New software-locked Tesla Model S/X, univeral charger, Acura ZDX, and more
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And we are live, everyone, for a new episode of The Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lamberg, your host. And this is the last week, three in a row, I know, but it's the last week where Seth is not here. He's still on vacation in Japan with his family, and it's just too hard to make a

to make things work with the time difference and all that. And also I know this episode is a little bit early, so I'm going to let people come in and everything, but yeah, I have, I just have an important meeting this afternoon and I need to drive for it. So I need to get on the road right after this podcast and jump into the Model 3 and get there. But yeah,

That's perfectly fine because we have plenty to discuss today. But we still should have some time to take your question at the end of the night, so at the end of the episode.

So if there's enough people here to ask questions, we'll have some time to discuss. So if you have any questions, any subjects about the EV world that you want us to interact on at the end of the show, you can put it in the comment section right now. I'm going to remind you of that a little bit later on. But we have plenty to talk about, so let's just jump right in here. How does that work? Boom, like that. There you go. All right, let's start out with...

The new Model S and X short range, that's something that Tesla introduced. I say new, but this thing existed before, but it hasn't existed since the Model 3 refresh and maybe even a little before that. Tesla has always played a lot with the Model S and X trims with different battery size. I mean, it used to be at least based on different battery size and then Tesla switched to only the 100 kWh battery capacity.

Closer to 95 usable, I think. Anyway, now they relaunched a standard range earlier this week. And it comes in at $10,000 cheaper. So for the Model S, it now starts at $78,490. And you lose 85 miles for that $10,000. So you get 320 miles instead of the 405 that you get on the Model S long range. Similar thing for the Model X.

You get 79 fewer miles for 269 miles of range. Also $10,000 cheaper starting now at $88,000 for a MOLAX. So they weren't too close from the, you know, MOLAX could get $80,000 and an SUV, they could get the federal tax credit in the U.S. So obviously I'm talking about U.S. prices here. The vehicle also is the two new standard range vehicles also now available in Canada as well.

And so when Tesla launched that earlier this week, the first thing that thought in my mind is, is that a new software-locked vehicle?

And it didn't take long to realize that I called a few Tesla centers, Tesla advisors, and they were able to confirm that this is indeed a software-locked Model S long-range. This is exactly the same vehicle as a long-range with some software, some battery capacity being locked resulting in that shorter range.

Now, I know this has been somewhat of a controversial approach from Tesla in the past because they haven't done that in years and years and years and years. Tesla has only offered them OS with the bigger battery pack.

And they've never done that, if I remember correctly, on Model 3. And why? Oh, well, they did it with the Model 3 in Canada with a 93 miles range Model 3 to get access to the incentive, the government incentive by locking the price because they had this thing where you could get the...

base price was the important thing. The MSRP was the important thing. The add-ons wouldn't affect the threshold to get access, the price threshold to get access to the full, to the incentive, the government incentive. So you could then unlock the capacity after the fact because no one wants a 93 miles. Well, I mean, no one nowadays used to be more of a compliance car range, 93 miles. So now it's back with them all S and X.

And I don't really understand the complaints there because on social media, people in our comment section, two people have been going a little bit all over the place about this software lock capacity. My thing has always been like, if it's clear to the customer, there's two approaches. So it's on the...

Actual efficiency side, it's definitely bad. We're talking about 21% of the capacity being locked here. So 21% of your battery capacity is unusable. The advantage that people talk about, even though it's not that big of an advantage, is that you can charge to 100% every day and technically not affect your battery longevity because that 100% is actually 80%.

So that's good, I guess. But you can do that on your car that you have 100% battery capacity and just charge it to 80%. And whenever you need it, you can charge it to 100% like I'm doing right now because I'm doing a little bit of a road trip or whatever. Anyway.

So you don't want, you're producing a car where you never, theoretically never going to use 20% of the capacity. That's 20% lost that you could put, you could use on another car that Tesla could produce. So, you know, you produce a couple of Model S with a 20% smaller battery pack, then you can produce, you have all the batteries for a new car. So you're wasting that battery.

Of course, Tesla's counter argument to the efficiency side of things is like it's actually on the manufacturing side. It's less efficient for them to produce a whole new battery pack, even if it's smaller. So that efficiency loss compensate for justifying the software like battery pack. And the argument is also at the end of the day, everything's going to get recycled. So it's not like it's completely lost. Okay.

