Will GM's Tesla FSD competitor, Cruise, survive? | Tesla Motors Club Podcast #54
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Hey there, welcome to another Tesla Motors Club podcast. My name is Lewis. I'm Doug. And I'm Mike. On today's episode, we're going to do a mini recap of our previous episode where we interviewed Dan O'Dowd, cover a couple of the things that we said there. We're going to talk about GM Cruze in the news once again, lots of drama. And then of course, everyone's favorite Cybertruck right around the corner, new leaks, new specs, all kinds of stuff. All that and more on episode 54, which starts now.

I'd like to say I did that rhyme on purpose, but I didn't. I was going to say, I was impressed. It was so smooth, and I was like, oh, that rhymes. Oh, Lewis has bars. Okay.

Alrighty. So, gentlemen, we are back. It's been a few weeks. How's everyone doing? Doing good? Prepping for the holidays. Prepping for the holidays. Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday. I'm having pre-holiday holidays. A lot of the family is traveling around Thanksgiving this year, and we had kind of a pre-Thanksgiving yesterday, which was fun. Nice. I'm feeling kind of sluggish and full of pie, so...

I'm super jealous because I love all that Thanksgiving food and you're getting to have it more than once. So, you know, I have a firm rule with my wife that I don't like to travel to other people's places on Thanksgiving because I'm always disappointed with either the food isn't good or the food's good, but I don't have any more of it. So I can't keep eating it. That's a disappointment. Yeah. So I have a firm like I prefer to do it at home. So I'm looking forward to I'm going to have some folks over. Yeah. So let's jump into this fun episode.

Drama. Our last episode where we interviewed Dan O'Dowd. That was an experience. Yeah, it was interesting. We've had some varied feedback. Some of it positive of just like, okay, that was interesting. And some were like, why are you giving this guy a platform kind of stuff, which was to be expected.

The guy's been vocal and I kind of just wanted to understand him a bit more. And I thought it was all right. The conversation at least was civil. My main surprise was I felt like he should know stuff better than he did. For example, being such a heavy critic about FSD, he seemed to think that the Teslas are drive by wire, that the brake is not mechanical anymore, that the steering wheel is just like a PS3 controller or something.

And then when I pressed him on it, because I pointed that out, okay, that's not the case. He seemed to think that's how most everyone else is doing it now. And that definitely isn't true. I don't even know if it's allowed by NHTSA or whatever driving safety authority there is. I feel like it was like a misunderstanding due to the fact that he works in aerospace primarily, right? And in aerospace, it's been true for years, for decades. Yeah, by necessity. But that's not how... Right, exactly. By necessity, because it has to with the computer. A human can't physically control it.

But with cars, it's definitely not true. It would be a safety issue, right? So which is a big part of why it's not true. So maybe he, like Elon, is living in the future. This future that doesn't yet exist where all cars are drive-by-wire. And there has been talk about Tesla eventually being drive-by-wire, but that just isn't the case now. And that's not the case anywhere else, as far as I know, in industry today.

where there's a vehicle that someone can actually drive on the road. If the power went out, if the engine stopped, you may lose your power steering, but you can still steer. You might have the strong arm. You may lose your power brakes, but you can still brake if you're really standing on it. So I don't quite get where he got that. And you would think...

that if you're going to be a heavy critic and you don't need to be an expert to know or have that basic sort of understanding. He's more of a CS guy, but even CS guys that aren't physics guys have that sort of knowledge, I would think. Well, there were a few cars that were announced to offer steer-by-wire, for example. The Canoo, the Lexus RZ 450e,

But there's only a half a dozen or so that we're going to offer it. I'm not even sure if they actually carried through with those plans or not. Like you said, it's a safety thing. I mean, you have to have fully redundant systems. And you mentioned the canoe. Yeah. I don't know if I'm saying that right. That's a weird little EV. It looks like a bus. It's like some big sort of people mover. And I thought that was by design supposed to be a self-driving sort of thing.

so that's the kind of thing you would expect to to eventually be driving or maybe not even have a story i mean technically cruise vehicles are drive-by-wire right they have the people out in the in the cloud that can remote in and control them but so so level four vehicles you know kind are sort of right so way most vehicles again it depends how you're defining it that the point he was making was that

If the computer decides to drive you off the road, there's nothing you can do. And the truth is that you're strong enough to overpower whatever motors are turning the steering wheel. And you, by turning the steering wheel, have ultimate command over the direction of the wheels because there's an actual physical connection. Obviously, if no one's actually there to turn the steering wheel, then that's a different situation altogether. Different topic. Yeah, that's fair. Like you said, he's living in the future.

like he's i mean those are problems that will come up they're just not here today but yes i agree with you i would hope that he would know better uh but you know he's a billionaire he's pretty busy he's got other things going on but you would think he would do research or have somebody else do the research for him to keep him informed if he's going to make his

like attack ads on Tesla and raise alarms on things and stuff. Yeah. And that seemed to be a bit of a general theme. He would have a claim or at least it seemed like a previous version of the software. And all I can do is defer to his team in terms of like, well, they did this and this is what happened sort of thing, as opposed to a little more personal experience.

The other thing, which was funny with the timing, was that he talked about Cruise and we asked him, what do you think of these other systems since he spent so much time criticizing Tesla, which probably gives them the most bang for the buck in terms of getting personal attention. True. Since Tesla is, you know... It's a big target. Yeah. So, you know, he talked about Cruise and he said he had tried it or... It wasn't clear to me that he had tried it or his team had tried it. Well, all right. You're right. The way I was...

I thought he implied he tried it. That's how I remember it. Yeah. He went up to the Bay area and he actually tried it. That's what I remember. So either, but either way he did it or his team did it and they sang his praises, right? They were talking about how wonderful it was. Yeah. It worked really well. And that was days before they lost their license. Yeah.

