New Tesla Model S/X, Mini Cooper EV 2024, cool electric Lightship trailer, and more
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we are live on ubs electric podcast i am fred lambert your host and as per usual i'm joined by publisher extraordinaire seth wintra are you doing today seth i'm good all right uh it's pretty slow news week this week we didn't have that much uh news in the space which is rare

a little of a breeder for us, but what it does, what it's going to give us is the opportunity to talk to you guys a little bit more. So we're going to let you sometimes to come in, of course, but once you do, we're going to ask you to put your comments in the comment section. And some, we have either questions to talk to us about what we discussed today.

other topics to discuss in the EV space or whatever you're going to discuss that is related to the show. We're going to get into it. But we're going to start it out with a few pieces of news that still was somewhat significant this week that I think you guys might find interesting. And we're going to start out with the new Model S MX starting with the price. So there was a big price decrease this week that's added on top of the big one that came in early January.

That affected the entire lineup, including Model S and X. But now this one is just for Model S and X and it brings the price down basically back two years, two and a half years behind. So the price has been slowly, gradually increasing over the years. Model S and X was in a weird situation, of course, because there was the 2020 refresh.

And the refresh took forever to get to volume production. So during that time, Tesla was basically sitting on like two years of backlog. And Tesla has been known to take advantage of that and increase prices during those times. So yeah,

They did that. And now I assume that they have been working through that backlog pretty well. And now they are bringing those prices down. So there was the big one, Ingenierie. And this one this week is a big one too. The Model S long-range all-wheel drive, the base Model S basically, was over $100,000 just a few months ago. Now it's $90,000. Plaid is going down to $110,000. If you remember, that was like $130,000 or $135,000 last year.

MOL S long range on MOL X starts at $100,000. That's been a while too since it's been the case. And the plot MOL X is $110,000, which makes no sense whatsoever because that's the same price as the MOL S plot. That happened before though. It happened before briefly. And it just goes to show that this is not necessarily about cost or anything like that. It's about demand and the demand to create a demand for the MOL X plot. That's how to bring down the price the same as the MOL S plot.

And so, because normally as the pricing model for Tesla, for the flagships, Model S and X, it was always Model S, sorry, Model X, generally $5,000 more expensive than the Model S for the same trim. In this case, now there's only two trims anymore. And now what makes this price decrease interesting on top of that is that there's basically a new sort of smallish refresh of the Model S and X again. And, yeah,

Tesla is calling it more for less, like more features for less price. And so we had a few things that came up this week that sort of announced that. First, we saw in the configurator itself a new color option, the ultra red. You can see it right here. So it replaces the multi-coat red with something that's a lot closer to the cherry red that Tesla is offering on the Model Y in Berlin. But we know that this is

only for Berlin vehicles because apparently the new paint shop that they have, like Gigafactory Berlin, is as a new process that is able to put deeper, different coating with a deeper effect that in the light makes it very different. So I... you get close to it with the Ultra Red but not quite. Did I have a comparison here at some point?

No, okay, so this is the comparison between the red multi-coat that was the red option before and the new ultra red now. There's a big difference there. The difference with the cherry red is a little bit less. Looks good. Yeah, no, it looks good for sure. Not cheap, though. It comes at $3,000. Yeah, but it's funny, the price drops. You mentioned that the Model Y and the Model X and the Model Z

S cost the same, but like if you go down to the, you know, the standard vehicle, the non-plad, it's a $10,000 difference. So it's kind of nuts that the plaid on both vehicles somehow equalizes the price.

Yeah, I mean, I would have to assume that is related to just the mindset behind buying a Plaid in the first place. With the Model S, it does sort of make sense because it's basically a supercar, even though it's a family sedan. You can just buy a Plaid Model S because you're like, oh, I want just the best performance car out there. It just so happened it's a family sedan, but it's still what it is.

While the Model X, even though it is, like you said, it's the same powertrain, it also gets insane performance, especially for an SUV. But...

It's just a little bit less than the Model S. So if you are in the mindset, I'm going to buy a supercar, an electric supercar, you're going to go with the Model S instead of the Model X. So the Model X is more like I want just a top-of-the-line electric SUV. You go to the Model X, you're like, all right, am I going to spend like $10,000 more to get also like a half a second faster of the 0-60 miles per hour? Not really. Yeah.

The mindset is not there. So it is clearly a price adjustment based on demand. There's just not that much demand for the mall X plot. All right. So there was this announcement and Tesla started delivering these new mall S and X with now the ultra red. Well, of course, the ultra red, they just started producing it. So the deliveries are going to, well, I'm sure they're going to put some in inventory and most likely also in display. But if you, they are producing it and deliveries of the new,

mall s i started and it's been sending out this email to people to call it this more for less thing with the price adjustment and the new updates and the new updates were mostly including things that we already knew about uh like there's the new badging on it there's um the uh the steering wheel option now you can get the yoke or you can get the round steering wheel and uh things like also the plot getting the new uh brakes

But there was one thing that was new that we didn't know about is this new glass roof. So in the email, Tesla noted that our new MLS roof glass, that's in more light, allowing a clearer view of the sky day or night while maintaining the same level of heat and UV protection. They actually talk about weighting less than the existing roof.