I get out of our ground. Also, even though some test advisors, I've heard other people because I called two and one of them told me that he didn't know. I never and no one told me directly that they didn't. The Tesla would never offer an upgrade like unlocking the range after the fact after delivery, which has been the case before. That's what they've done before. You can pay after the fact.

But they've told so to some other people, which I wouldn't take those comments with a grain of salt because it makes no sense to me. I think Tesla will offer eventually the unlocking of that battery capacity because otherwise they're just – they're leaving money on the table. And I don't see Tesla doing that. Like why would you – because right now they are selling those cars, those Model S and X, maybe not at a loss but close to one because it is – they are producing the long-range Model S.

So it costs the same as them producing a long-range Model S, but they are selling it for $10,000 or less. So they're leaving that money on the table. So I'm for sure, maybe not right now, but for sure in the future, they're going to open it up to get access to that 20% lock capacity, I think. Now on the consumer side, so some people are frustrated about the fact that Tesla is selling me a car and the capacity is there, but it's just software that's locking it. So I bought the car, the car is mine. Tesla is mine.

as written software that locked access to some capacity that the car I just bought, which is completely mine. If you bought it outright, like a loan, technically the bank is involved or whatnot. But anyway, you get my point. If you're coming in knowing that, then there's no issue there. I don't see how you can complain about that.

Now, Tesla might acknowledge that there is a negative connotation to this approach of selling vehicles because it's not clear on the website. There's nothing on the website that says, hey, this is a long-range Model S that we've locked batteries, and we were calling it a standard-range Model S or X. There's none of that. The only indication on the website that it is the same car is that they are the same weight, so it definitely doesn't have 20% of batteries because that's a few hundred pounds that you would save.

So you need to, I mean, I've not been in a situation where I'm like, oh, I'm interested in the standard range and see how the test advisor responds to that. I've literally asked them, is this a software locked vehicle? And they said, yes. So Tesla is not promoting the fact that it is a software locked vehicle. It's just you have to ask basically. So that might indicate that there's a somewhat of an indicative connotation to it, I would think.

So I get that, but at the end of the day, if everyone knows what they're getting into, I don't see a problem. The Cybertrucks, there have been a lot of Cybertrucks sightings lately in the last few days. If you're on social media in the Tesla world, all you see is Cybertrucks on trucks. It's getting a bit annoying, but it's worth mentioning at least to get an idea of what's happening. So last weekend, we spotted nine Tesla Cybertrucks at the Tesla Gigafactory in Texas, which

So it was a good indication that some trucks are coming out of the factory. That's nice. And then since then, a lot of trucks have been spotted on the road, more than nine, on truckloads, basically. So there have been truckloads shipping out of Gigafactory Texas, more than nine at this point. Because nine of them has been spotted yesterday in Fremont factory. So Tesla since a month ago in Fremont. And some of them are spotted in Arkansas and Indiana. So they're going north, northeast, basically.

I would assume to where in Michigan, likely for some official crash testing or some emission regulation, like emissions. It's an electric car, but it still needs to be tested. So there's some regulatory process that do happen there. So they might be going there. And Fremont, they might be going for a ton of other things. Like Tesla has so many different facilities, including its own crash test facility. So Tesla...

perform its crash test internally, but also regulatory agencies and other agencies like the Insurance Institute Association do perform their own

So maybe Tesla is bringing them for the car for that because some of the cars spotted on the road did have signage on them that would indicate that they have been involved with a crash test or are going to be involved with a crash test. So that's happening right now. And I think I think they're confirmed about 12 Cybertrucks that were shipped out of Gigafactory Texas, maybe even more. So a good sign that production is coming soon, starting soon.

All right, this one was a really interesting one. Tesla launched a new product this week. It's called the Universal Wall Connector. Very interesting product. It's basically a Tesla wall connector, a home charger station from Tesla, which Tesla sells both with a J1772 or its own NAX connector.

you have the option of one of the other. Now you can have both on the same one. And it's not a dual connector. It's basically a magic duck, like the solution that this has on the supercharger where you have the receptor as an adapter connected to it. And if you just unplug the handle, you get a NAX connector. And if you

Press another button, or in the case of the MagicDock, it's 2D app. You unlock it through the app because you don't want anyone to leave with the adapter. But this is for a home station or a commercial level 2 station. You click the button, and then the adapter, which adapter-receptor comes out with it, and you have a NAX 2J1772 connector, which you can use for any EV. This is... I'm going to play the video. You're going to be able to...

