New cheaper Model Y, Tesla price cuts, EV delivery numbers
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Welcome to a new episode of The Electric Podcast, everyone. I'm Fred Lambert, your host, and as usual, I'm joined by Seth Winchell. How are you doing today, Seth? I'm good.

I'm glad you're good because we have a ton to talk about this week. This week was a huge week in EV news. We're going to jump right into it. But right before that, I want to thank our sponsor. Today's episode is sponsored by HAMP, Makers of Energy Management Solution for E-mobility Products. We're going to have a little bit more to tell you about them later on the show. So stay tuned for that. But right now, let's jump right into the news because there's time to talk about. So we spent a big part of the show last week discussing our expectation for a

Not just our expectation, but the Wall Street's expectation for... Oh, sorry. Let me just mute myself. This is annoying. And not mute myself, but mute my notification. I forget that like one week out of two all the time.

the uh delivery number for q3 for tesla so pretty much exactly what i thought was going to happen happen i was saying last week i feel like wall street is setting up tesla for failure here the despite the warnings that tesla gave ahead of the quarter they push for basically like a marginal decrease in quarter to quarter deliveries um

And sure enough, Tesla came lower than that at 435,000 deliveries when Wall Street was... It's still a little bit lower than what we were discussing last week. We discussed it like a day later, they were updated the consensus that was closer to 455,000, but still 20,000 below the consensus. So there's a missed expectation by a big margin. But like I told you, I think that the expectation was just way too high from Wall Street.

Production was at 430,000 units. So this over-delivered by 5,000 units, like quarter versus the production. So they worked through their inventory. So that's something of note here.

Now, obviously, Wall Street was like, oh, down 4% in the morning because of that. But the stock came right back after that. So it's kind of weird because like Tesla warns Wall Street is like this quarter was going to be a little bit lower because we are going to do some production shutdowns for factory upgrades and everything like that. And then Wall Street is like, yeah, sure. No, you're going to deliver the same number, of course, this quarter, basically. Yeah.

even though you have access to all that production data and all that demand data that we don't have access to, we know better than you, Tesla. So we expect more out of you. Makes no sense. But at the same time, the stock went right back up and a lot of people attributed it to Tesla in the release of those numbers. Tesla said that it still expects deliveries of about 1.8 million vehicles in 2023.

So they were like, "Oh, well, at least they still believe that." Again, nothing has changed. And then the stock popped the next day with that. Makes no sense whatsoever because actually Tesla kind of gave us a range, which is rare for the year where they always officially said 1.8 million units, but Elon said that that's on the lower side and that he could see them reaching 2 million. Now I think 2 million is like out of possibility in my opinion. I think that's pretty fair.

But the 1.8 million is easily achievable. I think it's close to 475,000 units they need to deliver in Q4, which is like 40,000 more than they delivered last quarter, only 10,000 more than the record quarter of Q2. So it all seems very achievable in my book. I think this is going to hit that 1.8 million units for the full year, I mean.

All right, we had the comeback, well, comeback of a cheaper Model Y in a new version, Model Y rear-wheel drive with a

standard range, short of a battery pack. They don't call it the standard range, obviously. It's still with the rear-wheel drive Model Y they're sticking for, with a much lower price of $43,990, basically $44,000. So it replaced the all-wheel drive Model Y that went away with the Texas-built Model Y that we talked a few weeks ago that was discontinued.

So it's a little bit cheaper than that, but it has a shorter – 260 miles of range. I think it has the same range, about the same range, right? I think it'll be shorter. Oh, it's just rear-wheel drive, yeah. I didn't report on the range last time. I don't remember. I think it was around that same – we have indication, too, that it's probably LFP cells that you're using since they have the same indication in the –

notes of the system of the battery that you can charge 100% and all that. So that would almost confirm that it's LFP over NMC. So yeah, I mean, this is a very aggressive price brain. Obviously, it's something that we've been noting from Tesla throughout all year. They've been slashing prices. I want to put in perspective, though, that Tesla is aggressively slashing prices while amid still some inflation, amid other problems.

companies not necessarily cutting prices or cutting them as much as Tesla. But you have to put it in perspective that Tesla increases the price a lot in 2021 and 2022 to a higher margin than most automakers. So those price walk back a little bit are not as massive as they first seem. But we now have a Model Y at $44,000.

I think it's good news for everyone. Elon himself, when I promoted the vehicle on Twitter, saying that on X, saying that rear-wheel drive is actually pretty good in the winter when you have the right tires. You don't necessarily need an all-wheel drive, which is convenient to see as you discontinue an all-wheel drive model, replace it by rear-wheel drive. But I actually agree with him for the most part. Unless you live in a dirt road that is harder to maintain in the winter or something like that,

Most of the time, you're going to be just fine with the rear-wheel drive and electric vehicles in the rear-wheel drive specifically are a little bit better than the ICE vehicles with the same drivetrain. Anything other specific on the new Model 6.6 seconds, 0-60? So obviously a little bit slower than the all-wheel drive. Is that Tesla's slowest car ever? You might have a point here because I think it might be a little bit slower than the Model 3 rear-wheel drive.

- I mean, it makes sense, it's a bigger car. - Yeah, bigger car. - Also, how is Tesla getting away with the $7,500 tax rebate on LFP batteries? - So I have quite a few of you that reached out to me about that and I'm looking into it and like, if anyone can help me on this, if anyone has any kind of information or even if you don't have any information on this, but you have like a very good theory about it that I can explore more,

I'm willing to listen because this is something that's mind-boggling for a lot of people. Both with this one and both with the Model 3, the fact that Tesla is getting away with this, and I'm not against it. They might just be playing by the rule and we are not understanding the rule set completely. So I'm not saying that Tesla is doing something that it shouldn't be doing, but we don't understand how they are getting away with the battery sourcing requirements because we don't know of any

LFP sales production in the US or in North America or in any major way at least including in any countries that have free trades agreement with the US there's some production right now LFP sales in Quebec actually but it's super low volume and I mean it would be giant news if Tesla is getting that from there and I don't think that's the case yeah and I think Ford is even kind of putting its LFP plant on the back burner at the moment yeah yeah

So, yeah, it's a mystery that I really would love to solve. Do you think it's something like the final assembly is done in the U.S.? One of those kind of tricks? It could be that, but I feel that we would have learned about that if it was the case. Because we're talking like, first of all, what kind of final assembly it is. So if they get the final, because the battery pack is most likely being produced here. That's not a problem. So we're not talking about that. We're talking, are you talking about like battery cells final assemblies? Because that's...

that's like not likely like that's all done at the same spot so I don't know it's a weird one

On top of launching a cheaper Model Y this week, Tesla slashed the prices across its entire lineup of the Model 3 and Model Y, excluding the new Model Y that just launched. Obviously, that is at $44,000, it's still the cheapest. But the long range and performance version both got the $2,000 price cut, now starting at $50,500 and $54,500, respectively.

That's a little bit cheaper option too. Now you can also get the all-wheel drive. Not as cheap as the Texas one. You can still get this long range one, so longer range for $50,000. It's not bad at all. Then Model 3 getting cheaper too, starting now at $39,000 for the base rear-wheel drive model, which is 5.8 seconds. It is faster than the new Model Y.

