Tesla Cybertruck, new energy app, Polestar 3, and more
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Two, one. We are live for a new episode of Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host. And as usual, I'm joined by Seth Winchell. How are you doing today, Seth? I'm good.

All right. It was a pretty slow news week, so we don't have that many news items to get through, but we still have a few interesting things we want to discuss with you guys. But then that's going to leave us probably more time to answer your questions. So if you have any questions, put them in the comment section right now, and we're going to get to them. It can be anything about the subject we're discussing today, or it can be other subject in the EV space that you want us to address. All right. Let's jump in. The Cybertruck. So

We've been trying to track the progress toward production for a long time now because, I mean, it's probably the most anticipated vehicle program in the world right now. We are estimating something over a million people have reserved the truck. Just a $100 deposit, though, so it's not like...

Not that big of a commitment or anything, but still, people are looking forward to that truck. And even though Cybertruck is a bit late in the electric pickup truck space with the Lightning already come, the Rivian has been saying for a while now, is the Verado coming soon? We're going to talk a little bit about that later. But there's still plenty of space in that particular sector of the EV or passenger vehicle market.

And Tesla still has the opportunity to make a big splash just because of how big they are at quickly ramping up production. So that's why there's a lot of eyes right now on the Cybertruck vehicle program and getting into production. And the whole tidbit of news today that happened is like two new prototypes, or at least bodies, of Cybertruck were spotted at the Gigafactory Texas.

I was spotted by Mr. Joe Tegmeyer, and he's one of those drone pilots that keeps flying over the factory. And according to Joe, these weren't built at the factory, though. Tesla took delivery of them, so they were built somewhere else and shipped to Tesla factory, probably for some validation of the production process.

But we do know that also iDraw produces the big gigapresses that they use for the rear casting of the Model Y and the front casting of the Model Y too now.

They are building this new world's biggest casting machine. I think Tesla already had the biggest one at a 6,000 pound one. Now they're getting a 9,000 pound one. And it is to produce the Cybertruck's body. And we just learned this week that the iDraw Us finished producing the new GigaPress. I mean, producing these things like a single one, it's like something of an achievement. It's...

It's not like taking delivery of your average production equipment. The delivery of that is going to be a big step towards Tesla bringing the Cybertruck to production. And now the timing that we see those bodies being delivered to Tesla,

the Hydra new Giga press for Cybertruck production being accomplished. There's things brewing on the Cybertruck front, but the actual timeline to production is still a little bit vague because we heard two things from Elon most recently. Elon has mentioned twice mid 2023 for the production of the Cybertruck. But once he said,

start of production in mid 2020 and the other time he said volume production in 2022 which are two wildly different thing obviously if the latter is true a production should start like right now these uh evidence and those those two uh builds right there cyber truck bodies but things are well at least moving on that direction do you think they produce any uh cyber trucks by the end of next year

uh seems seems like far-fetched and here's why like well so I think they'll have limited numbers um but it doesn't seem like they're going to be producing customer vehicles by then um and you know so we just saw this week a Chevy Silverado being tested those are coming out next year like the mules of

a truck that, you know, on the street, like production came off a line. You know, that takes like a long, like a lot of testing. I mean, the Rivians were out for like two or three years before they even started producing them. Like they were driving up from South, South America. So yes, I think they'll probably get a few off the line. They're certainly going to get some like, you know, beta cyber trucks off the line, but it just doesn't seem like they're going to be able to mass produce them at that point.

Yeah, and it's also like a two-prong issue. There's the Cybertruck itself as technology that are new to mass production, including the exoskeleton. But there's also the 4680. As far as we know, the Cybertruck program is dependent on the 4680 battery cell. And as far as we can tell, Tesla still has issues producing those in production.

decent volume. Apparently, the goal is still to achieve that by the end of the year, but they've been late already, and I would anticipate some more delays on that front at this point. Yeah, and it just seems like Elon's a little busy right now with Twitter. It doesn't seem like... And frankly, who cares? They're making enough Model 3s and Model Ys

And they're growing, you know, the company is growing in size. Yeah, but they need a new vehicle soon to keep that pace of growth, like a 50% production delivery per year. There's still room to grow, especially from a little wide, but I think they need a new car next year for sure.