to see how it works exactly. I'm pretty straightforward, obviously, but it's a very cool product because Tesla already had a big advantage since the

clear momentum toward nags being adopted as the north american standard now for charging with its own charger being so much cheaper um spec wise comparably if you go specs for spec tesla's connector is a very good deal obviously um and a lot of people have been buying the g7 d72 ones and and the next one

But this is very good because this could be good for a household that have both currently Tesla vehicles and non-Tesla electric vehicles. But also, it could be good for anyone right now buying a non-Tesla electric car. Because obviously, with NAX coming, when you buy a charger, I mean, you're buying in the long term a car too, obviously, but sometimes not as long term as a

Depending on the people. I know people that buy cars every two years or lease them or whatever. And those that do that every 10 years, whatever. But the charger, you want to install it, you invest like hundreds if not thousands of dollars sometimes in the installation with an electrician and all that. You want that to be long-term. You want that to be future-proof. And if you're buying a non-Tesla EV right now from most automakers now announcing that they are switching to NACs,

You don't necessarily want to install a J1772 when it's going to switch over, when your next car is most likely going to be an axe connector on it. Now, there are adapters for J1772 also, just like there are for CCS. So it's maybe not that big of a deal. But...

adapters are just not a perfect solution. It's a little bit more annoying to handle. And like if you have a wall connector from Tesla and you put the G17-2 on it, you cannot put it on the receptor so that the handle has to hang or you have to find another solution. So this is a perfect solution because you can now use it with the adapter for your

non-Tesla EV that has CCS, basically. And in the future, if you want to update, like buy the same car, but a new generation, if you really love that car or any other vehicle, electric vehicle, really, Tesla or otherwise, it's going to have a NACS on it. So now you can just stop using the adapter, just use directly the NACS on the universal wall connector and boom. So yeah, I think this is going to be a winner for a lot of people that are buying non-Tesla EVs.

EVs right now. And it's going to put a lot of pressures on charging station, charging, home charging solution manufacturer, because like I said, this, this offering was already very competitive, very good. And now you have this one that has this unique aspect to it. That's very nice. And it's still pretty cheap. 595, like 600 bucks for up to 11.5 kilowatt home charging station. That is wifi capable and all the nice features. But,

It's just going to be very hard to compete right now against that, I think. Moving on, the... Oh, yeah, we had the licensecation from...

Tesla job listing that Tesla is looking to build its own first of its kind data centers, centers plural. So it was from a job filing for a senior engineering program manager in the data center division. And the posting says this role will lead to a hand-to-hand design and engineering of Tesla's first of its kind data centers. And they'll be one of the key members of the factory engineering team.

So Tesla is looking like this. A lot of people talked about this concept image here. It's one that they created with AI. It's not going to be like that, that the data center is going to look like. A lot of data centers actually don't look cool for good reason. You just don't want to attract attention to them for security reason. I just thought that maybe Tesla wouldn't do that and use AI to design these data centers. But yeah,

So, and interestingly, Tesla has been taking over some other data centers in Sacramento that Twitter has been giving up space in. So Twitter has had some issues paying its bills since Elon took over. They've been just cutting costs like crazy and they've been like sometimes just stop paying some of their suppliers or service providers. And in the information reported that

And Sacramento Twitter let go of its lease with NTT data of one of the biggest Sacramento data centers. And funny enough, Elon at the time when it happened, Elon said that Sacramento is the worst place to have a data center because of the EAT and whatnot. Now Tesla has taken over that facility with NTT data. And apparently they are in talks with Prime data centers for another facility.

Well, another data center, Sacramento, that was used by Twitter. So Tesla wants that capacity there, but they also plan to design their own now data center. So that's going to be interesting. Another kind of news that came out of a job posting that Tesla recently released for a program manager in business development is for Intel.

a rental program. So it's something called Tesla rental program. So the job listing mentioned that the business development manager is going to be, is going to lead in the launch of the Tesla rental program in Texas. So there's no detail about what it entails exactly. Obviously, Tesla rental program sounds like this is going to, is going to rent, rent his car, its cars. But

There is a mention that it's going to involve the support, support the team on launching a small pilot in all Texas collision sites. So Tesla collision centers are basically body shops. They have five of them in Texas, two in Austin, Houston, one in San Antonio, another in Austin and one in Dallas. So it would make definitely make sense for Tesla to rent cars at their collision centers because your car can be there for a while.

If you were in a crash, it can take weeks, unfortunately, even months at times. Unfortunately, I know that Tesla is trying to reduce those times and it can be a lot quicker, obviously, depending on the kind of damage we're talking about. But if your car is going to be there for weeks to months at a time, it can make sense to rent a car. So Tesla can provide that service at the same time.

