Mercedes eSprinter review, Aptera funding, Tesla California sales, EV crash course: Today’s Car News

Aptera says it has enough money to push ahead with production. Mercedes’ eSprinter previews passenger vans and more. Tesla tops the sales charts in California by a long shot. And is 90 minutes enough to school dealerships on EVs? This and more, here at Green Car Reports. 

In a first drive of the 2024 Mercedes-Benz eSprinter electric van, we saw how businesses and fleet managers are going to run out of excuses, as diesel’s living on borrowed time. And this quiet, super-efficient van leads the way to passenger vans, RVs, and the electric vanlife arriving in just a few more years. 

The efficiency-focused California startup Aptera claims it’s crowdfunded enough money to build its three-wheel solar EV. But is it enough to escape Elio’s long shadow, and a pattern of pushed-back timelines?

As a sales roundup released this past week by dealers in California pointed out, EV sales from franchised dealerships were way up 94% from 2022 to 2023. But the direct-sales champ Tesla still reigned in California, with the Model 3 and Model Y adding up to nearly one in eight vehicles sold in the state, electric or not. To mix it another way, nearly one in eight Teslas sold globally were delivered in California.

And the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) thinks it can turn car dealers into EV experts in 90 minutes. Could such a program be all dealers need to get pull out of the slow lane and belief that the Biden administration is moving too fast on EVs?

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