Massive Tesla price cuts, Autopilot update, Corvette E-Ray, and more
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And we are live on your episode of The Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host. And as usual, I'm joined by Sepp Wintraub. How are you doing today, Sepp? I'm good.

All right. I'm a bit tired today. Didn't have that much sleep. My energy levels are a bit low, but I'm going to try to rally for you guys doing my best right now. As usual, if you do enjoy the show, please take a second to give us a like or subscribe and hit the notification button. If you're listening on your podcast app, you can also subscribe and leave us a five-star review. That helps the show tremendously. It takes a second to do, and we appreciate every single one of you that does it.

We're going to start out the show this week with the biggest news, of course, that came out just last night, the big price cuts from Tesla overnight, some massive price cuts and some implication that goes with that.

Few more Tesla news after that, then non-Tesla news, Corvette news, which is pretty rare for us at least. And then if you guys have any questions, any subjects you want us to discuss, put them in the comment section below. We are live and we welcome your inputs. I see there's already a few comments with some interesting stuff that we can discuss later on. But let's start out with the news this week.

so this thing came out uh late last night uh tesla announced some pro well i say announced but tesla never really announces anything really uh they update their configurator and then we have to figure it out for yourself but what we did figure out is uh some pretty massive price cut and we're gonna focus on the us market here but those price cuts were felt throughout the

Every market that this lays in basically kind of reflect a little bit what happened in China last week. Now the price cuts are propagated throughout the US, Canada and a bunch of European markets too.

And the cheapest Tesla vehicle out there, the Model 3, of course, went from $47,000 to $44,000, a $3,000 price cut. And so we're still far from the used to be $35,000. Of course, the goal for that car went up a lot over the last two years. The Slab Lane inflation partly, but as we know, the gross margins says otherwise. Model 3 performance, a $9,000 price reduction.

That's significant, but the Model 3 performance, you could argue, was always a bit overpriced.

And Model Y, that's the biggest one here. And we're talking about the standard Model Y. Well, actually, the long-range Model Y, it's called, went from $66,000 to $53,000, a $13,000 price, got 20% price reduction. Huge. And, of course, Model Y long-range, even though Tesla doesn't break down their sales per model and per trims of models, I have to assume at this point that it is the best-selling Tesla vehicle in the world, right, Seth? Oh, for sure.

Yeah, with now Gigafactory Berlin and Gigafactory Texas both producing it exclusively at this point. Of course, those factories are still ramping up, but with the kind of volume they're putting out there on top of, of course, Shanghai that's producing a ton of them, Fremont has to be closing in on over a million units a year at this point. So a 20% price cut on that is absolutely massive. And in the US, that has even bigger implication, of course, because we talked about this Malawi's

you know supposedly being an suv so with the new tax increase a tax credit revamp that happened this year it was supposed to the mullowai was supposed to be eligible up to 80 000 msrp but for a bunch of

weird reason, dumb reasons really. It didn't make the cut and the MSRP was capped at $55,000. But now with Tesla bringing the price down, not just under 55, but 53, you can see that it's not just about getting the tax credit on that car because they're literally going below it. And they didn't change the specs like they did in Canada, for example, where the software locked the battery pack and shit like that.

This is just a pure price cut before applying a $7,500 tax credit on this. This ends up being like a $45,000 car at this point. It's pretty remarkable. So big difference here. Model Y Performance, also a $13,000 price cut, but it was a little bit more expensive. Model S is back on under $100,000 for the first time. $95,000, a $10,000 price cut.

a Model S Plaid, a giant $21,000 price cut. But of course, it's basically a super car. Well, it's still pricey, but you would think that if you're in the market for a Model S Plaid,

And it's basically a supercar. You're going to pay $115,000 or $135,000. Is that a big difference? Yeah, I guess it kind of helps though against the Porsche Taycan or whatever. Something that somebody else would be considering. Yeah, it could be a difference maker on that front possibly. And the competition, you're right. The competition has been going up in that particular segment with the EQS now. And the Lucid is starting to get some market share. Yeah.

Mole X, also giant price cut, now $110,000 versus $120,000. And same thing for the Plaid, big price cut.

So obviously this is going to have a giant impact on Tesla sales, especially the Model Y. I think it's going to blow up. Well, it's not already blown up in the US, but I think a lot of people are going to go for it. Especially even a lot of people that a few weeks ago were like, oh, I wouldn't buy a Tesla because of Elon Musk and what he's saying and all that. A lot of liberals. I think they might be like, all right, okay, but what are you going to buy? If you need a car right now, if you need a crossover or a small SUV,

The Model Y is starting to look extremely attractive. It's basically the price of an ID4 and I think you get a little bit more bang for your bucks. Right. When the prices of the two cars are the same, Elon flips you over. But when it's a $10,000 cheaper model Tesla, you're like, "Eh, Elon's crazy, but we're going to get it anyway." Yeah.

So, yeah, so this is going to have a massive impact, but it's going to have a massive impact on sales and on gross margin, obviously. I mean, I don't know how much money Tesla was making on the standard Model Y at $66,000. I would assume that was probably a big gross margin maker at that price. But now a 20% price cut on that, I would have to assume that...