Now, does that mean that it's only going to be for collision center when Tesla plans to launch a broader renting program, car rental program? Maybe because it's not clear, but for the language that you're talking about, they're talking about the pilot being an all collision center. So if the pilot is an all collision center, then maybe there's a broader program that doesn't involve the collision centers. I don't know. Or maybe it's just about Texas.

It's not clear, but Tesla is looking to launch something called Tesla Rental Program. So that is the clear information that you need to know from that.

But I'm still like 50-50 if it's just about collision center if Tesla prints and rents its own car. We know that Tesla has had a lot more issues selling vehicles these days because of the interest rates. So it might make sense to find alternatives. So lease is one of them, obviously. But rentals could be another solution, even though you can rent Tesla vehicles from other people. Like Hertz is buying 50,000, 100,000 of them. Havis also has Tesla vehicle for rents.

It's not uncommon these days. All right. We got some data coming in about this electric. So this electric has been just spilled some coffee on me. That's brilliant. Yeah. Tesla electric is,

And the Tesla virtual power plants, in my opinion, is one of the most underappreciated Tesla product that is rolling out right now. I think it's going to be a big deal long term because it's already very nice, very polished product, very good. And it's just in its infancy. And I think it's going to involve a lot because it's right up Tesla's alley too. It's all about software with hardware integration.

It's all about AI in terms of the marketplace and all that. So there's a lot of things that are like right up Tesla's alley. And for a product that just launched, it's already very good. And obviously, this is a product that becomes great at scale. So over time, it's going to get a lot better. So now the data point that we have is that Tesla confirmed that over the last 10 days or last 10 days since this thing, which was August 7th, that was just yesterday, Tesla

Tesla Electric customers in Texas, on average, made $100 over their 10 days.

So instead of paying Tesla Electric for getting electricity from the rates, they all made $100 over the last 10 days. On average, some people made a lot more than that. I saw some people getting like $3 a kilowatt hour that they were sending back to the grid. It's crazy. And that's because Texas is in an insane heat wave or in and out. But places like Austin got 40 straight days over 100 degree Fahrenheit. Wow.

That's crazy. I mean, that's almost becoming like unlivable for humans. Like you cannot survive outside for any extended period of time. It's pretty crazy. 100 over 40 days. I think it's a record all time. Anyway, so that wave results in a lot of people running their ACs, a lot of pressure on the grid and the electric utilities wants to turn up their peaker plants, which you don't want to do because

One, extremely expensive. Two, inefficient, less efficient than bigger plants, so more polluting. So what you want is you want batteries to squash that peak instead of being whoop like that. It goes whoop like that. And you can handle that a lot better. And then you can supplement that with solar, with wind and whatever. But for that, to have that battery capacity, they need to deploy like mega packs in large volume.

Or they need to take advantage of distributed assets. And that's what Tesla Electric does. If you have a power wall, you can jump onto Tesla's electric plan. And then when they need to, they can just siphon out some of that capacity from your power walls and you get paid for it. Basically become your own electric utility. And it's working right now very well in Texas with a relatively small sample size. And that's what's so cool about it. The more they add, the better it's going to get. Yeah.

I'm very, very hyped about that product. I just cannot be more bullish on Tesla Electric and virtual power plants. And Tesla has like over half a million power walls now in the world. So deployed already. So there's already a lot of opportunities that they can take advantage of as they deploy more virtual power plant and Tesla Electric utilities product. And there's just, there's more power walls coming out every day.

We had a little update still in Texas about NACS. So it wasn't sure if it was going to go through. We reported before that Texas was the first state to raise its hand and was like, we're actually going to force deployment of NACS connector in order to get subsidies for your charging stations.

There was some pushbacks from charging station company, mainly over, because you wouldn't take that because basically all of them announced that they would adopt NACs, but they are afraid of supply. So they are afraid that they're not going to be able to get their hands on the NACs connector in time. And they don't want that to prevent them from getting access to subsidies because it would slow down the rollout of their charging station.

like a reasonable complaint. But so it pushed the vote from the Texas Department of Transportation and the commission to adopt this new initiative. But this week they went ahead with it and they approved it. So now Texas has become the first state that is going to require you if you want to have access to the $400 million in subsidy that Texas is going to get. And that's federal subsidies. So that's the...

So the $5 billion that the federal government is distributing in subsidies, Texas is getting the most and more than any other state at $407 million, if I remember correctly. Yep, $407 million.