And if you're on the long range and all-wheel drive, you get up to $46,000 and $50,000 for the performance version. Man.

i remember when i i mean with taxes i paid a hundred thousand dollars canadian though canadian so that's still like like what 70 75 000 us and then yeah and as jamie mentioned there was a 35 000 model 3 that was a little bit uh what was that called the sr standard range yeah the standard range and it was very short-lived and it was off the menu for a while yeah it was i think it was on the menu for like a week and then off the menu

Supposedly for a couple months, a year or so. But the more we learned about it, the harder it was to get access to it. They really didn't want to sell that at all. Yeah. But now, I mean, if you can get access, if you are yourself eligible for a tax credit, I mean, $39,000 is pretty cheap.

for what you get i think yeah especially if you're in a state like new york or california we get another two thousand so you're talking under thirty thousand dollars for a model three yeah you can stack them up pretty easy then you take into account you take into account the gas savings and it's uh i mean pays for itself pretty quickly not really but pretty much um obviously

interest rates are a big problem still. That's why Tesla is slashing those prices. It's trying to combat that because at the end of the day, it's your monthly payment. It's important that it makes a difference. Some people are able to buy it outright and that's a big game changer right now with the interest rate. But that's, I think, I would like to know how many people right now, I know it's a much higher percentage than it was just a few years ago, but I'm still curious just how big of a percentage it is that people that are buying cars are, right? All right, this was an interesting one here.

Is the Powerwall 3 a precursor to Tesla finally going, I use vehicle to G here, V2G, vehicle to grid, but vehicle to everything, vehicle to home, vehicle to whatever. This is an observation that came from Mr. Ned Funnel. So he's a charging solution architect.

basically an electric vehicle charging expert. And he had a very interesting observation where with the launch of the Powerwall that we reported on last month, he said it's interesting that the power capacity is 11.5 kilowatts because the Powerwall obviously's inverter is bidirectional, so it's basically a bidirectional charger.

And it happens to be the same capacity, 11.5 kilowatt, that you have on all the latest Tesla vehicles. So everything except the rear-wheel drive Model 3 has an 11.5 kilowatt charger. So it raises the point, is it a coincidence?

Or is Tesla using the same onboard charger in its vehicle as it does in this new Powerwall? Tesla is known for loving to share parts between products. So I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case here. We don't know for a fact. This is an observation. And to me, it's an observation that makes a ton of sense. Obviously, you have to put them in the context of what Tesla has been saying about vehicle-to-grid products.

For the longest part, Tesla has not been super, super positive about it. Those pings are coming from you, right? Not from me, right? I keep hearing pings. Did you hear that? Yeah, it's my stupid watch. I can't turn it off. I wasn't sure. Sorry. I tried putting it under my pants. The good old under the butt sound system, sound suppression system. All right. I just wasn't sure. So,

The context is Tesla has not been very hyped about vehicle-to-grid, vehicle-to-home, vehicle-to-whatever. But lately, they have indicated that they plan to move to it. They plan to offer it. We even heard that Cybertruck would be the first one to get it. So the timing would make sense if Cybertruck get it. But Tesla has also been known to deploy hardware to be future-proof, which wouldn't surprise me if the capability would already be there inside the vehicle. They just need to have the interface with it.

through a software update. Obviously, there's other things that would be needed to either for a vehicle to load some kind of adapter on the vehicle with plugs, or if you want to really do a vehicle to home or vehicle to the grid, then on your home, you would need to have something. Maybe even the Powerwall 3 could be something that could work with that in the future. We don't know. So yeah, I think it's possible.

that this observation is based on a true move by Tesla, but we don't know. So I just thought it would be interesting to discuss it with you guys. Yeah, I mean, it makes a ton of sense. The other thing we were talking about is like, well, why can't you just do DC charging to the cars? That would require a lot less hardware and it could go a lot faster. But I think that might be a step too far, I guess.

Someday we'll have 400 volt charging. We'll see. I mean, I do remember it was a while ago at this point. I don't remember exactly when, but at some point Ilana hinted that the next version of the Powerwall, that's what it would be. Like it would be like a charger, bidirectional charger and a stationary battery pack at the same time. So...

That was a while ago. And when Elon announced something, sometimes he announced it publicly. And it's the first time that anyone at Tesla has heard about it or has heard that it's greenlit or if you can even call it that. So I don't put too much weight on that. But I put much more weight on that observation here that the 11.5 kilowatt charger is the same capacity as the Powerwall 3, which is undoubtedly a bidirectional charger. Interesting. Makes sense.

All right, this is pretty cool here. We see Tesla has expanded the Cybertruck testing all the way to Mexico and not just Mexico, but like for the most part, the Cybertruck we've seen have been primarily in California and Texas, almost exclusively in California, Texas and New Zealand for a bit for the winter testing and all that. But those are really the only places the car has been. In the last week, we've seen Cybertrucks all the way to Ohio.

All the way to Florida. And I think that Ohio and Florida was the same truck, actually. But that's as far east that the truck has been. And then we've seen it this week also in Mexico, in Baja, California. And I thought that was interesting because for a few reasons. First off, we have another wrap. I don't know if it has to be a wrap. Yeah.

a decal maybe you call it maybe they left it in the wrong neighborhood yeah or it could it could be an actual graffiti too like they might have a higher like some kind of yeah actually uh didn't you have a graffiti artist do your model x yeah um so i don't know it might it might be i don't know how good stainless steel is as a canvas though yeah um but yeah that's not the interesting part here anyway the interesting part is in baya california

I don't know if you remember, but in 2020, Elon said that Tesla might test the truck in Baja, said we're working on increasing dynamic air suspension travel for better off-roading, need to kick butt in Baja. And when he says Baja here, I assume he means not necessarily the place, but the Baja 1000 rally, which is

as a reputation to be like the toughest off-road rally out there well i guess the baja 2000 is even even tougher typically but you know like the the series of baja rallies it's off-road rallies which a bunch of different off-road vehicles not just like trucks it's also like atvs and utvs and all that but rugged trucks which i mean tesla has been marketing the cyber truck as a rugged truck uh he's been

aiming that this would perform well in Baja. And Baja starts actually, but not all the time. I think they change the location sometimes, but I think historically it's been mainly starting in Ensenada, which is where this truck was spotted. So it might be that Tesla has done some testing there. But we also saw

They have two bars. You don't see it here. You see more on this picture here. There's two bars on it for accessories. So we've seen one before when they launched the, or they broke ground at the refinery, the lithium refinery in Texas. But this is a new one. It's a more simpler accessory bar. And on this picture, we see that there's a Starlink antenna on that bar, which I thought was interesting. Yeah.

i went like starling for those unfamiliar starting is the spacex satellite by base internet service and they have an option for moving vehicles so to put on an rv for example and i honestly i wouldn't be surprised like don't be shocked if you see this as an option directly from tesla i wouldn't be surprised like if they eventually offer like do you want a starling with your with your space which your cyber truck i feel like it could be built in a little bit better

Yeah, maybe they're just testing it right now. Yeah. I mean, it could be under the glass, you would think. I don't know about under the glass, but yeah, there's definitely a way to do it better than that. Looks like a little bit sleeker. We got an update on the Tesla Semi thanks to Jay Leno and the team. So Jay Leno's garage on CNBC and YouTube, they had an exclusive with the Tesla Semi and Jay Leno got to drive it.

And he was with Franz Van Halsten, so Tesla's chief engineer. Sorry, chief designer. And also Dan Priestley, who was the engineering head of the Tesla Semi program. And the show was mostly with Dan. And I was very impressed with him. The guy is clearly like super knowledgeable.

and very passionate about the Tesla Semi project. I keep saying Cybertruck, the Tesla Semi project. And he gave a pretty thorough update to Jay who drove the truck. The show is worth watching, but those that don't have the 40 minutes, I picked up some of the most interesting points of the show. So first one, Dan confirmed that...

tesla has replaced some of its diesel trucks to do the trip between gigafactory nevada and fremont factory to move the battery pack so what the only thing that i don't like about the tesla sami since the production launch and everything like they did the whole event and whatnot is that they never confirmed the price so they still haven't confirmed the price and they never confirmed the weight of the tractor so that we can know exactly the capacity of the of the truck so they still haven't done that yet but

Priestley here said something that at least confirmed that it's a significant capacity and therefore a manageable extra weight because we do believe that there's extra weight with the SSMI compared to a diesel tractor.

is that they replaced these diesel trucks on these roads, he said, with the same load that they were doing before. So whatever they were loading those semi with, with those battery pack, which has to be pretty heavy, like I would assume that the tractor, that the trailer is like not full, like you don't full a trailer full of battery pack. You can full a trailer of toilet paper or of chips. I'm sure that Frito-Lay and Pepsi are doing that, but you cannot full it with,

These are my own battery packs. They said that they were doing this, the exact same trick, which is a 260-mile trip, and you have these...

