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- Trump loves the Cybertruck. - That is beautiful. - But he says he has to. - And I'm for electric cars, I have to be, you know, because Elon endorsed me very strongly. - And the first Cybertruck fatality is under investigation. - And Costco announces that it's gonna be selling Teslas soon, but Elon says not so fast. All that and more starts right now.
They don't go far. They cost too much. They're all made in China. Other than that, they're fantastic. So much to talk about. Trump was actually in our city, Atlanta, this last week, and he said quite a lot of controversial statements about EVs, and he said that he had to like them because Elon was endorsing them.
And I'm for electric cars. I have to be, you know, because Elon endorsed me very strongly. Yeah. So, you know, of course, there's been a lot of talk about Elon Musk supporting the Trump campaign. Forty five million per month was the report. Elon denied that amount. And so much came out of this particular dialogue with Donald Trump talking about EVs in particular. So let's just start with the fact that he said that he had to. And I thought that was particularly interesting because it's like, oh, I have to like them now because you're giving me money. That's basically what he's saying. Like most people don't just
come right out and say like, oh, I'm going to change my beat here because, you know, you're giving me some money. But do you think that he is actually does like EVs? So there's been so much back and forth in recent years. He was very clear that he was not pro EV. Then recently, he kind of puts EVs down by saying they're made in China, where three out of four EVs in the U.S. at least are Teslas. They're the most American made car, about 90% of their parts are
are American. They say they're too expensive. The average car sold in the US is $47,000. The average Tesla in the middle 30s to lower 40s. So it is cheaper. And then, of course, talking about not enough range, where 300 plus miles is the average range you're going to get out of a Tesla, which is right in line with what you get out of a gas car. So the statements there are not true. But then there's other things he talks about with the expense relating to charging station installs and so on.
Yeah, he said it's going to be like $9 billion trillion. He goes back and forth with those two dollars to be able to support the infrastructure in the Midwest, to be able to drive across. I'm not really sure if that's true. And then billion and trillion, that's a big number. Honestly, it's hard for me to visualize the difference between those numbers. But I'm sure it will be expensive. Not quite sure how much it will be and where we're at with all that. If you guys know more, definitely comment down below.
But I do think that he is a fan of Elon Musk. He said before he's a fan of Elon Musk. They're actually going to be talking on Monday and sitting down and having interviews. So I'll definitely be watching that to hear more about where he stands on all this and have Elon kind of push him on some of those tough issues. It'll be really, really fascinating to hear. But he also has been seen in a Cybertruck this week with influencer Aiden Ross gifted him a Cybertruck and a Rolex. Yes.
But I don't think you can really gift presidential candidates like those type of big gifts. So I imagine that Aiden Ross is just going to be driving it around now with like the picture of Trump, like with his arm up. Yeah, it was wrapped with the Trump picture from when he was shot. And of course, the blood's coming down his face. He's got his fist up in the sky. And that's the gift he got. He seemed to be pretty pleased by it. I don't know if it was because his face was on the truck and that's what he liked or if he actually liked the truck. You could already see the gift.
Yeah, I can. Wow. Check out this wrapper. Let me know your honest thoughts. I think it's incredible. You see him going inside of it, checking out some of the features and calls it Elon, the Elon car. So it's hard to tell because we've heard him for so many years put down everything about EVs and all of a sudden still put it down and say, but I like them and I support them, but I have to. Yeah.
I will say, like, I feel like the way I'm viewing things has sort of been shifted and is changing. And Trump is so entertaining to watch. Like he is just it's pure entertainment when I watch him right now. But also I do like seeing, you know, Republicans go in there and are like,
Hey, I like this. This is a good truck. And we had Tucker Carlson take the Cybertruck out. And that was pretty cool. He gave it to his friend. They got it from Tesla for a week. And his friend who lives in rural area of Maine was like, hey, this is a cool truck and it could actually work. And I think it's really cool to see that all kinds of people are starting to embrace these electric vehicles.
You know, for what they are outside of the political ideology that surrounds EVs. That's that's the best part, because even Carlson and his response from his friend who lives, like you said, in rural Maine, Carlson seemed like he was really surprised to see his friend say this actually could work for me. And the friends coming in from like some 1986 communities.