So now if you want to have access to that, you're going to have to have both CCS and NAX because CCS is still required by the federal government. So the federal government has its own requirements, and that includes get CCS on your charging station. But the states can put some requirements on top of that, and Texas has decided on top of it, we're going to put NAX. I think that's the right move.

I think all other states should do that if the federal government doesn't change its requirement and do it itself, which I have my doubts about. But the states have all the power to do it. They should do it because otherwise you're just, you're not going to use that $400 million efficiently. Not only today, there is more NAX vehicles out there, aka Tesla vehicles, than any other charging connector, Shademo, or obviously CCS is bigger than Shademo now. But...

chadimo and ccs combined as fewer vehicles out there than tesla has with the next so it makes more sense to have the next and ford gm rivian all of them have now uh announced that they are switching over to nax in 2025 so it just makes no sense you should have next of those stations otherwise you're there's not i'm not saying there's no value in doing a ccs only station right now there is some value in that because there's gonna be more ccs vehicles coming out too

But it's not as efficient as if you have both of them or even just NACs and you put an adapter at this point. I don't know. One of those solutions.

All right. We have a few more news items to discuss, and then we're going to jump into the comments section. So I see there's still people coming in now. I know that's not the usual time we're doing this show, so there's fewer people watching live. But that means that I'm going to have the time to go through all your questions, most likely. So if you do have a question or a different subject, EV subject that you want us to discuss, to

Today, jump into the comment section right now on YouTube or LinkedIn or Facebook. I don't see any question from Facebook or Twitter right now. So I don't know if I can. I don't know if it's working. But if you're on LinkedIn or YouTube, there's no problem. I'm going to see your questions right now. All right. Acura, Honda's luxury brand, is launching its home EV for the first time. So they've took their...

They took their sweet time to jump onto the EV bandwagon, like a lot of other Japanese automakers, really. But now the first one is coming and it's looking pretty good so far. The ZDX electric SUV launched this week at the Monterey Car Week. And I'm a fan of the looks. Look at that. Not a bad looking SUV right there. Look at that. Like that side angle is pretty good.

They have those big brakes, those big caliper right there like that. I'm not sure about this. Like I could have been another color here. I don't know about the joint, but the whole bottom part of it is sleek. Nice headlights. The ZDX electric. Nice interior. Little red accent lights. Yeah, I'm a fan. Now, jumping into the specs. I think you're going to like those too.

So you can have the ZDX A-specs or S-specs, and they're both available in dual-motor powertrain, but the A-spec is also available in single-motor powertrain.

power train uh starting at 340 horsepower the s-type gets 500 range here pretty good range of 325 miles if you get the single motor 288 for the dual motor both on the same 102 kilowatt hour battery pack so a very large battery pack not the most efficient vehicle for getting that kind of range of battery pack but uh i'm

optimist optimist optimistically hopeful about maybe on the hakura trying to be a little bit more conservative on the range side hopefully but the thing that is getting a little bit less optimistic is the wheels so it's only 20 20 inch wheels for the the base one and 22 for the bigger one so that makes a big difference here obviously 350 uh 3 500 pound towing capacity

And the price, the price starts at $60,000, which is not bad for an Acura, not bad for a new vehicle, period. These days, it's just, I think it's like $10,000 more than the average new car seller price right now, something like that. It's pretty crazy these days. You have a charging capacity of 190 kilowatts, so not top of the line, but not bad either. They're talking about 81 miles in 10 minutes.

I really like more like the 0 to 80 or 10 to 80% metric. It's more useful for most people. Obviously, your mileage may vary, and there's a lot of things that can affect charging capacity. Oh, yeah, I should mention versus the A-type, it has type. Also, you have air suspension for the A-type versus just fixed coil suspension for the A-type. So that's another also big difference. Big announcement in Quebec yesterday. Okay.

Ford and SK, which have been partners on batteries for a little bit now, they have like, what, three or four battery factories in the U.S. in operation, construction, or announced. Now they're announcing a giant cathode factory, which is a big part of battery manufacturing. In Quebec's Battery Valley, in Bécanco,

We've talked about Bécancour a few times. It's been called right now the Quebec's battery valley because of all the investment that's happening in the very little town, really. It's a little town, but it's just on the other side of the river from Trois-Rivières, which is a much bigger city. Not a bigger city, but it's a city. It's 150,000 people, something like that.

