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- This week on Trending in Tesla, Sandy Munro's team tears down the Cybertruck battery and what they found will leave you confused. - Plus, Reuters leaks that Tesla has moved on from the cheaper Model 2 project. Of course, Elon scoffs at the idea, but there's so much there to unpack.
Let's get right into this with the Cybertruck battery because we are seeing Sandy Munro and his team opening up the battery and it's not what we expected. This is a big deal. This is a really big deal. And we're learning from what they found in this teaser video that Munro and Associates posted. The 4680 cells that are inside the Cybertruck
are half empty. So of course, there's been so much talk about the disappointment that initially came from Cybertruck's range. The first test were showing 250 miles of range. It seemed like Tesla maybe fine-tuned some of the software. They got that up to the lower 300s and of course, well below the 500 that was initially expected. And then they promised the range extender to get you 440 miles. Which I've always said seemed like an afterthought.
Absolutely. It's nothing like what Tesla's ever done with any sort of battery pack where they've added something that visually takes away, especially from a vehicle that really is designed to visually really stand out and be unique and then pop something in the back that cuts your bed by a third is a big deal. And we're seeing all these other electric trucks now coming out that have much better range than the Cybertruck as well. Yes. Cybertruck's got 123 kilowatt hour battery pack on board. It is the least amount of range available.
So let me describe the teaser that everyone is talking about right now. Basically, the cells appear to be organized in modules separated by beams, which means that this is not a cell to structure design.
The design is different. The capacity on board of the room inside this pack is also significantly limited in that I want to show you something here. So a pill bottle, believe it or not, it is almost exactly a 4680 size, meaning 80 millimeters tall, 46 millimeters wide. In fact, this one is about 47 millimeters wide. So we're talking almost identical to this.
Now they had this in there, but the amount of room essentially is a second average pill bottle. So this is the amount of room that's empty. So we're talking again, a significant amount of open space inside this battery pack design. So people are now assuming is the range going to be closer to 500 miles?
Or was this left for a cost cutting measure? Is this an afterthought? And there's just so many things. - So many questions. I wish that we could talk to somebody and ask these questions at someone. They have to respond. Like what is happening here? - There's no PR team. So you know what's interesting is Wes, who's Cybertruck's lead engineer, he commented to Holmar's blog, who called this a half empty battery pack from this finding. He said,
I'd say it's half full. So is that implying there's much more to come? And maybe the range extender that has kind of been pushed back to the end of Q3 into Q4, maybe that doesn't actually come to market in that fashion or in that sense. Is this going to be something that Tesla seamlessly integrates into the battery pack? So why did they not do this with the initial Cybertrucks coming out? Did they not have an
enough batteries? Were they not able? It could be a number of things, right? I think the battery itself, the cost itself, we already know how expensive this initial run of trucks is going to be and is ending up. So this would increase the price. This would increase the weight. And maybe they weren't there or ready to be able to pump this out. Or is it just going to be like the cyber beast?
Yeah, that could be something that they do that as well. We know that this truck, of course, requires towing and it requires a lot more load on these batteries. Some people are saying maybe this is just to allow for some thermal control inside the batteries and give it some breathing room, essentially. But I'm not buying that. I think there's more to it, especially based on what the lead engineer for Cybertruck himself said.
kind of teased by saying i call it half full so i think there's just a lot more into it than we know it's really weird and i go back to thinking about when we were at the event where they were delivered
Elon didn't talk about the battery like in terms of like the range. Yes. At all during that event, which was really weird. It was really strange. Everyone at that event immediately was like, hold on, range is all we care about. This is all we care about with an electric truck coming from Tesla. And it was not mentioned until you went online, saw the battery pack was there, saw what the range was. Yes, I think maybe Tesla thought this is going to have enough demand initially that people will pay the premium immediately.
take this initial hit in range and we know how it goes when it comes to these kind of things, right? With early adopters, that's the price you pay every single time. Yes, it sort of sucks to be an early adopter. And we have, like, we're able to configure, we could configure right now ours and we're sort of holding off. And now it makes me want to hold off and see what happens with everything. I'm curious what you guys think if you have a reservation for Cybertruck or if you are an early adopter, how do you feel about this?
