Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
We are live for a new episode of the Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host, and as usual, I'm joined by Seth Wintraub, coming to us live from Paris again from the last week. How are you doing, Seth? I'm good. All right. And we're going to have a little bit to talk about Paris this week, because if you missed it, Seth did a post on the mobility upgrades in the City of Lights, Paris? What's the nickname of Paris? Yeah. City of Lights. City of Lights. And so we're going to talk a little bit more about that.
If you do enjoy the show, please hit that like button, that subscribe and notification button. All those things help the show a ton and they are free to do and easy to do. Later on on the show, we're going to take you guys' questions and comments. So if you guys have any questions for us regarding any of your subjects, and you can see the subjects here right now in the show notes, you can put them in the comment section right now when we get to them later on in the second half of the show. But let's start out right away with a new Model 3 interior, a cheaper interior.
Model 3 interior that was unveiled last night, really, as part of what appears to be a test that Tesla is running with just the Model 3. It's the standard Model 3 interior if you choose a Model 3 standard range rear-wheel drive in Mexico, only in Mexico right now. So that's what points to Tesla testing out this brand new interior with deliveries right away, August, September. So it looks like it's already in production.
So what is different with this interior? Keyword is cheaper materials, fewer features, simple as that. So first thing is the, you can see from the main image here, the textile seats and the different fabrics on the doors and dash. Though the seats, they don't look completely textile. They look like they're still got some faux leather on some of the parts of the seats.
But yeah, they call it a standard fabric versus the vegan leather, only available in gray versus black and white for the long range and performance version. Then the screen on the back seat for the back seat, rear seat screens, it's gone, reverted back to the old air vent. Then the heated steering wheel and the heated seats are also gone. Well, heated and ventilated seat for the front seats.
In the MOL 3 long range, the seats are heated front and back and ventilated and heated front.
So those are gone, as well as the heated steering wheel. It's not clear if Tesla actually changed the parts there, if the parts are not there, or if they're there or they're just software locked, because Tesla in the past has offered heated rear seats on locks through software. Steering wheel, I don't remember if Tesla ever offered that through steering wheels, but it's not clear if it's just there and unlocked or just not there at all.
What else? Oh, yeah, the ambient light that was added in the car with the refresh of the Model 3 is still there, but now it's just a white ambient light. It's not a customizable multicolor RGB and all that. One more time, not clear if it's just locked as white or if it's a white-only light, different hardware. No, no. We would probably know that once Tesla started deliveries, and you've seen the upgrades in the app, what they're saying. Okay.
What else? What else? What else? Oh, yeah. The acoustic glass on the front.
It's just on the front now. It used to be on all windows. Now it's just on the front windows, not on the back windows. So that's another change. This is an actual clear hardware change. And fewer speakers and amplifier, but that was already the case. Tesla started differentiating the standard range with the long range, whether the premium audio package was just for the higher-end trims anyway. So this is just...
consistent now. Yeah, so the price, what's the price for that? So obviously we're working with Mexican prices here, so it's not exactly the same. But if we go with this specific version, it's selling now for 749,000 pesos.
And but in Mexico, they do include the taxes in the price. So if you move the VAT and then you do the exchange rate, you're about the equivalent of $35,000, which if you compare it to the Model 3 standard range in the US, which still has the more premium interior standard, you save about $4,000 on that price.
Now, the question is like, what is this? Again, like I said, we think this is most likely Tesla testing this in Mexico and then releasing it to other markets if it proves successful.
But also, we need to look at this within the context of Tesla's greatly changed vehicle programs this year. So if you remember, we previously reported that Tesla killed the $25,000 vehicle program that they were working on on the Unbox platform.
Now just focusing on the Robotaxi on the Unbox platform, but also announcing two new vehicle box. Not announcing quickly, but signaling and internally from internal sources, we were able to report that these approved two new vehicle programs that are cheaper vehicles, but they're still based on Model 3 and Model Y. So, yeah.
It's not clear if they're going to be called Model 3 and Model Y and they're going to be just stripped down versions of them or if it's going to be a brand new vehicle on very similar platforms as the Model 3 and Model Y because there's going to be some upgrades that come from the unbox system, but not the full unbox platform because Tesla wants to keep utilizing the existing production lines. And those existing production lines are producing Model 3 and Model Ys right now.
as well as an SNX, but no, if we're going with cheaper models, SNX is not really the target here. So this set, this might be like the preview of what's to come with these cheaper Model 3 and Model Y. It's, you know, materials being tested here. That's probably going to be in those vehicles, fewer features, Lex luxury with the heated seats and all that. But so far, $4,000, what do you think for $4,000 removing these features?
