Dealers sold an estimated 78,895 new battery-electric vehicles last month, up 2.5% from July yet down 46.9% from August 2025, Cox Automotive noted.

  • EV giant Tesla locked in October 1 as the date of its latest Roadster vehicle unveiling, even as the U.S. auto regulator pushes it for answers on its wheel-less, pedal-less Cybercab.
  • EV startup Lucid and Europe’s Bolt said they will develop mostly autonomous vehicles on Lucid’s delayed midsize platform.
  • Rivian, meanwhile, is attempting to scale production of its more affordable R2 SUV.

U.S. electric-vehicle demand inched higher last month but remains far below last year’s subsidy-fueled peak, according to Cox Automotive’s August EV Market Monitor data released this week.

Dealers sold an estimated 78,895 new battery-electric vehicles, up 2.5% from July yet down 46.9% from August 2025, when shoppers rushed to claim the expiring $7,500 federal tax credit. EVs still accounted for just 5.7% of all new-vehicle sales, the data showed.

Despite the lower year-on-year sales, activity was high within the EV sector this week with new deals, launch dates, and regulatory worries.

Tesla: Roadster Date, Cybercab Scrutiny

Tesla has finally locked in a date for the unveiling of the next-generation Roadster: Thursday, October 1, in Waco, Texas. The company has sent digital invitations to reservation holders for an in-person event that would likely showcase the latest iteration of the sports car, touted to bring together rocket technology from SpaceX to enable never-before-seen acceleration.

The car itself is nearly nine years late. Tesla first rolled the prototype out of a Semi at a November 2017 event and promised 2020 production with a $200,000 base price. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has previously said that production would start 12 to 18 months after the unveil, likely in 2027 or 2028.

On the autonomous vehicle front, after Tesla began limited paid rides earlier this month in Austin in a two-seater with no steering wheel, pedals, or mirrors, a U.S. auto safety regulator issued a special order requiring answers by Sept. 30 on how the company self-certified the design against federal rules written for human drivers. The agency also inquired if the vehicle could be operated by a person with temporarily attached human controls.

Lucid: Robotaxi Pact, No Firm Order

Lucid and European ride-hail platform Bolt said they will develop mostly autonomous vehicles on Lucid’s delayed midsize platform. Bolt wants at least 25,000 autonomous Lucids across Europe. No investment, firm order, or launch date was disclosed.

Lucid is working through an operational reset that involves $1.4 billion in cash flow improvements for the year. The company laid off 18% of its U.S. workforce in June and pushed its more affordable midsize vehicle’s production timeline to 2027 as part of the efforts.

Rivian: R2 Ramp, Supplier Gate

EV startup Rivian Automotive, meanwhile, is attempting to ramp the production of its more affordable R2.

At Morgan Stanley’s Laguna Conference on Tuesday, CEO RJ Scaringe said its factory is not the bottleneck. “That isn’t actually what’s constraining our ramp-up,” he said. “Our ramp-up is gated by or throttled by the rate at which we ramp up our suppliers.” The plant is “out pretty far in front” of the supply base. “We can only ramp as fast as our slowest ramping supplier.”

The company is looking to add a second shift to the end of September at its plant in Illinois to scale production and meet its delivery guidance of 65,000-70,000 vehicles for the full year.

GM: Hybrid Gap, Falling Market Share

Hybrids reached about 19% of U.S. retail sales in August as fuel costs stayed high, Reuters reported earlier this week. GM’s U.S. share slipped to 16.8% in the first half from 17.6% a year earlier, the report noted.

The company has almost no hybrid lineup in the U.S. besides the Corvette hybrid and is not expected to field a broad one until late in the decade; dealers reportedly say shoppers are walking instead to Japanese automakers Toyota and Honda.

How Did Retail Traders React?

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around TSLA was 'extremely bearish' at the time of writing, while sentiment around RIVN was marginally better in the 'bearish' territory. Sentiment around LCID and GM was 'bullish.'

TSLA, RIVN, LCID, and GM closed 0.3%- 6.5% lower this week.  

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