I'm super curious. And I also wanted to, a lot of us, myself included, are not like, we don't know a ton about batteries. I'm learning so much as I follow Tesla and electric vehicles about it. But the history of kind of like what Tesla has done with their batteries is really interesting because it kind of goes back to like if we start out with our
Model X and our Model S. What did we initially have in there? So those were 18650 cells. I've actually got the actual 18650 cell right here. So we're talking about 65 millimeters tall and 18 millimeters wide. So much smaller form factor. This has been reiterated. The cell chemistry has improved over time. The latest Model Xs have this exact form factor, but they've got more energy density, which is how the range has increased over time.
We thought we're going to get these 4680 again, almost identical in size. And he's holding up a pill bottle if you are listening to this as the podcast. Yes.
So this is essentially what the Model Y beginning in 2022 started getting. They've further built on that and had a newer version of the 4680s inside the Cybertruck. But again, Tesla has never left an empty space equivalent to a second 4680 on top of it. And that's exactly what we have right now. That's really interesting. So then we go to 2020 Battery Day. Yeah. And that's when he kind of talked about these 4680s. And he talked about...
Oh, what was it exactly? Like one side of them having... Yeah, a dry electrode process was going to be involved. It was going to make it much more efficient. And of course, it was also going to be more affordable. And there was also a silicone anode that was going to be built into these batteries. When 2022 came, these Model Ys got those 4680s. Didn't seem like that was the case. People complained about this. I remember people complaining about like charging speeds being slow. And we were seeing that with Cybertruck, which again, hints to maybe it's not quite there yet.
and Tesla wants to be all in on being able to get that there. We know 800 volt architecture also comes in in allowing 350 kilowatt charging speeds. So when you have all of these into play,
it tells me maybe that's another reason why Cybertruck's speed is not quite fast when it comes to charging and that 350 is not there because it is going to be there in the next iteration, maybe next year. And who knows what Tesla is with pricing at that point. And then of course the complaints will come with early adopters
But that is literally, we've been in this game for so long with Tesla. 2012, 13 Model S, 16 Model X. We got 18 Model 3. We got every one of those being early ones. And we saw this play out over and over. Yeah, I feel like we need to hear from Elon. We need to hear, not just from Elon, but we need to hear more from Tesla on what the plans are at this point on this. There's so much going on, though. I feel like...
in the last like day like Elon's gone on Twitter and just been on a rant on all the stuff in Brazil and we have to talk about this $25,000 Tesla that's supposedly getting canned according to Reuters and Reuters seems to like to spread a lot of
rumors. There was another big story they leaked that was partially true back in October. I forget exactly what it was, but Reuters seems to have someone on the inside that leaks them just enough info to make for a great headline, but it doesn't necessarily translate into fact. So we know that the Robotaxi, of course, has been a huge thing for Tesla. And the Model 2, which is going to be the most affordable car they ever make,
at least for now, is something that has been kind of the mission statement of Tesla, right? So for them to actually move away from the Model 2 seems like it's a huge deal. Reuters claims they had three sources internally. This was a hands-on meeting and Elon Musk led this meeting by talking about priority has shifted. Elon responds on X to Reuters' article saying they're lying again.
So we're left here wondering. And then Franz also spoke on it too, right? Yeah, he said stay tuned. Yeah. So lots of confusion. What is going on? I know when we go back to the book that came out on Elon, he talked a little bit about RoboTaxi and how he wanted...
it to basically be the same vehicle, not have a steering wheel, be completely like driverless. And this is something that would compete with like Uber, but it would be a driverless vehicle, kind of like what Waymo has going on. And inside the book, and this book has been, of course, authorized by Elon. Inside the book, it said that this is going to be a Cybertruck-inspired design,
August 8th is when we get to see exactly what this robo taxi autonomous vehicle looks like without the steering wheel, without the driving features and physical gear inside. So it's going to be all passenger based. But also, what does that mean for people who have bought FSD in hopes of being able to put it inside the fleet? Is this going to be something that possibly supersedes that? And are they completely scrapping the $25,000 car? Like,
Elon says wrong, but then they are saying they are going to announce the robo-taxi. So is it going to be...
two vehicles or is it going to be one? I'm still confused on that. That's been where the confusion has come in. We always thought that it was going to be one vehicle that was going to be originally. And then they said two as of like January. I think they said that the $25,000 car would start in Texas at the end of 2025. They would start getting that out. But now all this stuff is coming out. So it's a little bit confusing on
on what exactly is happening. Tesla's got a lot of big secrets up its sleeve, I think. And of course, on this report, their stock went down a couple of percent because now people are thinking, hey, is this not going to come to market? This is going to be what makes them money and becomes a mass market vehicle and affordable. But I honestly think it is coming to market. And I do think we'll see it this year, at the end of this year, independent of the August 8th event, which is the RoboTax Dease.