And letting five times more lights, which sounds like a big improvement. Obviously, it's your glass roof. So letting more lights is not always the best thing. Yeah. If you're in Arizona, that's not what you want, really. Exactly. Especially for temperature controls and things like that. But they say that they block the same level of UV protections. It offers the same level of UV protection. So I guess that's good news.

And weighting less, of course, improves the overall weight of the car, which improves efficiency. Don't know by how much here, but they didn't actually talk about efficiency. They said it improves handling, which at first I was like, what? But yeah, technically, if you remove some of the weight at the top of the car, it does help lower the center of gravity, which is already pretty damn low in the Model S because of the battery pack, obviously. And that improves handling. I don't know why they would specify that, though, because...

I always have trouble imagining just how big of an improvement it is. Unless it's a massive weight reduction that they have, but I'd be surprised.

So in that email, they mentioned all those improvements and then they mentioned we dropped the price or like go for it. You should buy a new Model S. The one thing they don't mention in that email though, and it's arguably the biggest change to the Model S and X with this like small refresh that happened this week. And that's the new hardware for autopilot and self-driving sensor suite.

No mention of it whatsoever. Even though we know it's in those cars, they've been spotted with having a new hardware. And this week, even the service manual came out and the service manual gave us a little bit more information. Even though we knew pretty much everything there is to know about the new sensors yet. But one thing that was confusing is this front-facing enclosure here.

So a bunch of information sort of trickled in over the last few months that confirmed that the stuff was going from three cameras to two cameras in that enclosure. Surprising, but okay, fine. They're better cameras. This stuff probably has to figure out a way to use the data better from two instead of three. But then when we spotted it, it looked like there was still three cameras like in this picture, though one of them didn't look like the others. Now the service manual confirmed that one of them is a dummy camera.

So Tesla literally writes in the service manual, the bi-camera assembly, so there is two cameras in Scylla 3, has cutouts for three camera lenses assemblies, but one of the cutouts is populated with a dummy camera. Doesn't elaborate for why. There's been a bunch of speculation. The two main theories, I guess, are...

Maybe for right-hand drive versus left-hand drive, maybe Tesla would switch the camera on the other side for left-hand drive in order to keep the same ratio of where the positioning of the camera. That could make sense. Interesting theory. The other one is, of course, would allow for retrofit to have another camera once there's a

Maybe the more advanced camera is not available right now. And Tesla is anticipating that it will be in the future. And we know that the new computer in the 4.0 hardware suite has a spare chip

entry and a spare input for a camera so there's a possibility that this would revert back to a three camera system using that input and it's just waiting for a better camera lens or camera assembly to come to become available this is one of those times that a PR department would be helpful like no really hey what

What's going on? Yeah, because right now, you Google Tesla and there's a bunch of headlines that just say Tesla is putting a dummy camera in their cars, which is an accurate headline. It's not clickbait. And I would like to put Tesla is putting a dummy camera in its car and here's why, but I don't have the answer to it. So you can't blame me for that headline right there. And here's the actual camera assembly. It's straight up a dummy camera. There's no...

cables or anything like that. Why would they even, why just leave it empty? Like it seems weird to put a fake camera. Maybe it would look weird in the enclosure without it. I guess. It is an investment. Tesla is always like even the tiniest little thing, they remove it if it's not useful. So that to your point, that is weird that they went through the process of putting a fake one in there.

It would look weird though. Maybe, maybe in the future they're going to have, you know, maybe there's not the part isn't available and they're going to upgrade it or something. I don't know. Yeah. Who knows? Anyway, Tesla has not said a word about a 4.0 yet other than his brief comment from Elon last year, where he said that it won't be retrofittable. And, um,

He said he gave like a very vague percentage number improvement over the 3.0, saying that he still plans to deliver full self-driving on 3.0. But he has lost a ton of credibility on that front anyway. So you have to take it and leave it sometimes. All right. We're going to move on to the next piece of news. If this thing can start working. There you go. All right.

Again, if you guys have any questions, please put them in the comment section right now because this show is going to be quick on the news item because it was a slow news week this week. If you guys have any questions, put them down below. If you have any other topics in the EV world or renewable energy that you want us to discuss this week, also would be the time. We're going to have plenty of time later on the show to discuss all of that. I see we already have a few questions. We appreciate them.

All right, so we went to the high visibility glass, the dummy camera, price adjustments. That's basically it for the new Model S and X. Deliveries are starting right now. Gigafactory Mexico, after the official announcement last week, some more details started to trickle in. Tesla was very low on details on that too, just saying that Gigafactory Mexico is coming to the Monterey area and it's going to produce the next gen vehicle.

without saying what that's going to be, without saying the output of the factory, without saying the size of the investment, the job creation, anything like that. But we did learn last week that they purchased a very large 2,500 acres of land. So bigger than 4,200 acres of land. Almost twice as big as the land of Gigafactory Texas.

So it's going to be a huge factory that released that rendering here, but it's hard to tell the actual size of it from there. But it's probably going to be as big, if not bigger, than GigaFerti Texas. And since then, the local officials have released a little bit more information because obviously they've been starved of information. And even in Monterey, which is a large city, I don't know how big Monterey, what's the population of Monterey is?

I would assume it's in the millions, maybe 1.1 million. I don't know if that's metro.