Yeah, I mean, obviously, heated seats was probably not a big seller in Mexico. I know the climate's a little different down there. So, like, maybe some of these changes make more sense there. Maybe there's not a big market for luxury features in Mexico as well. So, you know, as you move down market a little bit, you open it up to a lot more customers. Makes sense, yeah.
Obviously, this isn't going to be the $25,000. They can knock $4,000 off by making things less expensive inside, but we're not looking at the $25,000 Tesla here. And not even the new $25,000. We say dead, we say postponed, whatever. But these two new vehicles that we mentioned aim at closer than what we are hearing between $30,000 and $35,000. That's where they are aiming at.
And a lot of people are like, yeah, I mean, $4,000 less, $35,000. It's not that much of a change.
Every time you can slash a few thousand dollars off of a car, you expand the market greatly, like a lot more than you would think. Like a $30,000 car sells a lot more than a $35,000 car. And it's just a $5,000 difference. It works like that. We have an electrician, Joe Baras, that mentioned here that it's wild that the textile and cloth option is cheaper than the vegan, less expensive.
slash vinyl option, which is not necessarily conventional in the industry. That's true. That's true. There's different companies that do prefer using textile versus the fake leather. And, you know, because there's been a big trend in the industry to just remove leather in general, use more recyclable materials, materials that doesn't involve killing animals and all that. So there's... And, you know, some people do prefer textile as a luxury option too because...
There's more variety of textiles you can use that have different property, where just leather or, you know, faux leather equivalents are a little bit more rigid in what they can and can't do. And Tom also asks, are the cheaper Model 3s coming from China with LFP batteries? Well, that's a guarantee. Yeah. Standard range, all standard range vehicle models.
at tesla now are all using lfp cells and if you're using lfp cells you're most likely using chinese lfp cells yeah all right we had an interesting comments here from uh uber's ceo i'm gonna murder his name right there but dara koshro shahi i think let's call him dara he's the he's been the ceo of uber for for a minute now and um
He made some new comments, interesting comments on Tesla's, you know, own upcoming, supposedly upcoming entry into the Uber's market of ride-hailing with what Tesla has previously called the Tesla Network. Or, you know, it's a Tesla ride-hailing app within the Tesla app that use Rebel Taxi once Tesla solves self-driving, which it has yes to do. If Tesla solves self-driving, maybe I should say.
And, you know, Elon has been promising that for a long time now. He's been promising not just a ride-hailing app, but he's been promising a customer fleet-based robo-taxi ride-hailing app, which he's described like a situation where, for example, a Tesla owner would drive to work or have their car drive themselves to work, drive them to work, go to work, and then through the app, press a button and...
You send your car giving rides to other people autonomously while you're at work. And then when you're ready to go back home, you call back your car, your car comes back and the car made some money for you where you were at work. Now you need it. It's back there. Bring you back home. Things like that. And now Dara, the CEO of Uber, commented on that and on Tesla's potential entry in this market. And he unsurprisingly said,
Well, at least he used a little bit more caution than Elon when it comes to that. And he warned Tesla that there's more complexity to launching self-driving, not necessarily just self-driving, but a ride-hailing system in general. So he said probably the times at which you're going to want your Tesla are probably going to be the same times that ridership is going to be at the peak. There are these peaks and valleys in terms of supply and demand.
It's also not clear to me that an average Tesla owner or owner of any other car is going to want to have the car be ridden by a complete stranger. So that's actually set a point that you made before that you don't want other people farting in your car. It's true. So, yeah, I mean, there's definitely a percentage of that that, I mean, that...
Everyone knew that. So that's not really a very novel idea from that right here. But the first part of his comment, I think, was interesting because I think that's obviously true. A big part of Uber's value is managing supply and demand and managing prices with supply and demand. And that's where a lot of Uber make its money. A lot of Uber drivers makes their money.
And he has a point there. When a Tesla owner is going to want their car for themselves, it's going to be a lot of the time when other people want to have access to that car too. So unless you're someone who works at home like me and you...
You can send your car like all day, all night when you're just at home. That's fine. But for the average person that uses their own car and doesn't have a fleet of Tesla to do this with, he's correct. I think that there's not going to be that much value in it because when you're going to want to use your car, other people are going to want to use your car. So you're going to miss out on these peak demand, peak prices and all that. So I think he has a point there.
