Ep07 - Trending in Tesla: Tesla FINALLY Gives Owners the Update They'™ve Been Asking For
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- This week on Trending in Tesla, Tesla invites customers to configure Foundation Series Cybertrucks with December deliveries. - And a new holiday update gives owners something they've been asking for for years. - And Tesla launches a new warranty program that you probably wish you had. All that and more starts right now.

so if you guys have been paying attention you'll know that we just got back from texas we were out there for the cyber truck delivery event yes there was a lot going on a lot to process and we've kind of gathered some of our thoughts and have some things to share yes we didn't put out in those videos we put some more out on patreon go check those videos out if you haven't already but first off i want to say

say the employees in the factory seemed really happy. I noticed that as well. I've heard in the past people complain about how hard it is to work for Tesla and Elon being so strict, but that was not my experience at all. Yeah, I agree with you. And I think even some of the audience noticed that they were very positive, very upbeat and kind of went out of their way to show us things. And again, not the perception I had from everything I've read in the past. There's an employee there and he had a modified

flatbed is what he called it. But he had taken scrap materials from the Cybertruck and made it, you know, while he was there. And I just thought it's so cool to see a company that embraces that and lets him do that with the scrap materials and be creative and that that's not frowned upon. They're not like, is that on our time? Are we paying for that? While we were there, I was able to sit in

backseat with Sandy Monroe. And I want to say how big that backseat is. You can definitely fit three adults in there, but I have gotten some DMs about that with more questions. I would say there's a lot of leg room, but I did feel like the headroom wasn't quite as high as maybe the Rivian R1T because of the angular shape. The slope down. The slope down. But I do think that three adults, obviously I'm only 5'5", but there was probably

Probably a good like, I don't know, five or six inches. Yeah, I would say 6'1", 6'2", you're okay. Anything above maybe 6'3", 6'4", you might get uncomfortable as far as how close your head gets to the slope downward of the back of the glass. There's plenty of room for most people. But for me, as a mom, I'm thinking about kids sitting back there. There's the nice big screen back there. There's lots of room for car seats.

especially if you have a rear-facing child. It's not going to be one of those situations where you can't put your seat back if you're driving because there's so much extra leg room. And then also, it's wide. It's big back there, so you don't have the kids up close to each other when they have their car seats complaining. Obviously, I can't wait to get my hands on one. I would love to put it to the ultimate test.

which is obviously a road trip with our three kids. It's coming. Sooner or later, you'll see it. However, there are some people that are going to be taking delivery fairly soon. We've gotten some emails sent over to us and there's some interesting things. There are, yes. So Tesla's began sending invites out to customers,

Very early customers, even earlier than the ones that you and I are at, which were day one. But these seem to be California and Texas only, someone close to HQ there, at least in Austin. $80,000 dual motor, the $100,000 beast mode. This end price for the Foundation Series is $120,000 in addition to the $2,000 destination fee. And of course, with taxes, you're over $130,000. So it is pricey.

but this gets you everything covered that's available right now. It doesn't look like full self-driving is included in that price. It's capable, is what the verbiage says, which I know when you're configuring a Tesla, capability versus inclusion are two different things. Also, we know that the extended range battery is not included. Yeah, I have some thoughts on both of those. So we did put a poll out there on X and

And I personally feel it should be included with the Foundation Series. Now, one thing a lot of people are saying is it wasn't included with the Foundation Series Model S and X. - The Founder Series. - Founder Series, sorry. Full self-driving wasn't available when those cars came out as well. Where now it is, the beta version at least is available. So I think that it should be included if you're paying $120,000,

you're getting the foundation series, why not just give those people full self-driving? - We actually got a message from a parts dealer for Tesla. He sent some documentation saying he was able to configure his order already a couple of days ago. And within some of the documents he signed, guess what? The no resale policy that we initially reported, then it was reported that it was removed,

It's back now, possibly in some of these early Cybertruck deliveries. So this customer said he received two pages of legal agreements with a subparagraph saying, quote, should Tesla have any reason to believe that the purchase is for purpose of resale, Tesla reserves the right to cancel the order with full refund of any deposits to the initial purchaser. He said that the $50,000 lawsuit that was initially hinted in some of those early document leaks,

is not there anymore, but they are saying they reserve the right to possibly not let you... So will they just take it back then? They'll take it back, refund your money.