Yeah, no, Metro is 5 million. So it's a huge city, Monterey. But even for a big city like that, Tesla coming in with a gigafactory has a significant impact. So the locals want to know what's going on, what's going to happen. And they released a little bit more details here saying that Tesla plans to spend $5 billion on the factory, which is in line with other gigafactories in the past. Tesla has been trying to be more capital efficient.

with their capital expenditure. So you can expect something big with $5 billion at this point because we've seen other factories with similar spending producing a lot. And over time with like Gigafactory Nevada, for example, was a bigger investment, less capacity. And with Gigafactory Shanghai was a smaller investment, much bigger capacity. And we expect something similar to come out of Gigafactory Mexico here. In terms of job creation, 7,000 workers here.

And Zirec employees here, which is again in line or a little bit lower than prediction for other gigafactories that went to 10,000 people. But Tesla has been trying to be more efficient with the workforce there too. And finally, in terms of timing, so we talked about Tom Zhu.

Tesla's head of automotive saying that they were aiming to beat the record of Gigafree Shanghai from groundbreaking to production of nine months. They want to do something similar. So now everyone is holding their breath as when is the groundbreaking going to start. Tesla is currently working on the final permit. And the local officials have confirmed our suspicion that the main thing about the negotiation between the government and Tesla was about

No red tape as fast as possible and moving as fast as possible. So they're saying that they are trying to obtain the final permit by the end of this month, by the end of March. So that would mean groundbreaking this month or next month if everything goes well with the permit. And yeah, that would mean production next year for sure.

I'll soon next year that would again depends on how smooth things goes. But yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if this starts production early next year at this factory, which brings another interesting point. If that's going to be the next gen platform, we're going to get a car. Yeah, that's going to be next gen model. We haven't seen that next gen model yet. So that would sort of put some time of timeline of when we're going to see that new model from Tesla.

Because people have been starving for that. Do we know that if they're going to make that car there first or they may make some extra Model Ys or Model 3s there? I would assume that the first car they produce there is going to be a new car because they're going to design the whole factory around this next-gen manufacturing system. Right. What do you call it? All the box ones? Unboxing. The new unboxing system, I think. Unboxed.

Okay, moving on from Tesla news already. We're not even 20 minutes into the show. We're moving on from Tesla news. You know that's going to be a quick show this week. But we have three very interesting news items that's not really in Tesla to discuss. Starting with the Mini Cooper 2024 EV. We got some new details about it in terms of specs coming out. So as you know, we really like the Mini Cooper EV.

Other than a little disappointment over the fact of where it stands as a vehicle program, considering the Mini E electric came out in, I don't even remember, 2008 or whatever. Yeah, like a decade and a half ago. Yeah. So going from they had already like that car like a decade ago and took them over a decade to bring it to market. So that was a little bit frustrating. And of course, when it did come to market, it was very much like,

You could argue a compliance car or at least of the very least a city car, like a car meant for the city. It's not, it's kind of a second car option. It's not going to be your full car probably, unless you just want to use in the city.

Now, the 2024 update does bring some interesting new options. So you go from a 32.6 kWh battery pack to having two options, and both of them are bigger, 40 kWh and 54 kWh. So a 54 kWh for a vehicle of that size, we don't have the EP range just yet. So the EP are always lower. So, okay, Jamie came with his own estimate here of 145, 180 kWh.

Yeah, 54 kilowatt hour getting 180.

I would have hoped for... Yeah, I mean, you think Chevy Bolt, that's a 65-kilowatt-hour battery, and that goes 260 miles. Yeah. So maybe a little bit more than 180. It might hit 200. Yeah, I would have liked to see 200 on that. Then a little bit bump on power, too. Went from 181 horsepower, 135-kilowatt-hour put motor to 215, 160. So 215.

200 plus horsepower and vehicle that size is not bad. We don't have the good pictures of it yet. It's just the prototype wrap still. So it's not ideal. We don't expect it to come in. Oh yeah, that's right. That was from a few weeks ago. We did see an update

unwrap one coming out so there is some significant exterior changes I don't know how much I like those to be honest I kind of like the look of the previous model yeah this one's not as exciting I don't know it just looks kind of like Honda Mini E or whatever yeah on the E especially the front end here with the yeah that is weird that grille is weird not the biggest fan either

But MINI is looking to go all electric and they want to, they're going to have the convertible one coming too soon. So we're excited about that. And you can expect the powertrains to transfer from one model to another here. So when we get here, we should get on the other versions of the car too. Moving on from MINI, we have Mercedes-Benz that decided to release their pricing for the US Bolt EQE SUV. So, yeah.

We just got the AQE sedan, which we thought was probably the most interesting offering from the electric vehicle lineup from Mercedes so far. And as has been the case with Mercedes, they have the SUV version of each of their electric vehicle version. And obviously going to the U.S. market, SUVs are pretty popular around here.

They have their factory in Alabama where they plan to produce it because they want to get access to try to get access to the federal tax credit. And though I thought the EQE, especially the SUV version, might be a little bit too high of a price for it. But it's true that if you get access to the SUV credit, it's up to $80,000. So there is a chance to make it work.