Yeah. The timing was almost perfect. That was crazy timing. Actually. So we did that interview on a Monday, didn't we? Right. Yes. And that the next day, the very next day was a Tuesday. And I flew to the West Coast. And part of what I wanted to do is I'll be back in the Bay Area. Let me go up to San Francisco and try these out myself. And while I'm on the plane, I'm listening to

the i know tech podcast whatever and they tell me about how cruise is basically having to stop operations in california i'm like what this is what terrible timing so yeah bad timing for him too in terms of being positive about cruise and tldr cruise is basically stopping operations everywhere right now is that what's going on

So yeah, it's interesting situation. So it seems basically crews lost their license to operate in California or at least it was suspended. So they're not allowed to do any self-driving in California anymore. And after this happened, they did do some layoffs and basically laid off a bunch of staff that were around their self-driving operations.

And there's been statements now they have one primary investor who basically said they're not putting any more money into the company. So the rumor is they have about nine months of runway left, which is in part probably why they laid off folks. They're trying to end the runway as much as they can. For those that don't work in tech or in companies, that just means how long before they run out of money and then go bankrupt. Right.

they're basically don't have new money coming in they're not allowed to operate in california while the investigation happens which is their primary area of operation they laid off a bunch of people so if they don't turn this around they may not be around anymore so i i read they they got their license pulled in california but they paused in the other markets now it sounds like they're still licensed for other markets

Right. Yeah. So in theory, they could turn it around. They could restart and get a little revenue going. Right. Yeah. They had to do a recall of their software, right? Because of the incident, right? The original incident was the car dragged somebody, right? Like it didn't realize that somebody was under the car and dragged someone, which is horrible, right? So because of that, that's why the investigation happened and all that stuff. Their license was pulled and they can't afford...

another incident. So because of this problem that they know about, they paused operation everywhere. Well, even though the license is still technically intact. I think part of the issue though, was that on the first conversations about this incident,

they submitted data to whichever regulatory body and their video basically stopped. Like this person got hit by another car and then the cruise vehicle hit that person and the video stopped there. And what wasn't reported was that, oh, by the way, then the car tried to do its normal thing of pulling over after getting into an accident. And as it's pulling over, it's actually dragging somebody underneath the car. And so that NHTSA,

or whoever, maybe it's simply California DMV, wasn't given that information, that part was withheld. And so that was a big deal and that was embarrassing, right? And also you have to wonder, okay, did you guys admit this on purpose? So that was part of the main trouble is that that wasn't initially reported. So going back to the runway that you brought up, Lewis, which is a very interesting piece of it. So you got a company that's in distress, they're shut down in one of their major markets,

They're trying to figure out what to do in the remaining markets. Would this be an opportunity for someone to be rather mercenary like Waymo and come in and basically gather up the assets at a bargain basement price?

In my perspective, Waymo is already further ahead. I don't think Waymo benefits from doing anything. I mean, they benefit from Cruise going down because it's their primary competitor, but they don't actually benefit from Cruise's technology. They already, in my mind, are further ahead in their technology development. It's possible another company could swoop in, like somebody else could come in and buy.

Cruz's tech and then Waymo would still have a competitor. I don't see someone like Tesla doing it, right? I would say Tesla is not really a competitor. They're almost a competitor. So really in my mind, it's like Waymo and Cruz. If Cruz goes away, someone else could come in. They also could get another investor, right? Their primary investor right now said, I'm not giving you any more money, but somebody else might come in. Right. And give them a cash infusion.

To be fair, they're not out yet, right? They have a plan. They publicly announced they're planning to hire a chief safety officer, which is kind of like, well, I would have hoped you already had a fairly senior person, an executive level, maybe not a C-level. That was in charge of safety, but, you know, maybe not. They recalled their software voluntarily. They're investigating ways to resolve it.

They can turn their systems back on in other markets like Austin, for example, where I'm at. They do technically have the license to operate here. But yeah, California might take a while. It might take some months or whatever of them proving to the regulatory body that. There's a perfect opportunity for Dan to step in and show us practical application of everything he's talked about. Just to come back to the point I was making, bringing Cruz up, I was like, what terrible timing.

In terms of Dan saying, okay. Terrible, yes, but opportunities. Cruz was doing a good job and he's a big fan of it. And it did everything it said it did on the 10 and everything worked out for him. But with a day of basically making those statements, Cruz has issues. And so I would assume that Dan would, at least he would approve of

of what they've done, which is to pause and try to fix things. Self-reflect, try to figure out the tech and fix the problem. But is that what's really happening or are they just taking their lumps? Because they knew about this problem, right?

they're not stopping when the problem happened they're stopping after the extent of how bad the problem was came out so i don't think that reflects what i mean that's that's typical corporate though right that's i hate to say it but that's how most corporations operate even if they know of something horrible happening they rarely publicize it themselves they maybe will change or start working on fixing it so i would very much believe that when this incident happened

They probably already had engineers or folks working on a solution, but the problem is they didn't admit to it and it got exposed and whatever. The other problem is, as all of us Tesla folks know, when you need to make a fix or a change or an improvement in something in these types of systems and these AI ML-based systems, it's not fast. Like they may have an idea of how they want to solve it.

When it comes to a cruise car, it might be more hardware, right? It might be, oh, we need additional sensors, which they got to go and retrofit all the fleet. Or it might be, oh, we got to train some additional models or we got to put some other things. And then we got to test all of that. We need to gather more data. Like it could be months and months of time before you're seeing any kind of resolution. This is not something you slap together in eight hours. Yeah.

It's not a webpage, right? It's not a website, right? It's a lot harder to fix. So to give them the benefit of the doubt, I will say they were probably working on it. But yes, it doesn't look good. They didn't admit it. I don't blame California for pulling their license. I probably would have done the same thing. Because I'm a fan of self-driving technology, I don't like to see this happen to a company. I don't want them to go out of business, even though

I'm not personally a fan of their company. Like I don't care for GM vehicles. I don't care about hers being robo taxi, whatever. Like sure. I'm a tech nerd. I'm a bigger fan of Google. So I'm a bigger fan of Waymo. But that being said, I still don't want them to fail. So hopefully they will pull through.

But, you know, we'll see. Layoffs right after this happening is not a good sign. And their investor coming out saying, I'm not giving them more money, not a good sign. So there's a lot of scary stuff pointed their way. Well, speaking of GM, GM is an investor in the company. I mean, between the vehicles and everything. I wonder if GM backing away from the EV market the way they've talked about in the last month will have anything to do with this effort. If they'll kind of look at this effort and say, well, maybe not now.

