ev.news Daily: Jaguar Returns From Self-Imposed EV Exile, Tesla Unlocks Battery Capacity & Porsche Wants To Sell Fewer Cars To Make More Money | 07 Oct 2026

Martyn Lee (0:00)

Jaguar just returned from its self-imposed exile with a brand new EV. Tesla unlocks battery capacity, and Porsche wants to sell fewer cars, but make more money. And stay tuned, because later in the show, I'll tell you why, just as buyers have a choice of small EVs, the legacy car makers have got themselves a waiting list problem. Hello, my name is Martin Leigh. I've made over 3,000 daily podcasts about EVs since 2018, and you can listen to all of them in the archive for free. Visit ev.news.pod to find the podcast. In fact, there's more shows that make their way into audio form that don't make their way onto YouTube. So if you'd like to get all the new shows that I make in your favorite podcast app with just one click, go to ev.news.pod.

Jaguar disappeared to reinvent itself and has come back with a £130,000 EV for a luxury market that may no longer be there. Jaguar has revealed the Type 01, a 5.2-meter electric GT that will start at £130,000 in Britain, over 1,000 horsepower and 450 miles of WLTP range. It's effectively a test of whether Jaguar can survive by selling fewer, far fewer cars, but ones which are much more expensive. The Type 1 uses Jaguar's new aluminium Jaguar electric architecture rather than a shared EV platform, because Jaguar says nothing else can accommodate. It's long bonnet, it's low roof, and it's 23-inch wheels. Even the battery is a little bit unusual. Instead of a conventional flat skateboard pack, the cells have been hidden through the structure, so occupants can sit lower. They've packed them in where they can.

Jaguar says a normal underfloor pack would have raised the car by around 20 centimetres. So what are the specs then? Well, three motors, one front, two in the rear, shove it to 60 in 3.1 seconds. Those numbers vary slightly, I found, between US and UK reporting, but it's all there or thereabouts. The battery, 118 kilowatt hours, that's usable, by the way, supports either 400 volts or 800 volts charging.

Jag says it can charge at up to 350 kilowatts, with the US estimate, I found, a 10 to 80 number at 22 minutes. Jaguar says it's actually an 850 volt architecture, and they said you can add 200 miles of range in 13 minutes. Of course, that's a nice way of looking at it, because it's not only range per minute, it also takes into account efficiency or lack of it. 200 miles in 13 minutes is very, very decent. European range reported at 450 miles WLTP. Jaguar estimates 400 miles EPA, but that's not certified, and they said 320 miles real world at 75 miles an hour. The chassis, well, that's impressive, gets adaptive dampers, twin chamber air springs, four wheel steering, it's got all the toys. Jaguar says that gives this very large car a turning circle like a golf. UK pricing now confirmed from 130K, but you're going to equip it for a bit more, maybe 150, possibly 200 In the US, Jaguar indicated $130,000 starting price. Deliveries were confirmed, but a nice big window to give themself some leeway. The second half of next year, they said. For buyers, Jaguar is moving above, and it's moving well above the traditional executive market and asking customers to pay Bentley money for something deliberately dramatic and a lot less conventional. For Jaguar, JLR and ultimately Tata who owned them, the calculation is that higher margins can make a much smaller Jaguar a viable business. The MD, Rodan Glover, says that the required volume is in the tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands. Production starts here in the UK, in Solihull, in the Midlands. With electric drive units and battery packs made in Wolverhampton and body panels stamped in Hailwood, Jaguar's gamble is also a sizable bet on keeping high value EV production inside Great Britain. However, Aston Martin, they pushed back their EV plans to the early 2030s. Rolls-Royce is taking it slowly, and Porsche are rowing back their electrification promises.

Jaguar might be back from their wilderness years with a truly impressive car. Now they have to hope that the buyers they thought would be there haven't moved on.

Let's move on though. And Tesla is finally turning cars into batteries. Tesla's finally unlocked the battery in its two best-selling cars, but it won't let you replace your power wall with one. Tesla has turned its new Model 3s and Model Ys into whole home backup batteries, but only for owners already inside the power wall system. Power share home backup applies to cars ordered from now. We're actually going back to 1st of October this year. And we'll activate through an over-the-air update. During an outage, the car connects through the wall connector and power wall three. And you can choose how much battery energy the vehicle releases. Model 3 and Model Y were previously limited to just 2.4 kW vehicle-to-load power with a little ding-a-ling-a-dongle adapter. But new cars can actually provide 11.52 kW continuous at 240 volts AC. That's enough for whole home backup. And equal to Cybertruck's power share output. This is brilliant news. This is the Tesla that we know and love. This is innovation. This is brilliant for the customers. This is adding something to a car that you may have already bought. And it just gets better. Tesla says premium and performance versions can support the average home for two days. And standard versions, a little bit less. They made an assumption of 30 kWh of household use. I would always suggest that if you are in a power cut situation, you wouldn't be looking at typical use. You would be, depending on the time of year, limiting your AC and your heating or your cooling or your refrigeration, your entertainment, things like that. If you are in a power cut situation, maybe you had a really bad weather event, I think you could really cut your usage, don't you? So it could last a week by plugging in your car.