This is, we're going to see a big difference, but I think one of the interesting thing here is that Tesla, because it has an industry leading gross margin, it can afford these price cuts. Like Tesla is still going to make money on all of these cars, a lot less money for sure. We're not going to see a 25% gross margin anymore from Tesla. Like you can forget about that. I'm curious to see what it's going to be like in a Q4 with the discounts. But of course the discounts came in at the end of the quarter, just mainly for December,

Of course, Tesla delivers a lot of cars in December. But I would assume probably we're going to see it closer to 20% in Q4. Now that the real question is going to be in Q1. Man, you could see that. Could it even dip below 10%, you think? I don't know. 10% seems like a good guess. Maybe 10%, 15%. Because it's not, I mean, I don't know.

I mean, so the bigger picture thing for me is that this kind of divides the Tesla community in half because you have the Tesla stockholders who are like, don't do this. We like the gross margin. We like the big numbers we want to...

We want Tesla to make the stock price to go back up. And then there's the people, and I think I include myself in this area, who are kind of like Tesla fans in the mission, which is like, hey, we want to try to sell more electric vehicles to more people. And this is probably going to reverberate across the industry. I think everybody else is going to kind of have to tighten their margins a little bit as well.

So a lot more electric vehicles are going to be sold now. Prices are starting to come down, equalize with gas cars. So I don't know. I think it's a good thing. And, you know, I'm sorry the price is going to go down. And I think in the long run, this is going to be good for Tesla because they're going to increase the market share quite a bit. They're going to, you know, a lot more people are going to be under the Tesla umbrella. It's just going to be a big, you know,

a growth opportunity for Tesla. So I don't know. And we know that Tesla has the coffers to withstand also like, I'm not saying that they would go negative on the gross margin, but they can take a hit on this. And with the market being a lot more competitive right now and possible economic downturn happening, we're in a situation where Tesla could potentially even push people out of the market at this point. Right.

Because a lot of companies like GM, and I'm not saying that GM would be out of the market, but they have admitted that they are having issues making money on selling electric cars right now. And they plan to be able to make money once they have a significant ramp up in production volume toward 2024, 2025. Around that time, Ford said the same thing. Most of them said the same thing. I think Volkswagen is...

A little bit earlier, I think they said that they're already making money on their cars. I think so. I mean, it kind of goes back and forth. I think they say they're going to make money and it's always like we're going to make it on the next. Yeah. So that's a good point. I mean, this could be kind of like a, you know, a big move on Tesla's part to kind of weed out the competition because Tesla can make money.

tons of vehicles at scale at a very low price, comparatively. And if they make enough vehicles that are low priced, then the Mach-Es of the world and the, you know, Chevy Equinoxes and the ID4s aren't going to be as appealing. And maybe those never get to scale. Yeah, that's the big question because right now,

If there's an EV price war, and there's never really been an EV price war because the demand has always exceeded production significantly, I think Tesla will win that war. But especially the cars that you just mentioned, like the Equinox, that's definitely a good contender if there's a price war because a $30,000 SUV with that kind of range, it is attractive.

Tesla doesn't have anything that's in that price range right now. So it's not even like really a direct competitor, but still I can see a lot of people right now that they're willing to splurge on the Model Y.

that if an equinox was available to them right now they maybe not go for that too but then you might get those people even before the equinox come right now because maybe that the price is attractive right now and with the gas saving that you get between now getting a model y which you can get within a month or two at this point uh it's better than getting a

getting an equinox and who knows when at this point here's an interesting scenario uh you know tesla typically doesn't do all their price changes at once they kind of go what if this is like the first salvo and then in you know two weeks or a month they drop it another you know five thousand ten thousand bucks and then they get back to 35 000 i mean the china model 3 is 35 35 000

35,000 for Model 3?

But yeah, I think Tesla's Model 3 built in Fremont are a lot more expensive than the one in Shanghai. I mean, we know they're more expensive to purchase, but the cost of making. But what you just said is a great transition to our next post that we want to discuss, where Tesla actually commented on the price decrease, which is extremely rare. I know people are...

are very tired of me talking about this and not having a PR department and how that's hurtful and all that. But it doesn't have a PR department in the US or a global one, but it still has some PR people in certain market, including Germany and the European or European colleagues managed to get a comment from them

And the spokesperson said, at the end of a turbulent year with interruption to the supply chain, we have achieved a partial normalization of cost inflation, which gives us the – I cannot even say it without laughing – which gives us the confidence to pass the relief on to our customers. So that's as much bullshit that I can think of of an answer. You bleeped out the bull. Yeah. I got it right.

Yeah, I did, right? Yeah, it's just not true. They basically erased two years of, like you said, more gradual price increases. It's not like big ones that they blamed on the increased inflation.

but at the same time as we noted we saw the same time that uh the gross margin kept going up with those price increases so at one point you have to ask yourself a question is like how much is inflation being countered with the price increase versus uh tesla just putting more money in their pockets and now you're basically erase those entire two years of uh in price increases

Supposedly due to inflation because there's a partial normalization of cost inflation, which is like as much of a like a politician and so that you can get. So obviously this is not true. We've discussed some serious indication that Tesla was having some demand issues. And that is obviously what's explaining these price decrease right now, these massive price cuts.

And the number one indication for that is that the last two quarters, Tesla had the biggest discrepancies between the vehicle produced and vehicle delivered it ever had. $20,000 in Q3 and as much as $50,000, I think, in Q4. So like...

