Vietnamese EV manufacturer VinFast has launched a Certified Pre-Owned program to encourage the sale of used EVs in Canada.
As in the US and elsewhere, the used EV market is growing fast in Canada—EVs are now moving through the second-hand market faster than legacy vehicles. (Read John Voelcker’s take on the exploding used EV market in the latest print issue of Charged.)
The first wave of EVs bought or leased in Canada has now had a few years to work its way into the used market. VinFast delivered its first Canadian VF 8 vehicles in June 2023.
VinFast offers a 10-year/200,000 km vehicle warranty, along with a 10-year, unlimited-mileage warranty for the high-voltage battery. Under VinFast Canada’s new Certified Pre-Owned program, the unused portion of the original 10-year/200,000 km warranty transfers to the next owner. CPO vehicles also undergo a 105-point inspection, including battery-health checks, and come with a Carfax history report and 24/7 roadside assistance.
Microchip Technology has expanded its 10BASE-T1S single-pair Ethernet portfolio with two physical medium dependent (PMD) transceivers, the LAN8679 and LAN8680, and the LAN8660X/1X/2X family of endpoints with integrated transceivers. The devices are designed for zonal vehicle architectures, as well as industrial automation, robotics and aerospace applications.
The LAN8679 uses the standardized OPEN Alliance 3-Pin (OA3P) interface and comes in an 8-pin VDFN package, which measures 3 × 3 mm. The LAN8680 adds system basis chip (SBC) functions: power management, wake/sleep control and watchdog supervision. Low-dropout regulators support internal power and two switchable power supply outputs, monitoring of all supplies and an ultra-low power sleep mode, in a 16-pin, 3 × 4.5 mm VDFN package.
Microchip says the devices are designed to meet AEC-Q100 and ISO 26262 functional safety standards. All three offer a -40° C to 125° C temperature range.
The LAN8660X/1X/2X endpoints integrate a PMD transceiver into a single-chip Remote Control Protocol (RCP) device, so edge nodes for control systems, lighting and audio don’t need an external PHY. The family has up to four serial communication interfaces for sensors and actuators and stores its configuration in on-chip non-volatile memory. Configuration, control and diagnostics are managed over the network. Microchip describes the design as a software-less architecture that eliminates the need for additional software programming.
The LAN8660X control endpoint supports time synchronization over generalized Precision Time Protocol (gPTP) and comes in a 32-pin, 5 × 5 mm TQFN package with wettable flanks.
In a 10BASE-T1S multidrop topology, multiple nodes share a single bus line, typically eight or more, according to Microchip. The company says that reduces wiring weight and system cost and eliminates the need for gateways, making it easier to connect sensors and actuators directly to the network edge.
The same physical layer is specified for charging communication in the Megawatt Charging System (MCS), where chargebyte’s CCL MCS charge controller uses it in place of power line communication.
The LAN8679, LAN8680 and LAN8660X/1X/2X are available in limited sampling.
OMV provides public EV charging in several European markets, including Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania.
The company recently deployed a SICHARGE FLEX charging system from Siemens eMobility at its charging station in Kufstein, Austria. OMV is a pilot customer of the new system, which Siemens unveiled in October 2025.
SICHARGE FLEX is a distributed charging system designed for depots and public charging. With a power output ranging from 480 kW to 1.68 MW, the system is suitable for charging both passenger EVs and heavy-duty electric vehicles.
The Kufstein location was chosen due to its strategic importance on the busy Brenner Route, a major transportation corridor between Germany and Italy. The Kufstein station is specifically tailored to the needs of truck drivers. It offers amenities such as showers, restaurants and washing machines.
The new SICHARGE FLEX system in Kufstein currently offers four charge points for passenger cars and two charge points for trucks, each with a capacity of up to 400 kW. In the next phase, four additional MCS charge points for trucks will be added, with power outputs ranging from 600 kW to 1,200 kW. A dynamic power distribution system allocates available charging power among the connected vehicles as needed.
“The electrification of freight transport is a key pillar of a sustainable transportation system,” said Markus Mildner, CEO of Siemens eMobility. “SICHARGE FLEX is a scalable solution that can be precisely configured for a variety of use cases, from logistics depots to public charging facilities for cars and trucks.”