You're going through, not necessarily going through Tahoe. What's the pass? They have a pass, Donner's Pass there. Like you have a lot of mountains. So it's not an easy trip. And they say that they are doing this exact same trick with the Tessomolo 3 drive train rather than the trucks with the same full load of battery pack. So I think that's awesome news. You did talk a little bit about the drive inverter being from the Cybertruck and the Tessomolo 3 drive train. Now they're using the carbon wrapped motors that you see in the Model S and X.

Also disclosed that the truck has up to 1,500 horsepower of power available. But he says that is always modified for the specific use of the truck. So it's not always fully available. It's available depending on a customer-specific profile. So it's in order to save the tires. If you don't need all that power, you don't want them to use it depending on the traction.

I mentioned the regen coming down from Donner's Pass is like a huge amount of savings. Not just for like you're saving obviously on power, you're regenerating a lot of power, but like the brakes on the trucks don't have to be replaced nearly as often because they're just regenerating the whole way down. They're emergency brake basically. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, they touched that a little bit. I would have wished that they would have said what's exactly the capacity, the regen capacity, like the max one, because I think that would have been probably pretty impressive. They didn't say that, but they did talk a little bit about regen and saying it's obviously a game changer or

you'll be able to recoup some energy from that. Franz did mention that the, I don't know if it was, I think he maybe said it before, but I think I didn't remember it, that the design was highly inspired by high-speed trains in Japan, which now that he says it, like I can definitely see it. I mean, the train, the high-speed train, there's definitely a much smoother... Inclined, declined. Like slope in the front, like for sure, but like it's more aggressive. Obviously, you have to do that for the purpose of the truck.

but i thought i know i can definitely see it uh priestly has confirmed that uh they're planning a sleeper cab uh but they're only gonna deploy that once they have deployed more mega charger station for long distance driving because it's just they go hand in hand obviously if you want a slipper cab it's probably because you

want to go more distances they have already have technically the capacity to do long haul with the 500 mile version of the truck but they have they are concentrating their deliveries right now for uh

companies that they use that internally, like Pepsi, for example, that goes between their distribution centers. So even though you're doing long distances, you can just charge at those locations rather than charge in between. Also, he confirmed that there's about 70 of them made. So I don't know if that necessarily surprises people. The last time we had an update on that is when they did the recall and they recalled like 35 of them, which confirmed that they had 35. Now they are up to 70. So basically double that.

So we know that the volume production of that truck is only coming once they have the expansion in Tesla Gigafactory Nevada, which has been stalling since the announcement in January. We haven't seen anything happen there. I did have a report this week and I found a bunch of new job posting that was posted in the last few days.

for the Tesla semi-production at Geek Factory Nevada. So that's good news there. But until we actually see Tesla build and the expansion of the factory, nothing's going to happen. So don't expect 50,000 trucks a year, like Elon said, would be coming in 2024. That's madness. But maybe in 2025, if things start moving. Yeah, missing just by a year would be an improvement. Yeah.

All right. Another one that's been lagging is Gigafactory Mexico. And yesterday we learned maybe why that's the case. The governor of Nuevo Leon, the state where Tesla is building this, just outside of Monterey, it's Samuel Garcia is his name.

he said that tesla and the states are right now negotiating for the deployment of energy water road and rail infrastructure at the site and if you see the site like i mean it's it's next to a highway but it's pretty deserted around it so it makes sense that until there is deployment of that i mean you could build a structure of it for sure and i don't know why that hasn't started uh the tesla has submitted its environment study but

uh until at least production there's just no way that you do that without the electricity water uh infrastructure and even probably rail for transport of employees and whatnot and and transporter goods too so he said that they are in the early stages of uh investment negotiation early stage of infrastructure uh negotiation for this project so

If that's the case, I think we have to reshape our expectation because our expectations were high for Gigafactory Mexico. Tom Zhu is now in charge of the Gigafactories at Tesla, said that you could see Tesla doing something like they did in Shanghai, which moves super fast. So obviously, they could still do that because the real impressive thing about Shanghai was from breaking ground to production was nine months, which is insane. So they haven't broken ground even yet. So that could still happen, but...

We thought they might have already broken ground by now. The thing was announced in March, so it's been a while. So maybe reshape our expectation until they have a plan for deploying infrastructure at the site. That's kind of a minimum requirement.

all right this this was a very weird one a very controversial one this week so we reported a few times on this uh class action lawsuit that uh some tesla owners are trying to put together in order to uh old tesla accountable for the claims that they've made around self-driving and their lack of delivering on those claims which i mean as a myself an owner of a full self-driving and having some disappointment in tesla not being completely transparent about the the timeline like

And I put a lot of the blame on that on Elon, obviously, because he's the one setting those timelines publicly. And I think if you were to look internally, you probably would see some pushbacks. That's what we've heard so far. Like the recent book, for example, we saw some of that in there. So I think there's...

There's a value in investigating this situation through legal procedures and with disclosure to see like, okay, what Elon has been saying publicly, what Tesla has been saying publicly, and what internally has been done and where they stand in order to justify selling a full self-driving package of up to $15,000 while not delivering.

I think there's some value in there. And those owners, those five owners there have been that initiated a class action lawsuit. That's what they were trying to achieve.

And now that's all in the garbage. A judge has shut all of that down. Tesla has managed to weasel its way out. And I've used the word weasel here. And I saw some Tesla fans. I'm sure some Tesla fans are broiling right now. But I'm sure some Tesla lawyers are kind of happy about it. They're like, yeah, yeah, call us a weasel all we want. We did our job, which technically you did, I guess. But what they did is they got away with it by...

Convincing the judge that all these owners have agreed to arbitration. That's a hard word for me. Arbitration. Arbitration.

uh i didn't know this i mean i've heard of it before but i didn't know it applied to something like that which i think this is like a big thing that needs to go through the court it cannot be a one-on-one arbitration process with tesla which tesla's gonna crush everyone one by one like that's that's the kind of thing like i know class action are kind of weird sometimes and the biggest winners are their lawyers all the time i understand that but they have some value in terms of like

Every single owner individually are not as strong as all the owners together pulling their resources and a farm of lawyers getting involved with the hope of having some compensation at the end. It's not the same as going against Tesla in arbitration one by one. That's just more difficult. And apparently what we learned is that everyone in the US that signed an order contract with Tesla

as automatically get into an arbitration contract agreement to arbitrate that is automatic unless you send a letter, not even an email, a letter to Tesla within 30 days. Did you send your letter, Seth? I did not. And I didn't even know that was even an option. I didn't read that part of the agreement. Yeah.