I feel like Tucker Carlson wanted to make the opposite video. He wanted to be like, oh, look at this silly truck. It's not going to work. And then his friend, who he obviously values his opinion, was like, actually, this truck's pretty sick. Yeah.
So that political disparity is going to be interesting to see how it plays out. And we've already seen Tesla lose some of its fleet customers because of Elon Musk's actions and also, more importantly, Elon Musk's support of Donald Trump. That seems to be the case in this area here. Rossmann, which is a German drugstore in Berlin,
has had a fleet of Tesla they've been using in their effort to be more environmentally friendly. They've just announced they're no longer going to be purchasing from Tesla moving forward, specifically relating to him supporting Donald Trump because they made the point that, you know, in the past, Trump has been very clear about being a climate change denier and also not supportive of EVs. So,
This Rossman drug company does not want to support Tesla as a result. And that's the type of stuff right there that I'm hoping that Elon and Trump discuss on Monday when they do sit down to talk. I hope that they talk about some of the environmental impacts and climate change and, you know, how that plays into everything. I think that would be super fascinating if they get into that topic of discussion.
All right, Kim, moving on. First, Cybertruck crash fatality is under investigation by NHTSA. Unfortunately, there was, again, someone inside this truck that perished at the scene there. And the images kind of tell quite a bit because we could see this truck was probably going very, very fast.
it's very much destroyed. Apparently it veered off the road, crashed into a barrier and caught on fire almost immediately as well. So you see the shape of the Cybertruck, but the front end, the back end, it's all destroyed. Yeah, it seemed to go up in flames, which a lot of people are talking about. But it also like raises concern for a lot of people of are the,
Is the Cybertruck safe? Was it, you know, in autopilot was like all types of things. And I can say for sure that it was not an autopilot because Cybertruck does not have autopilot yet. Almost. We also almost, but not at the time of this accident. Also, we don't know the speed that the driver was driving. And I think that if the driver had been in autopilot, it probably would have.
avoided this. Yeah, for sure. And just to be clear here, NHTSA is investigating this because, of course, about 15,000 Cybertrucks have been delivered. This happened on August 5th, so just a couple of days ago outside of Houston, Texas. And there's been a few recalls, some physical, some hardware, software as well for Cybertruck. And NHTSA is investigating to make sure this was driver error and not something within the truck itself that led to the accident.
but you talked about the safety being higher with the autopilot. The Q2 safety reports are in from Tesla for autopilot. They're saying for every 6.8 million miles that Tesla was in autopilot, there was only one crash. This is down slightly from Q1, which there was only one crash for every 7.6 million miles of autopilot driven in the United States.
And again, by comparison, Tesla says when you look at Teslas that are not using autopilot, the drivers are crashing once every one and a half million miles driven. So it's essentially about five, six times safer than when autopilot's not engaged. Yeah. So I think that...
Autopilot is coming, I think this week or next week to Cybertruck and they really just can't have it soon enough because obviously the data is there. Data is there and they're saying furthermore, you look at other NHTSA data for non-Tesla vehicles, an average person crashes once every 670,000 miles. So Tesla vehicles even without autopilot, I guess the safety features possibly play a role into it as well, are about twice as safe. And then you factor in autopilot, you become essentially five plus times as safe when you're driving these cars.
So what about the fact that the crash resulted in the whole vehicle burning up so badly? Yeah. Because that's the thing that people are thinking about is that the truck crashed and the
it caught fire and almost like exploded. - Yeah, I mean, when it comes to EVs, you're talking about high voltage and these batteries are very hard to put out when it comes to catching on fire. That's the biggest thing people always talk about. Sure, they don't catch fire as frequently as gas cars, which are 61 times more likely to catch fire,
But when EVs do catch fire, they take so much water to put them out that fire officials oftentimes just let the vehicle burn without trying to intervene with it unless it's threatening a property. So that's the thing. So my take on this is that the driver must have been going really, really fast for an accident to result in this kind of fire. Because I think normally you get an accident, you don't catch fire like that, but the driver must have been going fast.