That's building up for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a giant buildup of inventory. So not enough buyers. What are you going to do? You cut prices. That's what happens. So I don't know who they're fooling with that statement, but certainly not us. Certainly not electric readers. I hope. All right. Next up, um,

Yeah, despite those demand issues, so that Tesla fans don't get on us too much on that, Tesla is still, like, obviously extremely dominant in the market. In the EV market in the U.S., it still owns over 60% of the market, which is absolutely incredible, which is why we talk about Tesla a lot, obviously. But now, Tesla regained the title of the top luxury auto brand in the U.S. from foreign automakers for the first time. So, over the...

basically a quarter of a century, foreign automakers held the titles of the number one luxury brand in terms of volume, sales volume in the US. I'm talking about Audi, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Lexus, and companies like that.

I mean, that's what people think of when they think of luxury. Of course, you have some American brands, of course, Cadillac and things like that, but Lincoln. But those are in terms of volumes, like you wouldn't be surprised that those don't come close really. Well, I mean, no, no, they don't come close.

I'm just looking at the list. No, they don't. So last year, well, no, I guess last year, 2022. So in 2021, Tesla came 23,000 units from getting the title. It was number two to BMW. But in 2022, now it gained a title and by a massive margin too. That's what we have to be careful about because obviously the Tesla deliveries are an estimate because Tesla is...

Again, not very transparent with their information. So we have to use like registration data and just estimates to know how many cars they delivered in the U.S. in 2022. But regardless of your estimate, most estimates put it around 500,000 units last year. And BMW delivered 332,000 vehicles in the U.S. So it's not even close. Even if you were wrong by 100,000 vehicles on Tesla deliveries in the U.S.,

Tesla would still be number one. So this is a great accomplishment by Tesla. Congratulations to everyone involved because I know that takes a ton of work. Now, the next thing though is like when is... Real quick though. Go ahead. Who was the American brand in 25 years ago that was a Cadillac, you think? Yeah, I actually don't know. I didn't think of looking it up. But you would put Chrysler as a luxury brand? No, not really. I mean, they had some kind of sort of stuff 25 years ago, maybe.

Yeah. Yeah. Cause, cause Dodge was like the low one and then Plymouth was the mediocre. I don't know. Yeah. No Cadillac would make more sense probably. I mean, it was the, it was the nineties. I don't know how popular Cadillac was in the nineties though. Kind of hard to think. All right, let's move on to autopilot hardware. So any day now Tesla could be revealing this new autopilot hardware suite sensor suite really.

and possibly a new computer because generally those two come together. We're basing that of course on Tesla. Last month we learned that they were going to release a new radar inside the vehicle, which was a big surprise obviously since Tesla removed the radar a few years ago to focus on their vision-based computer vision system for the top-palette. Now radar being brought back into the mix, it's sort of pointed to somewhat of a significant update to the hardware suite.

So now, and on top of that, we saw the Model 3 prototype too that seemed to have cameras embedded in the headlights, though they wasn't completely clear. But these were the two main indication that something was going to happen. And Tesla made it clear that the radar is coming in January. So it could be any day now.

Now, in China, and China is a very good indication of Tesla updating these kind of things because normally any kind of production update goes through Gigafactory Shanghai first.

And this time, some regulatory filings for Tesla bringing a new version of the Model 3 into production shows update to the sensor, the suite of sensor, primarily the front-facing camera. So right now, the front-facing camera hub has three cameras in it, and it's a fairly low-resolution 1.2 megapixel cameras.

And now it's apparently being updated to two cameras. So they're removing one, but it's going to be higher resolution cameras. So and still one is going to be one is going to be at least higher resolution. The other one's going to be a field of view cameras, which they already is a field of view cameras on one. But it's going to have more pixels. Then they also updating the heater heating system fan inside that hub.

We don't know exactly what's going to be the impact of that. Of course, there's already a heating system in there. Anyone that's left their car in the snow for a while, you see, of course, you can also start your cabin climate control system remotely. But even if you don't, the top of your windshield still melts the snow. But they are adding some of that into the B-pillar cameras too. So, of course, you have cameras on each side on the B-pillars.

Those are also going to have a little eating system with a fan. So that's going to be useful. And there's no mention of that headlight and bumper camera. So that might throw some cold water on that plan. We don't know for sure. It might be just missing from that filing or maybe they're going to start with that and then the update is going to come later. We know that Tesla is not. Sometime Tesla will.

bundle a lot of updates together and release it and do like a refresh version of the car and obviously the model 3 has been rumored to get a significant refresh but sometimes they will also incrementally release uh new hardware new product inside the vehicles gradually whenever they're ready for production so this might be it this might be a bigger one we don't know for sure but it's certainly creating a lot of concern for people that uh

Is this going to be an update that's going to be needed to achieve self-driving or is it something that's just supplemental and Tesla still plans to reach for self-driving capability with the current hardware? That's the big question. And we don't have the answer to. And I kind of have a feeling that Tesla doesn't have the answer to that either. Yeah, we don't know when. But it's a weird time to buy a Tesla right now because if you bought one last week, you just lost $20,000 model Y base model. That sucks.