And then he also had it, we had to learn to build out a system that's able to make everything work for both the rider and the driver. It's taken us 15 years. It's taken us tens of billions of dollars of capital. He's also right there. And he warned that Tesla, you know, needs to build an entire customer service infrastructure around all the drivers and the riders for these services. And, you know, Tesla has, you know, is not completely...
oblivious to that obviously and they've developed their own service around their sales of cars so developing their own services around the sales of rides is not you know that much different some would argue it's a lot easier and i think they'll be right but it's not that easy either it's a lot of customer service and tesla is avoided using humans in their customer service for a while now you know it's hard to get someone on the phone and all that so i'm sure they're gonna try to do the same thing uh
Not that Uber is also known to do that too. So I think Tesla there at least has the advantage of learning from those 15 years that Uber lives and all these competitors had and just apply that. So I think that part is not too complicated. But I think there's other things that Tesla is just not looking at very smartly when it comes to this so-called customer base, Robotaxi ride-hailing fleet. And that's insurance.
You know, insurance for a consumer, for a regular driver and a commercial driver, ride-hailing drivers are completely different and much more expensive. And there is, then you had to add the autonomous side of things on top of it. So you double the complexity of the insurance and it makes it, you know,
Makes it unlikely that a lot of insurers are going to want or be able to insure Tesla vehicles that are doing that. So it increased the complexity greatly. Now, obviously, Tesla is doing its own insurance product. So you'd think that they're probably anticipating that and they want to address it ahead of time.
The only problem is that Tesla's insurance product so far has not delivered significant savings for a lot of people. I've seen some people getting better rates out of Tesla insurance than others, but I've seen a lot of people quit Tesla insurance because they realize they cannot drive their car the way they want to when they're under that. Now, maybe autonomy solves some of that. Tesla would be the...
entity most confident in its own autonomous system. So when deploying its own instruments on it, that would match that. But I think this is like a big unknown right now with this as deployment of Robotech C that I would like to see some development into because I think it's going to be a big hurdle. All right.
what do we have next oh yeah a little quick update on the cyber truck range extender so we talked about it last week a little bit because we had some comments from tesla engineer that confirmed that it's going to be installed by service and now through the new configurator in the us which is now open to anyone rather than just reservation holders we have a section for the range extender that confirmed a few things
Previously, we knew that it was going to be about $16,000 based on the code on the configurator, but it was not public. Now this mention of $16,000 or the mention I think is estimated $16,000. So it should be, it's now confirmed that it should be around $16,000, which is not cheap. And it also has been pushed to next year, early next year, early 2025. Previously, it was mentioning end of this year.
So it's going to be interesting to see. And you can also reserve it right now. If you place an order for the Cybertruck, you can place a $500 deposit for the Ridge Extender to be among the first to get it. I'll be curious to see the actual take rate on that set, see how many people would want that.
Because now you get a lot more range, but you kill a third of your bed and you don't have an easy way to get this in and out. It's installed as service. It's there, I assume, permanently unless you want service to remove it. And then what happens if you want the service to remove it? Does it stay at the service center? Is this for like a battery swapping type of deal? What happens? Still a lot more questions to answer on this one.
Because I remember when we first heard of this range extender, you did a whole post about it where you could, you saw, you know, Tesla building on that and potentially like making like some battery swapping potential and, you know, other things to work off of this completely new strategy for Tesla. But we still haven't heard much from them regarding that. No. And it doesn't sound like they're working on anything really interesting. It's just very straightforward. Yeah.
Put it in once and pretty much don't mess with it. So far, that's how it sounds. Yeah. All right. This week was a big story for Tesla. It's the NHTSA suspension investigation closing. So this has been years in the making and even years before that.
I remember Tesla fighting with Niedermeyer. You remember the truth about cars journalists? I forget his first name, but Niedermeyer, you know, push this idea that Tesla had a suspension problem and the one P wheels and all that was failing and
And Tesla like fought with him, like did the old blog post, like destroying him and all that. And then he was sort of vindicated to a degree when China issued a recall on Tesla for the suspension. But Tesla ended up fighting that. So that was in 2020.
The Chinese authorities forced Tesla to do a recall on 30,000 Model S and X, alleging a suspension issue. But Tesla, we thought that was weird because, all right, you have a recall in China, but these cars are made in the U.S. And they are the same cars that are made in the U.S. for the U.S. market, for the European market. So why is Tesla doing a recall of the same cars in China, but not in the U.S. and Europe?