Yeah, well, I'm currently testing a Ford F-150, which is the same relative footprint and size. And it's just way too big of a vehicle. So I'm not bullish on Cybertruck. Although I know the U.S., it's like the number one selling vehicle in the U.S. by far for like decades. But it's just for me, like I'm kind of over the Cybertruck. I would like to see Roadster. I would like to see some upgrades to the...

the model you know i would like to see another uh line cyber truck just seems like you know a toyish not that the roadster isn't you know a mass market vehicle by any stretch but yeah

fit the description better than the cyber truck. Right, right. No, I mean, I think that the cyber truck is still going to be successful even though it's big. Like you said, there's plenty of hunger for a bigger vehicle, especially in North America. All right, this is interesting here. This has a new energy app that they are launching first with the Model S and X, but we assume that it's going to make it switch the Model 3 and Model 4.

So, Tesla early was kind of a leader on that front, like in terms of like giving you information about how your energy.

But they haven't updated that app as far as like a long time, like four years probably. And now you have a few competitors that are like, they know that a lot of electric vehicle buyers and fans, they like to dig deep into exactly like where their energy is going and try to optimize and so forth. So this new update to the app here allows you, gives you a lot more information and even gives you tips to improve your performance.

uh energy consumption here so you you get now you can track exactly the projected

energy consumption throughout a trip if you have a trip set and then you see the live current energy consumption to it. So you can see how you track. So like for this example, in this example, the person is consuming a little bit more energy than it was projected. And then you can even tell us exactly where that energy is going. So while they don't put the propulsion, but obviously they put it here.

Okay, they put it on this example, not the other one. So yeah, the driving, so the propulsion of the vehicle, that's obviously most of it. So on this 12.3 miles trip, 9.8 already has been used for the driving propulsion, then 0.8 for climate. 1.5, that's not necessarily, that's in the driving too, but part of the elevation contributed more. So 1.5 miles, 1.5 miles.

If you're going downhill, will it be negative? I would assume so. Yeah. That makes sense. All right. You see the next, next to it, you have, so it's the consumption versus trip product projection. Okay. So that's actually what was consumed. And so the elevation was more than what the, so that, so we know that Tesla has been putting a lot more of these factors in now into the action. I think elevation has been in there for a while to be, to be fair to, I don't think that's completely new. Uh, but yeah,

So it looks in this case, so that's not the fault of the driver here. That would be the fault of Tesla's own projection. So 0.7 miles more that it consumed for elevation rather than what was projected. But the projection on the elevation that would be on Tesla's fault, right? So you also get a range tip. Staying below 70 miles per hour will sell you 1.1 miles this trip. So that's obviously speed is a big factor. If you drive slower, you're going to

achieve a higher efficiency. Then setting the cabin temperature to 72 Fahrenheit will have saved you 0.2 miles. So in this example, people were going a little bit more comfort versus efficiency, which is completely fair. But they go even further than that. So in this second example here on the 20.2 miles consumed trip, you even have screen time. So the use of the screen consumed 2.3 miles of range.

I don't know exactly how is that taken into account, like your screen time, because the screen is always on. So when you play with it, it consumes more than if it's just on? Maybe if you're doing karaoke or something. I don't know. That's a weird thing to have. Or maybe if you put it in dark mode, it's better. I don't know.

Yeah. And that's also a lot, like 2.3 miles in screen time. That would seem to be a lot of... I wonder if that's like CPU or GPU as well. Oh, wait a second. So this is an example of park when you're parked. Because you see 20.3 miles consumed and 13.5 of that was sentry mode. So this is an example of someone who's parked and has sentry mode on.

Is the beeping from me here? That's me. That's you. Okay. Sorry. I was getting confused. So, yeah. Well, I'll check this out. So this is an example of someone who's Spark, have Sentry Mode on. And also the screen time is probably like when you have Sentry Mode on, you can see on the screen, you can see that the image of, I don't know, is it Portal or it's one of those video games that they have an image of on the screen. So, yeah.

That consumes some energy. Then preconditioning, so the person had preconditioning on. You would assume that that would consume more than the actual screen. 3.5 miles of preconditioning. It did consume more, but not that much more.

And you can even have like summon standby that affects it, though in this case it didn't. Vehicle standby, so that's assumed is just a regular vampire drain. But anyway, there's a lot of information to dig into. So once we get that update, it's probably going to be something interesting at first to look at your trip. I mean, the parking one is one thing, but obviously I think the trip projection is...

Yeah, I love this stuff. I like in my other EVs, I really wish there was more information that you could like you can get out in the fact that they're presenting all this stuff. You don't have to consume it. You don't have to go onto this window and look at it. But for me, like, I mean, the energy thing is already a little bit like that. It's just you don't have to break down by consumption and everything.

