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Volvo’s PR department has been drip-dropping its EX30 compact SUV imagery alongside the patent department and website design teams ahead of its June 7th reveal in Milan, Italy. Head below for the latest installment with some interesting interior shots…

As you would expect from the name, the EX30 takes many notable EX90 design elements, including front and rear pixel lighting, and puts them in a smaller package.

The EX30 is a 4-door hatchback but harkens back to the small 3-door C30 hatchbacks of 2006-2013. Interestingly, Volvo made a limited run, compliance C30 EV called the DRIVe from 2011-2013 that was sold to fleets in limited numbers. The specs on that one were a 24 kWh battery and a 93-mile range. The EX30 needs to more than double these numbers.

Volvo EX30 front

Volvo EX30 interior

Until today, we’d not seen much of the EX30 interior, but Volvo provided some much-needed relief ahead of the global reveal next week. Below, you can see a tall tablet interface that will, of course, run on the rapidly improving Android Automotive, including Google Assistant, but will also support wireless CarPlay. Also interesting: there is no front-of-driver display, which would put it in the same league as Tesla’s popular Model 3/Y lines and will likely keep prices down.

Finally, we see that the dashboard looks to be made of a spotted recyclable material contributing to its best carbon footprint offering to date.

Volvo EX30 Interior
EX30 design UX

Perhaps most interesting is the center console design, offering a neat way to provide a sizable basin for purses and laptop bags, along with phone- and cup-holding configurations. Not only does the slide-out drawer facilitate the front passenger’s items, but there is a back slide-out door, as well, for the rear passengers.

Volvo EX30 Interior

Premium sound at a lower cost

Volvo is smartly cutting costs and offering more room while still offering premium quality. Instead of door speakers and window switches, both have moved to the center. The glove box is moved below the center screen for easy access by both driver and passenger. This “broader principle of centralization” has many benefits.

The soundbar in the EX30, the first of its kind, is inspired by home audio design. It brings several speakers together into one soundbar and fills the entire cabin with premium sound. When you choose to combine it with the Harman Kardon high-end sound system, you can listen to your favorite music and podcasts in outstanding audio quality. The soundbar is a great instance of smart design, by clustering speakers together within one component and reducing the amount of wiring and material. At first you might not even notice it, located under the windshield and seamlessly integrated into the cockpit design. But with no need for speakers in the doors, we can give you a lot more storage space. In the same vein, we’ve moved the window switches to the center console, easy to reach for both driver and passenger.

In addition to the EX30 and EX90, Volvo plans to introduce its first all-electric minivan within a year.

Electrek’s take:

With the Chevy Bolt being discontinued and Fiat and Mini not yet offering decent range in their small EVs, the EX30 is going to be one of the only small long-range EVs on offer when it goes on sale. A lot of people, including myself, love small cars regardless of the wider trend towards bigger vehicles.

More interesting is that Volvo seems to be trying to get this vehicle’s price down where it could be a mass-market vehicle. Unfortunately, it will be built in China, meaning it won’t be eligible for federal tax credits in the US. I’d still expect this to start under $40,000, so I think leasing – where the $7500 credit is still applied – might be a popular option.

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Trump’s war on clean energy just killed $6B in red state projects

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Trump’s war on clean energy just killed B in red state projects

Thanks to Trump’s repeated executive order attacks on US clean energy policy, nearly $8 billion in investments and 16 new large-scale factories and other projects were cancelled, closed, or downsized in Q1 2025.

The $7.9 billion in investments withdrawn since January are more than three times the total investments cancelled over the previous 30 months, according to nonpartisan policy group E2’s latest Clean Economy Works monthly update. 

However, companies continue to invest in the US renewable sector. Businesses in March announced 10 projects worth more than $1.6 billion for new solar, EV, and grid and transmission equipment factories across six states. That includes Tesla’s plan to invest $200 million in a battery factory near Houston that’s expected to create at least 1,500 new jobs. Combined, the projects are expected to create at least 5,000 new permanent jobs if completed.

Michael Timberlake of E2 said, “Clean energy companies still want to invest in America, but uncertainty over Trump administration policies and the future of critical clean energy tax credits are taking a clear toll. If this self-inflicted and unnecessary market uncertainty continues, we’ll almost certainly see more projects paused, more construction halted, and more job opportunities disappear.”

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March’s 10 new projects bring the overall number of major clean energy projects tracked by E2 to 390 across 42 states and Puerto Rico. Companies have said they plan to invest more than $133 billion in these projects and hire 122,000 permanent workers.

Since Congress passed federal clean energy tax credits in August 2022, 34 clean energy projects have been cancelled, downsized, or shut down altogether, wiping out more than 15,000 jobs and scrapping $10 billion in planned investment, according to E2 and Atlas Public Policy.

