbol “XOS” after the merger. – Feb. 22, via Reuters

Aptera Raises $4 Million and Nabs 7,000 Reservations: Aptera Motors announced it closed Series A funding round if more than $4 million. The company also said it received more than 7,000 reservations in just over two months totaling a $250 million. – Feb. 19, via Electrek

Batteries/Charging

CleanTechnica Survey of Apartment Owners and Property Managers – CleanTechnica surveyed apartment owners and property managers and found that the top two obstacles to installing EV charging stations were: 1) The hassle of getting them installed, and 2) That they don’t offer a clear return on investment (ROI).

Nearly half of respondents (45%) indicated that tenants are increasingly asking for EV charging access. Almost the same amount (43%) said they were interested in having EV charging stations on their properties because they noticed an increase in EVs on the roads where they live. – Feb. 18, via CleanTechnica

Getting the Rates Right for a Public EV Charging Build-Out – But this long-range payoff is threatened by the utility rates known as demand charges, which assess fees based on a customer’s peak electricity draw at any moment during a monthly billing cycle. For charging sites dominated by relatively rare, yet very power-intensive, bouts of fast charging, demand charges can add up to 90 percent of total electricity costs, leaving many sites deeply in the red. – Feb. 16, via GreenTech Media

Legislation and Incentives

Virginia to Adopt ZEV Standards and Targets – On February 19, the Virginia Senate voted to adopt California regulations that set stringent vehicle emissions standards and electric car sales targets. The bill allows the State Air Pollution Control Board to adopt both California’s low-emission vehicle standards and its zero-emission vehicle standards that set binding targets for electric vehicle sales as a proportion of all sales by manufacturers in the state. – Feb. 19, via Virginia Mercury

Long Road, Tough Choices Ahead for Biden Car-Charging Pledge – Biden has vowed to build 500,000 new charging stations across the nation by 2030, about 10 times what the U.S. has now. But the U.S. needs millions of charging stations to build out EV infrastructure, and California alone would need as many as one million to meet its 2030 goal of putting 5 million zero-emission vehicles on the road. Chief among the unanswered questions are how much the administration’s plan for new chargers is going to cost, who’s going to pay for it, and where they should go. – Feb. 22, via Bloomberg Law