So Béconcourt has had investment from GM and POSCO for their own anode battery plant, I think, or electric. I don't remember what they're producing, POSCO. But you have the lithium processing being there with Nemesco Lithium, which is being worked with Livent. You have Nouveau Monde Graphite, which is producing anode material, graphite. And you have a bunch of other smaller projects there.

I was hoping that this was going to be an actual battery cell factory because you have all the ingredients being produced there. You just need the actual battery cell production. But short of that, this cattle factory is a big deal because it's a huge one. It's a $1.2 billion facility that's going to produce 45,000 tons of cattle material per year starting in the first half of 2026.

So it's a massive endeavor here. So that's, it's very good. And there's just not that much cattle production in North America right now. So it's going to be a big inch in Jersey to, to really build the battery supply chains down to the resource in North America, rather than going to other countries like China. It's going to be NCM. So nickel manganese, nickel manganese, cobalt, cobalt battery. So it's going to be for more high energy density vehicles. Yeah.

The battery capacity, yeah. They're already starting construction on the 280,000 square meter, 3 million square feet facility. So again, giant facility on six floors. It's going to create 345 new jobs. I'm surprised that's a pretty low number for a $1.2 billion facility. It's going to produce 45,000 tons of cam per year. But yeah, it's very good for Ford, obviously, because it's going to

Ensure that they're going to stay on track with the requirements for the battery components coming into the vehicles that they come from North America or countries that have free trade agreement with the U.S. So that's going to reduce the reliance on China and ensure that Fords and its free trade electric vehicles keep access to the full tax credit in the U.S. for the vehicles sold in the U.S.

All right, last piece of news before we jump into the comments is about Jaguar. We don't talk a lot about Jaguar because they only have the I-PACE. And the I-PACE has kind of been a stale program now for a few years. And, of course, there was the recent battery recalls over the fire issue, fire risk.

Which is something that we reported last year and we told Jaguar this is going to be a problem. You should do something about it. Took them about a year to figure it out, but now they've done it. And now what they said is that this is going to be the last, the new model year is the last year of the Jaguar. It's going to have a new GT version of it.

But the 2024 model year is going to be the last year with the 2025, which is going to be talking about like a whole revamp of the Jaguar brand in 2025 because they want to go all electric by 2030, even though they haven't done anything since launching the I-PACE. Now they are killing the I-PACE for the next generation of electric vehicles that are going to come out in 2025. So enjoy the last year of the I-PACE. All right.

Let's jump into the comments section. Let's see what you guys have to say. And I appreciate for one of you that's joining in the show early today. I know that's...

It's not ideal if you have like a routine of watching the show live at 4 p.m. on Easter time. But I appreciate you being here. And if you do appreciate the show back, if you can give us a thumbs up right now, a like, click the like button on whatever app you're watching. It helps the show a lot. If you can subscribe to for any of the notification button to know when we go live.

If we ever go live at the same time again like this, very useful. And if you're listening right now on your podcast app, if you can give us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast app you're using, that helps the show a lot. It's free to do, takes a second, and we appreciate every single one of you that do it. All right, Patrick says, great to be here. Thanks to be here, Patrick. He's a car sound designer. All right, that's interesting.

We have one in the UN. He said, I don't like the name Canada. Okay. That's not easy. Philippe Lavoie says, question. Hey, Fred, what's your current expectation for Cybertruck versions and range at launch? Yes. So there's been a lot of rumors about that.

Historically speaking, Tesla has been doing with the higher hand, but not necessarily the top-end version of the vehicles first. For example, the Model 3 Performance was in the first launch and so forth. But the Model S, the Plaid, they're different. So it's different with every car, but normally it's definitely not the cheapest version. It's at least the second cheapest or the top version, either one of those.

There have been rumors that the tri-motor was going away and they were going to do a quad motor. So there's a lot of different rumors here. One thing for sure that I think was going to happen is like Tesla is going to try to stick to the limit in the U.S. at least.

of the $80,000 top price. Now we've seen a lot of electric pickup trucks coming out that are versions that go over that. And I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla does have a version that go over that, which might explain why Tesla would not launch the top version first and a version that's under $80,000, which might be a tri-motor, might be a dual motor version.