And I understand from what others have told me is that possibly they won't let you get other Teslas moving forward if that's... That's the worst part right there. It's like, not only are we going to take back our truck, you can't buy any more Teslas from us. No more Teslas for you. Yeah. And I do know there are some big companies out there that are willing to wrap your car, give you new wheels. T-Sportline is out there and has offered to do a lot for somebody receiving one of those foundation series. Yeah.

So reach out to us. We will cover it. We'll make a video. Maybe I'll replace your wheels for you if you are getting one of those because that would be awesome. I think we'd all like to see that. A couple other things that it doesn't get that range extender, you said. So they're not really getting all the accessories. And I will say at the event, the range extender was not there. Correct.

They showed a lot of accessories, but that's something that nobody has actually seen yet. So we just see these pictures where it looks like it takes up a third of the bed or so. And Elon Musk on X went ahead and said that. It said it'll take up a third of the bed. So I know others have suggested that, hey, if it's not something that Tesla has physically shown to you, maybe it won't be in the bed and maybe they'll figure something else out. It's more aesthetically pleasing, but...

Yeah, I think based on what Elon said, it is to me, it feels like an afterthought. And I've said that before we went, we did a little live AMA on X. And if you're not following us on there, make sure you do because we're trying to get more involved on there as well. But we did a live and I talked about how I felt like that was an afterthought. And if it was part of the vehicle, why did they not put it in that vault space?

yeah obviously that space is a little bit smaller but i feel like for sure they typically like the design of tesla is like so beautiful it's all integrated in franz really works hard for all this stuff so it feels like they're like oh we got to get that 500 mile range let's just throw that extender it'd be a great question to ask franz is that how did that range extender come into play was it an early discussion was it something towards the end not that

Honestly, if I had had that interview or an interview with Elon, that would have been one of the questions I would have asked about. All right. So that is enough Cybertruck talk for now. We've posted a lot on our Patreon this week with some exclusive details.

videos of the Cybertruck. Do you want to share those? Yeah, we've got a 16 minute vlog, never before seen content. We've got additional interviews that have never been before seen as well, all exclusive to members. So if you join us as a Patreon member, not only do you get access to all those, you get early release of episodes, this podcast, including Q&As with Kim and I as well. So go on there, support us. We really appreciate it. And it all goes back to just making great content for you guys.

Okay, so moving on. Some Teslas are about to see a price increase in the next couple weeks. Yeah, sort of a price increase, right? So the incentives, the U.S. tax credit is about to be cut in half for two specific variants of Teslas. They happen to be the cheapest ones, at least for one of them. The rear-wheel drive Model 3, the one with the LFP batteries, will be impacted. And also the long-range Model 3 are going to be impacted. And this is all part of an updated guidance from the White House on the Inflation Reduction Act.

that basically is trying to incentivize using U.S. source materials. And we know those particular Model 3s have batteries and other sources that are coming in from China. So the tax incentive now from $7,500 drops to only $3,750 for those two variants. However, it's a point of success.

sale now it is exactly so at the point of purchase there at the dealership or within tesla you get that credit immediately off the top so it's not something you wait for in the mail which is great but again those vehicles now have a sales price going to be essentially 3,750 more expensive yeah but this is also not just tesla that's going to be seen this this isn't something just for tesla

So the Ford Mach-E is really going to be significantly impacted, I think, because they go from getting their $7,500 tax credit down to $0 on January 1st. That's going to really disqualify them entirely from getting any credits on January 1st. So you would imagine that is going to hurt the Mach-E specifically quite a bit. All right. And on that note, I did have just...

Something that I've been thinking about a lot, and I'm not the first person to think about this. Do you feel that these tax incentives help EV adoption or do you think that they hurt them? Because there are a lot of EVs that are not built in the U.S., but then they don't get these incentives. Customers in the U.S. are not buying them because they don't get, you know, the credits.

And I'm thinking specifically about BYD and how they don't have plans really to come to the U.S. I mean, they've got to start thinking about manufacturing in the U.S. For example, VinFast with North Carolina, you know, they're kind of thinking along those lines. So any sort of international company that comes here, that's what the U.S. government wants them to think about. So we've seen a lot of headlines come out about there being this electric vehicle slowdown in the U.S. It seems to be a common

headline. In fact, you brought up a couple YouTube videos that you watched that got tons of views. This was a CNBC video. They've actually posted two of them because the last one last month got almost 4 million views. It's one of the most successful videos on CNBC's YouTube channel and it's called Why EVs Are Piling Up at Dealerships in the U.S.