Yeah, I mean, I have a lot of thoughts on all this. One is we recently made a video with FSD, the new version 12.3, and it is the first version of full self-driving where I'm like, I'm excited about it. Like, I would drive with this every single day. It's really, really good. It was shocking to me how good it was because the previous iterations I was, like, not a fan of. I'm like...
Are you really going to like charge me to basically be your lab rat? That's how I felt about it. But this one, I'm like, this is good. Yeah. And that's what I love about our channel because we're kind of straight to it. We'll tell you, we love Tesla, but we'll tell you if it sucks. And it did suck for what we expected to get out of $12,000. This go around, is it worth $12,000? I'm getting a lot closer to it. $12,000 is a lot, but I'm getting closer to that number. You can do a monthly though. Like what is it? Like $200 a month? $200 a month. Yeah. Yeah.
So that is like an option for it as well. But the point is that I think for the first time, we both see that this is going to come to market. This is going to make incredible noise in the space of autonomy. And we did Waymo, which is a completely different setup there with, of course, mapped roads. This is more visual based and it learns on the go and it responds on at the moment. This is why I think that FSD is really, really close. Tesla opening it up to every single Tesla owner in the United States.
tells you they believe that it's close. Now, of course, regulations, that's something else. August 8th, where will you be? It's going to be one of those things where we're all going to be, you know, tuned in. Hopefully, if it's an event, I'm hoping I'll be there, but you never know. And then they're also looking at getting a version out to the legacy Model S owners. FSD version, yeah, for legacy Model S owners that had hardware that supported it, but maybe not all of the hardware that you find in the newer builds.
So it is pretty neat to see that older Model S and X owners, maybe not the ones without cameras way back in 2012 or 13, but maybe the 15, 16 models that had cameras. Yeah, they'll be able to get them something. It's a very interesting thing with full self-driving because it's expensive, but
And for people like us who have had it and then gone on to sell those cars and you get nothing for it when it's not at, you know, where we all hoped it would be. So, you know, it's kind of a hard thing because there's a lot of people that are like, I would never pay for this. Or maybe they tried previous iterations that were not good. And it felt sort of like,
Like you're getting gypped a little bit. You know, I mean, there's been some lawsuits towards Tesla over it. There's a recent lawsuit where the driver was on autopilot. He was also on his phone. Tesla actually paid him out. I was kind of hoping that it would, we would see what would happen with this. It was interesting because the lawyer's,
took a different tactic because, again, he was on his phone where they said that Tesla knew Autopilot had this flaw where it would drive into the medians and they still had it out there. And also that Elon was over-hyping Autopilot. So I was kind of curious to see where this would go, but then Tesla just...
paid them out. They just paid them out. This is in the last couple of days. This was an Apple engineer that owned the Model X in Silicon Valley, went into this barrier, lost his life. They found out through the telemetrics that were on board there that he was on his phone and then through also being able to get his cell phone records. But Tesla paid the family that lost their husband here and the father. What's interesting too is that Tesla paid them out probably because with what's happening with full self-driving, what's happening with the robo-taxi, they just want to move that along and kind of bury...
this trial is what I think. - Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. This happens at the same time as the free trial comes out. So yeah, maybe it's not a good look for Tesla. - What kind of trial? They'd rather have that trial than the other trial. You have to be sensitive to these type of matters at the same time. So the other thing to think about is if Tesla does not do their $25,000 car, they're really missing out on this huge market. Here we have Kia
that's just announced their new EV3 that they're going to be coming out with this year. And it looks great. It looks really nice. It's sporty. Yep. They teased it as a concept in 2020, at the end of 23. They're saying July of this year, they'll unveil it. Again, the EV3, squished down version of EV9, has all the tech and features, starts below $30,000, available next year. And they have a lineup. I believe it's the EV2, EV3, 4, 5, and
and six, all leading up between $25,000 to $50,000. So they're absolutely prioritizing on an affordable version very quickly. We know BYD's already had great success doing that as well. So it does make me wonder, but it also makes me think that Tesla is not moving away at all from the Model 2. I don't think so. Or maybe the Model 2 and Robotaxi are really just going to be the same vehicle. Yeah. So...
