Ep03 - Trending in Tesla w/ Ryan McCaffrey: Cybertruck Delivery Stall, Tesla Bot & More
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Till now, minimalism has served Tesla extraordinarily well. Here's the thing, we don't know exactly what the Cybertruck has up its sleeve. This one is going to get ten times the scrutiny. So do you find this scary? There is physical limitation. That's what they said about Megan too.

Tesla is not standing still. Completely news to me is that autopilot now cannot be engaged during a crash because the car disengages autopilot automatically. It's almost like Tesla saying, hey, you're on your own now. Good luck with this one. We're not liable. Lots of

heated discussion in the Tesla trending topics this week. Tesla released an almost CGI looking video of a robot in action. Plus the staggering sales of the Model 3 and Model Y have even brought Trump into the discussion. And Cybertruck dropping some new merch ahead of its imminent launch. Plus an autopilot crash brings up more heated debate. All that and more starts right now.

Welcome back. Thank you again for joining us as we discuss the trending Tesla topics. I'm joined with my guest, PJ, who's also my husband, and he is a meteorologist. He's been following Tesla as long as I have. And then we also have a special guest this week. We have Ryan McCaffrey from Ride the Lightning, the Tesla unofficial podcast host.

So he's going to be giving us his thoughts as well on some of these subjects. But I want to get right into it. So let's talk about Optimus because there's a video that you guys have probably seen out there where Optimus is doing yoga and sorting objects. And it's pretty cool because two years ago we saw a guy dressed up like a robot doing the dance. And now we're seeing the real thing. It's come a long way. It was August 2021. Tesla unveiled it. They kind of got a lot of slack for it because of that costume and how cheesy it sort of was.

Now they've got this doing very complex tasks and it's able to actually maneuver almost very fluid. Did you notice on the footage it looked like some of it almost looked like CGI the way it was moving? It did. I definitely had to second guess when I saw it the first time. So Ryan, I'm curious what you think about this. If this

this technology makes you nervous. You know, it's moving quickly, which with Tesla, that's sort of the default is things move fast and they fail fast. They succeed fast. I know Elon's been pretty bullish on timelines, which he always is.

But it's something where I could definitely see a use for it if it really is going to be capable of taking care of a lot of household and backyard kind of tasks that we humans wouldn't have to do in our home lives. But it's very cool to see it because it does a couple things in there that are sort of

groundbreaking. Yes. It looks simple at first. You're just like, oh, it's sorting objects. But there's definitely a couple moments in there that show what it's capable of. It's a very different approach. That's the important thing to note about this, that we've seen robotics and Boston Dynamics, who makes incredible robots, do very complex tasks and do backflips and get pushed over and hop right back up.

But this particular robot with Optimus is using vision, it's using AI machine learning, it's using essentially what the Tesla cars use where you're able to learn from the surroundings, the environment all feeds that into an AI brain, and then it's able to process that in real time. There's no lines of code that need to be written. There's nothing that needs to kind of be put into this robot to tell it exactly how to operate.

And that's what's making this groundbreaking versus other approaches of robotics is that the AI itself is making dynamic decisions on the go. Yeah, so it's basically this neural net and it's only limited by the number of clips and chips, basically. So the number of images coming in and then, yeah, the processing. So it's amazing the implications for this. It's really not different from...

from the cars. From the way the cars navigate the roads, exactly. We were in San Francisco a few months ago. We tried out what Waymo is doing, which essentially is using lines of code and using humans that are monitoring the vehicle on the roads as well, remotely, continually adjusting it with a

person's aid. This again is very different. This is exactly what Tesla is doing in full self-driving where they're able to process the images, whether it's the car or the robot is seeing and then maneuver accordingly. So there isn't really an outlier that needs to be written for if it does this, you need to do that. So you'll see in some of the clips here, for example, at the 52nd mark, the bot's self-correcting a block that was kind of placed on its side. And all it had to do was that the AI brain had the video clips of the object being sorted right side up.

instead of on their sides. And it immediately realized without any sort of code having to be put in there that, hey, these are put in right side up. So we need to adjust this on the fly. And that's exactly what it did without anyone telling it to do that. It's interesting to me because it's really how humans learn, right? We watch things, we observe, and then we are able to make those corrections. But now AI is able to do that. So do you find this scary? Yeah.

Definitely scary. Absolutely. I think even Elon himself finds it pretty scary. But the potential use cases long term could be incredible. But at the same time, what does that mean for the human workforce? If you're a Tesla investor, it could mean big things if it all plays out as such.

I feel like it's almost like Apple where I might want to wait for version two of Optimus. I suspect that given how fast Tesla moves, that version two is going to be 10 times better than version one. I mean, look at the cars, you know, from the original Model S to not even the Model 3, like just a...

two, three years later, the 2014, the 2015 Model S's added autopilot. They added insane mode. They added a second motor for all-wheel drive. I mean, Tesla moves so quick that...