The range tips, I mean, you know, like, all right, if I turn off the climate or turn down the climate, I'm going to start, you know, I'm going to get a little bit more range. Or how much am I actually, you know, how much is air conditioning affecting my drive, that kind of stuff. So this is super cool to me. You know, one of the things about the Model 3 and the Model Y interface was that they took out a lot of, like, you know, how many watts are you using, you know, to accelerate and stuff. So anything they're putting back, I'm loving it. And this is something I like. Cool.

Yeah, this is something to always put a little asterisk on, though, because a lot of people are not familiar with it. Do I have to worry about all of that? Hey, Fred, I think you're muted. I'm sorry, guys. We have a technical difficulty here. Not getting any sound from Fred. He's muted now. Oh, okay.

All right, he's going to pop out and pop on again. So, you know, talking about the range estimate, the current Model 3, Model Y software has something like that. But I think that adding more things to the bottom is going to be a boon for people like me who are super into the range.

Are you there, Fred? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can hear me now? Yep. I think it's StreamYard having some issue with StreamYard today. All right. So we're all done with this energy app. So if you're a Tesla shareholder this week, not a great week. I didn't check today by the market close, but it was 6% by 2 p.m. or something like that.

uh this stock has had a rough go and a lot of it is a lot of analysts that they've been chiming in for the last few um last few over the last few weeks trying to both digest the q3 result that well not the result but the at least the production and delivery result that was released a few last week and um

there is this demand thing happening again. And even Morgan Stanley, like Adam Jonas, I'm going to say, which generally pretty optimistic about Tesla even mentioned that there might be a beginning of demand destruction being shown at the margin. And so that triggered a lot of people. And, um, this whole discussion about this, those demand is, uh, is, is back at the forefront of the, at least the stock market discussion at the very least. And, um,

Yeah, even Troy Tesla, who's been tracking the backlog, has reported that the backlog of order from Tesla is at a two-year low, basically, at 317,000 units. That's mostly based on the delivery timeline that Tesla reports itself. So does Tesla have a demand problem right now? My main thing with Tesla, the suggestion that Tesla would have a demand problem is that...

Why is not Tesla putting any demand trigger if they do have a demand problem right now? The biggest one, obviously, being pricing. Tesla has increased pricing recently.

a lot over the last two years. They are at a record high for good reason in part because obviously there's been a lot of inflation and supply chain issues. But if you look at Tesla's gross margin, they're also at a record high. So there's definitely room to decrease prices if Tesla was seeing a demand problem where they could take a bit of a hit on the gross margin sides of things in order to boost demand.

which they haven't done, which leads me to belabor that there's not a significant demand issue. There might be some issues in terms, especially in the U.S.,

Right now, with the tax credit coming, it's hard to determine how big of an impact the tax credit is going to have on Tesla because of all the restrictions. And I'm not just talking about the battery, critical mineral restriction, everything. In the case of Tesla, because of the Model 3 starting at $47,000, although why not almost $60,000, right?

these are expensive vehicles and there's there's the restriction of 150 000 income for a single filer 300 000 for dual filers so the these are vehicles that i mean if you make 150 000 a year it's you're stretching it basically to to to buy uh that car maybe not maybe not a new mold three but uh

any like a $50,000 cars, if you make $150,000 a year, actually it's less than $150,000 a year, because that's the cutoff limit. It can be financial strain on someone. So, so, so yes, that, that I don't know how, but there's definitely some people that it's, it's going to affect them. And if you do get in with the $7,500, then maybe like, Oh, you think I could, I could afford it with that. So yeah,

It's going to be an impact. It's just hard to determine how big of an impact. So some people right now are definitely waiting to place an order on a Tesla vehicle to make sure that they do get delivery in Q1 2023 when they can have access to it. Obviously, these are the other also issues.

that are going to affect it. We don't think that the base Model 3 can get it because of the batteries likely coming from China. So there's going to be a few issues on that front too. So there might be some people that are waiting for no reason right now. So that might be affecting the demand. But going into 2023,

Especially if they get it on all Model Y variants, thanks to the $80,000 limit on an SUV. No matter what you consider an SUV, $7,500, that's going to make a decent difference. And if the battery requirements are okay, which we think they probably are since the batteries are coming from GeoFactory Nevada, I think...