Yeah, that's fair. It is a little concerning when I look at all the car industries and I'm curious, Doug, what you think about this, but a lot of them recently have the traditional automakers seem to be pulling back from EVs, right? There's a lot of issues around auto workers and just market interest and all this other stuff going on. Do you think like this is going to continue? Do you think that there's going to be a bit of a pullback from the EV market?

Well, there are a lot of variables with that particular issue. Part of it is new owners having a not so positive experience with charging, which is its own issue. Of course, with workers at GM and Ford, Stellantis, these are union companies.

EVs are, once you get over the infrastructure technology hurdle of your assembly line, these are simpler vehicles, fewer parts. You don't have a whole big engine assembly. You have a motor that is made by a machine, and then you have that part and you're putting it in. So especially if they've just had to make some concessions to end the strikes, it's a complicated issue. The thing is, though, by necessity, the industry is going to go EVs.

That's where they're going. But there is the current entrenched interest that they have to appease. Dealers, unions. Dealers who don't know about the technology. And then a charging network that is subpar and that gives people a bad experience. So here, okay. Everybody. Riddle me this, Mike. No, I'm just kidding.

You know, I tried so hard not to say that. Do I need to say it? I knew you wanted to say it though. I think it's fine to say. I think it's fine to say it. There. I said, have your drink. All right. Thank you. I was thirsty. Thanks. Got my whiskey. You all know that at one time I had to order for a Lyric. I actually had it twice. They canceled my first one. I had to reorder it. I've since canceled it and basically blew off GM, but I'm still a member of the Lyric Reddit group.

Just because I really do like the way the car looks and the mechanics behind it and whatnot. But a very interesting thread is I've read of three Lyriqs new that are being bought back by GM because they can't fix the software. The users themselves say the cars are great. They handle great. They drive great. They ride great. They just can't operate the car because the software is unreliable at best.

and at worst it's a disaster. Public charging aside, I think the software is probably maybe even a bigger issue because that's the interface the user has to deal with every minute they're in the car. If you've got an interface that's unreliable and can't work, I mean people complain about the Tesla a lot because it's minimalistic and it's got the big iPad screen but I've had the software for three years now and it's been very reliable. It's hard to argue with success.

Right. We know something about why that's an issue. Tesla has that advantage of vertical integration. I wouldn't go to Cadillac. Cadillac is GM. For GM. I wouldn't go to any of those companies for software. I think they're learning more that software is important. A lot of times that starts off as third-party contractors as opposed to...

in bringing that in as a core skill and more and more than needs to be a core skill of any company right i wouldn't be surprised about that though tesla had their software teething pains but they're at least able to quickly fix things i've heard software issues with rivian certainly with lucid

They had certainly some software issues that they are probably working out. Are they still a company? No, sorry. They're still a company. They actually decided to adopt the Tesla plug finally. They finally decided, oh, maybe we should accept the Tesla charging connector. Something froze over and they accepted the Tesla plug. Wow. I mean, they're having serious issues, right? They're not selling enough vehicles. They're not building enough, fast enough. And they're essentially losing money on every vehicle. I feel like on that point,

Tesla is, I feel like a big contributor to a lot of the big automaker, you know, legacy automakers pulling back on EVs because Tesla played that pricing game. Right. And no one else can come close to making EVs as efficiently and as cost effectively as what Tesla does. So Tesla,

If they physically can't make the car and not lose money, why make them, right? That's the opposite of what a business should do. Well, but the market's asking for them regardless. So they can either make an ICE car, which is obsolete tech, or they can make an EV they're going to lose money on every single one, which is really where the market's going.

So they're kind of stuck between the rock and the hard place. Yeah. Like I said, there are a lot of variables and one also definitely is Tesla. Tesla has had record margins basically, and they've been willing to allow those margins to be reduced just for the sake of greater market share. So yeah, that makes it really hard. And people like Ford have,

made it clear that, okay, it makes sense to not try to compete in the same areas that Tesla competes. Making their EV sedan maybe isn't as important as trying to get their truck to work well or whatever. Did you see the announcement of the free charging, the free supercharging, if you buy and take delivery before the end of the year?

Tesla has a lot of knobs to turn on demand. They just turned another one. And that's another one. Yeah. Bringing back the free supercharging. And that is a great idea. That's one of the things that people need experience with, right? An EV newbie, the question they have is, am I going to be able to charge as much as I need or whatever? And giving them free supercharging, then they just try it just to try it, right? I see it from two points of view. I see it from yours, which you just mentioned.

But I see it from a slightly different point of view where there's been press lately from certain magazines and newspapers where they come out and say, oh, it costs you more the charge it takes to buy gas for your car. It's a direct attack on the EV and the fact that electricity can be expensive depending where you are. I can't help but wonder if somebody in Tesla world sees these and says, well, maybe we'll throw out some free charging and get that whole talking point dead and buried.

Yeah. Is that even true though? I've seen it be a little bit pricey. Like I just did a long trip from the East coast to Texas. But I do see the stop cost was $15. Yeah. I think it's still cheaper than a gas station. I live in Southern California with some of the most expensive electricity and it's still cheaper than gas. Although not by much. There's also the most expensive gas too. So it's sort of hard to. Without a doubt. Yes.

But even at peak, it's still cheaper than gas. Well, again, I think the pricing helps push behavior and the supercharging shouldn't be cheap exactly, right? You should encourage people to charge at home so that resource isn't overused.

requiring that kind of power, right? There's a cost to that as well. Not just the energy. There's a cost to the power, that rate of energy. And most people don't need that. You can just charge at home if you can. There should be a cost associated with it just to encourage the right behavior. I did supercharge for the first time. Oh, yeah, that's right. I finally supercharged. Congratulations. And I only did it just to prove...

that it would work so that if I ever needed it, all right, I've heard horror stories I've seen on TMC, people saying like, yeah, it didn't work when I first plugged in when I got a new car. Go to the plug-in and nothing happens. Yeah, so I just wanted to prove that it would work. It did. It was seamless. My mother was with me. She was visiting and I had her do it. Just like, hey, plug this in. She was able to just...