And then we learned that's because Tesla was actually disagreeing with the Chinese authority on the recall. They said that there was no defect. They said that the failure rate globally on these cars, on that suspension, was 0.05%.
And the reason there was a recall in China is because it was twice higher in China at 0.1%. But Tesla blamed that higher rate in China on driver abuse, including the driver usage and expectation for damageability. That's a new word for me. It's uniquely severe in the China market. If the customer inputs an abuse load, that can lead to the defect.
But then right after that happened, when the Chinese recall happened, NHTSA, the U.S. authorities for driving safety, came on board and started an investigation on this. And the investigation highlighted hundreds. Well, NHTSA first stated that the investigation didn't start because of the Chinese thing, but that because they got themselves 43 complaints.
regarding the failure of the front suspension. And through the investigation, they identified 426 instances of failures on two specific four-link parts in the Model S and X. But they said that none of the instances resulted in any loss of vehicle control. There was one minor crash with no injury. And that was it, basically.
Now, they didn't know that back in 2017. So like I said, this has been going on for a long time. So that was way prior also to the Chinese recall that Tesla did issue a service bulletin to replace the component, but only on vehicles built between 19 of January 2016 and the 25th of May of the same year. So now NHTSA...
You know, four years later after the investigation, seven years after the original issue was brought up, they announced that they were closing the investigation without forcing Tesla to do a recall. So Tesla is escaping a recall. However, the reason they were doing that, despite everything I just said, is because they don't see an actual safety risk because in the 426th instance of failure that they found, there was no...
crashes, no loss of vehicle control. So there's no risk of crashes. It's just your suspension is failing, dropping. It's not great. So what they're doing instead is they're doing a recommendation for Tesla because they believe that this replacement, the service bulletin affects less than 75% of vehicles that could end up having this issue.
So they are asking Tesla to extend the bulletin to the entire population that has risk. So I think it's a fair closing of this whole situation that has haunted Tesla for years. The wampy wheel, the suspension issues that have been plaguing Tesla for a long time. Yeah, it seems like everything that's closed, there's like 10 more that have opened up.
Yeah, yeah, that's fair. So that's one thing that's solved to a degree. There's plenty of other things on their plates. But I mean, I don't know if you remember I said, but I sure remember like in 2017, 2018, 2019, I wrote a lot about these issues. So I'm kind of glad to see it over years later. Right.
All right. I'll end with the good news for Tesla. That company is still dominating the charging experience based on a new GD Power study. You know, GD Power does this yearly study of electric vehicle charging experience, public charging experience. And they rank based on a thousand points system, all the different network, both the level two network and the level three network.
And Tesla still dominates in both with the Tesla Destination Network level two, finishing first at 658 points. Not too far behind at 645 is Volta. I've never used Volta, but I think they're more like a West Coast, right? I think so. And also, don't they have like ads or am I thinking of something else?
Yeah, I think they are the ones with the ads, the free charging with ads. I might be mistaken on that. I've seen them before. I've seen them in the Bay Area when I was there, but I've never used them.
And then, you know, more importantly, and more difficult to score high, is the DC fast charging system where Tesla crushes the competition with the supercharger network at 731 points, which is bringing the entire average up because the second best is charge point at 627. And then it drops down to five in the 500s with EVgo and Electrify America. So the average is 627.
uh 664 and that's uh you know that's a second best thanks to tesla bringing the average up and um so you have gd powers saying that tesla owner remains satisfied with the tesla supercharger network as if it does better score but it's down two points from last year so it's going down but still by far the best um
The biggest gap between the certification of Tesla and non-Tesla owners come in case of payment and ease of charging. Tesla offers its owner a virtually automatic plug-and-play ability not yet available to non-Tesla owners. Well, I mean, I wouldn't go as far as saying that. And plug-and-charge is very similar. So for people that have access to plug-and-charge, it is very similar. Its supercharger is compatible with Tesla connector. While current non-Tesla vehicles require the use of an adapter as part of the charging process. Yeah, that's fair.
uh yeah i mean the slow has deployed the two best charging network in the world level two level three which is why it makes no sense the ceo of the company fired a team that did that fired the entire 500 people team that was responsible for they re-hired a few cents but just a little reminder all right not quite the rewarded no i mean i'm sure they got rewarded with stock options i
All right. Talk to us, Seth, about what Paris did to improve their mobility for the Olympics. I mean, what didn't they do, really? They kind of did all the things that we've been talking about, what they're supposed to do. From the car side, they put electric vehicle charging, level two chargers, sometimes even level one chargers, like all over the curbside. So, yeah.