So they released the pricing here on the three version. You have the premium, the exclusive and the pinnacle. And it starts for the premium at $77,900. So just under the limit, the $80,000 limit. So it should give you access to the federal tax credit as long as the battery stuff is also under control. But we don't know about that just yet. The middle one is actually exactly $80,000.

Okay, so you have access to the two. Yeah. And do we know when the production is in the air aiming to start on that US dealership coming this month? In the coming months. Yeah. I think they're going to go for a 2024 model year here. I would expect after mid-year, most likely. Yeah, it's going to be a great vehicle option. It kind of sits between the EQB, which is kind of a low power, low range vehicle.

retrofit kind of SUV and the EQS obviously which is going to be much higher end. I love these cars. I think they're super fantastic. They drive really well. They're obviously very expensive because they're Mercedes and Mercedes throws a lot of extra stuff in there but if you can afford them, they're really nice things to drive around in. Mercedes is going to let me drive an AMG EQE

and a EQS SUV while I'm in Los Angeles starting in April. So thanks for that.

Yeah, I mean, the EQB too is just like, it's much less expensive, but in terms, you're not, it doesn't feel like luxury like a Mercedes normally feel to me. Like the EQE, that's where the bumps happen. Like you get into the EQE and it's like, all right, this is a luxury vehicle. So if you're looking for something premium, that's more like it. I think you're going to be a bit disappointed with the EQB. Like you said, more like a compliance feel almost. But yeah, this is where it's,

Mercedes started to be more Mercedes in terms of the electric vehicle lineup, I think. I've actually recommended the EQB to a few people. I think it starts at $55,000, which is crazy good. The range is just over 200 miles, which is what you would expect from a very low-priced Mercedes. And the acceleration is total garbage. So if you're not into acceleration but into a Mercedes, that makes a little bit more sense. All right.

One more piece of news and then we jump into the comment section. So you guys are going to have plenty of time to talk about whatever you guys want to talk about. So put it in the comment section right now. We're going to get to it in about 5-10 minutes. This is exciting, the last piece of news here. And it was one of the most popular articles that we had this week. So I would assume that a lot of people share our enthusiasm for it. It's called a light ship. So it's an electric RV trailer trailer.

And what makes it electric and what makes it a design for electric vehicle is two things. Well, first of all, it's the aerodynamics performance of it, which I don't think that should be related to electric vehicle, honestly, because I think all trailers should be as aerodynamic as possible for fuel consumption issues. But...

People have been associating efficiency a lot with electric vehicles in order to manage this range issues and range anxiety. And that's especially true for towing. So now that we actually have electric pickup trucks to tow those trailers, we realize that the 300 miles F-150 Lightning quickly becomes 100 mile F-150 Lightning if you have an inefficient and a heavy whatever to tow. And in this case, an RV trailer.

So this is one aspect, but what this makes it really an electric trailer is that it actually has an electric drivetrain in it that helps compensate for the loss that you get from the, um,

just pulling a trailer from within the electric pickup truck so they say that basically it negates completely if you do have that because there's going to be two options it's going to be the trailer just as is without the drivetrain and then you have the option with a drivetrain so it it comes from the minds of a bunch of uh former tesla engineers and uh and other companies like a proterra i thought riven too i saw someone from riven in there

But yeah, they've been in the EV industry for a while now. One of them, Ben Parker, co-founder, helped design the battery for the Model 3. So these are people that have been around for a while now. And they've been working to design basically what would be the perfect

RV trailer for an electric vehicle. And the Lightship L1 is what they came up with right now. So let's get into the details here a bit. It comes with an 80 kilowatt hour battery pack. Sweet. Yeah, that's a decent size for an electric vehicle. Like...

there's the EQE I think that's pretty close they have an option pretty close to that so you have something similar that you have in like a full size electric vehicle but the pack is used for two things it's used to power the actual trailer as a home when you use it as a home but if you combine it with the option to have a drivetrain so you have two two sets of wheels on the trailer and do they have the output of that um

we don't have the output of the motor on this i'm sure it's very low just it just has to keep up with the uh yeah it doesn't have to be very high just just it just has to keep up with the motor and you don't you're not going to push you're not going on a drag strip here you're pulling you're pulling a trailer uh so uh it it matches the capacity of the truck and compensate for the range loss that you get from pulling an av up to 7 500 pounds

7,500 pounds trailer when fully loaded, which is not that heavy of a trailer, especially for that size. What's the 27 foot trailer? So it's a big trailer. We're not talking about a small trailer here, but this is just one aspect of it. So a big one, obviously, in order to mitigate efficiency issues.

But they also make the thing super efficient where it's deployable. So you often have trailers that are deployable in terms of width. So they collapse into a normal width that you can use on the road. You can drive on the road without one of those big signs of being too large. Wide load, yeah. Yeah, wide load things. Yeah.

And then when you arrive at your camping spot, you enclaves them and then you have like a lot more space inside. This is not on the width. This is on the height, which makes a big difference on the efficiency. So when you're on the road, it's six foot nine. So it's not that high. You can see it here. Actually, you're going to be about the same height or even shorter than most pickup truck. Yeah.