I think Tesla is not going to have any problem going to 2023 for the demand. But right now, that might be like a weird little situation at this moment in Q4. Yeah. Do you think it's possible that other car companies and cars are eating into Tesla's demand? So people buying Kia EV6s or there's a new Mercedes EQB on the market that kind of competes well with the Model Y. Is it possible that

you know that we're starting to get to the you know we're starting to get as many electric vehicles as there is demand that's not what i'm seeing like especially if you're talking about ev6 and ionic 5. uh the only reason there is any inventory right now is some greenness on the on the dealership front right otherwise every every everything will be sold out so

I think there's a few factors coming in right now with some higher prices and the fact that the economy right now is also not very stable footing. Some people are like, all right, I might push the purchase of a new vehicle. But still, the market is crazy. My friend just took delivery this week of a VW ID.4.

And you could sell it right now for like $15,000 more than he bought it. There's a dealership not too far from the dealership that he bought it that has one. I think it's an Audi dealership that has some used VW ID.4. So the market is still crazy on the demand on EVs. I don't think we have any demand matching production just yet.

yeah go ahead on an unrelated note um I have so I'm really my my I just got my mom a Bolt EV and I'm really kind of tempted my neighbor just got a Bolt EUV with Super Cruise I'm really tempted to trade in my Model 3 for a Bolt EV because I can get so much for the Model 3 I'll probably profit like

I don't know, maybe $10,000, uh, by selling my model three for, you know, like $35,000 and getting a bolt for $25,000. Or maybe I get, you know, a nice decked out bolt EUV with the sunroof and stereo upgrade and super cruise. So what do you think about that? Like if I can break even on a brand new bolt EUV with super cruise and, you know, everything for 2018 base model, long range, uh,

Model 3. What do you think about that? Oh, that's a tough one. I mean, you... There's the warranty aspect of it, though. That's nice. That's definitely something, like, a lot of people, like, they just trade in their cars when the warranty is running out. So...

you would get a brand new warranty. That's nice. But personally, I think I would still prefer driving a Model 3 over a Bolt EV. Yeah, I agree. The driving experience for sure. But for me, it's kind of nice to have a hatchback. It's kind of nice to be able to zip around in a small car versus the Model 3, which is not a big car, but it's a sedan, so it's a little bit longer, a little bit wider.

There's more room in the garage. There's all these little things. And for trips, we have the Model Y, which has full self-driving and all the other silly stuff. So it's not like we're going to have problems on trips because we got the Bolt. We have the Model Y for trips. And I'm thinking maybe I should get a brand new Bolt and make money off the whole thing. There's a...

I'm losing your audio again. There you are. I am having issues again. Yeah. The other things, like you would trade it in with the GM dealership, with your local GM dealership, your Model 3? No, I'd probably sell it. Yeah, that's one thing. If you want the best price, you probably have to sell it yourself. Right. That's more work, too. That's a pain in the butt, yep. Well, maybe I'll see what GM will give me, but...

yeah a lot of people come in think like supercharger and stuff like that that definitely is the biggest disadvantage but i was not going to mention it because of course that also has a small y and that's what you're going to use in there yeah and you know we use that car for just around town and you know it's just the same garage charger all right uh in um in new mexico

Tesla has doubled down on its strategy to use tribal land to open service centers and stores. So we reported on that last year and we thought it was a very interesting approach from Tesla. There's still a few states out there that doesn't allow Tesla to have its direct sell model to operate its own stores and its own service centers.

Service centers is a pretty wild one. They don't even allow Tesla to service their own car. It's insane. But New Mexico is one of those states. But also it's one of those states that has a lot of tribal land that's actually pretty close to big city centers. Well, I mean, there's not huge cities in New Mexico, but there's Santa Fe and there's Albuquerque. And so last year, Tesla made a deal with a local company

uh tribal group uh native group the nambe pueblo i think that's how you first nation of nambe pueblo and that was uh they took over basically an old casino north of santa fe uh to build a location there to service the area so we it's a way to get around the fact that okay you the laws in the states say that an automaker cannot operate its own um its own service center or store

on state land. Well, it's not state land, it's native land. So they're fine with that. And it was successful enough that they did it again today. This week, they announced a deal with the Santa Ana Pueblo or they have land that's really close to Albuquerque. So that was the other big city center that Tesla needed to cover.

And now they made a deal with them to open a location there. And I thought it was interesting because even the cabinet secretary and a bunch of politicians uploaded the slits approach in the announcement. But they are the legislation. So they are the ones that are preventing this. They are the one that's forcing this. So they have to go to the native tribes in order to establish a service in the area. It's pretty crazy.

