Featured

Volvo is now building its EX30 electric car in Ghent, Belgium, in a strategic move to assemble key models closer to the markets where they sell best.

The small SUV was previously assembled solely in Zhangjiakou, China, before being shipped across the globe. 

However, Volvo decided in October 2023 that adding production capacity for the model in the European Union would help it to better meet demand in that critical region. The EX30 was Europe’s 13th best-selling EV during the first three months of 2025, ahead of cars such as the Audi Q4 E-tron, Cupra Born and Mercedes-Benz EQA.

The decision to prepare the Ghent plant for the EX30 was validated when the European Union last year imposed punitive tariffs on Chinese-built EVs, including the Volvo crossover.

Volvo said at the time that it would consider reallocating output of its cars so that Belgian-built cars were primarily delivered within the EU, circumventing the tariffs.

Conversely, deliveries of Chinese-built cars would ramp up in non-EU markets where the tariffs were not a concern, such as the UK.

“We'll start [EX30] production at our Ghent facility in Belgium in the first half of next year and then ramp up through the gears,” said former Volvo CEO Jim Rowan last year.

“In the meantime, we can supply that car to many other regions which are not yet affected [by tariffs]: a lot of countries in south-east Asia, and the UK is an example of that.”

Francesca Gamboni, chief manufacturing and supply chain officer for Volvo, has now said the EX30 is “crucial” for the brand’s position in Europe, adding that its production flexibility “contributes to our resilience”. 

Adding EX30 production to the Ghent plant came at a cost of €200 million (£171m), requiring a new assembly line, 600 new or refurbished robots and a new battery pack production line, among other changes.

The factory also builds the electric EC40 and EX40, as well as the XC40 and V60 hybrids. 

Volvo had previously planned to launch the EX30 in the US after 2025. However, it has yet to confirm whether this is still the case, in light of US president Donald Trump’s implementation of a blanket 25% tariff on all foreign-built cars.

Cracks are appearing in Elon Musk’s plan to maintain sky-high valuations for Tesla by pivoting to full autonomy. 

Musk has long promised his company would be able to update the majority of Teslas on the road to drive unsupervised, starting with robotaxi rides at the company’s home city in Austin, Texas, from June.

Musk confirmed the timeline on the company’s first-quarter earnings call on Tuesday 22 April and promised a quick roll-out of the technology for private cars. “I bet there will be millions of Teslas operating fully autonomously in the second half of next year,” Musk said. Drivers would be able to sleep in their car while it drives to its destination “by the end of this year,” he promised.

Musk’s bold statements and trademark confidence were deployed against possible fallout from a poor quarter in which automotive revenue sank 21% and the only factor stopping the company from dropping into the red were increased emissions credits paid to Tesla by other car makers.

However, questions from investors teased out more information from Musk and his lieutenants, revealing that the company’s plan to transform the Tesla fleet with a mere push of a software update is likely to remain a pipe dream.

For instance, Musk spoke about standard cars needing a “localised set of parameters for different regions and localities” to deal with, for example, snowy weather in the north-east of the US. 

In other words, far from being point-to-point self-driving, any upgrade would be to a very limited level-three autonomy, with cars taking control within restricted operational design domains (ODDs). This is a well-understood condition by which Mercedes and BMW released their level-three autonomous features for the S-Class and 7 Series respectively, which are limited for use on highways in Germany and California and then only at restricted speeds. 

As with BMW and Mercedes, a full geographical roll-out isn’t in the gift of Tesla but of law makers in whichever jurisdiction the company is targeting.

Tesla’s long-held dream is that it can activate full self-driving across almost its entire fleet, provided the chip is new enough to handle the extra computing load.

By relying on AI machine-learning and just cameras as sensors, Tesla can build cars relatively cheaply while still retaining the ability to one day transform them with a simple software push, if it can train its self-driving AI to deal with every eventuality.