Here again, you can see it. So those are giant glass windows here, but you don't see through them because it is collapsed from the height. So you see like the storage area from it. And then I can deploy it from the top. Here it is when it's actually deployed. So it gets much higher. You get to...

i think it's eight foot nine almost uh nine feet tall yeah 8.5 feet once it's fully deployed and you can actually stand in there and comfortably even if you're six foot and taller which is not always the case in most trailer and also it looks like it feels super big inside because it's class all around like you can see here it's a beautiful beautiful design yeah and again giant efficiency gain by being able to get that thing a lot shorter

So combining these two together, they claim that if you have a 300-mile pickup truck, instead of getting 100 miles of range out of it on that trailer, you're going to get 300 miles of range. And now this is a game changer for people that actually want to use this as a trailer because you want to get some distance out of your day. Like, you know, you're not going to want to. So if you have 100 miles, you're going to be doing. So with one charge, you're going to be doing 200 miles in a day.

of driving or maybe you get three charges out of it but it starts to get a lot uh you start spending more time charging than on the road so getting a max of 300 miles off of distance which is not necessarily bad like you can you can change your scenery a lot on 300 miles depending where you are in the world but now this this gives you the chance to do like 600 miles in a day uh of road uh so that that's a obviously day and night in term of uh

camping situation um in term of pricing i'm going to show you the interior a little bit the interior design is very minimalist um they have a full kitchen in there they have this spot for a dining table and also this lowers down to be the main bed which they say four to six people can slip in there but

My understanding was this is the only sitting area. So you're basically sleeping on top of each other if you're four to six. But for a couple, it looks perfect. Yeah, so the starting price is $125,000, but that's the version without the powertrain in it. So if you want a powertrain, it starts at $159,000.

I didn't put the price in there, but I checked it the other day. I think it's around that. Oh, you also get solar on. I should mention it because that's obviously a big deal too. So if you want to stop somewhere for an extended period of time, the solar will not only power, you get up to three kilowatt of solar, which doesn't sound like a lot. People in their homes normally have over five kilowatt minimum.

But on a small trailer on this, you don't consume that much energy. Three kilowatts is going to be plenty to power your day-to-day camping situation and then even charge up your car. So if you're going to camping for a long period of time, you don't necessarily need to be plugged in. And if you're at an actual camping situation,

normally you have at least 120 volts, but sometimes 240 volts charging right there that you can use to power your camper and also you can charge your car if you have an electric car. But this truly allows you to have fully Huff Grid camping where you power your camping with this solar and then trickle charge your vehicle to get enough range to if you stay for a week, for example, it's not going to be

high power charging obviously but if you're off-grid charging for a week you can arrive there with very little charge on in your car and leave with a full charge or at least half a charge or something that gets you enough to get to a charging station so i think this is the future of camping obviously not cheap uh but this is the first version of this technology you're not the only one working on this uh we reported on the airstream doing something similar i don't know if it's that big of a power train for the airstream though right i don't know

They didn't give the specs I'm actually looking at now. The Airstream is 22 feet in length, only has a single axle, sleeps up to four, only has one floor plan option. But the interior design is a little bit more, it's just more eclectic. It does have solar on the top as well. I don't know. They didn't say how much, but yeah.

You know, it's going to be one of those things where do you go with the established maker with the kind of lower specs, more expensive, not as, you know, exciting? Or do you go with the new one that, you know, maybe they don't make to market, maybe they're not as, you know, they don't have their manufacturing down quite as good yet, but they, you know, offer a way cooler looking vehicle with a way nicer design.

you know experience so i i don't know i i like both of these the e-stream and this one and i think there's some others coming out too yeah there should be more people working on on this i think there's plenty of space in the market personally i'm i i think i was very excited for the industry i still am but i i think this is a little bit more exciting just uh because of this aerodynamic aspect to it i think that makes a big difference and um

The fact that they designed it from the ground up, so they're not just using the classic Airstream model. So the solar integration, for example, looks way better in this vehicle than it does on the Airstream, in my opinion. And I like this completely open windows everywhere. Especially when you're camping, it's like inside living outside and vice versa.

You get that feeling a lot from it. And they seem to know what they're doing too in terms of the powertrains. I trust them almost more than the Airstreams on that front. Look at the video. They have some... They seem to have a pretty advanced prototype here. This is the deployment. Also, I think the deployment is completely automatic.

So if you have ever deployed a trailer, it's actually a lot of work sometimes. So if they can figure out how to make that more streamlined, it's going to be a game changer. It probably takes seconds and it's like you press a button and you do it. But I don't think they've shown the complete process of it. It's just some quick videos. They seem to have tested it with F-150 and a Rivian. Obviously, if there are Tesla engineers behind it, they're probably thinking, oh, is that an R1S? No. That looks like a

Just a regular Toyota or something. Yeah, very exciting. We're going to be keeping an eye on that. Look at that. That's a nice picture right there. Though that wasn't deployed. Because it almost looks better when it's not fully deployed because it looks almost like all glass. All right, really exciting. I'm going to keep an eye on this project because 2024 is when the first deliveries are starting.

All right. Let's jump into the comment section. Let's jump in. Luke Miller. Hi, guys. Afternoon from Montreal. One of your neighbors, Fred. Hey. Obviously. Nick Cedar. Question, Seth. Can you comment on what you think is the risk of buying a used Bolt that has not had a battery replacement? It's unclear at this point how dangerous it is. Can GM really replace every battery?