Not $20,000. I guess if you bought it last week, you lost $13,000. If you bought it two weeks ago, well, then Tesla was giving you money. Anyway. I mean, you lost $13,000. I mean, still the Model Y. The Model Y is going to be like $7,000 almost. Right, but it went down $13,000 last week. So wait, you couldn't get the tax rebate on the base Model Y?

last week, right? Oh, no. Yeah, you're right. Technically, it is a $13,000 difference than whatever because they were offering a $7,500 direct discount, but you couldn't get the tax credit. So, yeah. Anyway, it's a big loss. Like, maybe people will start rioting like they did in China. I hope not. Although it does suck. But then there's also the, hey, is the radar set and, you know, is the full self-driving that I'm buying going to be

you know, upgraded in like the next three weeks. Maybe I should wait until that comes out. So it's, it's like a weird time to buy. Like it's enticing, obviously the price cuts, but then you have this other thing that's coming down the pike soon. And you're like, eh, maybe I should do that.

yeah no no yeah you're right it's a question that comes up a lot with tesla since they don't do the model year too so whenever there's a potential of a new uh feature and new upgrade coming up everyone wants to uh time their purchase accordingly but uh yeah i mean the big impact too is on the used car market and actually that that might be what also kind of triggered this whole thing because this uh

we've been tracking used car prices and they've been going down lately. When I say lately, maybe over the last two months on Tesla vehicles and they used to be super high. If you remember around this time last year, sometimes used cars were more expensive than new cars for Tesla because the wait list for the Model Y was eight months to a year. Now it's not the case anymore.

And so now if you were like looking to upgrade your car too, and you were, you wanted to use a trade in your Tesla, like that's, that's going to have a big impact. Like be aware of that. Yeah. And you should also mention like the price of everybody's Tesla has gone down a little bit right now because the price, you know,

The things like when you cut $20,000 off the price of a car, the used value of the car also goes down because people are weighing, should I buy a new one? Should I buy a used one? So all of us Tesla owners probably lost 10 grand last night. Yep. Bummer. I mean, yes, for me, my Model 3 is 2018, so the impact has been going down for a while now.

The autopilot safety report are coming back. So that we used to report that quarterly because Tesla would release them quarterly and for all of 2022, they disappeared. And we couldn't, we didn't know why. But of course, we're not exactly surprised too, because as I just said, the Tesla is kind of known to be not the most transparent company on there.

uh and also anyway the the the reports were being kind of trashed a lot just for like the the data not being super useful but i always argue that even though the data is not the best example of like how safe tesla vehicles on autopilot are it's still a good data to track over time so you can just compare it quarter over quarter

Actually, maybe it's better year over year because quarter over quarter, they change just with the season. Obviously, like right now, you're going to get more accidents per mile just because it's the winter. So wherever it's cold, there's snow and everything, it's more dangerous. And even where it's not cold, just the daylight time being less, that also has an impact on safety. There's just more accident at night too. That's it.

just what happens uh but somehow this decided to bring it back and uh starting with the third quarter of 2022 so they are a quarter behind uh but they released it and uh looks like they might have released it because uh there's uh it looks like it is an improvement to it at least uh if you see here we're talking about over six million miles driven before an accident when autopilot technology is involved and uh that went down to five million in q2

Q2, not sure why in Q2, but now it's back up in Q3 over 6 million. And compared to when Tesla stopped reporting it, that was over 5 million for Q3. So year over year, decent increase. Of course, that's also changed the way that they reported it before they would do things like...

while using autopilot technology, or not even that, while using autopilot, then while using...

safety features that are enabled by autopilot but it are not autopilot itself like um for example the uh the lane keeping feature or the uh automatic emergency brakes and things like that and then they would say Tesla vehicle without autopilot whatsoever

Now they're just bundling everything together. And at this point, too, what's weird is like, is FSD involved in that? FSD better? We don't even know. Like FSD better, in my opinion, is sort of a little pilot technology, but Tesla doesn't make the difference for now. So I'm not so sure. But there is improvement. So that's encouraging on that front. And obviously, when I say the data is not good, the main thing that's not good about the data is performance.

And now that's where FSD Beta kind of throw things, throw a wrench into this, is that autopilot is mainly used on the highway. And on the highway, you can get a lot more mileage before you get an accident.

So it kind of skews with the data when you compare that to, for example, Tesla vehicles without autopilot. Or, of course, they compare that to all vehicles also in the U.S. And all vehicles in the U.S. don't just drive on the highway. And city driving is more dangerous in terms of accident, even though it can be like a small accident, obviously. But now with FSD beta being used,

on city street is that does that had city street driving to the autopilot technology? I don't know. Tesla doesn't let us know. Yep.

All right, quick take here on the new million square foot building that Tesla acquired in, or at least leased. They secured a lease on it in Brookshire, Texas. So that's just outside of Katy, which is just outside of, I'm always having issue with that one. Is that Houston? Houston? Houston. Houston. Houston for the town and Houston for the street in New York. Got it. Same word, same spelling. I'm going to ask you again next time that we mention it. Okay.

Just letting you know. So Tesla obviously has been expanding a lot over the last two years in Texas with Gigafactory Texas in Austin. And then there is, of course, they moved the headquarters there at the same location. Then more recently, we learned about the Lithium refinery that Tesla is building in Corpus Christi.