We had all our people at Electric that owns Tesla. There's quite a few and check it out. And me, I don't have it in mind because I'm in Canada. There was actually a clause on it, but it didn't apply in Ontario. For some reason, my car was registered in Ontario, I guess, first. But in the US, everyone had it. So everyone that didn't read their contract and send a letter within 30 days to opt out of that agreement to arbitrate,

automatically, in the event, and I'm reading for the contract here, in the event of a concern or dispute between us, us meaning Tesla and the owner, please send Tesla a written notice to

You cannot send an email to opt out of it, but once you're in it, you can send an email to resolutions at tesla.com describing the nature of the dispute and relief sought. If it is not resolved within 60 days, Tesla and you agree to any dispute arising out of or relating to any aspect of the relationship between us. That's quite encompassing. Any aspect of the relationship between us will not be decided by our judge or jury.

but instead by a single arbitrator in arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association. So technically, it's not in favor of Tesla, this whole arbitration process. And it is the argument that those companies that are forcing down there or troll these arbitration process are doing. But it is in their favor and decide that Tesla has an army of lawyers and you don't.

And now you're going to go and you can technically have an army of lawyers yourselves if you're going to a class action because everyone's pooling their resources or the lawyers are doing it pro bono. I guess it's not pro bono if you know that you're going to get compensation at the end, but they're not charging you on alert and a percentage of a settlement if there's a settlement.

Yeah, I just wonder if like a company or, you know, a lawyer can say, all right, hey, I know the formula for doing this. Let's just go to the arbitration. They go to the arbitrator. They do this, this and this. I mean, it's pretty obvious, like full self-driving is not doing any kind of full self-driving right now. And this one lawyer can just keep going back to every arbitrator they throw at him.

Yeah, but it would require some kind of consolidation on the side of the like some lawyer. Like it needs to basically be a new specialty. Like I'm not a family lawyer. I'm not a liability lawyer. I'm an FSD Tesla lawyer. And I take the claim. So it will have to be like someone that take up that role, which and yeah.

And yeah, I mean, I understand what you're saying. Like the work becomes like the same from one another. It's just, I don't know. It's not, Tesla weasel its way out of the class action lawsuit. I think my headline says it all. I think they should just offer it back. They've got the money. It's not going to break them. The stock will drop a little bit.

And it'll be over and everybody will be happy periodically. Here's the thing too. I think most people that bought FSD are like pretty hardcore Tesla fans that still believe that it's going to happen and all that. So I think if you go out and you say, everyone that's not happy with FSD, you get your money back. If you do that, you build yourself all the goodwill. Yep.

And those that are angry about it, they get their money back. I don't know what kind of percentage it is. I don't believe it's a very high percentage. I think it would be about 50. It is a percentage that they have a valid argument. That's the thing. They have their valid argument. And all those Tesla fans that are crying about it, just not to do that, just don't ask for a refund and stick with your full-time driving package. I don't even know if I would take a refund, to be honest. I still...

use the FSD package to some degree. I'm not happy with it, but I'm still holding on to that hope that eventually it will improve enough that it will become valuable. Yeah.

All right, let's talk a little bit about our friends at AMP who are sponsoring the show this week. Take it away, Seth. All right, today's episode is sponsored by AMP. Makers, that's A-M-P, makers of energy management solutions for e-mobility products. Team AMP is known for its expertise in the industry when it comes to understanding the battery and its functionality. With more than 300 years of combined experience, the team has developed proven battery management systems suitable for a wide range of applications,

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This unit saves space and cost in your EVs while providing maximum power density. Brands building new electric vehicle products will want to consider the AMP EVCC, a state-of-the-art charge controller for electric vehicles with support for all major charging standards including CCS, NAX, and CHAdeMO.

and the amp fast charge junction box to enable level three DC fast charging, all built by the amp charging software stack, the world's number one charging software capable of complying with all major charging standards globally. You can learn more about amp energy management solutions at amp.tech. You guys should take a quick look at the site here. All right. All right. Thanks a lot for sponsoring this week's episode of the electric podcast. We have, uh,

i mean we're 37 minutes in we have a bunch of other news to discuss on our non-tesla news really uh so stick around for that if you do enjoy the show i would appreciate if you can give us a like a thumbs up whatever it is on your app we're live on facebook youtube linkedin and x um

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in the next month. I'm going to Japan. You're going back to Europe. Uh, it's, uh, it's going to be a few months, but a lot of things to talk about on the show when you do. Yep. So that great. And if you're listening on your podcast app, the audio version of the podcast, uh, if you can give us a five-star review on that, on that app, it helps the show a ton and we appreciate when you do. All right, let's jump right back in with, oh yeah, there's a, these new guidelines from the IRS came out today with, uh,

the point of sales, which is going to go into effect January 1st. So next year. So already a year of the reformed

AV tax credit and has been very successful so far. But one of the point that was in the original plan, but was delayed a year is making it point of sale, which means that instead of having to wait on the next tax seasons to put that tax claim, your tax credit to work, you will receive it directly at the point of sales. How is what we learned today with this new guidelines? So I think one of the main point is that

All the eligibility criteria are still the same in terms of income requirements, in terms of MSRP for the vehicle, and obviously all the battery requirements and all that too. So the vehicle needs to be eligible like it is already. And you need to have the limited income, which is like $150,000 a year individual, $300,000 a year as a couple and whatnot.

There's one thing that changes though, which I don't think is going to apply to a ton of people, but it might depending on your situation. Your tax burden is not a concern anymore. So obviously if you get a tax credit,

you need to have the, for example, you get the full tax credit, you need to have the full $7,500 worth of federal tax burden in order for it to have any value. Now, most people that buy a car that can afford buying a new car has this kind of tax burden. I think Jamie calculated it's $66,000 to have a $7,500 federal tax credit. So you should be in that range to buy a new car normally, but everyone has different situation. Maybe you, uh,

are not working this year, but you have all their assets and you want to buy a new car. That's the situation like that.

Now, how it works is you need to be a dealer. So they call it not a point of sales, they call it a transfer. Basically, you can transfer, you're allowed to transfer your tax credit when you buy a new EV, but the only person you can transfer it to is a dealer. So you can give your dealer the tax credit. You have to give them all your tax information, including your income, so that they can confirm that you're eligible for it. They're not required to verify it. That goes to the IRS. So

dealer needs to register with the irs to be able to send that information and then get back the credit so they're basically claim the credit for you um if you lie on that application or whatever the dealer is not liable for that so so it sounds like it's the irs that's going to go after you for that so the dealers are all safe in that situation they don't take the risk uh it's it's your tax credit and the irs they are you're the two involved with that the dealer is just like a middleman that

A few days later, they take the credit. And then what the dealer can do once you transfer the credit to them is that they can give you cash compensation for the same amount or they give you a down payment of the car for the same amount. So that makes things interesting because...

What it does too is like it gives, it can give you like a direct discount of the vehicle. So that actually reduced the whole price of the vehicle. So I would assume that if you do it as a cash discount and not a down payment, because they do say there's three of them, right? There's...

Yeah, in cash or in a partial payment or down payment. So that goes directly to affect your vehicle directly. Though cash and down payment doesn't really affect the total price of the vehicle, so you still have to pay full taxes on them, I would assume. That would reduce your tax, your MSRP price and then the tax after that. Still, it's a nice deal. Basically, what it does, it's...

greatly the time between which you buy the car and you get the payment from the incentive for the government. Yeah, and shout out to Michael Bauer for doing that nice flow chart for us up there. Yes. Yeah, if you go on the net check and you see that flow chart, the flow chart, you follow it and basically tell you if you're eligible for a full credit or partial credit or no credit at all. And that applies also to that new point of sale starting next year, January 1st.

The only advantage is if you don't have a federal tax burden. So people have been saying a lot because in the original bill, there was a mention that you have to go to a dealer to get that. So a lot of people were asking, is Tesla going to be eligible because Tesla doesn't have dealers?

I read the full thing and I didn't see anything that would prevent Tesla from offering it because even though they do, again, say that dealers are the only one that can offer this, Tesla is registered as a dealer in all the states that accept direct sales. Obviously, there's still a direct sales issue, but that doesn't change anything with that.