“Heavy-duty electric vehicles require powerful charging options along major transportation routes. Kufstein’s location on the Brenner corridor makes it an ideal site,” said Peter Vysny, VP of International Operations & eMobility at OMV.
Energy storage company EnerVenue has started production of its Aqueous Metal Cell (AMC), a water-based nickel-hydrogen battery, at its Wujin site in Changzhou, China. The company says the line is the first high-volume AMC line built anywhere. Ground was broken in April, and the first conforming cell came off the line in late September.
Phase 1 is rated at 250 MWh of annual capacity, and EnerVenue plans to raise that to 1 GWh in 2027, and to multi-gigawatt-hour scale by 2028. The line is set to ramp to full rate through November, and at full automation it is designed to produce about 300 fourth-generation cells a day. The plant covers around 20,000 square meters, and the building has provision for a second phase of the same size.
No other company builds an AMC, EnerVenue says, so it designed and built every machine on the line itself. Automated guided vehicles move cells between stations, a stacking machine assembles the electrode stack under a vision system that learns from what it sees, and each cell is wound in fiberglass under tension controlled from the inside out. Every cell passes 41 quality checks across 11 test and measure stations covering weld integrity, leak tightness and performance.
The AMC is built on nickel-hydrogen chemistry, which powered the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station for decades. EnerVenue says it re-engineered the chemistry with low-cost materials and designed the cell for 30,000 cycles, up to three a day for 30 years, without scheduled augmentation. The cell uses no lithium or rare earths.
The electrolyte is water-based and non-flammable, and the cell carries no risk of fire from thermal runaway, according to EnerVenue. “While thermal runaway is generally defined as a self-accelerating sequence of exothermic reactions, the AMC chemistry does not produce the same progression of events that leads to ignition, fire, explosion, or propagation to adjacent cells,” said Majid Keshavarz, EnerVenue’s Chief Technology Officer.
The line supplies cells for four products. The 30 kWh Energy Core is for UPS at telecom and other distributed sites, and the 108 kWh Energy Cube is for in-building and data center UPS. The 150 kWh Energy Rack is for commercial, industrial and grid-connected duty, and the containerized Energy Prism ranges from 600 kWh to 1 MWh.
EnerVenue announced its first signed multi-MWh commercial order on September 23: 26 Energy Prism containers totaling 11 MWh for an oilfield company in northern China, pairing on-site generation with storage. The first containers are scheduled to ship in December.
The first commissioned deployment of the fourth-generation AMC has been operating with Towngas at Jintan in Changzhou since November 2025, integrating on-site renewable generation with electric bus charging. Cells have also shipped to customers in the US, Belgium and Saudi Arabia, and EnerVenue’s customers include PowerSecure in the US, Radiance Energy in Canada and Western Australian utility Horizon Power.
The Changzhou line is funded by the $300 million Series B extension led by Full Vision Capital that EnerVenue announced in March 2026.
“Anyone can make one good vessel. The job is making the ten-thousandth one exactly the same,” said TJ Hua, EnerVenue’s Head of Production.
EV charger manufacturer Wallbox has partnered with Enode, provider of an “energy orchestration platform,” to enable Wallbox chargers to connect with third-party apps and services powered by Enode in Europe.
Through the integration, Enode connects with Wallbox’s API, enabling compatible energy apps and services to connect with Wallbox chargers. Wallbox users will be able to link their chargers with energy platforms, providing access to features such as smart charging, tariff optimization and home energy management.
“At Wallbox, we believe the future of EV charging is intelligent, connected and integrated into the broader energy ecosystem,” said Eduard Castañeda, Chief Product & Technology Officer at Wallbox. “Our partnership with Enode makes it easier for users to connect their Wallbox charger with the apps and services they already use, helping them charge more efficiently and take greater control of their energy use.”
UK-based EV battery repair and remanufacturing specialist Autocraft Solutions Group has won the Green Award at the Automechanika Frankfurt Innovation Awards 2026 for its REVIVE workshops, which diagnose, repair and remanufacture failed EV battery packs. The Green Award is a newly created category, and an international panel of judges chose the winner from 185 entries.