For people in the city who want to charge their cars, there's now plenty of places to do that. Paris and France offer all kinds of incentives. They also have disincentives coming up for SUVs. So people are already stopping to do that. But for me, I didn't get in a car once. I haven't got like I'm still here. I haven't gotten in a car once since I got here. Not an Uber, not a taxi, not anything.
for no reason, didn't rent a car. And that's mostly because the bikes here are just super easy to use. I did a few line bikes, but mostly using the DOT bikes that are pretty much everywhere. These are the DOTs? Yeah, those are the DOTs. This one is basically the electric colors. Yeah. Well, it's funny because DOT bought this other company called Teeter.
And they use Segway batteries. So a lot of companies are all conglomerating, but they put the blue dot sticker over the tier bikes. So anyway, it's just a great experience because there's so many roads that are bike lanes only. So you don't have to worry about driving in the same road as a car and
It's not just a bike lane only, but it's blocked by cement barriers. So even if trucks wanted to come into the bike lanes, they can't do that. And they've this map that if you're watching the video, it's really easy to get from one venue to the other venue to the other venue back to your hotel.
or, you know, to go sightseeing or whatever. The bikes are just great. So Paris has three different bike systems, kind of. They have the Vélib, which they've had for at least 20 years. I know when I lived here, they had them. And they're mostly just acoustic pedal-only bikes, but they do have some electric ones. Then they have the Line bikes, which are kind of like the basic, more basic bikes.
And then they have these dot bikes, which have two gears. They have better lighting. They have speedometers and they're kind of more deluxe bikes. And they end up costing usually a little bit less than the line bike. So if you're picking a network in Paris, I would definitely go with the dot bikes. Also, Paris, the mayor kind of took cars out of the city center.
So only emergency vehicles, deliveries in the early mornings and stuff like that are allowed on those roads. So it just makes the road super easy to ride your bike on. And of course, Paris has a great metro system and it was running really well and they didn't have any strikes. I mean, there were a couple of times we took the metro to the Stade de France to watch the track and field.
that got a little crowded and, um, you know, Paris subways are famous for being very warm on warm days. So they were hot and crowded, but you know, you're in there for like 10 or 15 minutes. It's not the end of the world. So overall, just super impressed about how well Paris has done with, with, uh, getting people around and that, you know, the, the, the games were also pretty good. I, you know, there's some, some silly stuff like that break dancing girl and the, uh,
Posing ceremonies were a little bit long-winded, but overall, I think they did an amazing job. Yeah, that breakdancing girl, everyone trashed her. Yeah, she was nowhere near as good as the other ones, but she wasn't that bad either. People kept saying that it was a joke that she was there. I was like, I cannot do what she was doing for sure. Right. Yeah, it was...
But it's not just me. Other people were noticing. I was talking to people. I saw some comments in the previous post that Paris has gotten much better. And of course, like a big part of it is like, hey, Paris is a beautiful city. Now you can see further because there's less smog. You can smell the food, the cuisine, the flowers. Everything is better. You can see better. You can hear better. It's not bad.
quite as much background noise because the electric vehicles are much quieter. You can hear people playing the accordion and speaking French and all the other great stuff. So it just it's made Paris even better, this whole mobility thing. And hopefully it finds its way to other cities as well. So the city center thing without any cars other than emergency and delivery,
is that uh it was that for the olympics or is that is that new for like permanent no they already moved back it sucks now oh i mean it doesn't suck but like they're gonna have the paralympics in a couple weeks and they're gonna take it away again but it was so nice just being able to ride like everywhere yeah that's awesome i wish i would have done that uh
I lived in Paris for three months and I used the bikes a bit and all that, but the cars are kind of scary there, the way they drive. One thing, they did get rid of the scooter share program. So like the line scooters and the bird scooters are gone, but a lot of people have purchased their own and you can get them at like the stores around here for, you know, two or 300 bucks. Yeah.
So, you know, there's scooters are still everywhere. They're just not scooter shares. And I think that's probably right because the people are getting pissed off because people are throwing scooters into the sand or, you know, they're doing all kinds of, you know, leaving them everywhere. And the bikes are a little bit less likely to be abused like that. So I agree. All right. Moving on. We have some news coming from Ford.