I'm not really sure, but it does make you think twice about it. And then Rivian's doing something kind of fun. Now they're also offering wraps. Yes, $5,000. This is a free wrap, a $5,000 value they're offering as a perk to kind of incentivize more sales here on the R1S and the R1T. This is an in-house wrap Rivian is offering. And it is fascinating to see because the wrap industry has taken off.
talking to our friend who has a very successful rap shop here in Atlanta. And he's talked about if you had a chart and you could see how it's increased, it's almost become a dramatic straight spike up from about 2019 to present day of where rapping was and how it was perceived just a couple of years ago and how it's almost something you do just like getting wheels or something. You know, everyone does it. I mean, it's because I decided to rap. Rappable.
Exactly. Of course, they've dropped prices that are down to like 550 or so a month when you factor in the tax credit. Also, it is a stealth wrap and it's from Expel. Oh, is it? Yeah. That's the one we had. That's exactly what we had. So I'm excited about that. I think that's a good move for them. Kind of gets people talking about it. I'm excited. It's really fascinating how Tesla, Rivian have...
kept their paint colors to a minimum, but then increased giving you options while increasing their profit margins. Yeah. And in all the little videos of RJ Scringe, he has a broken arm. Does anyone know how he broke his arm? I don't think he broke it. I think he said something. He responded to someone. Oh, he did? What did he say? He said it was just some surgery. He's getting old and he had some surgery with the shoulder issues he's had that he wanted to get that fixed. All right. Because it was like in a nice little like stabilized cast. Your buddy RJ is okay. Don't worry. Okay.
He remembered you at the last event. I know. I was so excited about that.
I love Rivian. I think that they do a really good job. Now let's move on to someone who might not be doing quite as good a job. We have to talk about what's going on with Fisker. Yes. Yeah. Fisker, we've seen what's happened to their stock price, to their balance sheet, and they've dropped prices dramatically, like $14,000, $15,000 prices where their ocean is now selling between $24,000 to $30,000, I think.
Yeah, they've misplaced millions of dollars of customer payments for their ocean. Yep. It seems like internally there's some rough times going on. So from what we saw, you know, we saw really compelling to the beautiful aesthetically designed to that vehicle and compelling in the sense that the features were impressive, right? Yeah, I was super excited when they first unveiled it. I was like, I love the design of this. I think it's such a good looking vehicle.
And then when we met with our friend who had one, there was a lot of cool little quirks to it. I didn't get a chance to specifically drive it, but I remember asking him and he kept saying, oh, future update, future update. And then since then, you know, we obviously all have watched the MKBHD video and we know what has happened in that update.
I mean, they're trying. They're trying, but it shows you how difficult the space is and the ones that have made it through. And it looks like with Rivian, even Rivian struggling, even though we know the incredible product that they've put out, it shows you that this EV space is not for the faint of heart. It's super hard. But Tesla won't even take an Ocean as a trade-in anymore. Yeah, that's fascinating to me. I don't know. What do you guys think out there? Do you think Fisker's going to make it? Yeah.
I would like them to. And then even some of the OEMs are really changing the structure of how they do business. BMW just announced a partnership with Rimac to use some of their high-performance batteries. Yeah, they're going to be based out of their Croatia plant there. It's a very sophisticated battery production line that's going to have a pretty significant chunk of it dedicated to BMW as well. We got to see that when we were out
in Arizona covering the Pininfarina Batista, which is essentially exactly what the Rimac Novera is with just a different skin. So now BMW is basically going to be doing that as well and use those same products
batteries to have their high performance vehicle. Yeah, we knew that the battery aspect of scaling any EV is always one of the biggest challenges. And that's why Tesla got such an incredible advantage by doing it all in-house and being able to facilitate that themselves. And then obviously be able to scale at the volume they're able to scale because of that.
But the likes of BMW and others have obviously tapped into using other manufacturers. One more thing we have to bring up is the CyberHammer. We've received ours this week. It's number 114 out of 800. You surprised me.
After the last podcast. No, after the last podcast, I said, hey, if we don't like it, we could resell it. So PJ's like, oh, that's a good idea. He doesn't communicate any of this with me. He orders it. It shows up and I'm so excited. I'm like, wow, he actually listened to me. He got it. I'm all stoked. I'm like, we're going to make a bunch of videos. I have all these shorts ideas. And he's like, I already sold it.