Now in Brookshire, Texas, it's a million square foot building. So it's a big facility here. It's not exactly clear. Like Tesla didn't say what they're going to do in it, but we looked into, they're already two jobs openings for the location. And looking at the job description, it sounds like it's both a warehouse and a production facility for battery materials. So it doesn't sound like it's going to be just a warehouse because one of the

Job openings mentioned, sell materials, production area. So sounds like there's going to be production there. Sell materials can be anything. It can be anode, cathode, electrolyte. I have no idea. But that's an interesting one because Tesla, what's interesting is like we see Tesla literally building like a whole battery cell supply chains in Texas because you have lithium refinery. Obviously, that's going to be a big deal.

Then this in Houston, just a few hundred miles away. And then everything is converging in Austin at Gigafactory Texas, where Tesla is actually building the cells. And also there's a cathode production facility there too. That is under construction. It's not actually producing right now. Last Tesla news before we move on from Tesla news people. Just one quick one.

After that, I'm going to get into your comments. I see a bunch of comments already. If you guys have any questions, just put it in the comment section right now or any subjects you wanted to discuss related to the EV industry.

world this week. This is a white paper that I found from Tesla about solar inverters. So it's basically, we sat and I discussed this in the newsroom earlier this week, but there's, they call it a white paper, which is normally a bit more like scientific focus and everything, but it could be easily confused for a sales brochure too.

uh just based on the way it's done but at the same time the data is still accurate most likely um it seems to be at least where tesla is basically pitching why they are doing a string inverter instead of using uh how they call the ml uh the micro inverter which is uh micro inverter is uh end phase right yep and then you have the inverters with optimizers from solar edge of course which is

Is SolarEdge just really there right now in phase? SolarEdge is ahead, I think, in residential installs. They're based out of Israel and Tesla's installed tons of SolarEdge inverters. So they're kind of de facto residential.

Yeah, so that's the weird thing too. Obviously, Tesla has been a solar installer for a while using those products. But of course, last year, they introduced their own solar inverter and it has slowly been selling it to its own installation.

We reported lately that Tesla has been sort of expanding, focusing more on third-party installer to their certified Tesla installer program. And now they are selling their own inverter to them. And they are looking to be like a significant competitor to SolarEdge and Phase, which is a huge market, obviously.

And this is basically, again, we call it a white paper, but it's basically a sales pitch for that inverter here. And so the pitch is Tesla admits that the output, the production output is going to be less than with the optimizer solution that SolarEdge sells. They claim 1% to 2% less. I didn't find anyone that could argue against that. I also reached out to SolarEdge and asked them if they have any comment on that because I'm giving them an opportunity to...

to counter it, but they did not. But they claim that the levelized cost of energy, so the actual cost of

your entire system well before that even the inverter equipment cost apparently it's significantly cheaper uh 14 to 1800 cheaper at the upfront cost and then over time when you levelize that through a production of this system excuse me production of a system which uh uh what's normally it's you calculate on 25 years i think is the average warranty right uh average warranty but usually you can make your money back you know 10 to 20 years even sooner

Yeah, but since they probably calculate through the entire warranty, that's what's his problem. I think sometimes, yeah. So yeah, they expect, depending on the system, that's going to be 6% to 50% better than going with the optimizer solution or microinverter solution.

And they also claim some reliability. Sorry, I'm having some issues with that word. Reliability improvement. So basically improved lifetime of the system. And that's obviously a big deal. If it turns out to be true, like obviously the inverter has been on the market for two years now. So we don't have a lot of real world data on that. But yeah,

But if that turns out to be true, that's great because obviously when you install a solar system on your house, so a house is obviously a long-term asset that you amortize and you don't want to have to reinvest into the solar system. You just want like, okay, now I have a house and it has solar. I don't have to worry about my electricity. Of course, depending on your solar system's output and your home energy consumption, that can always change.

But yeah, you can read the whole paper on Electrek. We shared it right here.

If you're into that stuff, of course, it's really inside baseball stuff. It's not for everyone, but I thought it was interesting. And yeah, also what I thought was interesting is like Tesla, in the paper, they focused a lot on their ecosystem thing. Like everything is like we have, I think, did I put the, yeah, like one app to commission the system and one app to manage everything. I think Tesla is, I'm seeing a lot of evidence that Tesla is moving into the just, they want, they don't necessarily want to be the installer of everything, but

like they used to, because that's just harder to scale. But if they can sell the Powerwall or the solar inverter or both, they own the brain to those energy systems inside your home. And if they do that, well, all your energy is managed through the Tesla app. If all the energy is managed through Tesla app, then they can

or they can offer you to be included into either a virtual power plant like they've done in California or now the more recent product that's I think that's going to what we're going to see Tesla do long term. Tesla Electric that they've been doing in Texas where they are an actual energy retailer. Tesla owns your energy plan and works with the grid, the local electric utilities to sell you electricity.

By managing your own electricity through that system. So I think this is going to be the future. So we're going to see Tesla more and more trying to sell its solar inverter to solar installer with or without Powerwall. And that's going to be the new Tesla electric, the new Tesla energy business.

