⚡Onvo L60 review, EVBox shuts down

Happy Monday. Welcome to Electric Avenue, the only email in your monday morning inbox that you’re looking forward to!

Here’s what we have for you today:

• 1 Video 🎥: Onvo L60 Review

• 3 Links 🔗

• Meme of the week 🤡

Not subscribed yet? Sign up here 👇🏼

Let's dive in!

1 Video 🎥: Onvo L60 Review

In our last edition, ⚡Cutting Through the Hype: The Realities of Charging Electric Trucks 🚚🎢 , we talked about the Onvo L60, a budget-friendly sub-brand of China’s NIO, with prices starting at 206,900 yuan ($26,307), which drops to 149,900 yuan ($21,208) with a battery subscription. The ONVO L60 SUV features a 900V battery system and the lowest drag coefficient (0.229) in its class, achieving 12.1 kWh per 100 km efficiency.

Now we’re getting the first video reviews of the car, which people say is directly aimed at Tesla’s Model Y in China. It seems like NIO accomplished an impressive feat here: Building a more efficient, cheaper EV than Tesla, that also comes with more premium interior materials and an impressive range of standard equipment at all trim levels.

AND: The Onvo vehicles even get access to NIO’s exclusive battery swapping network, really differentiating the Onvo ownership experience from other Chinese EV brands and even Tesla itself.

Check out the review below to dive deeper:

3 Links 🔗

• EV charging pioneer EVBox shuts down🔒: French utility Engie bought Dutch startup EV-Box back in 2017. Since then, the company lost more than 800m EUR through ongoing operations. During the EV SPAC craze of 2021 the company was set to go public, but the transaction never ended up materializing and was abandoned in 2023. Back in May we reported in ⚡EV Box for sale, Tesla gets OCPP2.0.1 certification that ENGIE was looking to get rid of EVBox, stating in it’s Q1 report that it is “actively examining all options that could lead to disengage”. Now it has become clear that this means a near-complete shutdown of the EVBox business unit, leading to job losses for most of its ~700 employees. Despite receiving two bids for EVBox, ENGIE found none satisfactory, only selling the Bordeaux factory which has been modernized and produced fast charging stations since 2019. (Link)

• Nissan goes AC Bidi🔁: Japanese automaker Nissan has been a pioneer in bi-directional charging, going back as far as 2014 when the Japanese DC charging standard ChadeMo was updated to support DC V2G. Now the company announced that it will launch what it calls “affordable V2G technology” in the UK in 2026. The affordability comes from the fact that this system will be based on AC V2G, where a simple and cheap AC wallbox charger is sufficient for bi-directional charging. The news mentions EDF Dreev as the backend provider and Enovates as the charging station OEM fo the UK-focused AC V2G offering, which will be certified to UK’s G99 grid codes. Nissan’s alliance partner Renault is launching AC V2G in France this year, as we reported in #V2Gnow - Bi-directional charging news roundup . Meanwhile in the USA, Nissan joined the Chargescape V1G/V2G joint venture initiated by Honda, BMW and Ford to faciliate grid services through EV charging. (Link to Nissan UK AC V2G announcement, Link to Nissan USA Chargescape announcement)

• Tesla teases wireless charging for autonomous fleet 🚗 : At its recent Robotaxi/Cybercab preview event, Tesla also teased a new way to charge the autonomous vehicles. The company confirmed that it is working on a wireless charging pad with an efficiency well beyond 90%. The company released the teaser video below which shows the system charging a Robotaxi at ~25kW charging power at 35% with 56 min remaining:

Most-clicked link last week: Was the CarNewsChina post about NIO’s new budget EV SUV model, the ONVO L60 (Link).

Meme of the Week 🤡

🤣

Reader Review of the Week

Selected ⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️ Freakin’ awesome on ⚡Cutting Through the Hype: The Realities of Charging Electric Trucks 🚚🎢 and wrote:

“Excellent summary of the realities of Truck charging.”

That's a wrap for this week! Let us know how you feel and leave some feedback (We read every single one of these 🙂 ):

Someone forwarded this to you? Subscribe now - it's free!

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. The Electric Avenue team may hold investments in or may otherwise be affiliated with the companies discussed.