And guess what, when you watch this 16 minute video and it shows Teslas throughout and talks about Teslas and the thumbnails of Tesla with the verbiage of that title, 14 minutes into the 16 minute video, it finally gets to the point that it's not Teslas that are struggling selling.

It's that the prices of Teslas are so competitive that almost everyone, three out of four customers in the US is buying a Tesla and not the other EVs. So kind of misleading titles and thumbnails with some of these videos suggest that EVs are doing poorly. But then you look at a lot of these EVs, they're actually doing pretty well for year over year numbers. So we actually have a lot of data that's just come out from the 2023 Zero Emissions Factbook that really proves all this.

So for example, you think about Ford, Ford CEO Jim Farley, which happens to be Chris Farley's cousin, as I learned. Of course you have to bring that in there. I love it. He actually just went on X and said their November sales for the F-150 Lightning were their best all time and their best electric vehicle month sales ever as well. All right, PJ, because I know you are a stat man. Do you want to break down some of some of the highlights that came out of this fact book?

Yeah, so we're seeing that passenger EV sales around the world are on track to 14 million is an increase of 36% from 2022. And then the best selling EVs like Model Y are continuing to do really well, of course, in the U.S. But U.S. actually saw its EV market now surge past 1 million sales this year, which is the first time ever we've seen 1 million EVs sold in one year in the United States. And that's a 51% increase for the U.S.,

year over year as well. Now, not all EVs though are doing well. There are some that are not necessarily meeting their target numbers and one of those is Lucid. Early in 2023, Lucid had said they were planning on producing about 14,000. They adjusted their target a couple of times since then as their numbers kind of dwindled a little bit. They brought it down to 8,500 sales is what they expected a few months back.

And then further, it looks like they may not hit that number either because as of September, they had sold 4,200 Lucid Airs. But they have a plan. They have a plan. They're doing their Conquest credit bonus where if you trade in your Tesla, and it's not just Tesla. They're incentivizing more premium EV owners to bring in their EVs

in exchange of getting a Lucid Air. They've discounted their prices by about $2,000, I believe. And they're also offering ProSound ProDriver Assist features, which is a $10,000 value, plus a home charging station bonus included for free as well. So they're tossing in quite a bit, trying to get anyone from Tesla, from BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Genesis, and a few other premium EV makers into it. - Do you feel like this is a desperate measure?

Well, I mean, here's the thing. They've got a very, very compelling EV at a very high price point that has been gradually adjusted to be a little bit more affordable. Remember the Model S, which I have my mom who bought one of the first Model S's at the end of 2012 into 2013. We loved it. It was incredible, but it is nowhere near as refined as the Lucid Air is right now. But the S had no competition besides the Nissan Leaf, basically.

So if Lucid and the Model S came out at the same time, who would be the winner? Now we're talking. It'd be hard to not choose Lucid. Now, aesthetically, you like the Model S a lot better. I think the Model S is...

a more beautiful car, especially from the outside. Now inside, Lucid wins. And we're comparing it to a Model S in 2012 too, which is like, it's hard to compare apples and oranges. That's really not fair. Yes. Lucid has the range, which we've talked about this. Obviously, this is a big discussion with Cybertruck now. It has the range that we wish Tesla has. Lucid has kind of

you know, cover their head and decide to go ahead and do NACS. Yes. I'm sure they weren't happy about that, but they're going to. I think Lucid is priced too high, which is why they're offering some of these incentives. However, they probably need to sell their vehicles for more money because they're not where Tesla is. Yes. I think you're absolutely on it. I mean, if they came out in 2012 with that much range at the same price as a Model S around 100K, um,

I would have to imagine they would eat Tesla's lunch back then. But obviously, they are only where they are today because of 10 years ago's Tesla. So you can't compare them. But companies like Lucid that are new companies that are not meeting those goals is also kind of why we're seeing these headlines, these FUD out there in the news about EV adoption. People don't want it. And it's not necessarily true. You have to look.

at the big picture, which is kind of what we're doing here. So this was Lucid's kind of holiday update, offering you these deals. But Tesla also does some holiday updates. Every year there's been some fun things. We have Santa Claus. You can ask it for the voice command, ho, ho, ho, Santa pops up there. It's a little bit annoying, but...