So here's my thinking. You suggested selling it. I looked online and sure enough, it was selling easily for $3,000. So after I confirmed the order, I posted an image of it, said for sale. But you sold it for like $3,000. And when I look online, I saw like $5,000. There are some listings at $5,000, but I think it was consistently selling at $3,000. So people were going for the $3,000. The $5,000 will stay there for a while. But regardless, I'm like so upset about this because...
Only 800 made, only available with referral credit. It's signed by Franz, like a real signature on there. Yes, it is. Like this is...
This is not something you sell like we could have this in this cool like acrylic plaque on the wall. I wanted to keep this. So my thinking was you got to and I made it clear on the sale that this will be open for pictures and it'll be unused. And that's exactly what it was. We opened it. We got content. You got to shoot pictures and video of it. And he gave me literally he's like, you have today to open it, make content and I have to send it tomorrow.
So if you received number 114, that was ours. That was supposed to be mine. I'm so upset. I'm so upset about this. This is like Tesla history.
I get it, but it's $3,000. I don't know. What would you guys, do you guys think it's worth it? I think it's super cool. It does say though, that it's not for actual use, that it's a piece of exercise equipment on it. And I thought that was fascinating because like it's a sledgehammer, but it's again, it's like not a flamethrower, not a actual sledgehammer, I guess, but also it's like 12 pounds. So you could kind of do like a good exercise with it if you wanted to use it for that. Well,
Well, you got what you wanted. Not really. I got what I wanted. Not really. I'm still upset about this. I'm bitter. I feel like this should have been discussed before you went and sold it. Well, it was a surprise. And I think that we could have gotten like five, five grand. I think we could have gotten more. You'll never be happy with this. So we're just going to take this argument off camera. Let me know what you guys think. Whose side are you on? Oh my gosh. Would you sell it?
Or would you keep it like me? Let us know in the comments down below and settle this for us. Hopefully you're on Team Kim. All right, so with all these electric cars coming out, obviously charging is a big deal. And we have some cool chargers coming out. The lamppost is actually going to be deployed in the U.S. now this spring. Is it called lamppost?
Well, I call it the lamppost. It's actually called the bolt post. Okay. But I think most people know of it as the lamppost because they're actually able to install it on lampposts. Yes, this is fascinating. It reminds me of Talking Tesla, which was a podcast I used to listen to 10 years ago.
And they had an intro where one of the hosts said, I've seen the future and it's light post charging. And it immediately reminded me of it because when I heard that back in the day, I thought that was fascinating. No one really brought it to fruition. But Volt Post, the name of this company, is bringing this into some major cities across the U.S. That includes Chicago, New York, Detroit.
all of them this spring. They didn't disclose exactly how many they're deploying, but what's fascinating about it is just how easy it is to implement this into existing lights in these cities. They can do it in like one to two hours. It's really cool looking. They just throw it on a lamppost, which is why I call it the lamppost charger. And there's an app that goes with it.
And with the construction too, Kim, we're looking at there's no trenching involved. There's very little to no permitting involved. So as you said, within one to two hours, they can put this in there and get essentially chargers to areas that you wouldn't otherwise be able to get it. They're saying maybe underprivileged areas that don't have the infrastructure built in in their communities. Now, for very low cost, you can implement this into city streetlights.
and have level two charging available. - I mean, just being able to park your car on the street and then you have a charger right there. - Yeah. - Like so cool. I love it. - It'll be app based. They're saying it's app based as well. So you can then get it online and essentially have it communicate with your car without fumbling for cards and scanning and so on. - And then the charger actually comes out
And it doesn't like, it's not on the ground. There's not like a tripping hazard with it either for people on the sidewalks. It's very, very cool. It makes a lot of sense. Really excited to see this implemented. We'll have to go check it out. Yeah, it's 90 degree angle, they say on it. So again, it gets away from the pedestrians, like you said, 20 feet long as well, because those are always the things, you know, when you do plug in or try to find a charger when you're, you know, on vacation or something that you're
dragging it across the sidewalk and always worried about people tripping on it. This is going to solve that problem by being able to articulate and get out of your way. And if you're iced in 20 feet, you could potentially like pull it if you have to park behind somebody. So it's really cool. EVgo announced this week that they're going to be expanding their plug-and-go option to over 50 EV models. They have their AutoPlus program, which is kind of like Tesla, where you just
plug in and you go and you don't have to like deal with you know logging in all your information and a credit card and all that kinda stuff so I like where we're seeing the future headed speaking of charging you know who keeps this channel charged
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