So now Tesla is basically covered in New Mexico, at least Albuquerque and Santa Fe. And there's Las Cruces too in the south of the state. But Tesla has a service center in El Paso that is pretty close to that. So I assume that's for now. That's going to be it for Tesla in New Mexico. Kind of sad that they have to do that. No, today, like 2022. Well, it's good business for the native tribes. Yeah. At least. Get some smokes and get some Teslas. Yeah.

All right. Moving on from Tesla News, Polestar 3 was officially debuted this week. So we have all the specs and the price, which was a little bit surprising. Actually, it's a little bit more expensive than anticipated. $84,000 is starting price. Starting price. Crazy. And they priced themselves out of the tax credit too. So I don't know what's happening there.

because it's an SUV. So $80,000 is the top price that you can have the access to the tax credit. And they announced that it's going to be built in the US. So, you know, Polestar has been one of those foreign automaker that's been near the strategy of actually building their cars in China and exporting them.

So they have success with that with the Polestar 2. But now the Polestar 3 announced that they're going to build it in the US, but you would assume that it is to get access to the tax credit, but it is priced out of the tax credit. I think the first they were talking about $75,000 price, which would have been right on the margin of it, but apparently not. So in terms of the design, you can see it here. I think it's solid. I'm a fan.

Yeah, I mean, it looks awesome. You know, the specs are awesome. What is it? How big is the battery? It's huge, right? 111 kilowatt hour of battery. Yeah, so that seems like almost too big, to be honest with you. Well, 300 miles EPA, so I assume that it's not like the most efficient vehicle out there. Right. It's pretty boxy, pretty big.

Yeah, but I mean, that's probably why it costs so much. I feel like they probably should have come with a base model with a smaller battery, maybe like an 85, 90 kilowatt hour. And, you know, a price tag, maybe like 70,000. But, you know, this is what they have. Yeah, it's a big vehicle. 5,700 pounds. It is heavy.

3,500 pounds of towing capacity, that's not bad. Drag coefficient 0.29, that's pretty not bad. Yeah, for an SUV, it's not bad. 250 kilowatt charging, also very good. Look at the interior here. If you're familiar with the inside of the Polestar 2, at least the driving situation and the center display and all that, it's extremely similar.

There's no pictures of the backseat. I assume this can be a third row in this, no? I would assume, yeah. I mean, for that price. No pictures. No pictures of the third row. Yeah, it's kind of sporty. Yeah, I guess it's not a done deal. I mean, it's called a Polestar 3 third row now. Maybe not. And if there was one, I feel like we would have led with that, but maybe not.

No mention of a third rule. That would be a bummer. That would be a bummer. All right. You'd mentioned it earlier a little bit, but you spotted a post of a rare Silverado EV prototype charging at HFR America. Yeah. So I actually got a little bit more details on this, which is a little scary to me, but...

Yeah, just a Reddit poster posted this, and I followed up with him, and he gave me some more photos. It's kind of like the one we saw a few months ago that GM shared a video of. For some reason, GM doesn't have the trim on their prototypes. I guess that's a way to camouflage them a little bit. You mean like, I know we saw the Hummer EV also had that. Yeah.

Yeah, it just seems like a weird thing to do, like roll around with car in seems like pieces. Anyway, we've seen the Hummer, so it's not like a one-off or something. But we saw a video earlier of the Silverado EV in testing, and it looked quite a bit like this, but there was some silver bolts and stuff. So maybe not the same exact vehicle, but seemed pretty close. Yeah.

So we talked to the guy, the Redditor who had taken the pictures. He said that they tried charging at one Electrify America. It didn't start. Or actually, it was charging at 30 kilowatts, which probably takes like six hours to charge a Silverado at that speed. And then they had to move over to another one. And then they got like over 100 kilowatts. So yeah.

I'm actually driving a Ford F-150 to Detroit this weekend, and I'm using Electrify America stations. And the nice part is that I got plug and charge. The bad part is that everybody I've ever talked to says, be careful, Electrify America aren't reliable. And, you know, sometimes you get really great speed. Sometimes you get abysmal speed.