GM said they are going to replace every battery. So I would say you have a pretty good shot if you get a used bolt that hasn't been replaced yet. I mean, I think they're guaranteeing it. So I wouldn't worry about getting a new battery. It might take some time. In the meantime, I think the batteries are relatively safe. Like maybe, you know, don't charge in your garage or whatever.

um whatever and obviously their recommendation is don't uh charge to 100 just charge to 80 i think in that case you're fine um you know like 10 10 caught on fire

obviously not good you don't want that to happen but the fires are slow like i don't want to make excuses for battery fires but like yeah it's it's not a good look you know you don't want you don't want a battery fire but um you know i think it's relatively safe to get one just trying to get a replacement i don't think there's ever been one too that's been on the road either right like it's right it's always something parked and charging or so the big thing is like

park it outside and don't park it in a garage and then you're gonna be fine right all right good news fred uh luke miller says that fred apparently chat gpt is identifying you as a top electric car journalist congrats really i'm gonna have to check that out i uh if you ask chat dpt right now you can ask them who's the top electric car journalist and they're gonna say me

that's interesting that's awesome congratulations because me me two years ago like it's two years ago me i think because they don't have any information after two years so maybe i've been bumped up since who knows all right uh patricio benedon question is there a way to view the footage from the b pillars cameras on teslas any idea why they aren't included like in century mode or another feature thanks

Yeah, I don't think there is. I don't think there is because the Fender's cameras are the ones on the side that they use for the side. You got to give Jason Hughes a call or something. Yeah, maybe you can get some. I don't know if they even store it beyond a certain period of time. Maybe they use it for the autopilot, so maybe store briefly somewhere, but I don't think they do.

All right, Jonathan Root, notice how they never mentioned better acoustics with the new roof glass. That's a fair point, though. Is the roof glass the most important one for acoustic, though? I mean, was that even an issue? Well, I mean, I know it's an issue, but I don't think the glass was a big part of the issue. I mean, you double up the acoustic glass on the windows. Right. But yeah, it's a good point.

All right, we have a comment. Dan says, yeah, if the acoustics of the new glass was good, they'd have mentioned it. So some pessimism there. Carl in San Diego, Elon famously can't bring himself to release a compromised car. What makes people think he and Tesla will willingly design and produce a low range stripper car for $25,000? Well, first of all, what is a stripper car? Yeah, that sounds weird, right? Yeah. A stripped car probably, does that...

what they meant. It's got a pole in it. Yeah. I mean, they're making money, I think, on that base. Model 3 starts at $40,000. So how far down you have to go

The Model 3 right now doesn't have a structural battery pack, doesn't have the 4680 cells. That's going to be the big deal. So if you were just to make a Model 3 with that process, you're going to cut a lot of costs right there just with that alone. But...

Then you can add a few more things where – because the cost improvement on the manufacturing side of things, but then that also includes some efficiency improvements that will allow you to build that car with a lot fewer battery energy capacity. Yeah.

And that's obviously one of the big cost saving opportunities that you have with any electric vehicles. So if you just do that, you do a smaller battery pack with that, with the manufacturing cost improvement, already you're probably damn close to $30,000, which I mean, when Tesla announced a $25,000 car, I'm thinking a $30,000 car, obviously.

And then maybe some more interior, simple interior, maybe a cloth finish instead of fake leather. There's just a little few things there and there. And you get pretty close to that $30,000 mark, in my opinion. Yeah, smaller battery pack, cheaper battery pack LFP. You know, we saw that Mazda looking thing from China. I guess maybe something like that. I don't know.

I'm sure they can get there, somewhere near there. All right. Edmunds tests cars using Eco Mode and with a healthy mix of 60% city speed. Doing that, the current Mini Cooper SE is the most efficient EV sold in USA. Where's the love? No one cares. Well, it's efficient, but it's got a microscopic battery, which helps it being efficient. Yeah. So range-wise, it's not great. But...

For city driving, you're not going to spend more electricity on any other vehicle, I guess. Congrats. Our own Mikey G, who does the daily podcast that you should all go subscribe to now. He says, how do you foresee the transition from autonomy level two to five occurring? All brands, I'm guessing the public will be condemned to suffer through level two until level five regulatory cleared can be sold.

It is, uh, it is hard to imagine that, that transition. That's a good question because it is a hard transition to imagine. Um, first of all, level five, I think that's, that's the one that I've come to gripe with the idea that it's decades away. Like level five, we're talking about any environment, any conditions, uh,

like you if you've been driven in the winter in the northeast like it's everything gets dirty all the time all those cameras like i know that there is solution to that like there's just like an equivalent of a windshield wiper for for just the cameras all around the vehicle but it's not elegant it's it's expensive and servicing that is super difficult so

So level five, we can put it aside, but you can have a massive, massive impact just with level four. So level four, which is like most environment, most of the time, and a significant delay between switching from autonomous and non-autonomous mode. So like it's not like you can actually sleep in the car and they can tell you like when you're going to have to be alert and ready to take control.

So that's a big difference. And I think that's a lot more achievable, level four. But when you go from a switch to a transition from one to the other, so obviously level two is completely driver-assist system. It's basically cruise control. There's companies that are just, we're going straight to level four, level five, like the Waymo of this world and the cruise of this world and all that. So that's easier to see. It's going to be geofence systems.

