Welcome back to EV News Daily. Coming up today, the new BMW I3. Rivian expands the factory for

R2 and Hurt's still paying for a massive Tesla mistake. Plus, stay tuned because later in the show,

I'll tell you why CATL is moving from just batteries towards supplying vehicle platforms. Well, good morning,

good afternoon or good evening.

Wherever you are in the world, welcome to Evie News Daily, your trusted source of EV

information. It's Wednesday 13th of November. I'm Martin Lee, and I go through every

EV story so you don't have to. And welcome to a new podcast producer. It's you, John.

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and first, be like John by clicking on a link in the show notes. We'll start with Rivian expanding its factory for the new R2 SUV. Its new factory in, or its

expanded factory in Normal, Illinois, is going to support the production of its upcoming R2 model.

Chief Operations Officer Javier Varela confirmed that construction crews are now on site.

In a recent LinkedIn post, Varela said, and I quote, Rivian R2 is one step closer to coming to market.

We broke ground in normal to begin expanding the plant to build R2 in addition to our current

products. R2 is our new fully electric mid-sized SUV coming in 2026, with a range of more than

300 miles and a starting price of around $45,000 US, end

quote. With a groundbreaking for the expansion occurred on November 8th, following approval from

the town of normal. The plant currently covers 2.6 million square feet, and the new expansion

will add another 1.14 million square feet.

By moving on, Audi has launched the A3 All-Street plug-in hybrid following the A3 Sport back in

October. It has the 1.5-liter turbocharged petrol engine and the electric motor, operating in

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