So, you know, I don't want to be sleeping at a Electrify America station while this thing is charging. So hopefully that goes well. You have to change it up to like sometimes when it's too slow, you have to switch it to the other one like they did. That's very common.

yeah i mean this thing is supposed to have 350 kilowatt charging too right so no it's 350 yeah that's what i said yeah that's that's you know lots uh it's kind of like the hummer i think in terms of like it's basically two it's like a car ultium battery times two so you know like uh yeah obviously the bold is one of an example of an ultium or sorry not the bolt the uh

the equinox so it'd be like two equinox batteries stacked on top of each other so each one of those charging at you know 175 and you get 350 i guess um but we'll see uh so i'm going to be charging the the ford um which i think tops out under 200 kilowatts um so i've i've checked the electrify americas there's taco bell at the first one so that'll be fun

And then the second one, I think there's a TGI Friday. So a little midnight snack. It'll be a late night charge. So hopefully there's no demand charge, you know, leveling there. Yeah. All right. Last piece of news we're going to discuss is Honda. So last week we kind of went a little bit hard on Honda about the Prologue, the umbrella design of it. And we said that, I mean, we like the car obviously, but it's the more of how...

aggressive or not aggressive they are about their all-electric vehicle effort especially in North America with the first one coming in 2024 again the prologue and then the second one coming in 2026 and that one in 2026 the first one that's going to be built on their own platform because the prologue is built on the GM Altium that we just discussed so now this week the uh they announced a major investment into producing electric vehicles and batteries into the U.S. so

a welcome announcement, but there's no, there's nothing that it doesn't enable anything new. Like it's not like it changes the timeline for anything of the vehicles or anything like that. It's still like this announcement sounds like it is to produce that vehicle that's coming in 2026. Uh, so the first one built from the ground up, but it is a significant $4.4 billion investment in Ohio. So while he was really becoming an EV up, but, uh,

GM being there, Ford being there, I mean, Foxconn being there. There's a lot of companies being there. And now Honda is investing $700 million in its existing Ohio plant in order to gear them for vehicle production and a new $3.5 billion battery cell factory in partnership with LG Energy Solutions.

So they're taking basically the same approach as GM did with their partner, their old sealant partnership with LG. Now Onda is doing the same, so.

uh kind of makes sense since they're basically using also gm and technically gmn lg's technology for the prologue it's going to be something similar for their only vcoming 2026 which we don't have any information about but construction is expected to start early next year for the new battery factory

uh, expected to be completed by the end of 2024, uh, for production in 2025 and ahead of the 2026 model with a capacity of 40 gigawatt hours. So a decent, very decent capacity. Uh, it is going to be a gigafactory at least. So that, that gives us an idea of, um, the kind of volume that, uh, Honda wants to produce that new vehicle at, uh, in 2026. Just see,

So it is a significant commitment. It's just I don't know how it is late. I think 2026. Yeah, 2026 is a long way off. Yeah, it's four years away. Three, four years away. They should be doing stuff today. Also, it doesn't Honda have like a deal with Sony as well? Like I know they have a GM Ultium deal.

But I thought they were going to build Sony's EVs as well. I wonder if those are going to. Yeah, but apparently that's going to be just a subscription EV or something like that. Like it's not even like they're going to sell it. Like I don't know exactly what that's going to look like just yet. But yeah. All right. Well, I guess better late than never. Yeah. Well, we'll see. Like they are really like flirting with like just giving up on the North American market. I think at this point, but give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

All right, we have a few questions before we end the show this week. Yeah, can you see the stars on the interface? The stars? Yeah.

I made like little blue stars on the, and the questions I'm going to answer anyway. Ah, yeah. Yeah. I see that. Yeah. I thought that might be a good way to root out the good stuff. All right. Dan Oberst. I would not want a customer vehicle this year. We're talking about the cyber truck. They need to test vehicles for a long time before I want to take delivery. I agree. Like, uh, I always, for whatever reason, order and like the first Tesla's off the line and I'm always regretting it. Uh,

So, yeah. It's part of your job. Yeah, I know. All right, yeah. So the Semi is the new vehicle that Tesla's putting out this year. So we don't have to worry about them getting stale with the Model Y and the Model 3. Greg Poland's Cybertruck, they covered it in white. That's like putting a spotlight on it for drone fires. They want them to be seen. Perhaps. Probably not. I think that's just... There's some breaking news, Seth. Uh-oh.

Trevor Milton has been found guilty in this case. Poor guy. We love Trevor. Guilty on one count of securities fraud and two counts of wire fraud. Ooh, he's in trouble. Not guilty on one count of securities fraud. He beat one out of four. He's been 333. I thought you were going to tell me the Yankees scored. All right. Back to...