But that's going to be the price point that they're going to aim for. So I would expect at least under $80,000 for the first version. And yeah, that would make sense to me, a dual motor, 250 miles, that would be a good selling point. At the same time, you know, Tesla doesn't like to get one up by another company. And

GM right now with the Silverado Electric and that 200 kilowatt hour battery pack, the 450 miles of range, they are raising a lot of eyebrows. A lot of pickup truck buyers that are looking at this like, all right, now 450 miles of range, I can start towing with this. And even if I lose 100, 200 miles of range, I can still get some good distance, some good towing capacity. So for actual truck users that use their truck as trucks,

This is very nice. And Tesla has talked about the 500 miles Cybertruck before. And when Tesla announced specs, normally they are pretty good at staying close to those specs. The pricing is where Tesla has slipped before and slips today too. So I think we could see still Tesla at the very least announce a 500 miles version of the Cybertruck.

with the launch. I don't know that it's going to be the first version though. That's my take on this. Soudan Sousa, how do I contact you if you want to write AV domain content for your website? Well, we're not looking to hire right now, but you can send me your CV. My email is available on the website.

Joe M said, will a standard range Model S be eligible for the $7,500 rebate? No, it won't be. I think, what was it? $55,000 for the sedan, I think is the top price. So it's not going to be. Carl in San Diego, a frequent listener of the podcast, says, with GM dragging ass on production because they can't build their custom batteries quickly enough, on that, they're going to itch themselves the wrong partner. Yeah, I mean, I've said it before.

I'm not a big fan of those huge legacy automakers partnering on EV platform. To me, it's a bad look. They are giving up on expertise and production capacity for what is going to be. It's not only the future of the industry. It is the present of the industry right now.

So when Ford works with VW and GM with Honda and all that, it's like invest in your own capacity to build this vehicle platform because otherwise you'll be left behind. I don't get it.

Ismael says, any company that announced a new battery factory will see production years down the road. Yeah, I mean, obviously it takes some time to set up production capacity. But if you're referring to the Ford and SK plan, I think they said midway through 2026. That's a very good production timeline, I think. It's not too late behind. It's not too ambitious either. It looks like it's a reasonable time.

Carl in San Diego says, again, all CM vehicles are all inefficient. GM choose to ignore efficiency and double down on bloated giant brick vehicles so there are more batteries for every car produced that's limiting production more. Well, that's true. But I think, like you said, they are having issues like rimping up production right now to large quantities of the LCM cells. So LCM cells and battery pack and modules and the whole thing, really.

So it makes sense to focus on these lower volume because it's not just the battery packs that are big and efficient. The vehicle itself is by its like the GMC Hummer. It's a low volume vehicle either way. There's not that many people that's going to pay $100,000 on a Hummer.

The Lyric is a little bit less expensive, but it's still a luxury vehicle. So it's more right now that they are focusing on those lower volume vehicles that even though they use big batteries, that you can make more vehicles with fewer batteries, you can more vehicles with the same batteries. You won't make that many vehicles anyway. So might as well focus on the more luxury end of the market that...

is easier to justify with a longer range, basically. It's easier to sell with a longer range. So I'm not too worried about that. I mean, GM for years used to only sell the boat, which was fairly efficient with the 66-quadruple battery pack. So I don't think they have completely given up this idea. I think they are taking this approach of higher-end market down with the new LCM platform, and that's what we're seeing now.

Now, I would keep an eye on it because for sure we're seeing a trend here. But I think the smaller batch packs are coming. I don't think there's any doubt about that. The new name for Franck will no longer be portmanteau for the two words front and trunk. It's now officially a claim of Franck Utility and Parcel Area. Fupa.

All right, good one, Jan. Good one. I prefer Frupa to the, what the Fisker tried to do, fruit, fruit, whatever it was. Dan asked my favorite color. Okay, I don't think that's super interesting for the show, but let's say black. I love black. You can see I have a black and white type of color scheme in the background here. Are you and Seth attending the Fully Charged event next month in BC? Yeah.

It was not canceled. I thought they were canceling or pushing back their fully charged event. But no, we have no plan. Next month, we're all going to be in Munich for IAA. So we have that. And then I'm staying in Europe for a few weeks and then I'm coming back. So I don't think we're going to have anyone there.

carl has another question since you have some financial interests of the industry have you tried to investigate profitability of all ev models model by model there seems to be assumption that profitability isn't hard is not hard is that really what you meant because it i think it is hard it is very hard i mean as of right now i don't think there's many people there in tesla that's profitable selling electric vehicles

before credits because obviously there's credits emission credits change the whole game because all these legacy automakers still sell a lot of polluting vehicles and to be profitable selling those polluting vehicles they can sell evs at a loss get the credit to compensate for those and then they keep their margins on their gasoline vehicles so

So that's the big game changer here. But actually, like without any subsidies, I think EVs are still hard to be profitable. I think Volkswagen is turning things around right now. Obviously, Tesla. But GM, I mean, they have to make money on the Hummer or something. I'm not even sure if they do. Yeah.

