It's evening news briefly for Thursday 17th of April, everything you be in less than five minutes.

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The chairman and CEO of X-Peng, Heir Xiaoping, announcing plans to launch the MPV, the people carrier, the X-9, globally in the second half of 2025.

We get it in Europe later this year, 800-volt system, 100-kil-watt-hour pack.

It charges in, just check my notes here, 11.7 minutes at a 5C charge rate.

That's on the smaller 95-kil-watt-hour pack.

Wow, if you can even find a charger

quick enough. GM has overtaken Tesla in US battery manufacturing, not China, of course, but in the

US. GM has partnerships with LG and Samsung, the old Ultium stuff, don't call it that anymore,

and the new prismatic cells made with the Samsung

partnership, and that means they're now making more cells in America than Tesla, who get all the

credit. GM said they lowered the cost of their packs by $60 per kilowatt hour last year, another

30 this year, and more to come as they scale.

MG is entering the UK with the S5, or as they style it here in the press release, the MGS5 with no space sink, because if you call it the S5, I think Audi would have an issue with

that.

So the MGS5, as I'll call it today, starts at 28,000 pounds for the base model,

replacing the ZSEV here and the Marvel R in the European Union. MG plans for a European

manufacturing base as well. They say it won't be an existing factory, it'll be a new build,

and it'll be announced in summer, assembling the vehicles here,

hopefully getting around any Chinese tariffs.

Jeff Bezos is funding this new pickup truck, EV-Maker Slate, that want to make a $25,000

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