Ford had a little show and tell with their dealers for their upcoming electric vehicle lineup. And they apparently showed some interesting that we don't have access to, haven't seen. But there was a report in the automotive news that said that the event that happened in Vegas recently showed, okay, they didn't show prototypes. They showed some images of new EVs, including sedans, which is interesting because, you know, Ford is kind of out of the sedan market.
crossovers all right that's where we're used to they already have the mustang and pickups you know obviously they have the lightning already and they have the next generation lightning that i think is going to be very interesting next year but the big thing that a lot of people kind of want to see out of ford is this idea of maybe a maverick style pickup that's electric and
We don't have anything there that confirms that, but there was several apparently new electric pickups that were shown. Again, images were shown to dealers. So something to keep in mind, maybe it's actually in the works. And we know, of course, that Ford put together earlier this year a new shunk work theme to develop cheaper electric cars. So led by none other than Doug Field, former Apple and Tesla executive.
NIO produced their first Envo. Envo is the name. It's like a little crossover, a Tesla Model Y competitor in China.
and if you remember, Nio Nio are not too shy about getting heavily inspired by Tesla design, let's say. The interior is not too bad, like definitely the front end here at the peak of the nose, extremely similar to the Tesla Model I or Model 3, especially new Model 3, I would say. The rest of the design, you know, it's not, I think it's maybe not unique, like all cars are getting inspired a little bit, but
Oh, this angle, yeah. This angle is a little bit more Model Y. But the thing that looks very much Model Y, why people are comparing it to Model Y, it's the interior here. The interior is extremely similar to Model Y and kind of a Model 3 too with the ambient lighting. You know, the user interface on the screen is also super similar. Same thing with the user interface on the rear screen now. We can see here.
This lie flat. What is that? Front seat lie flat on both sides of the driver's side. What does that mean? You can use it as a bed. I don't know. I guess.
Yeah, and if you're not familiar with the Envo prices, they are pretty good. The standard range version with a 60-kilowatt-hour battery pack that apparently gets over 300 miles on range, but that's on CLTC Chinese standard, starts at the equivalent of $30,000 US, which is $4,000 less than the Model Y rear-wheel drive in China. And then you have the two higher-end version that has a 90- and 150-kilowatt-hour pack.
that are yet to be announced in terms of pricing just yet. The car just came out. But yeah, the Envo is expected to be a big competitor to Tesla in China. That's pretty good. Yeah. Polestar announced this week that they produced their first Polestar 3 at their South Carolina plant. So it's a start of a brand new era for Polestar, American manufacturing now for a Swedish slash Chinese brand.
And obviously the goal of that is to get access to the tax credit in the US. But even then, the Polestar 3 has kind of had mixed reviews. I mean, people like it so far. People have seen it and like it, but it's where people are...
We're stumbling a little bit with the pricing that started at $73,000 in the U.S. So it's a little bit pricier because Polestar, even though I think they make some beautiful cars and great specs and all that, I think they just have an issue right now getting a footing as a luxury brand. Even though I think they make quality vehicles,
The Polestar brand, even though it's not exactly new, it was around for a while. It's new to be electric for the last few years. And it's been associated with Volvo forever. It's been around forever as a premium brand. By itself now with this relaunch, it doesn't have the name recognition that BMW has or other luxury brands. I think that's their main problem right now. Would you agree, Seth?
Yeah, I mean, I would also add, I mean, you're right, but I would also add that Volvo is, you know, they're basically the same chassis. Volvo is making very compelling cars. The EX90 is going to be the same as the Polestar 3 in terms of, you know, battery, motor power, all the other stuff. But it's going to look like a Volvo. People trust Volvo. They know, you know, Volvo has been around forever.
And the EX90 also has a third row. It's got a kind of a better look, bigger LIDAR, just a bunch of other interesting things that, you know, if you're weighing one against the other, the EX90 looks pretty good. I mean, the third row for a lot of people is a game changer. So sadly, I think Polestar's biggest competition might be the company that spawned it. Yeah, not a bad point. This interior looks sharp as hell, though.
Yeah. Love it. But Volvo's interior is also great, to your point. And Volvo and Polestar always like to point out that they invented the three-point harness seatbelt, and that's why they kind of emphasize it with the orange coloring there. It also gives it a little bit of a race feel when you have a different color seatbelt.
