EV Canada Newsletter: Polestar 3, NextStar Inc and EV6 Owner review.

Weekly Recap Issue #21 - Tuesday, June 7th, 2022

Hello, thank you for joining me for this weeks EV Canada Newsletter. I’m working on a few things behind the scenes that will hopefully inform more potential EV adopters and keep those who have an EV up to date with the latest information about chargers, new technology, vehicle updates and everything in between.

Before we dive too deep, I wanted to give a shout out to the folks over at Potential Motors - who are developing advanced vehicle control software. The founders, Sam Poirier and Nick Dowling, are University of New Brunswick Alumni - like myself and wanted to share with you one of their recent posts about their development and testing:

Canada

David Suzuki is traveling across Canada from Vancouver to Toronto in an EV.See his message below:

Stellantis and LG Energy Solution announced NextStar Energy Inc. as the official name of its battery joint-venture company. 

Stellantis and LG Energy Solution have committed to invest more than $5 billion CAD to establish automotive battery operations in Windsor, Ontario. The partnership has received with support from the all levels of government. The manufacturing facility is targeted to have an annual production capacity in excess of 45 gigawatt hours (GWh) and will create approximately 2,500 new jobs in Windsor and the surrounding areas. Plant construction activities are expected to begin late 2022 with production operations planned to launch in early 2024.

Danies Lee has been appointed chief executive officer of NextStar Energy and will head the company as it becomes Canada’s first large-scale lithium-ion battery production plant.

Lee has held a many sales and marketing roles for the promotion of lithium-ion batteries at LG Chem since 2001. He was responsible for U.S. market sales and was based in San Jose, California, from 2015 to 2018. Most recently, he oversaw the sales and program management of key EV battery programs for the North American market. Lee will be moving to Windsor, Ontario, in the coming months.

“I am extremely humbled by this appointment and look forward to putting in place the senior leadership team of NextStar Energy who will help me achieve our vision of producing leading-edge lithium-ion battery cells and modules to meet a significant portion of Stellantis’ vehicle production requirements in North America,” said Lee, CEO NextStar Energy.

NextStar Energy will play an important role in the Stellantis Dare Forward 2030 strategic plan, which aims to have more than 50% BEV sales in North America by the end of the decade.

If you like this rundown/summary of what’s going on with EVs in Canada please share it with someone (or people) that you think might enjoy it as well!

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EV Around the World 🌏

Polestar 3 set to be unveiled in October 2022.

Swedish electric vehicle performance automaker Polestar has announced that the Polestar 3 electric-performance SUV will make its world premiere in October 2022. The company has recently released the first uncamouflaged look at the electric SUV.

Polestar to debut first electric performance SUV, Polestar 3, in October 2022

The Polestar 3 is the company's first SUV and marks the company’s entrance into a high margin and growth section of the automotive industry. Many companies are looking to gain traction in the SUV BEV market as this is the most popular category amongst consumers.

The launch of the Polestar 3 next year means that competition will increase among EV SUV manufacturers which should bring lower pricing to the consumer which will hopefully help with EV adoption.

Initially, the Polestar 3 will be offered with a dual-motor all-wheel drive powertrain and a large battery with a range target of 600 km. Customers will be able to order Polestar 3 in initial launch markets from the day of the world premiere in October.

"This is a major milestone for our company, one that boosts our growth trajectory and takes us into our next phase," said Polestar CEO, Thomas Ingenlath. 

The Polestar 3 will also be the first Polestar vehicle built in the U.S., with production set to take place in early 2023 at Volvo's factory in Charleston, South Carolina. All of the Polestar 3 vehicles built in South Carolina will be sold in the U.S., the company said. The electric SUV will also be built in China for the local market.

The Polestar 3 will also feature connectivity features based on Android Automotive OS, as well as high-end, safety-focused autonomous driving features, the company said. It will offer autonomous highway driving powered by a centralized NVIDIA DRIVE processor with integrated LiDAR from Polestar's partner Luminar. It will be one of the world's first EV's equipped with lidar during production to support autonomous driving functions. The Polestar 3 will also be a software-based vehicle capable of receiving regular over-the-air software updates.

Polestar plans to launch a new vehicle every year for the next three years, starting with Polestar 3, and aims to increase its presence to at least 30 global markets by the end of 2023. With the launch of the Polestar 3, Polestar kicks off their plans to grow its EV sales from approximately 29,000 EVs in 2021 to approximately 290,000 by the end of 2025.

Kia EV6: Honest Opinion After Several Thousand Miles Of Ownership

Cruise can finally start “charging” users for fully driverless robotaxis.

Self-driving company Cruise, which is backed by GM and Honda, has recently been granted a permit from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to charge for fully driverless rides. This is a major milestone for company which claims that it is “the first and only company to operate a commercial, driverless ride-hail service in a major U.S. city.” Cruise has been testing free driverless rides for the public in San Francisco since February as part as a pilot program, and now, it will be able to offer paid fares.

For this paid service, Cruise will be able to operate its 30 all-electric vehicles at night from 10PM to 6AM in “select streets” in San Francisco, and the vehicles won’t be able to go faster than 30 miles per hour. Cruise will also only be able to offer the rides if weather conditions don’t include “heavy rain, heavy fog, heavy smoke, hail, sleet, or snow,” per a CPUC press release.

Cruise’s driverless robotaxi service has been in the works for quite some time, with the company having the initial goal of launching in 2019. Cruis started testing their driverless cars back in 2020 in San Francisco.

Cruise isn’t the only company building fully driverless robotaxi services. Google spinoff Waymo, for example, is testing driverless rides in San Francisco and offers its Waymo One autonomous vehicle service in Arizona. And Argo AI, which is backed by Ford and Volkswagen, just announced that it’s testing fully driverless vehicles in Miami, Florida, and Austin, Texas. The driverless robotaxi service industry should be making it’s way into Canada sooner rather than later.

Would you consider taking a wireless robotaxi? Let me know in a comment!

Buick unveils electric concept Wildcat as the company begins their all-electric future.

QuickEV

EV Meme/Tweet of the Week

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