She was just able to plug it. No, no, no. She didn't even know what supercharging was. She knows nothing about it. But I was just like, look how easy it is to charge an EV. Here, grab the thing, plug it in. And she did it first try real easy. She's in her mid to late 70s.

how easy is the charge of tesla i will say i was a little annoyed with idle fees not that i paid any idle fees but that it was extremely unclear to me if i was going to pay idle fees yeah um yeah it's a bit of a so because basically i was i was at a bucky's in texas for those that you know a great

Big convenience store, lots of gas, lots of Tesla chargers. And it's telling me you might have idle fees. Okay, how do I know that? So I Googling and oh, if more than half the stalls are taken up or something and you've waited more than five minutes. So I kept charging my car higher and higher. Like normally I keep my car at 65% limit and I bumped it all the way up to 80%.

Cause I was just like, yeah, charge for another five minutes just to, you know, give me some more time while we were in the store. Cause I was worried about idle fees, but thankfully no, I didn't have any, but I'll say that I find a little annoying. I wish it would directly tell you upfront yes or no, there will be idle fees or warns you saying, Hey, you've got five minutes from right now where we'll start charging you idle fees. At least they have them. EA will just let you sit there all day long.

I don't feel there's a long time coming in terms of how to again encourage proper behavior. They make sense, but yeah, they have the technology. Maybe the ambiguity is to help motivate people to leave. They could easily send you a message specifically that yes, we have more than 50%. You're going to get an idle fee. They know they have to know, right? Because either they're going to charge you or not. Let me know. Are you going to charge me or not? Yes. Maybe they think if they gave people that leeway

maybe they'll start having more of an issue because more people will be leaving their cars there. But if you let people know, people will move a couple of ways. I mean, they do the idle fee thing, like you said, but they also do where they'll take your 100% and knock it down to 80 if they are really busy to keep people from sitting there for an hour trying to charge at 10 kilowatts instead of something. You know, I also couldn't figure out, like it was hard to find out how much I paid.

That was another one where I was just like, okay, I didn't notice that. There's a mystery that you can see. Like I had to go into the app and go into history and see what it was. You can see it real time on your dash. Okay. Well, yeah, so I didn't look in the car while it was charging. I just went up, unplugged it, did the thing, and then got in and drove home. And then I was just like, how much did it charge me?

because my mom was curious she's like how expensive was that compared to gas and i was like well it's way cheaper but i have no idea so yeah i had to find in the app so there are a few things like that that i were you know was suboptimal but but still like the experience is way better than a gas station because you don't even need a credit card or anything right that was wonderful so how much did you actually charge

I charged from, I don't know. Yeah, I charged from 50 something to 80. Oh, wow. Well, I drove down to San Antonio, basically. So I was a bit outside of Austin. Car probably went into shock. But it was, yeah, I don't know. It was like 10 bucks or something. Whatever it was. Cheap.

Cheap. Well, I mean, compared to my house though. So I always charge from home and it's free. I have solar panels, so it doesn't cost me anything. So whatever. Anyway, so I did it. I did the thing finally. But yeah, just from talking to my mother, there's definitely a huge barrier for regular people where they don't know enough about them. They don't know why they would want one. They don't know what the risks or the dangers are. And I feel like the problem that's part of this probably broken is that whole dealership model.

is a lot of people go to the dealership. The dealers have no incentive for you to get an EV. In fact, they prefer you didn't get an EV. So they're probably being told things. And so it's going to reduce demand even to some degree. So like, I don't know. So here's the flip side, Lewis. My son just turned 18 and he made a comment to me the other day that kind of rattled me. I really didn't think about it. He literally doesn't know how to pump gas because all he's ever driven is an EV.

He's never pumped gas in his life. I mean, that'll eventually be a thing, right? I mean, that's the bleeding edge of the other side of the coin, you know? And I have a public service announcement for all our viewers, listeners. Big Bear Supercharger is now open. Yippee! There's only six stalls, and if you get up there, you're going to wait. Because, like, all the Teslas come out of the woodwork now that they can actually go up to Big Bear and charge for real.

But it's actually available and working. It was a very pleasant surprise this weekend. I have to say, I've heard you talk about Big Bear. I've heard about Big Air. I have no idea where it is or what it is. It's some outdoor place that people... 8,000 feet. Nice lake. Very pretty. So it's like a mountain lake area. It's a steep grind up. So it's kind of hard on your battery range. Just to mention one of our live viewers comments that... Electrified light vehicles is the user...

oh he points out that yeah he has idle fees now okay took him long enough again i don't understand why these companies don't just copy tesla directly okay all right they've already done all this they've seen it works i mean you know why is that the wheel i mean tesla makes a big deal about reinventing the wheel and has a big not invented here sort of culture uh

But everybody else shouldn't have that. They should say, okay, Tesla's done it right. Just start where Tesla is so you can advance. You can be better than Tesla by starting where Tesla is. Start somewhere smart and keep going. Yeah, you don't have to start behind. Just start where they are and then keep going.

They're getting there. They're doing the Tesla charging port now. That's right. They're copying. One of our producers mentions the OEMs are doing like the big iPad screens now in the cars. Except Ford put a knob in the middle of it. I mean, you can't teach somebody taste, right? Like they're just...

I mean, they had the right idea, then they kind of blew it on the lower third. Oh, man. Maybe if it was a knob like the Microsoft Surface, where it's like a thing that you can pick up and move around, and then the screen can just do it. More like the BMW iDrive, which the knob is supposed to do 10 different things. Yeah, iDrive is terrible. It does none of them well. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, like opinions here, clearly I should just make a software consulting company for the automakers because none of them know how to make a minute. They would never, they would never hire me because yeah, exactly. So far, this has been another stream of consciousness. So we'll bring it back to Dan. Shouldn't have. Yeah. It's not Dan guys. What? Guy. You should have known better. Yeah.

So... Praising Cruz a day early.

So cruise possibly dead. That's our summary. We'll see where they go. A few months. I'm sure we'll hear more about it. Okay. Cybertruck, Cybertruck, Cybertruck, Cybertruck, Cybertruck. That's what we're talking about. I was going to have a segue when we started talking about dealerships. And one of the lame things about dealerships or buying something from a dealership, when there's a new hot car, they'll tack on whatever fee they'll tack on like 5,000 bucks.