So where Tesla can operate, they have dealer licenses, so they can register. All the dealers that want to offer this, they need to register with the IRS, basically, because there's going to be a portal on the IRS website to handle all these transactions between those tax credits for EVs. So I just felt like to mention that for people to know. All right, now we're going to get into some delivery. Real quick before we do that, we missed the Hyundai thing.

uh nax thing oh i skipped the next oh yeah so our weekly next update we have uh the hyundai group so that includes hyundai genesis and kia have announced next adoption so we already knew it was coming they already indicated it but today this week they made it official exact same deal as everybody else meaning 2024 adapters 2025 adoption on new electric vehicles in north america

Only a few left, guys, only a few left on the list that haven't adopted NAX. All right, we're going to get into some delivery numbers from automakers in the EV space. Starting with GM, we don't have a nice chart checking, I have to find the exact numbers. But in general, the Bolt still doing nice with just short of 16,000 units up 13% quarter over quarter.

uh we we thought they could get close to 20 000 units uh 80 000 like they were thinking he said 70 to 80 000 units overall this year they could sell more more if they made more they could sell more yeah oh yeah for sure there's no doubt about it uh because uh next quarter is the last one right yep yeah so well that this quarter is the last one really we're already in q4

uh but that's the bolt wasn't the most interesting one here uh the highlighted was the altium is starting to ramp up finally so old cian even though is the future of gmzv effort and it's been on the market for a year it's has been very very slow in ramping up especially the hummer ev but the armor ev jumped like crazy uh last quarter was just 47 units and

i thought it was okay sorry i have to find the exact numbers in the article uh 1167 in q3 so that's a giant job it's completely different so we're actually going to see some of those on the road now uh i mean i've seen i've seen them once in michigan last year but yeah it's like seeing in the unicorn oh right unicorn don't exist people i understand that but you know what i mean yep i mean who knows maybe unicorns exist

We haven't explored everything. Then the Lyric also ramped up a lot. It doubled quarter over quarter to now 3,100 units. So like when we're starting to see some, like it's still nowhere near like three mile wide numbers, but those are extremely expensive vehicles. Well, the Lyric starts not too bad, but, and there was a few Blazer EV that was delivered too.

19. 19, okay. And 18 Silverado AVs. Silverado didn't even announce that. Did we announce like start of the release? Yeah, but the problem is they were supposed to, the Silverados were supposed to launch in quarter two. Yeah. And they barely launched in quarter three. Yeah, 18.

Yeah, that's not super impressive. Yeah, I mean, what's especially worrying is that if we see the same ramp as we saw for the Hummer and the Lyric on these two cars, it's a bit worrying because we won't see any significant number until this time next year. Actually, the Equinox was supposed to start happening in the Q3.

oh yeah so it's supposed to be a fall though yeah yeah so that's what they said they said spring silverado summer uh summer blazer and fall equinox so they can still like i claim that they're doing okay yeah but but again those numbers they they say otherwise though hopefully we're mistaken and like the ramp up is much smoother for those vehicles because i obviously i think the diamond is there yeah

Rivian also came out with their delivery numbers for Q3 and it's quarter to quarter is a decent increase. So up to just short, eight units short of 14,000 deliveries. Is that deliveries? No, that's produced. Sorry, that's produced. And deliveries 15,564 up from 12,640. So up 23% in deliveries quarter to quarter. Okay.

No, sorry. The production is 16,300 up from 14,000 in the quarter. So they're still building up a bit of an inventory. I think they like 2,000 units increase in inventory over the last two quarter. Yeah, I mean, that's a delivery fail because there's a huge line for people wanting those things still. At least the R1Fs. The R1T, I think you can get one in like a week or five. Yeah.

Yeah, but still 2,000 units for Rivian, which has about like 30 locations in North America. It feels like a lot. It feels like it's a lot of units per location that they have. Yeah, they need to hire some more delivery guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But also the CEO, RJ Scurringe, went in an interview after that and he said that he sort of hinted that

The improvement in gross margin that we've seen last quarter, you should expect something like that to this quarter with this increase. It didn't go as far as saying that, but it's kind of where he's hinted. I wouldn't expect it like a halving of the gross margin losses that they have on the car like they did last quarter, but it could be something significant because again...

17% increase in production, 23% increase in delivery. And this is quarter to quarter, people. So quarter to quarter, this is some impressive stuff like the rate at which they improve. You're going to still be losing money on every car this quarter or in Q3 and probably in Q4 too, but a little less.

So I'm still encouraged by Riven. But if you're a Riven investor and you saw your stock plunge yesterday, that's not because of the delivery numbers. That's because they decided to go back to the market and get over a billion dollars in convertible notes, which has surprised a lot of people. Why they would do that? Because they still have deep pockets.

and they decided to do that. I didn't look into the details of the convertible notes. I don't know if it's an aggressive note that's going to convert. Technically, maybe it's something that they could actually pay back if they wanted to. Because the problem, obviously, with the convertible note is that often companies, they don't pay back and they just absorb the dilution on the stock and that's not good for investors. But I don't know, maybe that's not Rivian's plan. A new F-150 Lightning has launched this week and get that name. It's called the Lightning Flash Lightning.

And it's an interesting new model of the Lightning. It's basically Ford listened to the customers because there were some complaints about the customers that Ford was...

overcharging a lot to get that long range battery. They were like forcing you to have the more expensive, more luxurious packages to have access to that big battery pack, which would increase the price of the truck a lot. And I think the demand for the F-150 Lightning tends to weigh heavy on the longer range version, just because if you actually want to use it as a work truck and tow and things like that, it does...

kill that 200 mile range pretty quickly. So you want a higher range version. So they basically put like some kind of Frankenstein vehicle together where they have some of the options of the more luxurious versions and that still they have that long range battery also. So you end up with a range of 320 miles, but you also have some of the more high tech features in the vehicle, like the tow tech package, the power tailgate,

the eat pump to optimize energy use. Um, what else? What else? I mean, it's, it's a high tech version of the F one 50. I mean, for me, like I looked at this package and that's definitely like, I w I don't want the Lariat or platinum. It's got a bunch of stuff that I wouldn't need. Yeah, I know. It's like a luxury car, but,

i don't know i think the flash is the perfect mix of like high tech like it's got the long range it's got the heat pump which is good for the cold it'll improve your range a lot and uh it's also got the you know the bigger screen and the the other stuff so yeah so it's not at seventy thousand dollars so you get that long range battery for seven thousand dollars less yeah and then obviously it's good it's under eighty thousand for the

you know the platinum doesn't hit apply to the but you still have that with the lariat too so right if you want to get that luxury it's it's a nice addition yeah it's a it's a sweet spot they they made a new sweet spot version of the uh lightning yep i wonder if that has anything to do with the cyber truck i mean yeah the timing is pretty good for the cyber truck with the silverado too like especially the silverado maybe because the silverado's big seller is

It's range. So they made the range-y version of the Lightning more accessible to people. Right. Now they just need to make it in a high volume. Rivian has also improved its own pickup truck this week. Well, not just the pickup truck. Did you know that you're a Rivian owner now? I actually got this update. It's under embargo, so I can't talk about it. They gave me this update. They asked for my VIN number and...

But we have it. We did an article on it already. Yeah. I mean, it's public knowledge, but nobody's gotten it. It was sent to OEM stuff and somebody leaked it. Oh, okay. We got it through the Rivian tracker. Okay.

Yep, looks like that. So you cannot say anything about it, but I can tell you that it improves touring range estimates. So I always say that's a great thing about range anxiety. Range, having a lot of range is great, but having...

