EV drivers in the Borough of Camden in London will soon see a major boost in sidewalk chargers, thanks to a new partnership between Camden Council and Scottish charge point company Trojan Energy.

The council awarded Trojan Energy a contract to install over 570 on-street Level 2 EV chargers by 2026. The project kicks off with an initial rollout of 70 chargers in July 2025, with the rest coming as suitable locations are identified. This expansion builds on a successful trial from 2022, which received positive responses from local EV owners.

Trojan’s 22 kW chargers have a clever design—they sit “flat and flush” with sidewalks, meaning no bulky units cluttering up the pavement. Residents without driveways can easily “plug and play” using personal adapters, connecting their EVs to points linked via underground cables to a nearby cabinet. The chargers are grouped in clusters, increasing availability and convenience for drivers. Trojan launched an app last month that enables drivers to find chargers, check availability, and check charging history.

The sidewalk EV chargers won’t just help individual EV owners in the London borough; it’ll also support car-sharing programs, helping Camden reduce unnecessary car ownership and encourage more people to walk, bike, or take transit. Funding for the project comes from the UK government’s On-street Residential Chargepoint Scheme (ORCS).

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Councillor Adam Harrison, cabinet member for Planning and a Sustainable Camden (pictured above left) said, “By promoting active travel such as walking and cycling and facilitating this shift to electric vehicles with convenient charging points, we hope to improve air quality, reduce emissions, and support environmental resilience across the borough.” 

Read more: New York awards $60M to Revel to install 267 DC fast chargers

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The Xpeng G6 all-electric SUV has received a raft of 81 updates for the 2025 model year – and chief among these is a new, “bulletproof,” ultra-fast 5C charging “A.I. battery” that can go from 10 to 80% charge in just twelve minutes.

Sized and priced to put the best-selling Tesla Model Y firmly in its crosshairs, the Xpeng G6 SUV has been substantially upgraded for 2025 with three trim levels starting at “just” 176,800 yuan ($27,620, as I type this). Meaning that, despite the improved range, ADAS offerings, and charging speed, the 2025 model’s starting price is nearly 11% lower than last year’s already popular model.

For that money, G6 buyers will get the Xpeng-developed Turing AI intelligent driving system – an advanced ADAS system powered by the company’s 40-core “Turing chip” processor that promises to deliver the power of three high-performance chips in one.

The Turing chip is the basis for Xpeng’s Canghai neural network, which the company claims will eventually support full-scale L4 autonomous driving with enhanced safety features that have 33x the bandwidth, and 12x faster camera image processing than its main competitors, creating a foundation for full-scenario AI-enabled driving experiences that probably won’t smash your car into a Wile E. Coyote-style mural.

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Turing AI launch

The newsworthy specs don’t stop there, however. The new 2025 Xpeng G6 also offers the company’s new “bulletproof” 5C AI batteries.

For those of you not in the know, the “5C” there refers to “five cycles,” and basically means that the battery can go from 10 to 80% full five times in an hour. 60 minutes in an hour, 12 minutes to go from 10-80%, that’s 1/5th of an hour, so it’s 5 cycles … or: 5C. A 6C battery would do the trick in 10 minutes, a 4C in 15, etc.

As for what makes the Xpeng AI batteries “bulletproof,” the company claims the battery is wrapped in a sort of armor that can withstand more than 1,000 degrees C of heat, up to 80 tons of collision force in a side-impact scenario, and more than 2000 joules of impact from the bottom.

2025 Xpeng G6 available models

• 625 Long-range Max Technology Edition: 176,800 yuan (~ $24,400)
• 625 Long-range Max Ultimate Edition: 186,800 yuan (~ $25,800)
• 725 Ultra-long-range Max Ultimate Edition: 198,800 yuan (~ $27,500)

The 625 models get 625 km of range on the CLTC (China Light-Duty Vehicle Test Cycle), which translates to about 275 miles of EPA range. The 725 model adds another 100 km (60 miles) of range. The AI batteries in all three models go from 3C to 5C charging speed and ship with the Turing AI self-driving system as standard equipment.