Uber service basically in a city like that, that's easy to see. There's not that many companies that are doing what Tesla is doing basically. So trying to go from level two to three to four because on the other hand, you have like Mercedes and GM that's basically doing that level three. They want to focus on level three, which is also an interesting approach. And maybe you can see a little bit easier going from level three to level four because

than you can from level 2 to level 3 to level 4. It's a very strange way to look at it, really. But in terms of Tesla, which is the biggest one that we want to see, obviously, going from level 2 to higher, Tesla makes it sound like they don't even want to skip level 3. They're going to do it from level 2 to level 4.

But they just need to show, again, enough data over time. So they're going to have to convince the regulator to just a ton of data. And basically, it's going to be similar to a process of like when you go right now and you go to the DMV and you do your test, the driving test, and you need to pass that test. We're going to keep developing more and more advanced version to test those driving systems.

to get those level of operating up to different SAE autonomous driving levels. And then that combined would show a lot of data of it working in the background. So people are responsible, but it's working on the background, what it would have done, some kind of like real world simulation, if you will. And if you get enough data with that, combined with passing those tests, you're going to see some system actually being improved, I think.

All right, moving on. Stefan Fokjar, light ship trailer. We're talking about the solar trailer. Then you'd have to adapt the cars to drive and charge at the same time. I don't know what that means exactly. I think further down, somebody asked about charging both vehicles when you're at the charging station. You have to charge two different vehicles. So you have two different chargers, I guess.

So maybe that's what he's thinking. But at the same time as driving, he says, so maybe it's about the solar or does he mean like capacity from the pack of the trailer? Because that's not it. The pack in the trailer is not charging the car. The pack in the trailer is powering a drivetrain.

on an axle, on the trailer that is helping compensate from the efficiency loss that comes with pulling a trailer with the powertrain of the truck that you're using to tow. So there's no transfer of energy between the two. Yeah, you might have misunderstood that. Yeah, I think that's more like it. All right. Carl in San Diego, has Tesla ever officially admitted the kilowatt size of the Model 3 in various forms? I read a paper recently that referenced a 40 kilowatt hour Model 3

battery which sounded 10 kilowatt too small to me yeah i mean those are published but yeah nothing on the tesla side officially but you do get them from like the apa documentation and all that i don't know them by heart anymore uh used to but yeah uh 40 kilowatt hour sounds a little bit low i think it's closer to like 50 55 for the uh the base version which is the lfp now so

All right. Jeffrey Greik question. The IRA incentive says the Tesla open chargers include at least 3,500 new and existing 250 kilowatt chargers. Can't they convert a few and take most of the money to build new superchargers?

Yeah, I don't know how that works, to be honest. So that was the agreement. And I guess Tesla has like a specific agreement with the government with that because of their unique situation of having to have to open up the chargers rather than be CCS adapted in the first place.

But I'm not too worried about that. I'm sure it's going to be scrutinized like crazy by people because as soon as Tesla gets any kind of government money, it's like, oh, that's all the company's about. It's just about taking government money. But in this case here, it's like,

It's super hard to make an argument against Tesla not being the most impactful when it comes to DC fast charging for electric vehicles. And whatever share they get of that money, it's going to be not only the most well-deserved, but also most likely the best used money, government incentive towards electric vehicle charging.

So I think I'm not saying that this won't be criticized for it, whatever penny they get, they will all get super criticized. But I think that the smart people are going to put it in perspective that going to make it seem like it's worth it because it is, I think.

All right, Mikey's back. How much would you charge in money to haul the light ship for 200 freeway miles using the Aptera? The Aptera three-wheeled solar car pulling anything sounds like a pipe dream, but I guess if this thing's powering itself, then I guess you could pull that with the Aptera. No idea, to be honest. Yeah, I wouldn't try that. Yeah, doesn't sound like a good idea. Yeah.

All right, John Kachangas, the 25,000 Tesla manufacturing process will need to be developed while the factory in Mexico is being constructed. Would Austin be the logical place to set up the first production system or in Shanghai? It's a good question. Well, I mean, they already have the unbox process, like somewhat conceptually they have it. So, yeah.

Any new production line is going to be somewhat based on it, not necessarily the entire deployment of it. Tesla made it clear that this can be developed incrementally so you can have some of the part of the assembly to that concept and then eventually the entire unbox process can be the production line.

So I think any new production line that Tesla is designing going forward and deploying going forward is going to include at least part of that process and eventually all that process. So yeah, in terms of Austin would be a logical place, especially for Cybertruck. So I think Cybertruck is going to be partly like that, maybe not entirely like that since it's already been in production.

The production line has been in deployment for months already right now. But any new production line, so Shanghai, it's obviously going to be the new cheaper vehicles also supposed to be made there as well as Mexico. So yeah, you're going to see a production line like the Unboxed one in Shanghai as well as Mexico. All right. Stripper car is a Ford Escort. So I guess that's a terminology we're not familiar with.