Autocraft’s workshops in Grantham, UK and Arnhem, the Netherlands repair between 300 and 400 battery packs a month for OEM customers. The company wants to expand into more European countries, including Germany, Spain and Italy, where it expects OEM demand for battery repair capacity to be concentrated.
Autocraft says failed packs have typically been replaced outright and very often sent for recycling, regardless of the fault, and that its commercial repair data shows most failures are localized at cell or module level. Replacing only the affected components can restore a pack to more than 90% of its original performance, according to the company.
The REVIVE service covers triage and workshop remanufacture as well as vehicle collection and return. Diagnosis runs on the company’s OptEVizer testing platform, which goes beyond the BMS and actively stresses the battery to find faults at cell level. The results are analyzed against an OptEVizer digital twin built from thousands of real-world test cycles and millions of individual data points, which Autocraft says yields a true, independent state of health.
Figures from the RECOVAS consortium, a UK government-backed collaboration of vehicle manufacturers, recyclers and academic partners, show that repairing an 82.5 kWh pack rather than replacing it avoids around 12 metric tons of CO₂.
“As the EV parc expands, so too will the number of battery failures, especially as packs age and degrade over time. Yet most batteries can be restored to optimal health, making repair the only logical way forward,” said Mike Hague-Morgan, Executive Director and Co-Owner of Autocraft Solutions Group.
“The next challenge is design,” said Hague-Morgan. “Manufacturers and legislators must work together to ensure future battery designs allow for effective repair, rather than making repair more difficult through increasingly complex architectures. If we do not act now, we risk locking in a throwaway model at exactly the point the volume is about to arrive.”
When we spoke with John Harris, the cofounder and CEO of electric truckmaker Harbinger, back in January, we were impressed with his company’s tightly focused business model and cost-saving supply chain strategy. (Read the complete in-depth interview here.)
Now the Harbinger team’s hard work has borne fruit, in the shape of a $300-million order from FedEx for 2,000 electric trucks. This is one of the largest binding orders ever placed for electric medium- or heavy-duty trucks to date, and considered together with recent news from Tesla and Workhorse, it’s a harbinger (see what we did there?) of the end of the Age of Pilots, and the dawn of an era of large-scale electric truck deployments.
The order includes a mix of models from Harbinger’s all-electric vehicle lineup. The company aims to deliver the EVs by the end of 2027. FedEx will deploy them as one-for-one replacements for legacy vehicles in its pickup and delivery operations in the US and Canada. Harbinger’s Canadian dealer, Kaizen Automotive Group, will support the Canadian portion of the deployment.
Harbinger and FedEx have been working together for some time. The delivery giant was a co-leading investor in Harbinger’s $160-million Series C equity raise, and deployed 53 Harbinger trucks, in 2025.
“FedEx is demonstrating that the business case for incorporating electric vehicles into real-world fleet operations at scale makes sense,” said John Harris. “Our previous work together gave FedEx firsthand experience with the performance and economic advantages Harbinger vehicles can deliver.”
“Electrifying a fleet at this scale requires vehicles that can perform the work our robust operations demand while also delivering meaningful economic benefits,” said Paul Melander, Senior VP of Safety and Transportation at FedEx, and a member of Harbinger’s Board of Directors. “Expanding our deployment of Harbinger vehicles gives us an opportunity to continue making progress toward our fleet electrification goals while reducing fuel and operating costs.”
Harbinger estimates that each of its electric trucks will reduce fuel costs by an average of $20,000 annually, compared with the conventional diesel vehicle it replaces. Harbinger’s vehicles are designed and engineered for a service life of 20 years, to match the typical life of class 5 and 6 medium-duty trucks.
In a post announcing the sale, John Harris calculated FedEx’s annual fuel savings in California at around $26,000 per truck.
“This order represents the results of years of methodical investment in electrification at Harbinger, in production capacity, in service network buildout, in supply chain, and more,” said Harris. “It also represents an incredible step forward on electrification by FedEx, with huge upside in fuel cost savings, energy independence and decarbonization. Amazing work by all of my team members at Harbinger to make this possible.”