Greg Poland. So Cybertruck is covered in white. I don't think that is to bring attention to it. I think it's just so it doesn't get scratched in transport. Oh, yeah, for sure. All right. I'd be happy to take delivery of my Cybertruck well after the first one is delivered. Yep. I think being the first is not the best here. I'm also feeling the same way about Rivian. We have a Rivian on offer, and I'm not in a hurry to get it, although I would like to get it.

You know what, too? Like with Tesla, it used to be at least the service was so good in terms of like they took care of you at least. Right. Like the mobile service would come. Fix your donor. Give you a loaner and things like that. But now what we're seeing with Tesla like giving up on loaners, not only giving up on loaners, now like they don't even like give you

Uber, they used to give you Uber credits when they didn't have loaners and they don't even do that or don't do that if it's for less than a day. I think if the repair takes less than a day, they're not going to give you Uber credits either way. So with the degradation of the service on that front,

Because I used to think at least you get an early version. Worst case scenario, your car is in service for a little bit as they fix their early issues. But now it's like your car is in service, but you don't have any other car. I don't know if they're going to revert some of those changes for the early adopters of new vehicle programs like the Cybertruck. We'll see.

Yeah. All right. The Jose, any word on how Tesla will solve seeing any objects a couple of feet in front of the front bumper, which the camera cannot see with the removal of the ultrasonic sensors? Good question. Yeah. Camera cannot see a couple of feet in front of the front bumper. Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's right. Yeah.

Yep. I mean, I don't know that. No answer for that one. Ultrasonic sensor things. I see all the Tesla fan blogs. They're like, oh, Tesla is saving hundreds of millions of dollars by removing the ultrasonic sensors. Hundreds of dollars per car. Okay, is that a good thing? Yeah, it's weird when people are...

fans of cars getting worse yeah and and because that's the problem with the tesla fans right now they still have this mentality of like tesla being the small like underdog company it's not like a 700 billion dollars company and and the market leader in electric vehicles it's like we need to start treating him like the big company and the mat that the money making machine that it is and

stop being so lenient on that front end thing. They did a cost-cutting effort with that, and they're trying to sell it as our vision technology is so good that we don't need those sensors. But it is a cost-cutting effort. There's no way around it.

Yeah. And also like safety for like little kids running in front of cars. That's not good. All right, Peter, will current Tesla vehicles qualify for the 2023 EV tax incentive? We touched on that a little bit. Or do they need to change battery chemistry and prices? Not price. I mean, talking for a Model 3 and Y here, a Model S and X won't be eligible. And that's perfectly fine because they are flagship super expensive supercars, basically.

But like we said, for the Model 3, our understanding right now is that Tesla is using for the base version, which is the one that is eligible to the tax credit in terms of pricing. I don't think it is. I don't think it meets the criteria on the battery side of things. So no, Tesla might adjust pricing on the higher end version that use nickel base chemistry. And that could possibly give you access for like a long range Model 3 model.

a little bit cheaper um maybe with some some furlock features we don't know so there might be something that could happen there on the model y front it it looks like that that is the vehicle that has the highest chance of being uh fully uh eligible for the ev tax credit so good news on that front yeah i think all that's going to shake out pretty soon like the automakers are going to have to say hey one way or the other yeah all right moving on

uh great poland question i have my wife driving a fiat e500 right now uh okay she says the model y is too expensive should i just go ahead and get her a model y in 2023 well that's the question for us should i go against my wife's which is a buyer an expensive vehicle get her a bolt dude

Yeah, I mean, the Bolt would be like a bigger, well, not the bigger, but it would be already like a big improvement on the Fiat, I would think. But again, you wouldn't like in terms of long distance travel, you wouldn't. I assume that you have already another vehicle. So maybe the wife's car can still be just like a city car, like the Fiat or the Bolt EV. Yeah. Yeah.

All right, Bernardo B., the supercharger network is what makes me only buy Tesla's EVs right now. Sorry, I'm not going to rely on EA. Yeah, I get that. And, you know, EA and EVgo and the rest have not been as reliable. And, you know, a lot of it has to do with, like, what EA has to do. So they have to figure out how to charge, like,

70 different cars from 20 different automakers. Everyone's slightly different. They all have to have a screen and they have to have a credit card reader and they have to have RFID and an internet connection. Tesla's need to have an internet connection too. A Tesla is like you plug it in, it does a little handshake and you start charging. There's no screens, there's no credit card readers, there's no stuff like that.

