China’s NIO (NIO) is considering buying Volkswagen’s Audi plant in Brussels. Volkswagen’s plant is at risk of being shut down, and NIO wants to take advantage as the market shifts to EVs.

NIO in talks to buy Volkswagen Brussels plant

Volkswagen may close its first plant in Germany ever. Its Audi Brussels factory is also at risk. The last time the company closed a facility was back in 1988 in Westmoreland, Pennsylvania.

However, VW is facing an overcapacity crisis amid sluggish EV sales and a slew of new competitively priced electric cars from China.

CEO Oliver Blume warned that Germany’s competitive advantage is at risk as the industry shifts to electric vehicles. Volkswagen has already canceled plans for a new EV facility and delayed key model launches as it falls further behind Chinese automakers.

According to a Belgian media report, China’s NIO is in talks to buy Volkswagen’s plant in Brussels.

The report from De Tijd claims NIO representatives recently visited the plant and are already working on a bid. NIO needs to submit its offer to VW by next Monday at the latest.

Volkswagen plans to stop building cars at the facility after the last Audi Q8 e-tron rolls off the production line next year. If the plant closes, the nearly 3,000 workers will lose their jobs.

NIO already sells vehicles in Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark. Although it doesn’t sell cars in Belgium yet, NIO plans to launch there soon.

Although NIO faces an additional 20.8% tariff on imports to the EU, the Chinese EV maker is committed to expanding in the region.

Electrek’s Take

NIO buying out Volkswagen’s Brussels plant would be symbolic of the market’s shift to EVs. European automakers, including VW, are facing stiff competition from China.

Even with tariffs, several Chinese EVs are expected to still be cheaper than their European rivals.

Although NIO is known for its “smart electric vehicles,” it’s launching new lower-cost models. Its new electric SUV, the Onvo L60, is widely viewed as a true Tesla Model Y Challenger. Starting at around $30,000 in China, NIO’s new electric SUV undercuts the Model Y by about $4,000 (30,000 yuan).

NIO plans to launch the competitively priced electric SUV globally later this year. Next year, the company will follow up with its new Firefly EV, which will launch in Europe for under $32,000 (30,000 Euro).

Meanwhile, Volkswagen’s struggles are not limited to Europe. The company is also facing a plant closure in China with its joint venture partner, SAIC.

Source: CnEVPost

Tesla’s stock (TSLA) is up this morning on delivery data from China showing a strong end-of-quarter performance, but is this enough to save its Q3?

Insurance registration data in China shows that Tesla delivered 15,600 vehicles in the country last week, down 3.7% from the prior week, which had a strong performance with 16,200 registrations.

This is a strong start for September, with 31,800 registrations. That only accounts for Tesla’s vehicles built at Gigafactory Shanghai and sold domestically—though that’s generally most of its Shanghai production at the end of quarters to limit vehicles in transit.

Tesla tends to end quarters strong with a push in deliveries over the last few weeks.

According to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), Tesla China delivered 86,697 electric vehicles made in China in August and just over 74,000 vehicles in July.

Tesla is on pace to deliver over 230,000 electric vehicles in and from China in Q3.

Is China going to save Tesla’s Q3?

Tesla introduced 0% financing in China this year in order to boost demand in its most important market and it is clearly working.

However, other markets are not doing as well.

According to registration data, Tesla’s deliveries in Europe are way down this year:

Tesla is down more than 70,000 vehicles in its biggest EU markets compared to last year. The difference is more significant by 10,000 units since we last checked in August.

Electrek’s Take

It looks like China is going to be able to compensate for some of Tesla’s troubles in the EU, but not all of it.

The difference maker in Q3 could end up being the US market, where Tesla has been having its own issues, but it recently introduced strong incentives to try to boost sales.

The new referral program basically results in a $1,000 discounts on all cars except Cybertruck. Speaking of Cybertruck, it’s not a high volume program, but the recent ramp-up in production does point to it contributing a few tens of thousands of units to Tesla’s total deliveries in Q3.