Other upgrades for 2025 include a 9-inch streaming rearview mirror, updates to the soft-touch rubber and plastic materials in the cabin, and Xpeng’s new “cloud-sense” seats that support heat, ventilation, and (up front) even massage.

Two new body colors have also been added to the G6′ pallette: Starry Purple and Cloud Beige (shown, below), bring the total of available colors to six.

Xpeng went to Weibo to announce that it took the redesigned 2025 G6 just seven minutes to log 5,000 firm orders, on its first day of availability.

Electrek’s Take

I don’t always agree with Ford CEO Chris Jim Farley, but he’s absolutely right about Chinese EVs setting the standard for range, performance, and technology. It seems like every new EV that emerges from China’s tech-forward car brands makes EVs from Ford and Tesla look the level-three generic offerings from whatever the automotive equivalent of Dollar Tree is.

The only problem with that analogy is that the American offerings often cost consumers twice as much. And, before you jump into the comments and write about government subsidies and federalized healthcare costs and other supposed Chinese advantages – remember that we could do those things, too, if we wanted.

What would our excuse be then?

SOURCE | IMAGES: Xpeng, via CarNewsChina; CNEVPost.

Tesla Autopilot drove into Wile E. Coyote-style fake road wall in the middle of the road in a camera versus lidar test.

While most companies developing self-driving technologies have been using a mix of sensors (cameras, radar, lidar, and ultrasonic), Tesla insists on only using cameras.

The automaker removed radars from its vehicle lineup and even deactivated radars already installed in existing vehicles.

The strategy has yet to pay off as Tesla’s systems are still stuck at level 2 driver assist systems.

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CEO Elon Musk claims that Tesla’s advantage is that once it solves autonomy, it will be able to scale faster than competitors because its vision plus neural net system is designed to work like a human driver and, therefore, will be able to adapt to any road.

Critics have pushed back against those claims, especially since Musk mentioned Tesla achieving “level 5 autonomy”, which means “in any conditions,” and cameras have limitations on that front that are fixed by lidar sensors.

A new video by engineering Youtuber Mark Rober has provided a very interesting demonstration of that very problem:

In the video, Rober puts a Tesla Model Y on Autopilot against a vehicle using a lidar system in a series of tests in different conditions.

The Tesla on Autopilot managed to stop for a kid mannequin in the middle of the road when statics, moving, and blinded by lights, but it couldn’t stop in fog or heavy rain:

It’s not surprising that the lidar, a laser-based system, is capable of detecting better in heavy fog than a camera system.

The heavy rain was a bit more surprising, but to be fair, the level of rain was quite spectacular.

The last scenario of a Wile E. Coyote-style wall with a fake road painted on it was obviously not realistic, but it serves to illustrate the issue with cameras versus radar or lidar sensors: they rely on the perception of potential obstacles rather than hard data about potential obstacles.

In simple words, the lidar sensors didn’t care what was painted on the wall, they only cared that it was a wall, while cameras can be tricked.

Electrek’s Take

I think it’s clear that no Tesla vehicle currently available will be capable of level 5 autonomy as Elon claimed.

Level 4 is also questionable.

I think you can accomplish a lot with cameras, but I think it’s undeniable that adding radars and lidars can make systems safer.

In DMs with us during Tesla’s transition to vision only, Elon even admitted that “very high-resolution radars would be better than pure vision”, but he claimed that “such a radar does not exist”:

“A very high-resolution radar would be better than pure vision, but such a radar does not exist.”

When we pointed one out to him, he didn’t respond. Also, while they use light rather than radio waves, lidars are basically high-resolution radars, but the problem is that Musk has taken such a strong stance against them for so long that now that they have improved immensely and reduced in prices, he still can’t admit that he was wrong and use them.