I figure if Optimus really is as awesome as we all want it to be, then version two is going to be the one I'm going to keep my eye on. You look at some of the comments and the anti-Tesla folks were saying, you know, Boston Dynamics has so much more going for it, so much more experience.

But again, Tesla completely treading their own path with this one, not at all following the way typically things like this are done. - I mean, that's what Tesla does, right? - And again, at the 34 second mark, you can see what happens here with a person that kind of randomly sorts the blocks on the table and Optimus is able to track that object on its own without any explicit instructions from a human and adjust accordingly on the fly as well. So you see the dynamic aspect of it. - And this, just looking at the blocks, it seems very basic,

But the fact that it's able to make those corrections itself is sort of mind blowing because it's how fast is this going to go? Like how fast is it going to be able to take in information and change? Are we going to have a Terminator situation here? Hopefully not. Or, you know, that movie Megan that came out a year ago. I mean, that was kind of scary. But, oh,

Hopefully... There's physical limitations, according to what Elon had said with this particular optimist. That's what they said about Megan, too. How fast it could run and what it can pull off. Until it's able to learn how to override those limitations. Absolutely, and manipulate. Manipulate its environment. I mean, it is a little bit scary, I'm not going to lie, because we've seen every...

horror movie in that genre is pretty much about AI taking over the world. That's true. There's never an AI that just comes in and does as planned. Does it scare you at all? No, I wouldn't. I'm not quite in that category with it. I can see how just the idea of a humanoid, reasonably heavy robot that can perform tasks autonomously

I can totally respect and understand how that might be a little creepy, a little scary for some people. You don't think going out to get water at nighttime in the middle of the night by the fridge and you see it standing in the corner charging and staring at you. Well, PJ, I hadn't considered that possibility and now you've put that into my head and now it's creepy and weird. You've made it creepy and weird, so thank you. And you're going

to go for the second the second iteration here which will probably have like a face and be even more human like right I would love something that could fold laundry and yeah mop the floors vacuum uh

mow the grass. Yeah, there are definitely plenty of tasks that would be awesome to hand off to Optimus. So what do you think, though? I mean, you kind of a little bit talked about it, but in terms of a timeline for when this would come to market, like, are we thinking a year from now, two years from now, five years from now? What would your guess be? That's a great question. We know that

when Elon gives a timeline, with the exception of the Model Y, that's the one and only time they've really actually beat the timeline, but usually it's going to be much later, but the product is every bit as awesome as they promise it's going to be. And in fact, oftentimes usually more awesome than they initially promised. So

It certainly doesn't seem like something that's going to come around in a year. Definitely not on a consumer level. There's so many more checkpoints we have to go through. I mean, seeing these little basically tech demo updates is interesting, but...

There's no way, I can't see a way, a world in which Tesla sells it to consumers before they're actually utilizing it in the Fremont factory in Giga, Texas in like actual meaningful ways, not just in sort of testing capacity ways. So that to me will be the,

a big milestone once it's actually literally employed, although not having to, they don't have to pay the robot, uh, in the factories, then I, I'd start kind of zeroing in on, okay, when, when might we see a consumer version of this? But for the moment I'd have to think it's gotta be a, an absolute bare minimum of two years away from,

Three is maybe a safer bet. Could be five. I don't know if it'll quite necessarily be that long, but you know, it's coming. It is going to happen. What's your take on the humanoid aspect of it? When you look at robots in work right now in factories, the way they're operating and building vehicles, they're not in human form. That's not necessarily the most efficient form to get a certain task done. This comes in in human form, essentially, probably with the premise that it's going to end up in your house or somewhere in public work.

So what do you think about it being human form? Do you rather have it be a block that does all this stuff or do you want it to have a head and an arm? Well, I feel like if I'm going to have it sort of laundry for me, it needs to have hands. So I feel like there's a reason we were built the way we're built. But, you know, I really, I'm not sure. It is a little bit weird. Anytime Elon's talked about Optimus, he said that this would be the majority of Tesla's long-term value would be with Optimus. Curious though, what the price of this would be. I think it's got to be at least...

10,000 to 20,000 initially.

And that keeps it in the somewhat affordable range. And if it's going to do some of these tasks that you maybe are already paying someone to do, then just like an EV and how it pays for itself after a while, this might do the same if it's doing your lawn versus you paying someone to do your lawn. As far as implications go, obviously he's going to have them building cars. And then also I think when Mars comes along and we're trying to colonize Mars, that's the biggest thing is that not having to send humans to space, actual humans,

but a humanoid robot, you know, makes sense. You know, they can live in environments that we can't live in. But as far as jobs, a lot of people are concerned when they see something like this because it's, is that taking away our jobs? Of

For sure. I mean, I think regardless of what you do, it's the whole, you know, Netflix blockbuster thing. It was inevitable. It was bound to happen. Jobs are definitely going a different direction, regardless of whether you feel good about it or not. It's interesting, though, too, because you won't even need people to write code for these robots. They're basically writing their own code. Yeah, they're learning from one another. So if anything, you need more of like a police, the watchdogs for the A.I.