Just for the sake that they can, right? Because they're in a position to allow price to meet demand. And Tesla is now trying to keep people from doing that. What a great segue. There's your segue. Oh, that's what it was about. We didn't get there.

It's a very long, convoluted way of saying that Tesla is doing what they can to keep folks from just flipping their... You will not be allowed to sell your Cybertruck. Are you familiar with the subreddit? It's awful taste, but great execution. This was awful, or it was great taste, awful execution. I'm going to flip it on you. But yes, to Doug's point, he's spot on.

tesla is now doing the opposite of what dealers do in trying to screw you when you buy your car so that you cannot flip it um it's all right so hit us hit us with the deets mike you're i'm sure they haven't started this is this has always been the case it's always been in the fine print that you're not allowed to sell your reservation for your model three your model y blah blah blah hasn't changed

But all of a sudden they've kind of like reiterated this on the Cybertruck. You're not allowed to sell your Cybertruck in the first year as a flip unless you got some really good excuse. And Tesla has first right of buyback. They want to prevent people from selling your truck right away. No flipping, no making a whole lot of money on Tesla's expense. It's interesting because people are already doing that. There's eBay auctions for reservations exceeding $10,000.

The market will do what the market does. People are crazy. I'm not sure how many knobs Tesla's got. The rumor is Tesla will brick the car or brick features of the car if they catch you doing it. I'm not sure if they can actually do that legally and get away with it. Yeah, what's the legality of that? I mean, it just seems kind of nuts. If they're really concerned about this and they have that much demand, why wouldn't they just charge more for the car if they think the car can get more of a premium?

Because they promised the car at $35,000, I think, or was it $40,000? Well, they already broke that promise. That's not going to happen, right? I suppose there are PR issues. And then as soon as people get enough cars, then you have that super depreciation. But that's already happened to other, like, Lewis. Did you say you dropped by $40,000? If the camera goes crazy, it means I flipped my desk. Yeah.

That's it. Yeah, they screwed me out of $40,000 in less than a year. Speaking of people that got screwed out of $40,000 in less than a year, how's it going, Jones1? I see you in the chat, fellow platformer. No, anyway. Yeah, so you bring up an interesting point, Doug. There are other ways in which they could do this. So they have a queue, essentially, right? They have a thing you order. You get put on a list. There's some...

to the lists. I'm assuming it's first come first serve, right? That place their reservation. There's probably some wiggle room in there where it doesn't quite work that way. Um, so the question is what if they did something different? What if they said, Hey, we're going to auction off the first X number of cars based on highest bid of people on the reservation, right? Like that's one way they could do it, which would prevent the flippers from effectively flipping. Um,

or at least reduce it uh but yeah i mean their plan of we'll sue you we'll brick the car or we'll ban you from buying like i don't know how that's all right they'll ban you from buying another test like i i yeah i don't see how that's legal um they could do that but that's just so negative i didn't think well but there's who wants to interact with the company like that it doesn't seem to make sense i got one word for you doug ferrari

Ferrari does that every single day. Okay. And people still line up to buy their car. Okay, first of all, Tesla sells more cars in a day than Ferrari sells in a year. We're talking attitude. It's a little different. We're talking attitudes. It's just...

Again, Tesla is selling like mass market consumer. They are. You can't say, hey, millions of people, I'm not going to allow you to do this thing with this thing that you own. Right. I can see them being shady with things being like, all right, we'll rate limit. Well, no, just they could publicly say something like, if you sell the car, we'll turn off supercharging or we'll rate limit something or we'll stop doing software updates. And that crazy.

Could make the buyers be less incentivized to try to buy one. Agreed. But...

They probably could just get sued and would likely lose the lawsuit. Right? Like I imagine consumer protection laws would basically not go in Tesla's favor. So I don't know. Elon has a lot of lawyers. So he would get sued. It'd be tied up in court for four or five years. And by then it's a moot point. Yeah. The idea of doing an auction is interesting. And there's certainly people like super fans.

that would bid like crazy. And at this delivery event, they're certainly not going to have 100. It feels like it'll be about 20 cars delivered. 20 within spec. The rest are...

But the idea of the auction sounds interesting. The only thing about it is that it draws attention to the inability to produce it well now. Certainly there's a production ramp, but most companies don't do this sort of thing, right? Does Apple sell out of iPhones on the first day when they release a new model? Right. They don't, right? I mean, they do. They did early on. I don't know that they still do. Yeah.

But they still get a bunch out the door. And also, you'd be paying a premium on basically the worst version of this car, right? That's true. That's true. 1.0. Plus with depreciation, you're extra losing. But at an auction, at least people know what they're getting and they know what they're paying for. Yeah.

I don't know, man. Actually, I would love to be a fly on the wall when someone gets their Cybertruck and they're all jazzed that they finally got it. It's in their hands. And they go to the app and they say Tesla insurance and they basically go, no, not today. Yeah.

I mean, the insurance on that would be a killer for something that unique and that hard to work on and fix with no track record. Well, you think at least Tesla would insure it, right? With their insurance. I guess we'll find out. Speaking of the quality of the vehicle, right? So we had one of our users, Josh G. He posted a thread on TMC.

And he saw a Cybertruck in Los Gatos. Los Gatos is a city in the Bay Area, basically. I think it's just a little bit south of San Jose. So it was interesting that he got a lot of pictures, so you can find this thread on TMC, and we'll put the link to the thread in the show notes. But he said it looked neat. It was neat to see it, but you can see a lot of...

It's within spec, Doug. Yeah, is it within spec? The interior is pretty minimalistic and okay. And apparently there are a number of these cars driving around for people to do reviews, but the reviews are embargoed until... There's the infamous body fit on the back.

For our audio listeners, we're basically looking at photos that Josh, do you put in the back of the truck? And there's some body gap issues. Yeah, not just gap, but sometimes there's negative gap because you see body panels overlapping each other. That's hammer to fit and paint to match. I mean, what the heck? I don't know what to say about that. I got to say, Josh, you got some awesome pictures, dude.