Insanely fast. Yeah, and the data by the way from this q2 report Specifically says Tesla accounts for people disengaging autopilot within five seconds leading up to a crash So if you think a lot of people are disengaging autopilot right before they realize they're about to hit something Which is probably the case Tesla still counts that as an autopilot crash For the crashes that are happening five seconds leading up to someone disengaging
So it's super fascinating to me. What do you guys think? Do you still feel like Cybertruck is a safe car? Are you comfortable driving EVs? Do you look at the data and you're willing to like go by the data and does that reassure you? Let me know in the comments down below. All right, so talking about Cybertruck, we know that it has the 800 volt architecture and it can use these V4 chargers. And you saw something on X that was super interesting.
Friend of the channel, Tess Latino actually was in Los Gatos, California with a Cybertruck. He plugged into a V4 supercharger and we've done this before in a video we did where we tested a V4 supercharger and we found they were using V3 cabinets and not really getting the maximum speeds that we thought maybe 350 plus kilowatts were gonna be in the works.
Now, these V4 superchargers, according to Test Latino, he was able to get 323 kilowatts of charging speed out of this one. And Kyle Connor, who's our charging expert, verified this actually still using V3 cabinets
But is able to maybe software updates through Tesla has been able to allow some of these vehicles, Cybertruck specifically, to charge faster than the 250 that everyone up to this point has been able to peak at. So is this all the V4 chargers now?
now? So apparently the lead engineer for Cybertruck, this is Wes Morrill, he went on X, he posted that it looks like, yes, it is going to be all V4 superchargers. There's a few dozen of out there in the US now, are now updated to be able to tap into faster charging speeds as a test basis right now. And it's still using V3 cabinets, even though it's a V4 post.
and they're calling it a V3 Plus supercharger as of right now. So it's not quite there for all vehicles. And it is, again, only at stations that are hardware capable, which is these latest stations that we tested out last year. That's so interesting. And it does make me want to go try out that V4 charger again with the Cybertrucking to see what happens.
So I don't know, have you guys tried this out? Do any of you guys own the Cybertruck and you've gone to one of these V4 stations, you saw the SunX, you tried it out? Let us know down below. So moving on, Rivian had their Q2 earnings call this week. Yes, the numbers are in. They've lost about $32,000 for every vehicle they sold last quarter. That is actually an improvement from Q1, which they were losing about $38,000 per quarter.
And you look at Tesla, Lucid and Rivian's quarterly income, their net income and net loss. We have Tesla at about one and a half billion in the positive for their net income. Rivian comes in at a net loss of about one and a half billion in the negative.
and Lucid at about 800 million in the negative. So you look at these numbers, $32,000 loss per car, kind of reminds me of where Tesla was for a very long time. Up until 2018, they were losing tens of thousands per vehicle sold. So some people get scared about this. I'm not necessarily there. So Rivian's not over.
They're basically, they're losing money, but not as much money as before. And they've already made some improvements. They've retooled the factory in normal Illinois. They've cut down their costs on the R1 vehicles. They did some stuff with the electrical. The wiring, they've reduced it by one and a half miles, 1.6 miles of wiring has been reduced. That's kind of brought the weight down by 44 pounds in the vehicle. We saw Tesla do this early on with the Model X, I believe, where they reduced wiring harness size and reduced the weight of the
vehicle increase the range and of course the parts then are also reduced which saves on cost so this is what rivian is trying to do essentially yes and they're they're doing it so it's being done um also we have the r2 that's going to be coming out and they got some money from volkswagen five billion dollars was invested into it yeah so i feel like rivian is you know
I feel like they're on their way. They're good. I feel like people have been like, oh, Rivian's over. No, they're definitely not. Well, they've got their following. Much like Tesla, the Rivian owners are very much into their EVs. And I think those two EVs... I love Rivian. They separate each other because there are so many other EV makers out there. And then, of course, OEMs that do make very compelling EVs. But with Rivian, they are in a very separate class of how their owners perceive them, just like how most Tesla owners...
perceive their vehicles. So let me ask you this. Do you think that Rivian should have gone all in on their van before pushing the R1s?
No, I think for them to even be a notable company, the R1 is definitely what put them on the map. And they were the first compelling electric SUV and truck that rolled out onto the market. So I think that was important for getting their name out because then otherwise, I don't think that masses would know about them, would be invested in them. So I don't know. But, okay, hear me out. The van space is really like an open space, right? Tesla doesn't have their van yet. Yeah.