Like government needs to come in there and kind of like set some boundaries as far as what we're allowed to do with AI. Obviously Tesla at this point is miles ahead in terms of sales. And so for something else, another product like out of left field to come and be the majority of their value is huge.

kind of crazy. So talking about Tesla being so far ahead, Sawyer Merritt tweeted out an article from Reuters just really showing the data of how far ahead they really are. Yeah, the data looks at the EV sales in the U.S. so far in the first six months of the year. Tesla is besting the next 19 competitors 10 to 1 as far as sales are concerned, almost pushing the other competitors into more niche products. It's

The gap is so large, it's so huge right now that he tweeted this graph and Elon Musk responds saying, quote unquote, competition is coming. So, I mean, where is that competition? And that's like meant to be a joke, in quotation marks. Where is the competition? Who's the next competition for Tesla?

I mean, look at the numbers here. As far as sales so far this year, Tesla sold 325,000 cars in the first six months of the year. The next best was GM with Chevrolet brand, and it sold the Bolt, and it was a distant second at 35,000 sales, literally 10 times less. And then Ford comes in third, and they sold about 13,600 Mach-Es.

and then Hyundai and Rivian are four and five. So the competition isn't there yet, that the prices, some of these prices are comparable. And then Ford just decided they're canceling their $3.5 billion battery plant they had in the works in Michigan.

Once again, realizing that, hey, we're not able to sell as many EVs as we thought we are at this point, maybe. And they're scrapping it as it's not a worthwhile investment. Really, Tesla with the Model 3 and Model Y is the only one in the game that's able to sell at high enough volume to support opening these new factories. You know, and they all said Tesla would fail. And now look at what's happening. And it's just, it's really interesting timing too, because we have this strike going on with the United Auto Workers.

The UAW, the United Auto Workers Union, initially they were demanding 40% pay raise. Then nothing really happened. So they bent a little bit down to 36%. Now they're asking for a 30% pay raise. With a 32-hour work week, I believe, as well. Yes, that's an important part of it. Yes.

And when you look at these numbers, the amount of losses is kind of staggering. So GM and Ford actually stand to lose two and a half to three billion dollars per week that this strike continues on. Yeah, you know, and by contrast, if they agree to this 30 percent pay raise, it would cost GM and Ford about four to five and a half billion dollars over the next four years. So literally two weeks of the strike cost them more than just paying these guys for the next four years.

So it's so interesting because then we have companies like Tesla and Rivian and Lucid who don't use unionized workers. And I think seeing what's happening here is a big reason why they don't use unionized workers because...

the union has to know that they're making these companies go into bankruptcy. Absolutely. That's what Elon Musk was also suggesting is that, you know, you guys realize you're biting the hand that feeds you and you're sending essentially the company that you're hoping to pay you in the next, you know, four or five years into bankruptcy by that point. I mean, I support the workers' right to

to strike and bargain for a better deal. These car makers bring in billions upon billions of dollars a year on the backs of the workers. But at the same point, you've got to be reasonable because as you both wisely pointed out, Tesla is not standing still. They, they have their foot on the accelerator 24 hours, literally 24 hours a day. Then they do not let off

the accelerator. They're continuing to move. There was a story that I'm going to talk about on Ride the Lightning this weekend about a report from Reuters out of Giga Shanghai that Tesla is now looking into doing a single piece gigacasting for the entire underbody of the car. So they're only going to get faster. They're only going to cut their costs by even more. And

As you both said, the other automakers, be they in Detroit or Germany or anywhere else, are already lagging behind Tesla in the race to electrify the entire automotive industry. They've got to kind of see the writing on the wall that if they push too far, they're really going to put the companies themselves in jeopardy, which puts their own

careers in jeopardy, which just sets electrification back in general. Of course, Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, they're actually structuring their employees pay in part to have it rely on stock units and stock purchase plans. So in the past, Elon had said this makes their employees essentially millionaires.

if they've been there for four or five years, we've met some employees at Tesla, some mobile technicians and people that have been there for five, six, seven years that are literally millionaires right now. They'll come to your house, work in your garage, but their stock compensation that they've had for all these years has put them in a different bracket. And the UAW president also wants Tesla to consider joining the union after all that. Yeah, that's not going to happen. Our tax dollars are going to go towards bailing them out again.

because it's not the first time. So it's kind of funny. And even Trump joined in on all this. I actually agree with what he said this time. Yeah, you know, he said it doesn't make a damn bit of a difference what you get because in two years, you're all going to be out of business. Curious what you guys think about this. What

What do you think? You're asking me? I'm asking you as well. I'm asking all of you and I'm asking you. Do you think that it's too late for those companies? Some of them. Some of them, it probably is. I've talked about this on my podcast repeatedly that there are... It just seems inevitable, not that I'm rooting for this, but it just seems inevitable that...

one or more major automakers is not going to survive the transition to electrification. The one I have always kind of pointed out on my podcast is Dodge slash Stellantis. Their whole brand is the muscle car thing, the gas-guzzling V8 thing.