Yeah. Were these with a phone? Because they look amazing. You would think that the first couple that they give out to people would be hand done and be really good and quality controlled. But yeah, some of these panel gaps and overlaps just do not look good.

And you imagine that at different times of the day, like maybe the sun's on one side of the car, you're going to have different issues because it's like thermal expansion and whatnot. True. Given that it's all steel. I love Josh's picture of the parking ticket. Yeah, it got a parking ticket. With the big wiper going up the side. Yeah.

Yeah, I have to agree with Stefan in chat. He said Tesla and sharp corners doesn't seem like a good combo. Some of these corners look dangerous as hell if a person gets hit. When I first saw this vehicle, I was like, I don't know how that's going to pass pedestrian safety regulations. And I still don't see how it's supposed to do it. So I don't know. They still didn't show us the crash test video. It may be sharp corners, but at least it doesn't have the...

like the old Cadillacs did with the big fins on the back. Wasn't there like a Twitter thread the other day, and I think it came out of New York or something, about how amazing the panel gaps were, and it was so clean and beautiful? It was perfect. It was perfect. Well, that's not this one in California. Apparently...

Wow. Maybe with some use, they might shake out. So, Doug, can you stop on that picture right there? So what we're looking at is the corner of the, I guess it's the front of the truck. I think it's the front left corner because here's the light bar. If you look, is that paint protection film or duct tape holding the corner? It looks like tape residue. It literally looks like tape residue. Yeah.

I can't quite make it out. - It looked like there's a masking tape on there and they took the masking tape off and here's where like dirt collected at the seam. - Yep, but again, like your point, if I was a manufacturer wanting to show off a brand new product, this is not what I would have out in the public.

Yeah. I would definitely have some PPF on this just because of the fingerprints, the finger oils that would single person wanting to touch it. You can really see the edge of the tape or whatever it was on that picture there. Yeah. Right here. I guess that's the hood or frunk. That's a pretty visible piece of former tape. Yeah. The, the frunk is huge. Smaller than you know, it feels smaller than you, you think it should be like it has no depth.

Oh, yeah. So here we go. We have the specs. So the specs leaked out. The frunk is 7.1 cubic feet. And the weight capacity of the frunk is 420 pounds. Wow. That's actually pretty good. That's a lot of weight to put over your front. Yeah. Because I'm assuming there'll be a motor there, too. Under there, yeah. Just to throw out, that's like 190 kilos for the non-imperialists. Non-imperialists. Non-freedom units. Yeah.

non-freedom units yeah so we got it was interesting spec so overall length of the car is 18.6 feet that's a weird measurement i don't know why they said it that way car um with not counting mirrors 79.9 inches height on medium ride height setting is 70.5 inches

wheelbase 143 inches curb weight with two motor version is 6600 pounds 66 70 and with three motors is 68 90 6 890 pounds a tow rating 11 000 pounds bed length 72.8 inches um bed width 51 inches what was the wheelbase again

143 inches. So by comparison, the Model X is 116. That's a long, long truck. It doesn't feel as tall as it could be.

Personally, I feel like the proportions seem off, right? I feel like it's not quite how I would want the proportions to be, but I'm sure they iterated on it, right? They've had different sizes and shapes of it as they were building. I'm sure there's reasons that ended up how it is. Is this a front camera right in here in that sort of grill there and take there? It could be. It's hard to tell from that picture. It looks like there could be. It's LIDAR. Yeah, I know.

They definitely have to have a front radar, right? The quote unquote HD radar. They'll probably have one on the front. So I would imagine there's a camera there, but I don't know. I'll have to, you know, if I left my house more, I could probably find this out because I'm not that far from Texas. I'm sure I can go see some. Yeah. You know, didn't I hear you saying you wanted to practice drone flying? I mean, this sounds like a prime opportunity. Yeah.

I did not say that, but you're right. I could. It's interesting. So we got some specs. We have, is there a date on the actual delivery event? Did they announce a date yet? I thought it was the 30th. There was an announcement that went out weeks ago.

Okay. So we got a date. We're expecting not very many cars delivered, like 20-ish probably. Somebody flew a drone over, right, and saw how many cars are already made. Do you have roughly how many there were? Yeah. If I'm remembering correctly, he saw like 14 outside in the parking lot that looked sort of new. I think they had the tape.

tape on the scenes overseeing the residue from um so 14 i'm not expecting a whole lot i wonder how their production hell as they keep coming back to i wonder how that's going for this vehicle there was a earnings call not that long ago and elon he sounded kind of somber talking about it and he said that they dug their own grave with the cyber truck it's a little bit funny because when the model x came out he talked about having everything in the kitchen sink in that car that had

had the falcon wing doors and a bunch of engineering had to be figured out like the special ultrasonic to so that it could calculate the arc at which they would open these doors so it didn't whack the car that you parked next to and uh people have mixed results i heard people complaining about the at least the first iterations of those falcon wing doors of people getting hit in the head with them and that sort of thing or it's supposed to do something ends up whacking the car i i hear a lot of complaints about leaks they seem to be uh

I mean, it's got to have a complicated seal thing. There was also another feature of as you approach the car, the door just opens. And I was at the Model X event. It was at the factory. You had hair back then. No, I'm just kidding. I think I was already shaving my head back then. And, yeah.

He couldn't, he had this open door on approach sort of thing. And he had to try it like a couple of times. So basically they tried to do a whole bunch of new things with that car and they're regretting it, really regretting it. And it seemed to be the lesson. And I've heard him say publicly, the lesson was not to try so many new things. And I think they forgot that lesson.

with the Cybertruck. The Cybertruck was supposed to be, what was it, ectoskeleton? Wasn't that the big thing about it? Oh, he talked about it. Yeah, structural body panels or something. And it was essentially an exoskeleton. I don't know how you get

away with that and have proper crumple zones. Crumple zones are overrated. You probably don't. Hence the fact it's not an exoskeleton. There may be a reason that most of the industry doesn't do this kind of thing. Like most of the industry won't do those wing doors. And NASA has water cooling for their launch pads. Yes.