So if they were able to go in on the same platform and come out with like, kind of like the VW minivan, like their van version and really kind of pushed the
Rivian, maybe that could have been their open space where there was nothing. Yeah. I don't know. What do you guys think? Am I just like sounding off stuff? I don't know. But I just think about it. I'm like, maybe that could have been their way to go. But, you know, it's all nice to like be like the backseat driver and like feel like you should have done that first. You know, I know nothing about it. Yeah.
And going back to Tesla, they have their all-new Giga train that's going to be transporting passengers to Giga Berlin. I know. At first, I thought this was clickbait somewhere, right? Because we didn't hear about something like this being in the works. Then I thought, is Tesla developing this for themselves or just for their employees? It is for employee use, but this is actually operated by NEB, which is a private rail company out there in Berlin.
And what I found fascinating by this is that Berlin had kind of this love-hate relationship with Tesla, where initially a lot of people in that area weren't a fan of the company coming through and kind of breaking the ground apart there and disrupting the wildlife. There was like owls nest involved. We saw that with Rivian, though, over with the Georgia plant. Like a lot of the people that live over where they're building the plant in Georgia have been very against it. They don't like it's disrupting the wildlife and all that kind of stuff, which seems...
like the opposite because they were like you're building electric cars but so this again kind of goes
along with Tesla's mission to try to improve clean energy and transport. And it's doing so locally in that region. Right now, again, it is for passengers that are working at the factory. Each train carriage accommodates about 120 passengers. So two of them, a round trip gets you up to almost 500 people that can get on these trains, these employees that can go to work and back. And it has a bike compartment and ground level access.
and also state-of-the-art UI system there on board for the passengers. - I think it's pretty cool. - It's a cool train, yeah. - I love it, and it's free for them to use. I think it solves a big traffic congestion issue. I wish that we had better train system here in the US. - Yeah, the Brandenburg, Berlin area has had significant traffic issues, so this really looks to tackle that when it comes to the employees making their way out there. And NEB, this private rail company, is actually looking at getting 31 new battery-operated trains
in their fleet moving forward as well. - So if you live in Germany, in this area, or you know somebody that does, how do the people feel about this train? Are they for it? Because again, they were kind of against Tesla being there in the first place, but maybe this train is like,
Making them excited about that. I'm curious. So put that in the comments down below. Definitely be checking that out. So we have to talk about EV Jet. We've talked about them in all of our podcasts because they have been a sponsor for us. And it is a product that I use, we use, we recommend to people. And it's a breakaway charger where if there is an emergency, you're at a charging station, normally you're just sitting
stuck. You actually have to get out of your car to unplug. But with EVject, it allows you to break away. The charger breaks in half. You can just drive off if you had to. Well, Tesla is suing them. Yeah, this is a very well-loved company in the EV community because it really fills a void of something that I think is absolutely needed, clearly by the support from the community of people wanting to have something where in case of an emergency, you're not walking out there trying to
unplug your car to get away from a situation. And as you said, Tesla is suing EVJECT for $75,000 in damages. And EVJECT's CEO, who we've known and worked with for quite a while, actually says the tests that Tesla did were really unrealistic and they didn't even involve active or passive cooling in the supercharger. And there was no car plugged in. They literally used a copper bus. They plugged the adapter and then the supercharger unit into it.
and essentially put it under unrealistic thermal loads and caused it to overheat and then kind of marked it as this is not safe enough and filed this lawsuit to essentially have them stop making this product. So Craig Peeler, who's the CEO of EVject, reached out and put the results and kind of some of the discrepancies there with Elon Musk. And surprisingly, Elon Musk replied back and said he's going to investigate and look into this.
So we're hopeful that Tesla possibly thinks about this a second time, maybe works with EVJECT in creating something. I would love them. That's my hope is that they work together. And then this is definitely a product that is needed, that people want. So potentially they work together and maybe Tesla sells their product online.
on their website. Really, if anything, I feel like this should be a positive thing because they could work with the company, make the product better, unless Tesla's like, I'm just going to make our own product and we're going to make it cheaper and take this idea and do it ourselves, which is a possibility. Yeah. Some of the commenters said, watch Tesla make their own and then make it four times the price. So that could also happen. But you
EVJX has made it very clear for a very long time that they want to work with Tesla in being able to make this and other EV makers as well. And apparently they're in talks with other EV makers in supporting hardware for them. And, you know, it's not just the Tesla NACS adapters that they make breakaway chargers for.
which again, these are in case of emergencies. This is not something that you just drive away with. Yeah, some of the comments, it's funny because we'll post something in short form on our other social medias and we get these funny comments from people that are like, what was one of them? It was like- You lazy bitch.