No, I think he's saying like strippers are known for trying to escort and they can escort. Oh, escort. Yeah. Funny. All right. Kenny Armour, metal roof might help getting to that $30,000 price point. Is that right?

what like does glass cost more than metal like i feel like once you yeah but but we talked about that too last week anywhere i'm not so sure about that because also of the unbox process the roof access putting the glass at the end on top of it and keeping roof access throughout the manufacturing process might be a better benefit than a cost benefit of switching to metal roof though i guess you can also just bolt in the roof at the end but

All right. Stripper model equals automotive term for featureless. Elon is claiming the cheap car could be a robo taxi, which means it needs all the tech. Yeah, that I don't I don't quite get that idea. The cheap car being a robo taxi just because it needs all that, you know, the good computer, the good cameras. And, you know, like, are you really saving that much money by not having a steering wheel? I don't know.

Well, and also, is it going to be able not to have a steering wheel? I know they've talked about it, but just from the history of Tesla not delivering on the self-driving capability, it would be super risky to deploy the high hundreds of thousands units per year to a million units per year vehicle program that...

people might not be able to drive and then it cannot drive itself it's it's suicide like it's no steering wheels just that'd be kind of scary uh they said the cyber truck would be the first of the new construction style yeah to implement part of it yeah that makes sense the tesla van teased that the investors day will be based on the cyber truck platform and will be made of the same material and processes am i right

Well, so people have been talking about this Tesla van thing. When you say tees, I mean, you assume like the one that was on the image and with the cloth on top of it. I think that's the robo taxi that we're talking about. Yeah, and we've seen that a few times before. Yeah, it's not necessarily a van, though I understand why you would say that. But I think it can look like very different from a van. It can be more just like a people mover, basically. Yeah.

All right. A few more questions. Tesla's vegan seats are from the oil plastics industry. I guess that's like so they use petroleum. Yeah, I'm not that familiar with all they do. That's the fake leather thing. Yeah. And then Steve Sutton, they won't strip features from the car. It isn't cost effective to remove a $10 part. Hence the reason why they leave FSD hardware when people don't buy FSD.

Yeah, obviously that's not the reason why all the cars come with the FSD hardware. It's more of the value of unlocking it over time. So Tesla can offer obviously the subscription service later on, or you can unlock it buying the whole package later on. So there's a ton of value in that. But yeah, it is not cost-effective to remove it. That's for sure. But the reason is like you can still get the revenue from it later on. Sorry, even if people don't buy it.

when they take delivery of the car. On top of it is also the data collection. Data collection still happens. On top of that too, the safety features that are enabled through that hardware suite of the sensors and the computer, those are standard on all cars and they are powered by the same hardware. So if you want to have that, you need to have the hardware in the first place

So, yeah, I mean, those are the main reasons to do it. In terms of the overall cost, like, it is somewhat significant, but I don't think it's, like, overall, if it's in terms of material costs, I would be surprised if it's over $2,000.

thousand dollars maybe and then of course it is more complicated for the production because there's a lot of cabling that all the wiring that goes into all the sensors all around the car it's the bigger deal but that was part of the new unbox the system of the streamlined wiring so

That's going to be addressed a little bit, at least partly through that. So yeah, I'm not that much concerned of how much cost is added to the $25,000 Tesla to the FSD hardware as much as...

the steering wheel or no steering wheel like that's that's the bigger concern to me uh but yeah carl just says like 25 000 car plus 15 or the fsd yeah that's that's what this is aiming forward to well and that's the bigger concern i think too from if you if you zoom out of this whole thing because i think that's what this has been thinking they've been thinking

we are going to deliver on a full self-driving capability. It's going to happen. And that they're so sure of that, at least Elon is so sure of that, that he's like, yeah, we do a $25,000 car. You see $15,000 now for the full self-driving package, but he's been made it clear that once they actually deliver

the full self-driving package, if they actually do it, it's going to be even more expensive for that. So it's like it's never going to be a $25,000 car because who is not going to want to have it full self-driving? So it's going to be a $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 car in its view. And at that point, it's pure profit because it's, again, like I said, this hardware is no more than $2,000 or something like that. So it's going to be all software development costs that's going to be amortized through those profits.

All right. A few more. 25,000 car. Well, we just did that. Just did that. Oh, and then Steve Sutton, if Mexico permits are done this month and Tom said it should take Tom zoo said it should take nine months to build giga Monterey. What the timeline for the press is. Don't they take a long time to build ship install and configure? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I would assume that Tesla has taken that into account and the buy orders are already in for a while for those. We know that Gigafactory Mexico has been in the work for a while because it was supposed to be announced late last year.

So I wouldn't be too concerned about that. I'm sure Tesla is thinking ahead of time. And also, I think there's going to be a lot of synergy between Gigafactory Mexico and Gigafactory Texas. So they might be able to share parts and things like that. Because I think it's like a six or seven hour drive between the two. And obviously, Tesla has the deal at the border that makes it super seamless. So yeah, everything points to some synergy benefits from the two Gigafactories not being located too far. I mean, they are the...

Other than maybe like Fremont factory in Gigafactory Nevada, like this is the closest situation that Tesla has between Gigafactory and

So, yeah. Well, thanks a lot, everyone, for listening to the show this week. Appreciate your questions because, like I said, we were kind of short on news. It was a show news week. So your question helped fill up the time. We appreciate every single one of you. If you do enjoy the show, please give us a thumbs up, a like, whatever it is on the app that you're watching. And if you can leave us a five-star review on your podcast app, that also helps us tremendously. It's free to do, takes a second, and it helps more than you can think.

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