Kids love it. The kids have played that one way too much. We have the lights, the light show. That's been a holiday update. And there's some more stuff coming. So yeah, this is leaked from both source code leaks and also release notes that have been leaked. This update looks like is right around the corner. And since this recording, Tesla has publicly confirmed that a couple other features are going to be included, including custom lock sounds like the goat sound. And then you get gaming in the back.

in addition to the Bluetooth compatibility of the rear screens for those cars that have rear screens. They also say there's a new thunderous light show coming that they're calling The Arrival, and also they're going to include a high fidelity park assist, which isn't exactly the bird's eye view, but it does give you a 3D reconstruction of your surroundings while you're parking.

It looks like you'll get Apple Podcasts now natively within the Tesla app. Some really impressive ones here maybe are the automatic 911 calling that's going to be included. Your car would automatically call 911 once it detects an accident and an airbag is deployed, it'll pop up

a countdown, 10, 20 seconds, and if you don't respond to that, it'll automatically call 911 for you. Also, there's gonna be a use of a trip planner on your mobile app that now lets you confirm and add waypoints from your phone, send those to the car, versus being able to edit the waypoints there on screen inside your car. Lastly, and I think most importantly, a lot of people have asked for this for a very long time,

And it's some sort of a Waze-like application where the Tesla community and drivers within Teslas can actually notate different speed traps or cameras within your UI. And it looks like that sort of community sharing is going to be starting to happen. So I know a lot of Tesla owners have been asking them to incorporate Waze into the UI in some way. So they're kind of like doing their own thing here.

Of course, yeah. In Tesla fashion, they're not going to incorporate Waze, they're going to do their own UI and they're going to incorporate a community-driven data setup. So when I talk about having the camera data and traffic light data, essentially what I think is going to happen is as you're driving up the road, you'll have options to say, oh, there's a cop right there. And then enough people do that, the Tesla behind you is going to know that there's a cop coming up a few blocks up. And the same thing for cameras monitoring red light runners,

All the good parts of ways they're going to take and do themselves, basically. Yes, but it's Tesla to Tesla only. So another owner is going to be who's notifying you of, hey, if you've got plaid...

Yeah. Maybe don't launch on this red light. Yeah. There's also going to be a driver liveliness monitor system going on as well. So I try to look into what this was and essentially it's a ploy to defeat any sort of static pictures. Apparently people have tried to use pictures of their face where the camera inside the cabin sees or thinks that a human eye is paying attention.

and have been able to get away with getting the nag by having some sort of a visual cue given to the camera. Now this driver liveliness monitoring system update is kind of trying to defeat being fooled by static pictures because people have tried the oranges, the weights. - Yeah, something's going on the naughty list.

oranges and weights on the steering wheel now fake static pictures are going to be detected by the camera you know what it's funny to me as long as there is autopilot and there's somebody looking after which is in tesla's case is the camera there's always somebody trying to find a way around it no matter what there's always going to be someone to try to find a way so that they don't have to pay attention yes even though it potentially hurts them

you know, and everybody around you. And well, that's true. And everyone around you. Um, but it seems to always be the case moving on. So we have to talk about all the Elon interviews this week. There were a lot. There was one Andy Sorkin one was good. That was probably my favorite interview that I've ever seen. The questions were amazing. Um, it was nice to see Elon so raw and like sticking to his stance and, um,

I don't want to get into all that. F the advertiser stuff. But I mean, honestly, he had a good point. I thought the interview was fantastic. And then Sandy Monroe was able to interview him and we got some details about the Robotaxi being built, where it's going to be built. Yes. And it looks like

it's gonna start out in Texas, which was surprising to hear because I thought it was going to be Mexico and I think we all did, but it sounds like Mexico's not ready yet, so they're gonna go ahead and start in Texas. - We're talking about the $25,000 Tesla here. So he said, quote, "We're in quite advanced

in that work and I review the production plans for that every single week and the revolution in manufacturing by that car will blow people's mind. Now, he also confirmed it would be initially again deployed at Giga Texas and not Mexico but based on previous talks it looks like

This vehicle is going to be unveiled sometime in the next 12 to 18 months. So let's say the end of 24 into the beginning of 25, maybe beginning production sometime two years from now, which would be the end of 25. Once that happens, they're really hoping to be able to scale a volume of 4 million units per year. This is the EV that's going to set the stage for Tesla's end goal by 2030 to be 20 million EVs per year. I am so excited for this. And can I tell you that I hope it has...

