It's evening news briefly for Friday 15th of September. I'll be back as usual at 5pm UK.

That's Midday Eastern with the full podcast. Patron supporters get them as soon as they're ready and ad free.

Be like them by clicking on a link in the show notes. I did mention I would update the VINFAST numbers.

I was a little bit critical of VINFAST yesterday and their 200 billion valuation after their recent stock market flow.

I said they sold 138 vehicles in the US.

I can confirm up to July it's now 170.

So there you go.

That's why they're worth that much to retail customers.

They've sold more vehicles, but to themselves.

Let's talk about some news from Volkswagen.

They are going to trim some of the

temporary contracts they had out at their German EV factory in Svikau. 3,000 employees worked there,

269 contracts approaching their expiration. But another 540 will be converted to permanent roles.

But VW and Audi are boosting their output there, even though Svichau is not at its capacity. They're also adding

ID3 production to their Vulsberg factory this autumn. In Zvikau, they make the ID345, the Audi

Q4, Etron and Sportback, the Kupra-Born as well, but like I say, still capacity there to expand

if they need to. The US saw a record 100,000

PureV registrations. This is July data coming into the show that I can tell you about. And what does

that mean? 100,000 is the first time that's been hit. That's a big psychological landmark,

7.2% of all new vehicle sales in the US, Pure EV. But if you do a rolling year to the end

of July this year and you knock off June from last year, then I think the United States hits

one million pure EVs annually, not a calendar year, but on a rolling 12 months. Now, if you include plug-in hybrids,

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