Makes sense. I mean, hiring local people all over the country, all over the world, that's hard. That's not as lucrative. But having your system all over the world controlled by one central database, I think that's the way to go. That's the high margin stuff right there. So it makes sense. All right. Let's talk a bit about Corvette.

it's not often we talk Corvette on the leg tracks and stuff. And actually, uh, so, uh, yeah, there's not much you can tell us about this, right? So you're kind of limited. So here, here's my fear, uh, is what, uh, how I'll put it. My fear is that they're going to put such a small battery. So Chevy T's the 2024 all wheel drive, which is nice, uh, Corvette E-Ray, and they're going to have a New York city reveal, uh, this coming week. Um,

But they're calling it the E-Ray because it does have an electric system, but they didn't mention anything about plugs. We didn't see a plug in the teaser. So if that's the case, if there's no plug, then it's a mild hybrid at best, and it's going to have a very small battery. Now, officially, we don't know for sure, but, you know,

Obviously, if we did know, and that would be disappointing if it was a hybrid, and if it had a really small battery, like even less than two kilowatt hours, that would be hugely disappointing. But we don't know this stuff yet. It's just quite frustrating that this isn't kind of a plug-in hybrid, and even more so...

it's gotta be frustrating for Chevrolet to say, all right, Hey, we're putting everything at this car, a Corvette, and it barely beats a model three performance that you can buy for 40,000 bucks, you know, like, and it's a, you know, a sedan and it barely can be, you know, a Porsche Taycan. It can't beat a Porsche Taycan actually. And it obviously isn't going to come up close to a plaid Tesla model S or X. So,

To me, it's like, why are you guys even messing with internal combustion engines in your high-performance cars at this point? They're just going to get slaughtered. Electric cars are quieter, less vibration, all the bad things, less of, obviously, range would be nice on an internal combustion engine vehicle, but everything else is pretty much better on electric, which is frustrating to see them try to

capture people's interest within E-Ray and then, you know, likely it's not going to really have much electric motor to it at all. So that's my, that's my not saying that I know anything. Yeah. I mean, let's, I've heard some things to the grapevines and, uh, I'm having a tough time caring about that car to be honest. Uh,

So they say 2024, so that's going to come out later this year, like late this year, I guess? Yeah. Who cares about a hybrid supercar in late 2023? Who cares about it in early 2023? Right. I know. It's frustrating. I mean, I see them saying, oh, we should have made this an electric vehicle. Let's call it the E-Ray or something.

But it's kind of like those Ferraris that go really fast because there's a little electric motor and a little bit of a battery that during acceleration, it speeds up. But it's not going to beat a Plaid. It's not going to beat a Taycan. So, you know, what's the point? Like, why are we even talking about this thing? I agree. Let's move on. All right. Can I click on this? All right, let's go.

All right. The I-Pace got a little sleek facelift this week and are dynamic models. Actually, I didn't look too much into that though, so I'm going to have to add a new one. It looks nice. The lights are nice. It's a nice upgrade. I often forget about the I-Pace. The I-Pace was early. It was great for off-roading, which was not really a thing for a while.

I think you drove one and you had some problems with the center stack. It was just awful user experience inside the car. But no, I mean, the update is like sleek is a good word for it. I think especially, I mean, is there a back end picture on this? I don't think so. No, because the back end of the I-Pace was always more of...

I guess it looks like on this one here, I felt like the B pillar situation and the C pillar is a bit different. But from the side view, I have to say that looks pretty much like the old one to me. Yeah, I think it's mostly just, you know, the lights and that front grill thing. All right. In terms of the specs, is there that much difference? I don't.

Not from the drivetrain, which is really frustrating. 90 kilowatt hour, that was already it. So what's this R-Dynamic model thing? Did we go into the details about that? Because I'm not familiar. I assume that has to do with Jaguar's performance naming or something. It doesn't look like they didn't release any details on it. No.

All right. And our last piece of news before we get into the comment section, and that's coming in a few minutes or however long we're going to spend on this, which is also not the most exciting. It's the Mazda MX-30. This beautiful 100-mile EV is coming back. So rejoice. Yeah, rejoice. Rejoice. The three people are going to want to buy this.

So they sold 105 units. Sorry, 505. Which is actually impressive, to be honest with you. Like, you know, when there's a Chevy Bolt sitting there that goes two and a half times farther, costs less. I don't know. It just doesn't seem. I mean, some people like, I guess, the, I don't know, the suicide doors. Yeah, I guess. I don't know.

I mean, we have some late-breaking news that they actually, the P-HEV version of this, where they're going to put a little Wankel rotary engine in it for generating more mileage, but it actually has a smaller battery somehow. So that's some news there, I guess. Late-breaking news. Yeah. Yeah.

I got an increase in price of 700 bucks to 34. Also impressive that they would increase the price, not the range. They're like, what do the customers want? They want to pay more. They want to go 100 miles. That's fine, but too cheap. All right. Should we jump into the comments section? Let's do it. All right. A couple guys jumped on before we even started. Igor...

Grubzik, Fred, would you return FSD package for a full refund of original price? And he's estimating that's around $5,000 or would you keep it given the choice? I mean, like, that's not a fair question at this point because like you said, Igor, the original price that I paid for it was, I mean, I don't remember exactly, but probably around 5K, like you said. So if I had paid like 10,000,

Between $10K and $15K, which was over the last year, year and a half or something that's been around that price. Yeah, probably I would prefer at this point having $10K to $15K in my pocket rather than just hoping that they actually deliver on that promise.