However, Tesla executives admitted on the earnings call that in some areas, the cars aren’t equipped with the hardware to deal with full autonomy. For example, when the car needs to respond to blue-light situations, the director of autopilot software, Ashok Elluswamy, said that standard Teslas don’t have the required microphones to pick up the noise of sirens, something that is fitted to BMW and Mercedes level-three cars.

Crucially, however, the converted Model Y robotaxis (rather than the future Cybercab) planned for rides from June in Austin will have the audio input. The cars will also be overseen by remote operators, Elluswamy said, making them closer to the sensor-laden Waymo robotaxis derided by Musk on the same call. (“The issue with Waymo's cars is [that they] cost way more money,” he said).

With every additional upgrade needed for models on the road or coming down the line, Musk moves further and further from his dream of switching on a global robo fleet.

Colin Langan, autos analyst at Wells Fargo Securities, wanted to address Musk’s long-held aversion to lidar and other sensors that would offer redundancy to the camera-only set-up.

“A lot of autonomous people still have a lot of concerns about sun glare, fog and dust. Because my understanding [is] it kind of blinds the camera when you get glare,” he said. Musk replied that Tesla cameras don’t suffer from sun glare and similarly had no problems at night.

As Langan alluded, many in the business think Musk is never going to achieve safe full autonomy with just cameras and a smart AI – even those who would benefit from exactly that, such as ADAS specialist Mobileye.

“Mobileye is camera company. It's our DNA. But if you want to reach eyes-off [driving], cameras alone will not get you to this very, very high precision,” company CEO Amnon Shashua told Autocar earlier this year. “The way to achieve this is by redundancy, by having multiple systems perform the same function, starting with sensors.”

Musk referenced the fact that Tesla might need redundancy for autonomy but again said the company was working to avoid the need for it, rather than spend the extra money to have a back-up. “For example, if one of the computers goes down on the customer fleet, it would throw its hands up and ask you to take over, but we don't want that kind of situation,” he said.

Meanwhile, Teslas are circling Austin, Texas, to chase down the edge cases that would confuse a self-driving stack not properly trained on how to deal with even rare events. “We just have like a big list of all the issues, [and] we just burn it down,” he said.

But the extreme timeline and the glaring gaps in safety and regulatory issues make Musk’s latest timeline just as improbable as all the other missed deadlines.

For example, in 2019 Musk claimed Tesla would deploy a million robotaxis globally from 2020, earning the cars’ owners $30,000 a year in revenue as they remotely worked for them. In 2022 he promised volume production of the robotaxi, now known as Cybercab, by 2024. The Cybercab is currently still in early prototype phase.

But in 2022 he also made the statement that still rings true today: “Of any technology development I’ve ever been involved in, I’ve never really seen more false dawns as I’ve seen in full self-driving”. Moving past the brash predictions to drill down into the detail, it looks like the sky is still dark on Tesla’s own self-driving cycle.

New American EV manufacturer Slate, backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has revealed a back-to-basics compact pick-up truck set to cost the equivalent of just £20,000.

The secretive start-up had not made any public announcements about its debut model, called simply Truck, in the run-up to its unveiling, but is now taking reservations and plans to begin deliveries at the end of next year - with a targeted base price of $27,000 before local incentives.

Only confirmed for a US roll-out so far, the utilitarian two-seat pick-up is engineered and designed to keep costs down in a bid to make electric motoring affordable and more appealing in a market which continues to heavily favour combustion propulsion.

Its monolithic, composite-panelled silhouette is unadorned with chrome and unnecessary decorations, for example, while the windows are manually cranked and there's a smartphone mount in place of a central touchscreen, à la Citroën Ami. Speakers can be fitted as an option, though, and standard kit includes a USB port, central locking and cruise control.

The Truck is highly customisable, though, with a raft of colours, accessories and kits on offer. It can even be converted into a five-seat baby SUV or a fastback crossover using bolt-on conversion kits for the 1047-litre load bay, supplied by Slate.

Power is supplied by either a 52.7kWh or relatively large 84.3kWh battery under the floor, which are said to return ranges of either 150 or 240 miles and can each fast-charge from 20-100% in less than 30 minutes. 