All right, quick post just to, you know, as a PSA, Rivian has suspended production of their electric delivery van, you know, for Amazon and others now. I think they're producing on others. And they confirm it's because of a part shortage. It's a specific part shortage that affects only the electric van and not the R1S and R1T. We don't have word on the parts in itself. We don't know exactly how long the suspension is going to be, but just...
keep that in mind in terms of like how it's going to affect Rivian this quarter. Yeah, there was some other big Rivian news. One that most people probably won't care about is that they have a camp kitchen coming out now. Yeah. But the bigger one that Rivian owners are really going to take note of is the, it was a update to the stereo. And I'm not, I'm in Paris. I don't have my Rivian with me. Otherwise I would have written it up, but
My understanding from the comments that I've seen in Reddit and other places is that it's finally like they finally figured out the sound profile in the Rivian stereo. So I'm actually looking forward to going home and seeing what that sounds like. So, you know, Rivian owners have been asking us for this for a long time. The stereo has always been a little lackluster. So now it's fixed apparently.
Nice. Yeah, I know Apple Music is coming now too. And Adobe Atmos sound as well. Yeah. All right. Speaking of Rivian, we're still on the Rivian subject to a degree, but Volkswagen has, you know, like Tesla recently, they changed a lot of their plans regarding their electric vehicle programs.
move things up quite a bit. The Trinity EV, it's like this next generation EV that was supposed to come within the next two years, cheaper, still long range, fast charging and all that, has reportedly been delayed. There's been a bunch of different reports coming out of Germany, especially in those that that mentioned now 2028, 2030, and even one report said at 1.30, 2032. So,
We don't know what's happening exactly with the Trinity program, but it's not looking good so far based on those reports. But now, in the meantime, to hold us off from this next generation stuff, apparently Volkswagen is considering now, well, I mean, we already knew they were considering a next generation car.
I keep saying e-Golf, but I don't think it's going to be called the e-Golf. I think it's the electric Volkswagen Golf because there was an e-Golf before that that was, you know, gasoline version of the Golf that was converted to electric. So it was another bad car. I still know of someone that owns one in Ontario that still loves it. But it wasn't optimized for electric propulsion vehicle. Let's put it like that.
So now they are looking on a brand new version completely built on either the MEB or the new MEB Plus platform. And they are accelerating, apparently, according to this report. They're accelerating the program thanks to their new partnership with Rivian. So previously mentioned that Rivian is going to receive an investment from Volkswagen at the tune of about $3 billion. And it's going to invest in a new joint venture with Rivian at the tune of $2 billion.
And they are looking to take advantage of especially Rivian's software expertise. We know that Volkswagen has had some issues with software when it comes to its next generation vehicles. And they're looking to combine those expertise into a new electric Golf to hit the market around 2029. So we're not talking about any time soon either. So, you know.
Not worth really much looking into the specs or anything like that. But, you know, they have the ID.3 and ID.3 GTX for a while. So it's not too far from a Golf, really. It's a bit smaller. I think the ID.3 is a bit smaller than the Golf, right? It's hard to tell, but it looks... Yeah, I mean, the Golf has grown. So the ID.3 looks like it's a little bit smaller. Yeah.
And obviously the Golf, one of the best selling car, like a lot of different variants. It would be interesting to see a Volkswagen revisiting it with an electric powertrain, but designed from the ground up to be electric, not like the old Eagle. All right. I think we are ready to jump into you guys' comment section now for today. Yeah. We should note, if you do want to throw some comments in there, we're a little bit late this week. It's,
It's summertime. People are out enjoying themselves in the sun. All right. Joe is back saying Tesla has its own insurance. So when you call customer service after your robo taxi crashes into a Waymo, an optimist robot can deny your claim almost as quickly as a human. Well, maybe in fact, they can just they know when you got into an accident, the optimist robot can call you and say,
hey, this is not going to be covered. They don't even have a way for you to call. Didn't know ahead of time. You know, I talked about that a lot before, like linking the insurance part to the real-time data part, but also for customer service.
Yeah, it's a wonder why they haven't been able to optimize the insurance rates any more than they have already. I mean, I guess you're dealing with a pool of money from X number of customers. And if only the people that are good drivers are going to go on the Tesla insurance because they know that they're being watched, then I don't know. It seems like there's this possible for there should be some.
that don't seem to be happening. All right, Nick Cedar says, yes, Volda is free with a giant video screen ad stands now rumored owned by Shell and going to a paid format. Yeah, I think it's... Is it rumored? I think they've been sold. I heard they've been sold. Yeah, and Shell was kind of divesting itself from this stuff, so...