Now with $5,000, it's kind of a gamble that I'm willing to take. Also, if I was just a regular owner,

it'd be different probably to be honest now you have to take into account that like i'm a reporter and i report on tesla and i report on the fsd program and it is useful for me to have a car that has the fsd beta in it so you have to take that into account too and that's probably worth 5k i would assume yeah he didn't ask me but uh if i had paid

I would give it back. The problem is I'm not using it right now. And I guess at some point in the future, it could be worth it, but I don't know. Moving on, Doug Grinberg's Elon API debacle breaking third-party Twitter apps. No official word, terribly unprofessional. So I think he's talking about TweetBot not working. Shocker. I think that's not a surprise to anybody.

All right. Nana Holt says, massive Elon flex. No more Mr. Nice Guy on the price drops. Yeah, that's kind of, it could turn out that way. Yeah. What do you think? Is it a flex? I don't understand that comment, to be honest. I think it's about the price drops. Yeah, but what does that mean? It's that he's, like Elon's saying, I can go lower on prices than anybody else. Oh, okay. Yeah, I guess.

All right. Jonathan Root, weird how some people in the Tesla community praise price hikes as strengthening demand, while on the other end...

praise price cuts while saying it's not demand related well i mean that you're just highlighting the fact that there's a lot of irrational tesla fans out there which we already knew about like there is a core group of tesla super fans especially on twitter that no matter what this is going to do it's going to that is the right move to do right now exactly and they cannot criticize it whatsoever and elon is loving those people like crazy right now and isn't and uh

And, oh, I'm blanking on the word right now. Empowering them? Like, he's giving them some clout online. Yeah, literally, on Twitter and stuff.

All right. Moving on. In New Jersey, there's the New Jersey Charge Up Initiative incentive that takes off $4,000 more and no sales tax. So the Y long range is $41,000 in New Jersey out the door. Yeah, that's true. New York has 2,000. I think California's got a couple thousand. Colorado, some other states, some...

Electric utilities have incentives as well. So it's going to be a good time to buy regardless. Do you have to have a New Jersey address? No. You can just... I've got a Vermont address, but not helpful there. No, I'm saying, do you need a New Jersey address to... Oh, yeah, you do. I mean, you need to pay New Jersey taxes. Adrian Tatum says, looking at the inventory prices, the base price for the Model 3 Long Range is $49,990 before the tax credit.

So I think he's saying that the inventory prices haven't dropped with the new car prices. I haven't checked that out. That might be just a deal issue and that might come in a second. Yeah. Jonathan Root, these price cuts were Elon's way of apologizing to liberals.

Okay. Yeah, I don't see that happening. No. The price cuts come straight out of margin. That's true. And any recent efficiencies. Wouldn't the growth in sales have to be massive to offset? They would be, but... No, impossible. There's not going to be...

like tesla is going to produce whatever it can produce right now like it's like i don't think if they do try to throttle production it's going to be minimal so what how whatever it could

economies of scales that they can achieve, they have achieved, or the bulk of it, at least, has been achieved already. So we can forget about that. There might be, like you said, some efficiencies, improvement over time that happens, but obviously not 20% of the cost of the MoY. That's why I cannot believe that

that spokesperson thought it was a good idea to put that comment out there because who's going to believe that a partial normalization of inflation is going to release a 20% improvement in price and cost really in the middle of a while. You need to be, I don't want to say it, but dumb to believe that. Nice one. Yeah, or maybe you just haven't really thought about it much and you're not in the business.

You're one of those Tesla super fans, maybe? Yeah. Adrian Tatum says, okay, this is going to be controversial. I think the Model 3 will get yet more price cuts. So that's something I think is possible in the next few months. $7,000 to $10,000. This will serve as sort of a bridge to the new $25,000 question mark that will probably be announced in March. I don't know about that.

I mean, it might be on to something. I don't know about the $25,000 car being announced in March. I don't know about that. But there is, and we've seen Tesla do that before, especially if the new, the refresh mode comes out soon, which we do think it's going to happen, probably end of Q1.

And if that's introduced with especially casting improvement like Model Y, that does bring the cost down somewhat significantly. So you can achieve some improvement to that. I don't know $35,000, but it does make it an ascendant. We've seen Tesla do that before where they come out with either a lower price, just a price reduction or a lower price new version of a car. And

Then they release a new card or they say that the new car is coming, like they unveil it. And so a lot of people will want that. But then with the new lower price version, they're like, do I want to wait a year or a year and a half or whatever it's going to take to get that $25,000 one? If I can get a $35,000 Model 3 instead, that is very good at creating demand. That's the very adamant lever. Yeah. Lever.

all right carl in san diego other manufacturers never claimed any profit margin they won't drop uh i mean if they can't sell cars they have to drop like even yeah that's that's that's the thing but but that's something to keep an eye on though with that big price drop from tesla is there going to be any that's the question is there going to be any other filmmakers that are going to follow suit that they're going to try to compete with that now i'm going to keep an eye on that

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, you know, Elon has to know that like he's alienated a great deal of people. I wonder if he's just so confident in the Tesla's ability to make a good car less expensive, a good EV at a much less, much smaller price than the competitors that he's like, eh, you know, I'll talk all the smack I want, but people aren't going to pay a $10,000 premium because they hate me. I mean, I don't know if that's the case, but like that's something to think about.

And, of course, this is going to influence used markets, as Adam Wibley says. Yes, all of us lost a lot of money yesterday. All of us Tesla owners. Bolt price is already a desperation low price. No room to drop it. Chevy will raise. I don't think Chevy is going to drop the price of the Bolt anymore. I mean, they can't even. It's hard to find one. There's like an eight-month waiting list. So, yeah, I think they'll probably raise or do nothing because they don't care.