Yeah, why don't you get out of your car and unplug? It's like they don't understand the concept of this is an emergency thing that you would use that it actually breaks when you actually have to use it. So let me know how you guys feel about this. I definitely have the way I feel. We've talked about it on here so much. So I know that you guys have some strong responses to it. We'll put the link for it down in the description below as well. You can check out the product for yourself as well. All right, Kim, a story I think it's going to be near and dear to your heart that's going to get you excited.
Apparently Costco in Taiwan is partnering with Tesla to sell Tesla vehicles inside Costco stores. And if you act now, you get 5,000 free supercharging miles. You get a level two charger. This was publicly announced on Tesla Taiwan's social media pages there.
and word got to Elon over on X. He quickly shoots it down saying this is not gonna happen, it wasn't approved, but people got so excited. People were even saying this was actually part of a trial to maybe see if it was successful in Taiwan to bring it to the United States.
And there was all sorts of comments, positive and negative about this. So I do have some questions about this. One, obviously, I'm a Costco girl. I love Costco. But two, like you can just order these cars online like you don't need to go anywhere. So would Costco potentially just act as the delivery center?
So I don't know if it would be the delivery center necessarily. You know how they sell tires. They've got their tire department. Well, Costco has been selling cars for years and has them on display. And you go there, you see the vacations that are on sale and really good deals. And Costco has great service in general. But Tesla is not going to give you a deal.
Well, in this case, they had decided in Taiwan, the Tesla people in Taiwan had decided they were going to give you free supercharging and a charger, which Elon didn't approve of. So, yeah, I don't know how... So someone got fired. Someone got fired somewhere. But some commenters were saying, why would you stop this? This was a good move because it allows people to see these in showrooms and essentially get more brand awareness, more eyeballs online.
on these cars. And other people said it devalues the brand because, you know, this, you're getting it. It's a discount. You're getting it at Costco. But the commenters continue to say that Costco shoppers are generally upper middle class. I would say that I don't think that that's true because I feel like the products they carry at Costco, like are good, like high quality things. Like they have designer stuff there too. And they even sell jewelry and all kinds of stuff. And like,
Yeah. I don't know. So I think seeing this, I would be more for them having these vehicles in their stores as something that you could see outside their stores parked right next to the pizza shop or wherever it is before you enter. Yeah. I will say that I'm for it, but I don't think you get a discount for being a Costco member, unfortunately. I would like that, but I just don't see how that's practical. But I like the idea of having them in the stores.
I would like the idea of possibly like having some sort of extra service center. Well, for sure. There could be partnerships that would incentivize you getting it from Costco or being a Costco member, which would include better deals on tires. Maybe actually having someone that picks up the phone when you call. I'd love that. Yeah. Costco's got a pretty good return policy too. They do. They do. Like Costco has great service. So there's parts of this
that are not terrible. So I don't know. What do you guys think about all this? It's kind of crazy to think that Tesla could be sold at Costco. Okay, and before we forget, remember you can listen to this podcast now on all major streaming platforms, even inside your Tesla. Just go into the podcast app, search for Kim Java.
And every week we have one of these. It's automatically uploaded there as well. So you can listen to it on the go. And if you like getting your perks like our Costco members do, you can actually get early access as being a Patreon member. Yes, Patreon members get exclusive access to content never before seen footage. One-on-one Q&As with us.
And on-air shoutouts as they're about to get. Yes, so thank you to our newest member, Gareth, for your support. Yes, and the highest tier members, those are David Gillespie. And a special thanks to Thomas Goss, who's going to be getting a one-on-one Q&A live with us here coming up pretty soon. To get access to all this, check out the link in the description below. And thank you guys so much for watching, as always, or listening, and we'll catch you next time. Announced that they're going to be selling... Sorry.
You get me excited then you like leave me hanging. I'll do it again. I know the podcasts are sort of your thing that I just react to. Oh yeah. That's news to me. Yeah. You're the news guy. Is that what it is? Yeah.