And it's worked for them, but they don't seem to have a plan to electrify. And if they do, can they convince those muscle car enthusiast customers to

that they're going to make electric muscle cars, because arguably that's kind of what Tesla's doing. The Model S Plaid, it is a muscle car. It just happens to be electric, right? It is a bull in a china shop. It just will decimate anything in a straight line, which is kind of the historical definition of a muscle car. Rivian seems like, in my totally amateur opinion, that they've

They seem to have weathered the worst of the storm and they seem to kind of have a good trajectory now to continue ramping up their production on the R1S, which by all accounts is an amazing vehicle. I think you both have lived with it, have experienced it. I've not had the pleasure, but the R1T is a great truck and they've got their second generation lower cost vehicles.

vehicles on the way. But yeah, there are going to be other companies like Pontiac that are not going to be here in 20 years from now because of this inevitable shift to electrification. I think maybe 10 years from now, all the cars are going to be electric, hopefully. 10 years? Wouldn't you think? Well, California has the mandate of 2035 to go 100%. But I guess that's almost 10 years. Yeah, it's about 10 years though.

Right? There's still going to be a few like holding on, you know. Probably the majority of the U.S. will still be internal combustion engine in 2035. But I think there'll be some states. Okay, so let's move into Cybertruck land because that is always a big topic of discussion. There's some

new drone footage where people are saying this could be production Cybertruck. Everyone is hoping for that. But then we also are seeing some merch that's being delivered to employees that says Cybertruck launch event on it. - So a good indication that it is pretty much around the corner here. And you know, there's still some non-negotiables that have to take place before an official delivery takes place. We know crash test rating data hasn't been available, though we've seen crash test footage.

So, and apparently that footage came from a vehicle that was on its way to Ohio where NHTSA's crash test labs are located. So the test is probably done. The data is not available yet for the public. And there's also one other element that needs to be in place before deliveries can officially take place. And that is what's called the certificate of conformity that comes from the EPA when they run tests for a fueleconomy.gov website.

When that data and the certificate of conformity is online, it means that's already been completed. That data is not online. So it's either not there yet. So I'm guessing that they've done everything and they're just like waiting for that checkmark to appear. That's probably why the delay in this delivery event, because, you know, Tesla announced it through the referral program of being able to attend such an event. This was like well over a month ago.

nothing has come of it. So I think you're absolutely on point here is that we're waiting for that check mark before they can officially make this event happen legally. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think like every other day we're trying to guess when we think it's going to be, if we'll see something in our emails,

Again, we've talked about this before, but October is such a busy month for us. We're actually going to Tokyo in the end of October. It's our son's birthday. I already told PJ that if it lands on my son's birthday, I'm taking him instead of you. And we've got some very cool EV stuff in the works in Tokyo. So wait till you see those episodes.

You didn't, you seem to just like not hear that I'm taking my son. Or you're just choosing to ignore that. I just moved on from that one. You just moved on completely. That's not going to happen. He's like, well, you need somebody to film. You need someone to film. And I think that Liam could tackle that. He'll be nine. He's going to film your knees. We need you to. No. Yeah, Kim's going to look really tall in those videos. The angle's going to be pointing up. They can't launch this thing right.

until it's totally ready to go because there's going to be, there's scrutiny on every single Tesla vehicle launch, but this one is going to get 10 times the scrutiny of any of probably of all of their previous vehicle launches combined.

SX3Y combine them all, all the scrutiny that those cars got when they launched. And, and it's going to be all that and more on the cyber truck because it's so polarizing. It's so divisive. There are going to be so many people wanting it to fail for whatever reason, you know, the fudsters out there, the haters, but, uh, uh,

They have to get this right. And so sure, take a little extra time. But given the fact that out here, I'm in the San Francisco area, there are the release candidate Cybertrucks running around constantly here that the Tesla engineers are out driving around testing, whatever it is they're testing. We have, as you noted, the launch team merch going out to the employees.

I don't think it's going to slip into November. I think it's going to be sometime in October. Oh, uh, what's your epiphany? What happened? I just like realized I forgot to talk about RJ Scringe.

How dare you? I know, how dare I? Because he had some comments on Cybertruck. He doesn't think that there's going to be competition. I don't think he meant it in a negative way. We can roll that footage and you can judge it for yourself. I mean, he did a very CEO, PC sort of answer. You're about to have a competitor on the horizon here. What do you think of the Cybertruck? I think if you were to think of the Venn diagrams of customers, there's probably not a lot of overlap in terms of...