Propulsion comes courtesy of a single-motor on the rear axle, giving 201bhp and 195lb ft for a 0-60mph time of 8.0secs and a top speed of 90mph.

Slate will build the Truck at a site in the Midwestern US, so it will not be subject to president Trump's new 25% import tariffs on foreign-made cars, but it has not named a location, nor said whether it plans to build the EV itself.

The company, which is based in Michigan, is bringing the Truck to production partly using funding from Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, which has a commercial vehicle supply deal in the US with Rivian, though it is unclear whether Amazon could strike a similar agreement with Slate.

The new Range Rover Electric has completed a second round of winter testing ahead of its launch.

Key aspects put to the test included the EV's new thermal management system: how well it could heat the cabin and maintain rapid-charging performance in extreme sub-zero temperatures.

The prototypes also faced high-angle inclines and declines on frozen surfaces, testing that their one-pedal driving modes (using the motors' regenerative effect to slow and stop the car while off the throttle) work across a range of terrains.

"Rigorous testing procedures in extreme and unpredictable conditions like those experienced in Arjeplog [Sweden] are crucial to Range Rover Electric's real-world reliability and resilience," said JLR product engineering chief Thomas Müller.

JLR has also confirmed that the Range Rover Electric uses a 117kWh battery pack designed and assembled in-house, comprising 344 prismatic cells and running at 800V.

The firm has yet to detail a range figure, but such a large capacity should comfortably yield more than 300 miles between charges.

The winter testing comes after prototypes were last year driven in the UAE in temperatures approaching 50deg C.

They were sent up Big Red, a 300ft sand dune in the heart of Sharjah’s Al Badayer desert, to test the EV’s new Intelligent Torque Management system, which replaces a conventional ABS-based traction control system.

This is claimed to improve traction control off road by diverting power to each electric motor to reduce torque reaction time from around 100 milliseconds to as little as one millisecond. JLR says, after five continuous attempts, none of the cars demonstrated any fall in performance. 

Müller said: “A hot climate is one of the most challenging for any battery-electric vehicle, because of the need to cool the cabin and optimise battery performance at the same time. 

“The additional challenge of driving on sand requires controlled low-speed torque, so our specially developed traction control and thermal management systems work in harmony to ensure power delivery is unaffected. 

“Our tests have shown that in this climate, repeatedly driving the equivalent of 100 metres uphill on fine sand, Range Rover Electric matches the performance of its ICE equivalents; in some instances, even surpassing them – thanks to the introduction of these new features.”

Like the cars pictured in the Arctic Circle, these Range Rover EV mules are  shown completely uncamouflaged – a decision made to "underline the build quality of the initial prototypes", according to JLR.

Painted all in black and without the contrasting matt trim elements that JLR has previously suggested will mark out the EV powertrain, the prototype looks all but identical to the ICE Range Rover that has been on sale since 2022.

JLR said this shows how the prototype's "modernist design language stays true to the Range Rover bloodline", suggesting that the Range Rover Electric – as it is officially named – will only be subtly differentiated from the straight-six, V8 and plug-in hybrid derivatives. 

JLR previously highlighted that this is the first car to use a battery and electric drive unit assembled in-house.

Although bosses have yet to give any performance details for the new Range Rover, it has been promised to have the same “go-anywhere” capability as the ICE version, with a pledge that it will offer towing, wading and all-terrain capability that will exceed any other luxury electric SUV – including the ability to wade through 850mm-deep water.

The hint that the Range Rover Electric will offer performance “comparable” to the existing V8 suggests a total output close to the 523bhp that model offers.

It's expected to adopt a dual-motor system, which will allow for greater four-wheel-drive ability and systems such as torque vectoring to boost its off-road potential. 

JLR said its test programme has been adapted to particularly examine the vehicle’s underfloor, battery durability and thermal derating. 

The Range Rover Electric will be built in Solihull alongside the existing mild-hybrid and PHEV versions. It will initially use batteries from a third-party supplier before eventually switching to packs produced in the new Somerset gigafactory that JLR parent firm Tata is planning.