You know, I heard it. So this is at CES. I talked to somebody at I think it was at the LG booth and he wasn't an LG employee, but he mentioned that part of the settlement for, you know, the LG batteries catching on fire. Part of the settlement for that was that they would get inexpensive batteries for the rest of the Bolt's term from LG. And possibly that's why Chevy was able to cut the price of the Bolt.

Just remember that. I don't know if that's true or not. It was just some guy. I mean, that price drop surprised a lot of people. We didn't really know where that was coming from. And the battery is the most expensive part of the car. Also, yeah. All right. Do you think price cuts will affect quality standards? I mean, you have to give that to Tesla. All the things you can smack them on about safety issues,

It's been like a tough one. So in terms of quality requirements related to safety, I wouldn't be really afraid about that. Now, obviously, Tesla has had some qualities issue that are more aesthetic, talking about the paint mainly. So that may be something to keep an eye on, but I wouldn't be overly concerned about that. All right, question, Maximilian Wyss. Would you rather have a P85 with AP1 and free supercharging for life or a new Model S?

I would rather have a new Model S. Like,

Yeah. I mean, free supercharging is real, but I guess that person doesn't like the latest autopilot. There's a group of owners that are like hardcore, like autopilot one, like they just, they like the mobile of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's an advantage for them. For me, it's not like I do like the latest versions of autopilot. So that's not the free supercharging is super good though.

You know what? My main thing personally is, and I have a P85 signature, is the seats. The seats have improved tremendously since then. So just that alone, like if you spend a lot of time in your car...

It's just a no-brainer. You want the latest versions. Yeah, I would take the latest version unless I was like an Uber driver and that free supercharging saved me tens of thousands a year. Yeah. But I'm not.

So Kyle Rash question, if used Model 3s get to around the new Bolt prices in coming months, which they're not, does Electric reconsider its Car of the Year award for last year? No. Which would you pick if it happens? Obviously at the same price, I would pick a Model 3 over a Bolt. Yeah. And we were quite clear about that when we decided to do the Bolt Car of the Year. It's half the price right now, or last year. Yeah. Half. Yeah. Half the price.

It's the best value for it. It has major caveat with the charging capacity. Clear about that. But if the goal is to have a car with as little compromises as possible, then the Bolt is the best value. There's no doubt about it. All right. For those safety reports, how many accidents were avoided by grabbing the steering wheel to prevent an accident? Are those reports misleading? Driving with autopilot is really not regular driving. That's a good point.

Yeah, I mean, Tesla has been accused of that before of like, well, I mean, if... Doesn't autopilot turn off before an accident? So like, how did it even register any accidents? Well, now I guess it's a bit different with the way that they are doing the data right now, where it's a Tesla vehicle with autopilot technology, then it doesn't matter if the autopilot is activated or not at the time of the accident.

So with the new way that they are framing the data, I wouldn't be concerned about that. But yeah, I mean, there's been times where we had to just raise some eyebrows in terms of when Tesla saying that there's an accident and it looks like an autopilot accident, but Tesla claims that autopilot was not activated.

you could see a scenario where Tesla is saying that because like five seconds, three seconds, whatever, before the accident, it just, you turn it off. All right. We're an hour in. Let's kind of burn through these last ones. A question. Do you think it makes sense for Elon's compensation package to be linked to ESG targets?

that's the uh environmental okay moving on i agree thoughts on the upcoming ev9 that's a kia ev9 seems to be the first fifty thousand dollar full-size suv um i'm very interested in it uh i have a rivian on order rivian rs1s i'm also looking at the volvo ex90 but this thing would be kind of a lower price point uh i think that at fifty thousand dollars you're probably gonna get a rear wheel drive one or or something not very exciting

To get to all-wheel drive, you're probably going to pay $60,000 or $70,000. That said, Kia knows how to make a good vehicle. We love the EV6. So, like, fantastic. Let's make it happen. And we've heard we're going to get some more announcements, more news about it this quarter.

Nando Holtz, on Tesla's site, if you take the base Model 3 and look at the cost after potential gas savings, okay, that's not anything. That's not accurate. Right. Mark Webb, one problem with the type of inverter that is used by Tesla is that they tend to install an inverter that has a significantly lower power kilowatts than the output kilowatts of the panels. This results in clipping. Well, that doesn't seem like a good idea. That's a waste of power. No, Tesla has two...

Two different capacity, I think at 3.6 and 7.2, I want to say. Yeah, and they're stackable. Yeah, you could put five or six of them out there. People are always biased depending on their perspective. Are you happy with lower prices? Depends on your circumstances. But one thing history has shown, and I am surprised no one seems to remember, comma, and then he doesn't. Okay. Okay.

I'm sure it was going to be a good comment. Yeah, it looked like it was going in an interesting direction. Yeah. All right. I think we have a few more. Inflation normalization could be including the uncertainty that Tesla had to build their prices when delivery dates were nearly a year out. Price increases had to factor in possibly higher inflation. Right. So Tesla was just hedging. And that's why they raised the prices so much and didn't want to lose. Yeah.

uh you could you could say that maybe it's a little bit of a stretch i think uh all right that's pretty much it good because that was about the first thing and it's not because you guys comments are not good you guys have great comments i'm just

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