But I think it's great that a product like that exists in the world. As I said a moment ago, if we really truly want to electrify everything that's produced, to give this some scale, there's one and a half billion cars on the planet. We as a planet produce about 90 million a year. Customers want lots of different things. So we need to have a choice, we need a variety. So it's great to see something that's so different

that's there. I hope there's lots of different choices that give lots of different types of customers. Often in the context of like the tech space, we think of a single winner or maybe a small set of winners. In transportation, by definition, there needs to be many winners. So there needs to be 20 to 25 successful auto manufacturers building electric connected vehicles. And so our success doesn't require someone else's failure and vice versa. And it's just very different than when you think about

you know, traditional big tech where there's one or two really highly concentrated winners. But yeah, I don't think it was a negative knock. You know, it's not competition. No, I agree. I think that what he says is it's different buyers, different people who are going to want the R1T versus Cybertruck. I couldn't agree with him more. I've talked about this on my podcast. I actually would put the F-150 Lightning in that group as well. I think by and large, not that there's not a little bit of overlap,

RJ was talking about the Venn diagram with it, but I don't think there's a ton of overlap between any of those three vehicles. You know, the F-150 Lightning is clearly a work truck. Ford has included all sorts of awesome little touches for working out in the field. They've got what? They've got like a little laptop thing.

kind of desk thing in the center that folds out of the center console. They've got outlets everywhere in it. They've got the little tape measure kind of things like built into the, so you can just measure right off the truck. Just all sorts of little stuff that they've really, really thought through and done a great job with. Their challenge is just getting enough battery supply to build lots of them, which that is not going to be a problem for Tesla with the Cybertruck.

But yeah, and then the R1T is, it is the Land Rover of electric vehicles. It is an adventure truck. It is meant to go out into national parks and just go out into the wild. And the Cybertruck is, not that it won't be able to do work things or adventure things, but it's going to be more of a,

of a cool guy truck. I think it is, it is kind of, it is, you know, it's definitely going to appeal to a lot of Tesla owners. And, um, I'm going to be interested to see kind of exactly where the cyber truck market lands, but, but, you know, Tesla is, as you both know, all about minimalism and, and in most up till now, minimalism has served Tesla extraordinarily well.

But there is a part of me that worries that minimalism isn't going to serve the Cybertruck well because that's not... The pickup truck market isn't about minimalism. It's about how much functionality can you pack into your truck. So we'll see if the Cybertruck will be embraced by workers in the field or adventurers when it's probably only going to have...

the one outlet in the bed compared to the Lightning that's got a million of them and the R1T that's got the gear tunnel and all sorts of neat stuff going on in it. The price points are going to be pretty similar. I mean, you've got the R1T, I think, starting at 73K. You spec that out, you're going to get to 100K.

The Cybertruck is probably going to be close to that. I'd imagine Cybertruck at its peak price point is probably aiming to stay below $100,000. But I have no idea what they're going to have as far as deployable solar panels or accessories to make the price go way up. Price point-wise, they're comparable. But I think they're so different looking. There is a side-by-side footage.

that you can see them for the first time, what they look like next to each other. I definitely think the people that were disappointed when they saw the Cybertruck at the event and they wanted something more traditional looking would go probably for Rivian.

And then people that are diehard Tesla fans and just love this new sort of look are going to go for that. I do feel like a lot of the people getting the Cybertruck are going to be people that are not typical truck people. It's going to, yeah, exactly. Us too. We've never owned a truck. I fully confess, I readily admit, I will probably never do any truck things ever with the Cybertruck. I am buying it because...

of the stainless steel. If it were, you know, it's just, it's very close to my heart as a DeLorean, as a former DeLorean owner, I owned the original stainless steel bodied vehicle. There's only ever been one in history. We're about to get the second one. And I just figure, well, I got to have that. And plus I know how, and I'm sure we'll talk about this in a future episode. I know better than pretty much anybody, uh, how, uh,

easy it is to care for a stainless steel bodied car. That was my next question. Yeah, compared to a paint. So I don't know about the two of you, but I have just, I am really, really picky about my car in the sense that I keep it super clean.

I'm very proud of the fact that it still looks new after five years and 58,000 miles. It's got paint protection film on the whole thing. The detailer did the paint correction, the ceramic coating. I've got the whole nine yards going because I just, it's the most money I've ever spent on anything except our house. And I want to keep it looking nice and I want to take that pride in it.

But paint a painted car, which is literally every car other than the DeLorean has to be, if you want to keep it looking super nice, you have to baby it. There's just no, you know, I envy anybody that's not crazy like me, that is okay with scratches and wear and tear on their car. I just like mentally can't. You would probably like die if you saw my car right now, just because I have three kids and carpool and it's,

I try to clean it once a week or I try to get you to clean it for me once a week, but it gets destroyed. It's kind of a family car, at least the Model X's. If I still had my DeLorean, I could show it to you. But when I sold it, it was 30, like 31 years old. And it looked, the body looked as good as new because the stainless steel was

doesn't age it's it is it doesn't rust it's uh it is virtually maintenance free you don't have to wax it if it gets a scratch a deep scratch you can take a a heavy duty scotch brite pad and blend that scratch right out as if it never happened uh it is it is extraordinarily easy to you don't have to you just wash it with soap and water and you're and it looks gleaming and perfect and