Yeah, that's a tangent we don't need to go down. But yes, you're spot on. Actually, we do at some point. Let's circle back to that tangent. Well, I've got my NASA shirt on, so I had to, you know. So we're being asked in chat, and I agree, what do we think in price? So originally, what, they said like $36,000, $39,000? What was the difference? It was like $39,000. Yeah, it was an enormously low price. It was on the order of $40,000, and we did a watch event when that happened.

And to me, that was the most impressive thing or the most astonishing thing was the base price. 'Cause it was so much cheaper than all the competitors and they were announcing it early. And of course, since then all the competitors have delivered and that price has been erased from the website. So who knows it's erased from memory. It just doesn't exist anymore. - I think a delivered price is 75K. - For the base? - Yeah. - Yeah. I'm thinking about- - If they want a profit margin, if they want any kind of margin, it's gonna be 75K. If he wants to eat the margin,

There'd be a lot of unhappy people if you're close, Mike. I'm thinking just because of all the crazy price cuts and other things that they've done, I'm thinking we might be looking at like 55 to 60 base. Those are established model lines. Sure. The pricing's already been settled.

Sure. I feel like Elon would be more willing to lose money for each cyber truck sold at the beginning than he would be to like, yeah, he'll lose on the first bad and jack up the price. You know what I mean? Um,

Ooh, it's going to be the more expensive, like the tri-motor one's going to be up there, right? It's probably going to be at least $89,000. I thought that was the only option out the gate was the tri-motor. I think so. They tend to launch with the most expensive vehicle because that gives them the most opportunity for margin. And it's also the customers that can afford the most expensive vehicle. So they'll tend to deliver those first. And that's been the model with the Model S and Ford. I'll say $75,000. You can laugh at me afterwards, but that's what it is. $75,000 for base or for the tri-motor?

Well, I don't see a difference. It's $75,000 for what they release at the end of the month. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's probably low then. Yeah, because they're most likely selling the TriMotor, so the more expensive one. So, Siobhan says $89,000. It says guess. I could see that, but...

Like you said earlier, they're already blue. They're pricing all the hell. Lewis, I think you mentioned that they probably don't want to raise the price. I think they'll do whatever. They'll raise the price if they feel like they need to. Yeah, sure. I mean, they've done it with every other vehicle. Yeah. So at some point, then they can say it's an appreciating asset, right? Yeah.

but they'll also they'll also you know dump the price of it oh but you know but will they qualify for the rebate come january 1st are they worried about the rebate this is a heavier vehicle right so there's some other rebates available for that i just feel like realistically they from a price standpoint they need to not be worse off than a rivian because that's probably their main competitor for a truck i'm gonna pretend the f-150 lightning doesn't exist because as far as i'm concerned they're not the same people that would buy that um

But a so a Rivian base price, what it starts at 73,000. But Cybertruck base has got to be cheaper than that, right? It's got to be under 80k for tax credit eligibility. So as Electrified Light Vehicles and chat said, they're going to have at least a model under 80k. I don't know that the tri-motor will be though. So the tri-motor might be 90k ish.

It'll be interesting. We'll find out what in less than a month. We'll find out in a couple of weeks. So 73K for the base bare bones Rivian. Yes. If you want the dual motor performance, it's 84. Okay. Yeah. So the question is, is Tesla worried about that price point or do they not care at all? Maybe they don't care. Electrify light vehicle says has to be under 80K for eligibility tax credit. Then it might just be 79 then. Yeah. Well, 75 is right there, man. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Matt, Matt Senko, 79, 999, 999 and nine tenths. Yeah. I, I wouldn't be surprised by that.

Yeah, we'll see. Honestly, the Rivian to me looks like a more desirable vehicle. Not just that it looks a little more normal. It looks more functional. I don't think it's any more repairable. Probably what I would buy if I cared for a truck. If you cared about trucks. And all the stuff that's been going on with the Cybertruck, like bulletproofing and all the gimmicky stuff that's been going on, like Elon talked about unloading a Tommy gun. That's just ridiculous. And I think...

dangerous right are you going to try to say that your car is bulletproof if you're making that claim and then someone gets killed from a bullet going through it then what uh i thought this car was bulletproof that's just sort of a ridiculous thing to spend time on i'd be happy with it being waterproof well it's supposed to be a boat you see it's supposed to be about

And as I said before, that's a dangerous thing to say. I mean, if there's a flood, you need to get to safety. And your truck doesn't float. It might float, and then it gets dragged down to some unsafe location or gets smashed against some trees or something. Floating is not an advantage in and of itself if you have to control over the vehicle while it's in the water, right? Well, that's an option. You have to pay extra for that.

They come with an outboard motor. There was video recently of someone trying to unload their jet skis. Oh, man. And they had a Model X that they were backing up. And I guess they took on some salt water. Maybe there's... Ooh.

an opening on the battery casing, but then it just caught fire and then they just let it submerge. And the emergency personnel just let it sit there to like, the thing's on fire underwater. And they're just like letting it work itself out before they even try to pull it out. But if you had your Cybertruck, you could just put the jet ski in the bed, right? And just roll it out into the water and just launch the jet ski from the car, right? From the Cybertruck. Roll up Tannu cover might get in the way, so. Well, I'll be rolled up.

Tesla Motors Club is not responsible for anything that Doug has just suggested. Oh, man. Anyway, it'll be interesting. I'll be happy when it's finally on the road. I'll be happy when it becomes less of a thing that we talked about. I'm more interested in the even less practical Roadster. Roadster. Roadster. And I really want to see the... Phantom Roadster.

I want to see the semi get their production numbers up and I want to see a box van or something similar to what Rivian has been doing with Amazon. I'd like to see all Tesla service people roll up into some kind of box van that has their tools and stuff. The Ranger that pulled up the last time came in an X.

That was impressive, I have to say. I've had several in modified Model S's where they have the whole rears kitted out to hold their tools. That's better than driving up in a gas truck, certainly. Well, the X with those wing doors just impressed the hell out of the entire neighborhood walking by and see what was going on in the driveway.

Well, maybe the new service vehicles will be Cybertrucks, right? It's possible. Yeah. I don't know. If they ever can make enough of them. Let's see. We get, so Matt Senkow asks in chat, predictions for number of Cybertrucks produced in Q1 of next year.