Finally, Tesla recently introduced new financing incentives in the US that are likely going to be impactful at the end of the quarter.

At this point, I think Tesla is likely going to beat deliveries from last quarter, 443,956 units, which would actually mean a return to year-over-year growth for Tesla since it delivered 435,000 units during the same period in 2023.

However, I believe that Tesla will be far short of the 585,000 vehicles it needs to be deliver in order to be on pace for its original goal of 2 million deliveries in 2024. It might even be short of the 485,000 vehicles it needs to be on pace so as not to be down year-over-year in deliveries for the whole year.

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.

Depending on where you live in the US, electrical outages can be anything from a rare occurrence to near certainty. While some only last a few minutes or hours, longer ones can end up spoiling everything in your fridge and lead to an uncomfortable day or two with no air-conditioning or fans. Backup by BioLite is a new home backup battery launched by electronics company BioLite that makes it easy to install your own redundancy before the next storm or power outage.

The solution provides up to a claimed 60 hours of backup and is meant to power a homeowner’s most important devices (like a refrigerator, fans, computers, etc.) instead of backing up the entire house.

The concept works like a modern take on a UPS, or uninterrupted power supply. To put it simply, it’s a big LiFePO₄ battery in a sleek-looking shell that charges itself from the grid in your home and then feeds that power back out to your most important devices when it senses that the power has gone out.

There are multiple versions of the product that offer different capacities. The 3 kWh Backup Complete is the full monty, and it includes both the main 1.5 kWh Core unit and a 1.5 kWh Extend panel to add even more energy storage. Alternatively, a 1.5 kWh Core unit can be run independently or connected to up to five more Extend panels for the largest energy storage capacity.

The system can output 1,800W continuously and surges up to 3,000W peak.

You can get a better idea of how it works in the overview video below.

One of the main advantages of the system isn’t just its lower cost, but also the ability to be installed by the homeowner instead of needing an electrician to wire it into the house. The device simply plugs into a wall outlet and runs independently of the house, meaning it doesn’t need to be tied into the home’s grid.

“Traditional home backup power typically costs upwards of $15,000 and can take months of coordination with contractors and electricians to install,” shares CEO and Co-Founder, Jonathan Cedar. He continues, “Backup by BioLite offers homeowners and renters alike a more affordable alternative that they can install themselves in under an hour and build resiliency back into their home.”

Compared to more expensive systems, the promotional pre-order prices for BioLite’s 1.5 kWh and 3 kWh systems start at US $1,299 and $1,999, respectively.

The backup system has now launched for pre-order on Kickstarter. Yep, Kickstarter.

Electrek’s Take

First, to address the Kickstarter-shaped elephant in the room. My regular readers will know that I rarely cover Kickstarters or other crowdfunding campaigns, and only make an exception under one of two cases. Either I’ve been able to test the product myself in advance, or it’s coming from a well-established company with a good standing record for delivering products. In this case, it’s the second. I’ve tested several products from BioLite before, and the company has a long reputation in the energy storage and electronics industry. This is also the company’s fifth Kickstarter campaign, with the last four all going quite well.

This isn’t some fly-by-night startup trying to raise the cash to make their oddball idea a reality; this is a company that knows how to build electronics and has been doing it for a while.

That being said, crowdfunding inherently always comes with risks (even when it’s being leveraged largely for marketing purposes), and there’s no guarantee these things will ever get delivered, so proceed accordingly.

Even so, I can absolutely see the need for a product like this. Whole-home backup systems are great, but most people don’t need everything in their home to be powered. In the case of a sudden storm or other outages that last for a day or two, just being able to prevent all the things in your fridge from spoiling is a nice benefit, as well as being able to charge up your phones or run some cooling fans. So I can definitely see the benefit of a simple, easy-to-install system like this.

Sure, it’s largely a modern repacking of a conventional UPS, but it’s a pretty slickly done repackaging that looks like it benefits from BioLite’s experience and brand reputation.