And it's awesome. If bird poop gets on the stainless steel, you don't have to worry about, ah, it's going to etch into the paint. Nope, there's no paint. It can sit there for a month and it'll just clean right off and it's fine. So yeah, the stainless steel factor of the Cybertruck is the primary draw for me specifically. And sort of by extension...

my wife because her whole thing, she's had her current car for 19 years, a Mini Cooper. She works from home, so not a lot of mileage on it. So she's been able to keep it this long, but that's kind of, that is how I sold her on the Cybertruck is look, this thing between, uh,

The latest generation drivetrain and motor technology that Tesla will be putting into this thing, the latest generation battery cells, it's going to go forever. And with the stainless steel body,

It's going to look as good in 20 years as it looks on the day we take delivery. So that, that is the, to me, the signature feature of the cyber truck. And the thing I'm most excited about, if it were a regular just steel or aluminum painted body, uh,

truck, but even if it still looked the same, I wouldn't be buying it. The stainless steel is the reason that I'm interested in the Cybertruck. Tell me this. What do you think about this? What if back in that date in November 2019, Tesla rolled out what would look like the R1T as the Cybertruck and it looked different enough. It kind of looked like a Range Rover. It looked cool. Would they have over a million and a half, two million pre-orders? I think they would. I think that the Tesla Mystique and the brand power that it's generated is

they could have rolled out almost anything. I think they could have done almost anything. It would have done just as well. But I also think that it only helps their brand that it's so polarizing looking. For sure. Because people are talking about it so much. And it really was like...

I mean, the week that happened, all people could talk about was this weird looking truck and the windows that broke and all these things. And they got so much free publicity. And it has no family resemblance to the other four cars in the lineup. All the other ones look like they're related. This one doesn't. I actually, right away, at first I was stunned when we saw it. But then right away, I was like, you know what?

This is a car I could see like all the rappers taking on. People are going to... Not just rappers. They're going to rap it. Also... Music videos, celebrities, you name it. Celebrities. It's just going to be like... It's going to be like when Hummer first came out and people were like... And Arnold was... Arnold was...

Exactly. It's going to be different buyers. Different buyers buying these vehicles. They're both electric and that's really all that they have in common is they're electric and they're trucks, but they're completely different. You think they look about the same size? I thought they did when they were side by side. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to tell from the picture depending on how far one vehicle is pulled up, but maybe it is those sharp lines that make me feel like it's a bigger truck because everywhere, every picture, every comment is like, it's huge. Oh my gosh, that's not going to fit in my garage.

But, you know, it's hard to tell until we know the specs here very soon. I really did like the R1T other than cracking the roof. I loved it. I thought it was such a great vehicle. Here's the thing. We don't know exactly what the Cybertruck has up its sleeves. It's true. If it does have that solar deployable shield that, you know, we're talking about or any of the other cyber quad feature that you can get it as an accessory to come with it. I mean, there's so many things that I think that

Tesla's been able to stand back, look at for a couple of years and see, oh, Ford has this and bi-directional that. And so they can really incorporate quite a bit of Tesla tech into it. I was bummed though that they took out that seat up front. They originally said that it would be six seats, which I actually tweeted. I tweeted. Yeah. So your respondent saying it would have six seats. And I was like, wow, that's so awesome. And again, I look at cars from a family perspective and how

how many people we can fit in our car and things like that. So I thought that'd be really cool to have a third seat up front. So I was kind of bummed. So this is a story that we've been following for a while now. We actually made a video where we interviewed Peter Gruber about it. There were three original Roadsters found in a shipping container over in China with zero miles on the odometer. - From 2010, 13 years in a shipping container. - So it's kind of crazy and I guess

the back story that we kind of know now is that they were originally purchased they wanted to reverse engineer them. The Chinese EV company that never was able to pay the import tariffs and bring it in they went out of business before the roadsters made it to China. But now they have been brought back to

the U.S., so now we know a little bit more about them. Yes. And it looks like the paint is in great condition, but there was some rodent mischief. Yes, there was. I don't know how the rodents got into the shipping container. That's odd. I thought that it was sealed, like they wouldn't be able to get in. Yeah, some of the initial pictures had cover and plastic and wrap over the vehicles as well, but apparently the wiring harness has been chewed up pretty extensively. The battery is likely bricked. The engineers there at Gruber Motors are taking a look at it.

but probably needs a whole new wiring harness, probably needs a whole new battery. And a lot of the parts that have been damaged sitting there for all these years, Tesla doesn't make anymore. So sure, it could be a museum piece. That's what I'm saying. Does it even matter? Because I feel like these are museum pieces. These are not pieces that...

That whoever buys them should drive. And someone did buy them. So this went into auction a couple of months ago when it was in China. Someone bid and won it for $2 million for all three of them, but they were not able to secure the insurance necessary because the insurance company didn't value the vehicles at around $700,000 each, which is what they had to put the number in.