However, in just the first three months of 2025, after Trump started rolling back clean energy policies, 13 projects were scrapped or scaled back, totaling more than $5 billion. That includes Bosch pulling the plug on its $200 million hydrogen fuel cell plant in South Carolina and Freyr Battery canceling its $2.5 billion battery factory in Georgia.

Republican-led districts have reaped the biggest rewards from Biden’s clean energy tax credits, but they’re also taking the biggest hits under Trump. So far, more than $6 billion in projects and over 10,000 jobs have been wiped out in GOP districts alone.

And the stakes are high. Through March, Republican districts have claimed 62% of all clean energy project announcements, 71% of the jobs, and a staggering 83% of the total investment.

A full map and list of announcements can be seen on E2’s website here. E2 says it will incorporate cancellation data in the coming weeks.

Read more: FREYR kills plans to build a $2.6 billion battery factory in Georgia


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Tesla delays new ‘affordable EV/stripped down Model Y’ in the US, report says

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Tesla delays new 'affordable EV/stripped down Model Y' in the US, report says

Tesla has reportedly delayed the launch of its new “affordable EV,” which is believed to be a stripped-down Model Y, in the United States.

Last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a pivotal decision that altered the automaker’s direction for the next few years.

The CEO canceled Tesla’s plan to build a cheaper new “$25,000 vehicle” on its next-generation “unboxed” vehicle platform to focus solely on the Robotaxi, utilizing the latest technology, and instead, Tesla plans to build more affordable EVs, though more expensive than previously announced, on its existing Model Y platform.

Musk has believed that Tesla is on the verge of solving self-driving technology for the last few years, and because of that, he believes that a $25,000 EV wouldn’t make sense, as self-driving ride-hailing fleets would take over the lower end of the car market.

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However, he has been consistently wrong about Tesla solving self-driving, which he first said would happen in 2019.

In the meantime, Tesla’s sales have been decreasing and the automaker had to throttle down production at all its manufacturing facilities.

That’s why, instead of building new, more affordable EVs on new production lines, Musk decided to greenlight new vehicles built on the same production lines as Model 3 and Model Y – increasing the utilization rate of its existing manufacturing lines.

Those vehicles have been described as “stripped-down Model Ys” with fewer features and cheaper materials, which Tesla said would launch in “the first half of 2025.”

Reuters is now reporting that Tesla is seeing a delay of “at least months” in launching the first new “lower-cost Model Y” in the US:

Tesla has promised affordable vehicles beginning in the first half of the year, offering a potential boost to flagging sales. Global production of the lower-cost Model Y, internally codenamed E41, is expected to begin in the United States, the sources said, but it would be at least months later than Tesla’s public plan, they added, offering a range of revised targets from the third quarter to early next year.

Along with the delay, the report also claims that Tesla aims to produce 250,000 units of the new model in the US by 2026. This would match Tesla’s currently reduced production capacity at Gigafactory Texas and Fremont factory.

The report follows other recent reports coming from China that also claimed Tesla’s new “affordable EVs” are “stripped-down Model Ys.”

The Chinese report references the new version of the Model 3 that Tesla launched in Mexico last year. It’s a regular Model 3, but Tesla removed some features, like the second-row screen, ambient lighting strip, and it uses fabric interior material rather than Tesla’s usual vegan leather.

The new Reuters report also said that Tesla planned to follow the stripped-down Model Y with a similar Model 3.

In China, the new vehicle was expected to come in the second half of 2025, and Tesla was waiting to see the impact of the updated Model Y, which launched earlier this year.

Electrek’s Take

These reports lend weight to what we have been saying for a year now: Tesla’s “more affordable EVs” will essentially be stripped-down versions of the Model Y and Model 3.

While they will enable Tesla to utilize its currently underutilized factories more efficiently, they will also cannibalize its existing Model 3 and Y lineup and significantly reduce its already dwindling gross margins.

I think Musk will sell the move as being good in the long term because it will allow Tesla to deploy more vehicles, which will later generate more revenue through the purchase of the “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) package.

However, that has been his argument for years, and it has yet to pan out as FSD still requires driver supervision and likely will for years to come, resulting in an extremely low take-rate for the $8,000 package.

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Podcast: how Elon killed Tesla Model 2, global EV sales surge, and Chinese EVs keep killing it

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Podcast: how Elon killed Tesla Model 2, global EV sales surge, and Chinese EVs keep killing it

In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss how Elon Musk killed Tesla Model 2, global EV sales surging, how Chinese EVs keep killing it, and more.

The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.

As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.

After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:

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We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.

Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:

Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET):

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