Accurate range estimates is the biggest thing to kill range anxiety. And obviously when you tow that screw with your range a lot. So if you can have a more accurate prediction on that too, that's also great. So they're doing that. They're doing something called Halloween mode. I'm not going to look into that too much. What else they're doing? Okay, we have it. It's basically a new UI for the, you know, if you're,

going up and down with the height and also the, it gives you some access to more information. There's like a little compass on there. You can see from that previous image or the two previous images. It's a nice update. It's not super, like I almost like I'm kind of having trouble finding enough information to do a story on this. Cause it's all kind of like right here in front of us. There's a compass on there, you know, as a little widget,

It's got the turning thing you can see above. It's got temperatures of all the motors. I guess this is all more for off-roading stuff, I guess. Right. You don't do much off-roading with your... I actually had to go around. My wife parked in the driveway, so I had to go in the grass around to get to the garage. Crazy stuff. Yeah, it was crazy. Yeah, Maverick. Yeah.

Lucid also launched a new version of the Air. It's a rear-wheel drive version. It's the new most affordable trim for the Air. And it starts at a price of $77,400. So it's the new cheapest by far, starting to compete with the Model S now. But it's not an SUV, though. Yeah, it's not an SUV. So you can't get that.

sweet federal tax credit. No, $65,000. Is it a limit? And you still get a more than decent range. What's the range on this thing? I think that's the biggest seller for the Air.

410 miles of range. So you get over 400 miles for this $77,000 price point. And also you get still very luxurious interior and whatnot. So I mean, I really, I want to try the Air. I've never tried the Lucid Air and I really want to try it. And Lucid told me that I was going to try it this summer in Quebec. I haven't tried it and I'm offended. I'm kidding. I'm not offended by it, but I wish they would give me, like I even emailed them this week because

I'm going on a road trip between Montreal and Quebec, which is a very easy road trip. Nothing like that. But I thought it was a great opportunity to try the air and they haven't gotten back to me. So Lucid doesn't want me to drive the air. And I guess I've heard good things. I've heard bad things about the driving experience, the interior feel and whatnot. I've had in the interior before. I've been driven by side interior and I didn't see that.

Like anything bad feel to it. No, it looked really nice. Yeah, but I wish I could spend some more time with it and some driving experience with it. That would be fun. All right. We have some time to take you guys' questions. It can be about what we discussed today or it can be about any EV subject. We still have about 10 minutes before set has to go. So let's do it. All right. Carl in San Diego, a question for the audience. Have you ever come close to zero charge and had to pull into a stranger's home business?

to ask to use level one charger. I've never had that. Have you ever had that?

I've never had that. The closest I've been was probably like 2%, 3%. And I was going for Supercharger anyway. So I arrived at the Supercharger at 2%. I don't know if I'm lucky, but I've just never had a problem with charging. I've been kind of low sometimes. I wasn't getting the kind of range I was expecting. I slowed down a little bit and made it without a problem.

I don't know. Yeah, you need to keep an eye on it if you're doing a long distance and you know you're going to be short. You keep an eye on it just to be sure. And you adjust, like you said. And most of the time, like, you know where you're going. So if you have a good range prediction. And there's good chargers at the other end of the. Yeah. All right. Brian says in August, outlets said that Tesla bought Wiferon. However, if you go to Wiferon website on the top, it says they've been bought by a company named Poles. No one has reported on this. What's true?

Yeah, I've looked it up and all the business document that pointed us that Tesla acquired a company still says the same, that it's Tesla acquired. So I'm as confused as anyone else on this. I've saw the website, the update on the website. I look up Pulse. It looks like a legit, like a small startup. So it's

Not out of question that he could have bought a company, obviously, if it's on the website. They said there's going to be an announcement on October 10th that's coming. So I'm going to wait for that to know for sure because everything that pointed that Tesla bought it before is still pointing to that. So unless we see a concrete update on that, I'm going to wait in the meantime until October 10th to do an update article on that. All right. Next question, Carl in San Diego. Are BYD Seagulls going to be the next...

or the first people's EV. I would almost say that Model Y is the first people's EV. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I know what you're saying, like pricing-wise. So the volume, I guess it might be the first people's EV, people's of China's EV. It's where it's accessible. So BYD has been a little bit shy to get into the North American market with its electric vehicles for good reasons. It's just harder to come with Chinese-made EVs, though others have done it.

Same in the European market. They've done it in a few markets. They haven't expanded that much. So I guess it depends what you mean by first people's EV. First people has to be

available everywhere i guess and it's it's just not right now so in china is the first people's ev i guess it's uh that's significant and uh what i like about the idea and they've made some announcement lately um the south american market has been neglected with electric vehicles uh for a while now uh it is a market that is uh

Obviously not ready in a grand scale in terms of infrastructure for electric vehicles, but it has a great potential and there's a lot of economies down there that are booming. So BYD has made some progress.

into those markets with their electric vehicles. So it's an opportunity for them to make a big impact there. So I like that they're doing that. Maybe I like doing that more than the North American market, though I wouldn't mind them taking a share of that too and making it more competitive. You know what the Seagull is a copy of? Yeah, it looks a lot like the Volta. Yeah.

No, I actually had to shorten this picture to make it look like that. But yeah, it's kind of a bold-ish kind of vehicle. I think it would do well in the U.S. I don't think they'll bring it here, though. Yeah, I mean, they will idea some nice vehicles, too. I think if they come, they will come with their higher-end stuff first. Yep. All right, Ralph Spratt, Model S 2021 remaining electric power shows as...

for example 380 miles but it's inaccurate by 20 percent percent left on navigation panel is much more accurate just multiply percent left times current uh yeah uh i think we've kind of talked a lot about how the um how fast do you drive ralph

I don't know. In a Model S, you're not going to get what it says on there. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I have a similar experience with my Teslas too, but I drive fast.

right i can admit that like it's cold up there sometimes yeah oh yeah you know if you talk about cold the weather that's that's completely different but even like in the summer i don't get the range i'm getting but also i drive a little bit faster than the limit um so if i slow it down which i do sometimes when i need to because i'll be concerned about my range for whatever reason i get i get it pretty close in the the this to the display range

Yeah, so we've talked about the, you know, is it a deliberate error? Probably yes. Carl in San Diego, it's annoying that Tesla had moved to all-wheel drive only for more than a year. That was an unnecessary choice to keep it higher priced. Glad to see real-wheel drive return, Carl. We know that you're in San Diego. There's not a lot of snow there. Yeah.

But you're right. Most people can get by with all-wheel drive. Well, I like to have the options. I would be fine if this keeps the all-wheel drive options too. Why did it go away? Why couldn't it be both? Yeah. And I like something that GM is doing and putting really cheap, low-powered front-wheel drive motors on that don't even activate until you're in the snow or whatever. Yeah, that's cool too. Damer Oberst say there aren't enough superchargers to get from Tijuana to Cabo. Is that true?

I don't know how many people are trying to get from Tijuana to Cabo San Lucas, to be honest. That is a crazy drive. I've done that drive.

You've done that driving a bus to like a minivan or whatever it was. Yeah. So you can talk to it. I've thought about it, but then I looked it up and I'm like, oh, this doesn't look like fun at all. These are not nice roads to anything. You want to go to Cabo, you have to take a boat or fly basically. Yeah. There's a lot of parts that are not fully inhabited. It's like a desert too. So it's not a great

But I mean, one day, maybe Tesla can put some off-grid superchargers on the way. That would be cool. That would be cool. Even just a few, like a four-pack. All right. Carl and San Diego, I re-watched the Investor Day Q&A answer about the vehicle to grid, and it was very clear they were not planning to do it when asked. Instead, it was an answer that said we could do it, and we chose, and we could choose to do it by 2025.