I'm sure that Ford is having issues with the F-150 Lightning right now, especially with the price cuts. I wouldn't be surprised if they're making much money on that. But they're all... I think you have to understand that a lot of them are... Tesla has...

several generation of vehicle ahead of a lot of these automakers. So Ford right now with the F-150 Lightning, they are clear this is like the first generation and they are learning from that and they expect the second generation to be the profitable one and the much higher volume one too. So it's all these things that need to be kept in mind.

Uh, Stefan asks, uh, do you think Cybertruck will have some sort of wall factor vehicle to grid or vehicle to home? I understand they want to canalize their Powerwall market, but they don't want to, uh, canalize them on, but maybe they could pair them. You see, you need one Powerwall to enable them. That, that last thing that you just said, I think is going to be the, I don't think there's going to be the wall factor for Cybertruck. Honestly, I don't even, I don't, uh,

I don't think vehicle to grid, vehicle to home, vehicle to everything is not that big of a wow factor to me. I think when it first came out, well, like maybe when the IONIQ 5 came out and Hyundai had some marketing around it, like it got some momentum and people were a little bit excited about it. But...

For the masses, I don't think it's a difference maker for most people. It might be a difference maker for some, there's no doubt, but my intuition would be it's not that big of a difference maker for most people. Because there's so much value in having energy storage capacity at your house without having your car there. You don't want your car to be your energy storage capacity as your home space.

If it's going to be on a daily basis. It's great to have. Vehicle to home capable vehicles. In term of an emergency. So if there is something. That happened. God forbid a solar flare. Whatever it is. And you have like. There's grid is screwed for weeks. It would be nice to have the capacity. To use your car. Which has up to 100 kilowatt hour battery pack. So it can last you a week or more. If you're.

cautious about your electricity use to power your home. That would be nice. But on a day-to-day, like for a Tesla electric vehicles, sorry, for Tesla electric, like rate programs where you can send the energy back to the grid and make money for that, you don't want to use your car like that and drain your battery on your car on a daily basis. You would want a Powerwall for that, I think. So yeah, I think the ultimate product, like it's going to be expensive though, obviously, but if money, no object, I think something like

a power wall that is both an energy storage device and a charging station and a vehicle to grid a bi-directional charging station, I should say then, then that I think is the best solution because you can use the power wall or several power wall for your day-to-day use of energy storage. So taking in your solar, storing it at night, redistributing, sending electricity back to the grid when the grid requires or at peak, getting your money from that.

and charging your car. But then when something bad happens and you might need more energy storage capacity, boom, you plug your car into it and the electricity goes both ways. And then maybe you can charge on solar with it, another Tesla product, to extend that capacity. So there's a lot of things to do with that, but one, I don't think it's going to be the wow factor of the Cybertruck. I think the wow factor of Cybertruck is...

Obviously, but it's the design. I think that some people hate it. Some people love it, but it looks like there's enough people who love it, that it is a wall factor. So there's that other wall factor. I don't, I don't think there's going to be other, like a big game changer coming out of it, but Elon did say that they are packing a lot of new technology in it. So I don't know. We'll see.

Carl is expending on his comment about profitability because I think BMW is still selling EVs at a loss, but no one investigates these things and company won't disclose. Yeah, I mean, that's the problem. Like there's not much to investigate. They are not breaking things down. The only one that we can get into is like Ford. I mean, I talk about legacy automakers here. Obviously, we can get into like Rivian, Lucid, Fiskars. Like these are all...

electric vehicles everything is in there so you can get into that but for the legacy automakers it's it's not transparent at all other than what ford did with splitting up the company so now we have a clearer more transparent look at their ev business versus the gasoline business so kudos to ford for doing that uh but the others are not really doing that so no we we cannot know uh carl says uh thanks for the show

Keeping it going all these years is always helpful. Yeah, I appreciate that, Carl. And we're working hard to make things happen. And thanks, everyone, for listening this week. It was a quicker show, but I'm having a busy day. I had to get moving. But I think we covered some cool subject. I hope you appreciated the time. And I appreciate yours for sure. We're going to see you at 4 p.m. If all goes well, 4 p.m. next week.

And Seth's going to be there and is going to maybe tell us a little bit about his Japan trip, if you care to know. All right. I'll see you all next week. Have a good weekend. Stay safe out there, everyone. We are out.