What are we thinking their Q1 numbers look like? We need to dig up our predictions from last year. I mean, from earlier this year. We did have a prediction already about when the Cybertruck would be delivered, and I'm pretty sure I said it would start in Q3. Yeah, I think I said September or October.

So I missed it. I was not pessimistic enough. Something like that. We'll have to look them up. We'll have to see what they were. Yeah. How many will they make by the Q1? Yeah. Q1 of next year. I don't know, man. I'm thinking a few hundred maybe. Yeah. It's hard to predict. I was going to say definitely less than 10,000.

If we, you know, you're optimistic. Well, I said less than, I mean, we're, we're physics people and we do, we do order of magnitude. Zero is less than 10,000. So somewhere on the, actually it'll be a, a big milestone. If they can do a thousand by then, like they're starting to get their stuff together. And, but it's such a quick takeoff once you start getting stuff worked out. So that's why I say between 1000 and 10,000. So it might be a couple of thousand.

That's not hedging. It's an order of magnitude. How do you predict this when the slope changes at an exponential? The derivative of an exponential is an exponential. Okay, so it's a little hard to predict that. You're hedging your bets. It's not a hedge. That's my prediction. It's an order of magnitude.

All righty. Yeah, I agree. It's going to be something along those lines, probably at least a thousand because of course they got the rest of this year and then all of Q1, I think they'll probably make about a thousand or so. We'll see. But yeah, if they made more than 10,000, I'm not even going to say anything because it's not going to happen. I don't even need to come up with a ridiculous thing. What about you, Mike? What's the ballpark of what you think they're going to do Q1 next year for Cybertrucks? Q1, all of Q1? Yeah. Yeah.

2000. Hand built. 2000. Okay. That's basically my same guess. There you go. Okay, cool. We're all about the same. All right. We've accomplished nothing. Excellent. Yeah. Moving on from the Cybertruck, something Mike alluded to, the Starship, supposedly SpaceX, they're ready. They say they're ready to launch. It looks like they've already loaded in the flight termination system on the ship and the thing's on the pad now.

Doesn't that have a finite lifespan attached to that for batteries? It's more of a safety thing. I'm sure there are some finite, like maybe batteries or something, but they've been seen doing that in this past week.

And they put out a video and are saying that they're ready November 17th, which is soon, which is this coming week here. And pending regulatory approval, which is the same caveat when FSD is already ready, but pending regulatory approval, it's going to be turned on. Anyway, I'll be watching that. That should be interesting. I was down there in September. Pretty impressive. You can roll right up. Took a lot of pretty close-up photos just with

my phone down in Boca Chica. And if you're around, it's probably worth trying to go see. I don't know that. I may have to make a Pilgrim. I will consider it. I will consider it. I was starstruck the other day when I was at the airport in Austin and I saw Tim Dodd go by the everyday astronaut YouTuber, right? He's a pretty big space YouTuber. And I saw him standing there and I'm waiting, you know, waiting for my mother to arrive. And I'm like,

wait a minute. I think that's everyday astronaut. I was like, I know that guy. And I looked at my wife. I'm like, do you recognize him? And she's like, who? I'm like, everyday astronaut. She's like...

I don't know what you're talking about. So I'm like, so I see him and I'm like, I don't want to bother him. So I pull it up on my phone and I show her and she looks at it and she goes, oh, yeah, that's definitely him. And I was just like, cool. And he walked out and I was like, all right. Yeah, I'm not going to say anything. You know, anyway, big fan. Yeah. So that often that was an awesome airport. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I'll consider going down. Wait, sorry, 17th? I can't. No way I can do it. I take it back. My father is arriving on the 17th because he's going to be staying with us for a few weeks for Thanksgiving. Well, you could go with him. You know what? He would love that, but that would only work if it wasn't on the 17th.

Right? Because he's arriving the evening of the 17th. You know what? I doubt he'll actually fly on the 17th. That's probably the opening of their being ready window. Maybe I'll do that. We'll see. Isn't it like seven hours or something? That's a long-ass drive. I drove there from Houston, and it was something on the order of seven hours. It didn't seem bad. And I stayed in Brownsville. Yeah. If you want to go down there, Brownsville is your last sort of normal town.

town, you know, I had an Airbnb there and then it's about a half hour drive from there to get to Boca Chica in terms of like views. I think there are some other spots to go that would maybe be a better view. There's like a resort town that is further away, but is a better spot if you're just going to set up and watch the launch happen. So I just pay attention and do we like get a collective discount for waving the Tesla flag? If we show up in our Tesla and the Boca Chica, I mean,

I think like everybody that shows up in a Tesla basically, right? It's probably like 90% Tesla. I saw a lot of Teslas when I went down there. There's a bit of a community there. There are some dudes that seem to be just like living in a camper van across the street from SpaceX and just...

And yeah, I mean, some people are real fanatics about it. But when are you going to get another chance to roll up? Actually, it might be harder if things are getting soon because they'll probably have some road closures and stuff. But otherwise, the public road that goes all the way to the beach and you basically drive up to the beach and drive onto the beach if you want. And a lot of vehicles do that. Not doing that in my plan.

But you can come up pretty close to it and park on the road next to the beach and just walk up and it's right there. You see this big thing and I feel lucky I got to see it stacked. And when I was there, there was even talk of it might go up, but that was before the fish and wildlife news came out. And so...

Anyway, historic. Maybe it will actually go where it needs to go. It's just going to be the first of many, right? They'll have to do a bunch of tests. I don't know how many tests before they even risk the super heavy, the booster, to actually come back and get caught by the chopstick. So they certainly don't want to blow up their pad to stage zero. Right.

Should be cool. Should be cool. We'll keep an eye on it. I mean, what do they say? Excitement guaranteed. So even if it works, it doesn't work. Rapid disassembly. It should be exciting. Well, it won't be exciting if they end up halting the launch and don't even do anything. But you're right. There are many opportunities for excitement. All right, folks, that's our show. This was episode 54. Thanks again to our producers and all you guys out there watching and listening, subscribing.

Sending the love, the hate. Keep the comments coming. Peace out.