And they also wanted to lease the vehicle. Yeah, I read that they wanted to lease them. So were they planning on letting people actually drive them or just lease it out? It would be just like any other roadster. To like a museum or just, you know, that's what I would think that they would lease it to a museum. I definitely don't think anyone should drive these vehicles. Yeah, but Peter Gruber was saying that now that it's in Arizona, people can come and see it there in their offices.

possibly the bids would come in and take it well north of two million dollars where you can see this physically in person see that it has zero miles sure it doesn't currently work but the folks there in Phoenix are able to piece this possibly back together maybe borrowing parts from other I would love to go look at them yeah I would really

They've invited you. When can we make that happen? Let's go out there to Scottsdale, to Phoenix. We have a three-day weekend coming up here. Someone has suggested Elon purchasing these with the lint in the back of his pocket and then putting it in the three different factories. The New York one, the Texas one, and the California one, and having them out front on display there. All right, up next, Kim, another autopilot crash that unfortunately was fatal in...

and lawyers involved in this are trying to sue Tesla, which is nothing new when we've seen with these autopilot crashes. But there was a crash in Southern California a few months back. The driver passed away, the two passengers seriously injured. Autopilot was engaged. Apparently the vehicle by itself very sharply turned into the curb and hit a palm tree, caught fire. That's when the driver passed.

And now the lawyers for the remaining passengers that were on board and very seriously injured are saying Tesla knew there was a defect with the vehicle and that there should be held liable for essentially creating this accident when the car was just driving. Now, Tesla says there was alcohol in the driver's blood, but it was below the legal limit. But at the same time, they said autopilot wasn't engaged when the accident happened.

And apparently Tesla in the past has said, and this is completely news to me, is that autopilot now cannot be engaged during a crash because the cars received the software update at some point. They weren't clear on when, where it disengages autopilot automatically immediately before maybe a second or two before a crash is to occur.

But it's almost like Tesla saying, "Hey, you're on your own now. Good luck with this one." Yeah, we're not liable. But I guess it's-- You're already saying that you're willing to be responsible for an accident. Yes, you do. So you've already agreed to that before you check off on using this feature.

But it's also like how much time do they need to give the driver a reasonable amount of time to where they could take over before an accident. Yeah. But again, you are signing off that you're going to be basically driving or paying attention enough that you could disengage yourself. So it's kind of this gray line with this. And I think that whatever happens with this case is really going to determine future cases.

Yes, there's actually a similar lawsuit in April 2023 and Tesla was acquitted of all charges with that one. Yeah, it was a Model S driver. I believe again in California on autopilot car turned into a curb very abruptly while it was an autopilot and this driver suffered a fractured jaw missing teeth nerve damage to her face brought Tesla to court sued them for three million dollars in damages and the California court actually awarded zero dollars in damages and acquitted Tesla of any wrongdoing.

So, you know, it kind of draws that fine line of on level two, Tesla tells you, you know, you're checking off on this, be ready to take over at all times, keep your hands on the steering wheel. - You know, for me, autopilot has done a really good job. Full self driving on the other hand, there's a couple scenarios where I'm like, whoa, this has been a little bit crazy. It does continue to get better. - Well, I think we use autopilot on the freeway

And that's why we think it does a good job because it does. There isn't as much involved as far as adjusting for very dynamic situations.

When you're using FSD, you're using it on surface streets, you're making turns into oncoming traffic. So you expect a lot more and that's when it becomes just scarier in general. But I will say seeing that video of Optimist now, I kind of think differently about full self... You're optimistic. I'm optimistic about full self-driving. Yeah. It's kind of cool because it's the same sort of...

of thing. But I, you know, as far as going back to the accident, it's awful what happened. It's terrible. You know, obviously somebody lost their life here. But it's a bigger deal because it will set that precedent for all future cases.

Look at one of the comments though, this is really interesting. Someone said, "Although I feel very sorry for the victims of the accident, there's often a collateral damage to people's selfish and unrestrained behavior. As much as I believe that FSD has ways to go before it's good enough for hands-off driving, as long as it's legally a level two system, Tesla pretty much has to be held innocent. The car could say anything it wants, but California labels it as requiring human control, so it's the human at fault in the accident.

And when they step into level three territory now, things will change from a legal standpoint where you're able to really get closer to full self-driving. And that's when the gray area then maybe changes and Tesla really has to be held accountable. Yeah. Because they're telling you, you know, you're getting close to it. But this was autopilot. And Tesla has all the data that they'll provide. I think they've covered their bases with having so much data in these vehicles that it's basically your word on what happened versus...

tons and tons of telemetry data and vision-based data and video footage. And the other thing about autopilot is it typically does make it a safer drive. There's been plenty of times too where I've avoided accidents because of autopilot, where it sees cars way ahead of me stop and then it stops where I haven't seen that happen yet. And so it's

Obviously, their situation's awful, but there are plenty of times where it's probably saved lives as well. So do you remember when Elon talked about being able to charge at a dine-in theater? Yeah, he had talked about this in 2018, teasing that Tesla's going to create a supercharger experience and have a dine-in theater sort of set up there like the 1950s. And you can come on in and charge and actually enjoy the experience of charging versus waiting. So we're one step closer. They've broken ground on this.