Yeah, no, it's been officially Shell USS officially acquired Volta. Oh, there we go. Apparently 169 million. So I'm sure there was a nice exit for the startup. All right, Joe, I don't quite understand this one. Maybe you do, Fred. I love that one tweet. I've been to Australia. She's the best answer they have.
I tend to defend her because she's clearly not as athletic as some of these other break dancers that are like freak of nature that can spin on their head and all that. She's not that athletic. She's not that explosive. I think she's also a bit older if I'm... I don't want to be disrespectful, but the average break dancer. But she had some cool moves. I'm not going to lie. I thought she did pretty okay. Yeah.
It's amazing. So just this is totally off topic, but it's amazing that like every third Instagram reel that I see is her doing something hilarious. Like somebody's taken like the windshield wiper in the back of a car. They put her like legs. Yeah, I've seen that. It's just it's it's like one of those memes that is just on fire.
All right, moving on. Still waiting for the Rivian to come to St. Louis with the R2 and R3. That's some skeptic. I guess they're on a roadshow with that. Would Polestar be doing better if it was just Volvo? That's a good question. Probably, yeah, probably. If it was just like, if, for example, the Polestar 3 was just like the EX90X,
uh, uh, Polestar, for example, the Volvo EX90 Polestar version, Polestar body kits, like things like that. Yeah. I think it would probably do better. Yeah. I think Volvo or Geely or somebody made some money. Polestar did an IPO. I don't know if it was, ended up being worth it, but, um, I mean, I think, I think they wanted to have the, the, you know, the, the all electric rub, you know, they launched the brand as all electric Volvo, uh,
volvo has commitment to go all electric but you know it's still years ahead they still have their fossil fuel powered version of the vehicle so i think they they wanted to like yeah and we we have this all electric brand and it's you know already an existing brand on top of it and they wanted to do the spin-off like you said they want to do the ipo yeah they're not i mean on the market they're doing stock market i think they're doing terrible i haven't looked it up for a while but
They're doing great cars. It's just, I think, having some issues differentiating themselves, like you said, from Volvo, and also establishing themselves as a premium brand worth that money. Yeah. Especially when BMW and Mercedes are coming out with really compelling electric vehicles as well. All right. Skeptic says, I'm seeing a lot of articles the last couple of days about Musk needing to sell Tesla stock to keep Twitter afloat. Thoughts on that? Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, this is somewhat a real possibility. It's just it's hard to put a ton of credibility on it right now. It's just because it's pretty opaque, Twitter's financials. If you listen to Elon, the site has never done better, like record numbers and all that. And then the media, to be fair, they don't like Elon that much. They don't like Twitter that much. They do say that revenues are down 80% and all that. So, yeah.
ultimately, I don't listen to anything Elon says for the most part these days. I don't trust him. I prefer to watch what he does. And what he did is he sued advertisers for boycotting Twitter. When you sue your customer or people that pay money on your platform, generally, it's not a good look. It's probably not doing great.
So, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter is in need of money. And so far, when Elon has needed money for Twitter, he has taken it by selling Tesla stocks. So it's not that far-fetched. I'm not saying it will happen. I'm just saying it's not that far-fetched of a possibility that he would sell more Tesla stocks to finance Twitter. Yeah.
All right. One little last piece of trivia. Volvo also invented the Lambda O2 sensor, which is at the core of ICE emissions controls. So Volkswagen owes Volvo a big debt of gratitude for that one, I guess. Yeah. Is it ICE emission controls or ICE emission cheating? I don't know. I don't know about that sensor. I'm just joking.
All right. But that's it for us this week, everyone. I hope you enjoyed the show. We did enjoy talking to you guys. If you did enjoy the show, please give us a like and a subscribe. Free to do takes a second and helps us a ton. So we appreciate what you do it. If you're listening on your podcast app right now and you want to give us a five star review, we keep getting attacked with one star reviews because we are apparently too political or too anti-Elon. Anyway,
which, you know, if you don't like our views on that, you can not listen or you can just actually not give us a one-star review and take in the information from the other side of the aisle and
And, you know, use that information for your bettering of your own opinion, maybe. I don't know. But if you do enjoy the show, please give us a five-star rating because that also helps a ton. And only if you help live the show, of course. And then we're going to see you same time next week. And Seth's going to be back in U.S. soil in the freedom of the U.S. of A. Have a good one, yeah.