Uh, that's not how I understood it personally. Was that the one with Drew and Elon were on stage and people were in their cars watching? Uh, no, that was not the one. That was more, it's more recent than that. Okay. Um, but yeah, I remember like,

Drew said, we're going to do it by 2025. We're going to be ready by 2025 to do it and everything. And before that, he had said the Cybertruck. That was before I'd ever noticed that the Cybertruck would be the first one. And then Elon sort of poo-pooed the idea a little bit right after. So that's true. But I don't think he poo-pooed it like, yeah, we shouldn't do that. Like, I don't care about doing that. He said it like, I don't think that... He basically was trying for people not to...

not buy the Powerwall because of it. The Powerwall is still the best option. It would be nice to have it on top of it, and I agree. But yeah, I think Tesla's going to have to do it at some point. I think it might come sooner rather than later. All right. Daniel DeYoung says, do you think they'll cut the price on the Chinese-made Model Y in Canada too? Is demand for Chinese Model Y with exports to Europe and Canada higher than the Austin factory?

It doesn't look like they're doing that. It looks like they might be moving back to the US-made Model Y for Canon market, at least for now. I don't know if it's a demand issue or what, but it looks like that's what they're doing for now. So I wouldn't expect a price cut beyond what happened this week. All right. Seems like heavy-ass Cybertruck would get stuck in the sand quickly for Baja driving. I don't know if that's... What do you think?

I mean, yeah, it's definitely heavy. It's an electric truck, but I don't know if it would necessarily, like we've seen plenty of electric trucks do very well in the sand. And we've seen, actually, we've seen an electric vehicle in Baja, like made by a Spanish company. I think it's Spanish Electric Utility and it's done very well too. And it was heavy. So I don't know, maybe, I think the Cybertruck can do well too.

All right. I didn't know Jay Leno had a commercial driver's license. Yeah, I thought about that too when I was watching. It's Jay Leno. Come on. He can do whatever he wants. Yeah.

Hi from Saudi. Hello. Maybe a lucid employee there. Mike, the car geek, what is the size of the semi battery? I keep hearing 850 to 900 kilowatt hours, but nothing official. Yeah, that's what we speculated based on the charge rate. But yeah, they have not. You know Tesla now. Tesla refuses to confirm any kind of energy capacity in any of its vehicle systems. Yeah.

Maybe it allows them to switch around a little bit. Yeah, it's long range and nothing. Long range and not even standard range anymore. It's long range or another thing. And they give you miles, but the miles aren't always right. All right, Bill Roosh says a plan of this size, I think we're talking about Mexico, almost anywhere would require new infrastructure. So maybe that's part of the... Oh yeah, for sure. But also like any infrastructure, like it's not, there's nothing there. It needs also like a new...

like it needs a new road it needs a new exit on the highway it needs a lot of things yep bill roche is from kansas uh seattle vienna says do you think long term any car brand will refuse to adopt the nax in the us i mean the only one that seems to be refusing it right now is kind of lucid i thought lucid adapted it uh lucid did yeah i thought so am i making this up uh

I mean, there's so many announcements of that that I might be mistaken. I don't know. But I feel like they're only like German and Japanese that haven't now. No, they haven't announced anything. Okay. Maybe they haven't. And I feel like Rawlinson actually commented on it where he was like not on board. Right. Maybe because of the 800 volt thing. Yeah. Maybe that. Maybe there's still some bad blood with Tesla. I don't know.

But yeah, it's the only one that I remember some outspoken resistance to it. But honestly, if everybody else adopted and almost everybody has updated so far, other than Volkswagen and a few others, a few Japanese too, it becomes the de facto standard.

At the same time, they will shoot themselves in the foot next year when all these other automakers have Tesla adapters and start taking advantage of the superchargers and their owners can't. Why would you buy an EV from them? Because there's no one. The biggest Tesla hater out there cannot argue against the fact that the supercharger network is far superior than anything else in the US and in North America right now.

And it is a nice thing to have a very nice charging network when you own an EV. It's also a smaller adapter. Yeah, it's also just a better solution in general. Right.

But that hasn't stopped the industry for any industries to adopt the worst standard that happened in the past. But right now, Tesla is dangling a carrot right now. It's like the supercharger network. You want access to it? You want access to it? Then adopt the next. Which, to be honest, Tesla doesn't have to do that. I think Tesla would do better not doing that.

I think they would do better just using it as a moat. But it's one of those moves that I think Tesla is true to its mission. They're like, our mission is not to be the only EV manufacturer. It's to accelerate the adoption of electric transportation. And I think that move is that. It's like, we are going to make your...

your EV owners happier. We're going to make it easier for people to buy your vehicles because they have access to a better EV network. They're going to make some money along the way too. They're going to charge for that supercharger, but of course they're going to do that. But I think if you zoom back and you have two alternate universe where you have an alternate universe where Tesla opens the NAX and once that Tesla keeps the supercharger network closed to Tesla owners,

I think Tesla makes more money by owning a bigger part of the North American market, which already owns 60% of it. Of course, it's been gradually reducing, but it's still a massive part and it will still be versus Tesla opening it and making some money selling that electricity to some people. But people always compare...

charging infrastructure, EV charging infrastructure to like gas station, it's like, it's not the same. Like everyone that has a gasoline car needs to go to gas station. Not everyone that has an electric car needs to go to a supercharger because most of the time you charge at home. So it's not the same business, but it is going to be a big business that this is going to make some money off. But I think they make more money by owning a bigger percentage of the EV market, which they decided not to do. So kudos to Tesla.

All right. Uh, spikes 43 says question, Seth, are you going to do a longer term Rivian review? Are you glad to have it? Or would you rather have a Volvo EB nine if they were available Volvo or EB nine, they were available. Uh, so yeah, I've been quite busy lately. Um, I was going to do, I was going to do a 90, 90 day. Cause Rivian was like, Hey, it's been 90 days. How do you like your Rivian? And I was like, Oh, this would be a good post. And then never got around to it. Um,

So here's the thing. Just on my Rivian, I love it. It's a great car, but it's big, and I would much rather drive a Bolt around town, and that's 90% of what I do. And then for super long trips, we have the Model Y, and that's kind of the default one for that. So the only time we really use the Rivian...

Um, is when there's going to be seven people in the car or when we're going to go off roading, which is almost never, as you alluded to earlier. Um, so it's, it's just kind of like one of those things that's sitting in my driveway a lot. We're not putting a lot of miles on it. I wonder if we had gotten a, uh, Volvo EX90, um, if we would use that more often, um, that does have a third row, but they're still not delivering those things. Um, I don't even think they have it. They,

I don't know if they even had a test drive for that yet. And they're having a test drive for the X 30 next week or the week after. So that's interesting and weird. And then obviously the key V nine is not going to be nearly as good, but it's, it's still huge.

Um, it probably doesn't drive well on the highway. Um, I mean, the Rivian is a great vehicle and it does what it says it's going to do. It's just, I don't need a seven seat off-roading vehicle when I'm, you know, driving around, dropping off, picking up kids. I mean, that's pretty much 90% of what I do, which is sad. Um, so here's a good example. I'm going to Vermont this weekend without anybody. And, um,

you know, I'm taking the Tesla because, you know, it's going to be easier to charge. And, uh, you know, I'm going all the way up to Burlington. Maybe you should come down. We'll, we'll have a coffee or something, but, um, that's right. Maybe, maybe I'll sneak up there. Anyway, it's not too much further from Burlington, right? It's a little bit. Um, anyway, uh,

Like, why would I take the Rivian for that? Like, I'm just going to be driving on a highway. I might as well drive in the Tesla. And it's easier to supercharge than find. I mean, I could easily find charging points. So I don't know. I kind of think maybe I shouldn't have gotten the Rivian because I don't really use it as much as somebody who would go off-roading a lot more or has, you know, maybe they have five kids or something. I don't know.