a Cybertruck feel to it. So if they had that look and that feel, I've seen some cool renderings and if they could put that, it would be awesome. And let me know in the comments below what you guys think. Should they have it look like a typical Tesla or should they make the future look like the future? The other thing that I thought was pretty insane is how fast

they can make a vehicle. I read that it takes 37 seconds for a car to roll off the line at Giga Shanghai, while Giga Texas takes 76 seconds. Like that blows my mind, like the whole production line. So we were able to see some of it when we were in Texas, we walked through and... And those were in demo mode on display, but we were able to see that in action of essentially what would be happening in that

And Elon's obviously said that the revolution in production of this vehicle is really going to blow your mind. And he's even talked about, you know, that they should have a documentary just showing the production of how these vehicles

vehicles are built because it's fascinating. And Tesla is adding a new warranty that I bet you guys wish that you had. Yeah, I know. This is something we wish we had for sure. A new tire protection plan is available now for Teslas that covers repairs and replacement for tires and wheels damaged by road hazards. But it's only available in the state of California.

and the price does vary between different models and different wheel sizes. It's $35 per tire on small Model 3 18 inch wheels and up to $90 per tire on the larger Model S and Model X wheels. - So we have a warranty on ours. We get it from Discount Tires. What do we pay? - About $30. It's about $30 for each tire, not wheels.

Okay. Yes. All right. But I do think this is something they're testing in California. I'm sure it will, if it's successful, it will go everywhere else. That's the verbiage. The verbiage makes it sound like that this is initially in California and it's going to be available elsewhere soon. But what's interesting to note, it does not cover cosmetic damages, theft or vandalism. So I don't know if a curb rash is going to be something that they'll cover on this warranty. That's, you know, considered cosmetic.

But if it's something that makes your driving characteristics or your safety of your vehicle, you bend your wheel by hitting a massive ditch in the road, that's going to kind of make you... So I wonder if this will be an add-on when you get Tesla insurance, you get the warranty for your tires, and then you'd get this. Yeah. And then the other question, is it all going to be handled with the service center? Yeah.

through the app. And it's also not available, it's important to note too Kim, it's not available for the largest production wheels. So we're talking about the 21 inch Uber turbines or the 21 and 22 inch Arachnids. So some of those performance large wheels, they won't qualify. It's the base ones, it's the mid-tier wheels and tires, it's not the super pricey, super large wheels. So there is a catch. Okay, there's always a catch.

The plan is only good for one year, has to be purchased within seven days or the first 100 miles of taking delivery. So you've got to be right on it when you get it. You can't decide. But what about if you purchase a new set of wheels? Can you start over again? So a discount tire you can. You've got to do it from discount tire and they'll come out and make sure. And this is not sponsored by discount tires. Just going to put that out there. And I do want to take a minute to thank our current Patreon members.

We have Michael Danbury, Victor Halleck, Scott Hurlburt, Mike Gossett, Tom Kovec. And a huge thanks to our top tier members. Those are Patrick Woods, Rob and Brenda Mosher, Stephen and Laura Sykes, Patrick Corcoran, and Lee Sweet.

And our newest members, we have Kirby, Jeff Hobbs, and Winston from All Things Electrical. All right, so that is what we have for you guys this week. I feel like there was definitely a lot of Cybertruck. There's been a lot of videos on the internet. Which one was your favorite? I'm curious. What about you? Which one was your favorite? Hagerty. It was really good. It was so good. That was really good. The production value, yeah.

when it backed up and hit that fridge. I mean, that was pretty awesome. And then Tesla's put a lot of stuff out there too. Just the presentation footage that they had on stage there. Yeah, and can we talk about that too really quickly? And then we'll wrap this up. But the presentation footage was by far the best part of the entire event. You didn't like the sardines packed nature? Well...

It was a short event this time. There wasn't a lot to it, but I will say the presentation itself was really cool. It got you excited. It was cool to see it racing the Porsche 911 while pulling the 911. Just a lot of cool things that were there, part of it. I think that their content creation team really killed it. It was awesome. It's all available on Tesla's website. Thank you guys so much for watching this. Hopefully, you enjoyed all the videos that we put out. We tried to put

Three videos out, we joined with a team to do a live stream with Zach and Jesse. We did all kinds of stuff while we were there. So thank you guys for supporting us. Check out our Patreon and we will catch you next time. Take care.