And there's some really cool renderings as well that kind of get you excited for this. Yeah. So Elon's tweet back in 2018 was saying he wanted an old school drive-in with roller skates and a rock restaurant.

I wasn't kidding at all. It's happening now. A few months later, actually Tesla applied for permits, but the project stalled right then and there in 2018 because apparently there were some regulations for the location there. And from the filing, now we know exactly what this might look like. It's going to be a two-story diner with the 29 supercharger stalls and two movie theater screens as well. Semi-circular. You see these renderings here from an architectural modeler. I really hope the food is A, really good.

And B, Tesla themed. Like I hope they have a plaid burger that has like, you know...

food colored plaids, you know, on top. But the problem is, is that you charge so quick now. You don't really have time. Are you going to have someone go out and move your car for you? Or we're going to have that snake-like charger. That would be the supercharger to test them out in if they were ever to do it. Yeah, Tesla might not want you to just sit there in your car taking a charging stall for 90 minutes or two hours to watch a whole movie while you eat. But then you don't have the time to watch a movie.

Oh, for sure. That's what I'm saying. You get parts of a movie. Yeah, you get parts of a movie unless you have someone go and unplug your car and move it. I'd imagine it's like iconic movies where you already know what's going on, like Titanic is playing or something. Okay, okay. Yeah, something going on. Gone with the Wind. Something kind of fun. No, it's going to be like Spaceballs and all the movies he's into. Are you kidding? It's going to be all the Elon references. It's going to be all Elon reference movies for sure. I'll be making a trip to Santa Monica. Is Santa Monica?

It's going to be in Hollywood. It was originally Santa Monica and they're just moving a little over in LA. Yeah, it's going to be in Hollywood now. It's on Santa Monica Boulevard though, which is probably what you're thinking of. Okay, that's probably what you're thinking.

It'll overtake Kettleman City as the coolest Tesla supercharger in America. Yeah, there's actually something else goes with this. Just this week as well, literally at the same time as this groundbreaking, Vrove, which is a new developer for full-service electric vehicle charging stations, just announced that they're going to be building this 40-stall station in Santa Monica with a grocery store. And again, you kind of see the renders of what they've released.

and it's going to have an indoor outdoor seating area, a car wash, wifi, 24/7 lounge as well. Now this isn't Tesla superchargers. This is DC fast charging up to 350 kilowatts. It includes NACS chargers as well.

But it's a completely different brand that's bringing in an experience around chargers, which obviously Elon was already thinking about five years ago. But they're breaking ground on the same day, essentially. And it's even going to have a fenced area for dogs. So your dog can go potty over there in the corner. And it's going to have an eco-friendly car wash with 80% of the water used in this car wash that's going to be reclaimed. Yeah. So it's just fascinating how brands are thinking about charging as a whole. But to your point...

isn't charging going to get faster really soon. So Ryan, how long have you been doing the podcast for? I just recently surpassed eight years every single Sunday for the past eight plus years. So I'm in it for the long haul. And thank you for coming to this side of the camera so that we can see your face and everyone can see the man behind...

the podcast, which is my favorite podcast to listen to. I just think it's so cool how dedicated you've been and how you do it every single week. And it's like clockwork because I know how hard that is for us to stay on a schedule like that. So I have a lot of appreciation for you. I wanted to go ahead and let people know where they can find you and how they can support you. So if you wanted to give a shout out, now's the time. Awesome. Yeah. Appreciate it for anybody that might not be familiar with me.

Ride the Lightning, the Tesla unofficial podcast. That is the name of my weekly Tesla podcast. It's on all the major podcast platforms, Apple, Google, what have you. You can check it out. Just search Ride the Lightning Tesla on Google and you should find me pretty quickly or on your favorite podcast service.

and yeah i hope you'll give the podcast a try i've had franz von holshausen on my podcast a couple of times most recently back in january i had elon on for an hour back on my 200th episode which is gosh already like four years ago now but you know it's a i keep up with everything and uh and try my best to to make it feel kind of like a fun radio show all

All right, so out of all the stories that we talked about this week, which one was your favorite? Optimus was pretty interesting to me. That's always exciting. Probably more exciting than any other product Tesla has lined up. I am just curious to see how that ends up being rolled out into being a consumer product. Yeah, I'm still really excited for Cybertruck. So anything related to Cybertruck gets me excited. Today, I'm wearing my Circle Skirt.

square Cybertruck tee that you guys can get one down below. And I really wanted to thank you guys for either watching or listening, however you choose to engage with us. We really appreciate it. It all goes back to this channel, just liking this video, making sure you're subscribed, sharing this video, and we will catch you guys next time.