So that's my take. It's a great car. All right. Crimson Decade, at least they should allow you to transfer it. I think we're talking about FSD. Yeah. So they dropped the price down 2000, but you can't transfer anymore. So, you know, both Fred and I are talking about upgrading our model. So they squeezed everyone to like buy a new car, buy a new car by the end of September because we won't let you transfer. And then as soon as it's done, oh, by the way, it's like now $2,000 cheaper. Yeah.

So, yeah, it's like I knew this was going to happen. Yeah, same. I'm waiting for them to announce one more time that they're going to do that with the long year over price. And then maybe I'll upgrade. But I don't like...

For a long time, Tesla was like, "We're not like those greedy dealership that gives someone a price and then give someone else a price." You're getting pretty damn close, Tesla, to do that. Your pricing strategy, I mean, I'm glad that the price is going down, but the way that they pull those demand triggers on people and saying, "Oh, this is a one-time amnesty of it and all that," it sounds like just any kind of car dealer salesman to me. Yeah.

By the way, my wife took my son to Canada. Yeah, I was just looking at the 160. We're way past that time. All right, question. Now that NAX is standard, will other electric mobility devices like motorcycles accept the transition to the new charging standard? Yeah, that's already happening. Verge Motorcycles already announced that.

I mean, it's even better for motorcycles, a smaller adapter. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah. The company I work with, Tehran, that does electric ATVs also are adapting the NACs on their next generation vehicles. Boats, snowmobiles, all manner of transportation. Yeah, everything that does level three has to do it, basically. Yep. All right. Carl and San Diego, 18 Silverados sound like a press event batch. I think that's actually about how many they had at the press event. Maybe they just sold those off. I don't know.

Yeah, because deliveries are supposed to be deliveries to dealers. So, yeah, it cannot be just like... They can't, but that's about the same amount. So maybe they made 36. All right. Auction wheels question. Will the Ioniq 5 charge at 240 kilowatts with the NACS? So Ioniq 5 uses 800 volt charging. So I think it actually charges a little bit less, significantly less, actually. Well...

They have 250s chargers, don't they, Tesla? Yeah, but they're at 400 volts. No, they're not the new ones. The new ones are not 600. Oh, they might be 600. Yeah, I think the latest ones are 600 now. But anyway, Tesla can support, NAX can support up to 1,000 volt. So eventually they will. Now, right now on the superchargers, you wouldn't be able to get that on most of them. But that's also true on other charging station too. It depends on the station.

There are plenty of CCS stations that are kept at 150 kilowatts. Right. And frankly, 150, if you're getting that for most of the charge, it's pretty good. Yeah, happy with that too. The charging curve is also the most important thing. Yep. How scary is it to own a very expensive Rivian if they can't turn around and go bankrupt?

um i'm like if they're if they're if they lose a lot more money i'll start worrying about it more but yeah at this point it depends on how long you want to keep it too like i think irivian is going to survive for at least the next four years uh the worst like so and that that's again worst case scenario i'm saying so yeah if you want to keep it like five years that's worrying obviously also maybe like three years from now if things go downward like i guess it's going to be able to order to sell but yeah

Yeah. And I got mine for 70, whatever, thousands. So I can probably break even if I sell it now. Eric Williams question. Are you worried about the impact of UW strikes on Detroit OEM future production plans for EVs? Will it will the negotiated outcome slow the transition?

Possibly, but I mean, so far we haven't seen a giant impact on their EV production. It looks like they haven't targeted that specifically with the strikes. So, so far, so good. We've seen some progress too. Right when we were going live, the UAW president announced that they had a deal with GM for at least for the battery plans. So they're going to unionize the battery plans. I'm sure that that was some kind of goodwill gesture from GM to us.

sweeten a possible overall deal i don't think an overall deal has been achieved with gm just yet but um they were getting a lot closer with ford now it sounds like some progress with gm so and chrysler it's hard to care about chrysler right now they have plans they're coming with things they have their ram and i'm getting i'll get excited when it comes but right now like what kind of uh detroit oem production ev production from chrysler would they be impacting yeah i guess the uh

the uh what is it the chrysler pacifica minivan that hybrid plug-in hybrid not big numbers there all right uh what will fred see first a unicorn or a forty thousand dollar cyber truck hmm a unicorn for sure i don't think we see a forty thousand dollar cyber truck ever unless um

Unless some big change with the inflation happens too. And then we come back to a more reasonable market. But with Tesla probably starting with the higher end going down. But the cheapest right now with the current microeconomics, I don't see a cheaper Cybertruck than $50,000, $60,000 probably. Yeah. All right, question. Especially for towing, but also for EV. I want to see the actual kilowatt hours in the battery real time. Why can't we have that?

with an aftermarket setup. How useful is that, though? How is that more useful than percentage or miles? He just wants the raw data. I don't know. I guess that helps. I think that actually our third-party app does that, I would assume.

all right of these companies which do you think is least likely to be around in 10 years fisker lucid or jaguar interesting three two yeah yeah mike took some three very interesting one uh i mean right now based on the financials i would say lucid least likely to be around but in terms of products i would say lucid most likely to stay around i think

but again i haven't drove it make me drive it lucy i was gonna say but from on paper i think they have the best product and the best product uh the best plan they have the best strategy they just need to turn their financial situation around which i think is possible especially with the backing of the saudis um fisker fisker is kind of a mystery to me right now like i don't know how like uh i've saw like the big event that they had a few months ago in a

They seem to be all over the place. They kept getting a prototype out, the one after the other and everything. I don't like to see that from a small EV startup that's still figuring out how to sell EVs. Also, they are heavy on advertising. I don't know about you, Seth, but I see advertising everywhere from Fisker on our site, on Instagram, on Facebook. They are everywhere. So that tells me, oh, they're having issues to actually sell that thing, even though the car seems like an actual decent product.

so I don't know Fisker is a question mark for me Jaguar like Jaguar I mean we need we need to see what's next for them like what's gonna be the next generation because the high pace is done basically like it's staying like very poor numbers and they have to recall them all anyway now so um like

I know they are going electric, but we need to see how serious is going to be their next electric product. But Jaguar is a big brand, obviously, and they have some loyal fan base in the luxury segment. So they are not in a bad position. They just need to finally execute the transition to EV and leave that high pace behind and do something brand new.

So I don't know. That's a tough one. On a purely financial basis, definitely Lucid. But I think more generally speaking, Fisker, I think, is the one that is least impactful, I think, is going to be Fisker. All right. TN9 question. Would you like to hear your estimate on what year the first sodium battery car hit North American market? My estimate would be valueless. I don't know enough about it.

Yeah, maybe it would hit Mexico because I know they're starting to be built in China. So that might be their first port of call. PS, love your show. Thanks a lot. Mike, the car gave F sorry. Front wheel drive is only good in snow because of weight distribution is over the front. Rear wheel drive in an AV with relatively even distribution should be a OK. Yeah, absolutely. That's true.

All right. And then Fisker is definitely marketing to Carl through YouTube. Yeah, they're marketing everywhere.

All right. Thanks, everyone, for listening to the show this week. A lot of you are tuned in. I appreciate it. If you're still listening, an hour, 25 minutes into the show, you're a real one. We appreciate you. If you can give us a thumbs up, a like, a subscribe, a five-star rating on your podcast app, all those things, we appreciate them a lot. They help keep the show going. We are a top 10 automotive podcast in the world. That's not true in the U.S., but still.

That's pretty cool. We're going to see you same time, same place next week. Have a great weekend. Stay safe out there. Bye-bye. That's not the one that