So like it's, it's hard, like it's hard to, you know, have, uh, EA stations that said, like, it's really like, I'm, I'm doing a drive on just EA chargers and I'm like, I have serious range anxiety right now. Like I'm going to be stuck in the middle of Pennsylvania, uh, with either really slow or no charging. And I'm going to be just stuck overnight and I'm going to miss a baseball game in Cleveland tomorrow.

Yeah, because at least the Ford is very good at range prediction. So it's not even range anxiety at this point. It's charging anxiety. You're anxious that the charger, because you're going to get to the charger. For sure. You're going to get there. Ford trip prediction is very good.

So you're going to get there, but then it's like, all right, if it doesn't work or if it works poorly, then yeah, that would give you a bad experience. And Ford has plug-in charge, which works with EA. So I don't even have to worry about credit cards or the app or anything. I just plug it in and it does a little handshake and we're off to the races. But still a little stressed. We've gone lots of times to EA chargers and one out of four will work.

or one will work really slow. So it's still a little sketchy, a little scary. All right. What's the order time on a brand new bolt? You can get one today at a dealer near you for probably $10,000 to $20,000 over MSRP. If you want one at MSRP, you have to go to a dealer who's

not horrible and uh talk to them nicely and maybe you'll get one in a few months that's been my experience here in New York I've heard similar elsewhere um I think you know if you're willing to wait you can get MSRP if you want one right away you're going to pay a little bit over all right hey Seth if you want to get a bold EV EV maybe you should want to park it away from the house for a while just in case that's that's funny all right Tesla Cybertruck is vaporware

That depends on the definition of vaporware. Yeah, I mean, at the moment, it doesn't exist, but it's happening. Yeah. Big Met on the Polestar, there's zero wow factor to justify the price. I disagree. I think it's a good-looking vehicle. I just don't think it's that good of a looking vehicle.

look at the prices of big suvs these days they are expensive like that's true if there's no third row though that would be disappointing like if you have a third row option then is it i forget how fast is it crazy fast or is it just like normal ev like four seconds 4.9 seconds i think yeah it's not too fast yeah it's fast it's fine it's fine like it'll be super happy people are super happy with it but

All right. Silverado, you know, the Tesla Cybertruck is going to be more than $70,000. So it's going to lose the tax credit. So the Silverado is a definite choice. Yeah, the Silverado is actually, they're still saying $40,000. And they're also saying there's going to be a 400-mile version. But I don't think the $40,000 is going to be $400. No, no, no.

Yeah, I think we should be careful though on that front. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some price adjustments there. For sure. And the Cybertruck...

I would be surprised if it starts at $70,000. I would think starting closer to like $55,000 or something like that. And isn't the tax credit like $80,000 for a pickup truck? Yeah, for SUVs and pickup trucks, it's $80,000. But I feel like the first cyber trucks that come out are going to be the high-end ones. Yeah, yeah, that's fair. All right, Nanda Holtz has a funny one. Milton's life is coasting downhill because of the...

yeah anyway uh i need to look into it i just saw that he was found guilty but uh what really needs to happen he needs they need the money back yeah get that money back that guy made hundreds of millions of dollars off of his lies like that's that's the main thing if he if he gets to all right he goes to prison for like five six years or whatever and then he comes out and he's still super rich like he's like 35 years old he's that his goal is he's probably like all right that's what i wanted out of this situation

all right what is the range of the Polestar 3 in terms of EPA estimates I think we said 300 miles right yeah

All right, here we go. Here we go. This is classic. Tesla will use the Occupancy Neural Network to see in front of the bumper. The vehicle will see the space before it goes there and store the information just the same way they do for an occluded vehicle. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. But then knowing Tesla, I'm like, all right, let's say that you park the car, you shut it down and everything, you leave, like you park it in your garage or whatever, and then you come back.

Does the car, like, remember as it was driving up and it remembers in front of your car now? Like, it should. It should. Also, like, that doesn't account for, like, a dog running in front of your car that it can't see. Yeah, no. Or a kid. Yeah.

Maybe Tesla will retrofit older car with a camera in the front grill and then add cameras to new vehicles. All right. We're just adding things to the vehicles. I want back an automaker that makes EVs but won't make their own charging stations. All right. Who are we talking about here? Why should I buy their vehicle if they can't invest and believe in their own vehicle?

I completely understand what you're saying, Ken. And historically, you've been right. Tesla doing that has had... It's a big part of their success. However, when you look on the other side of things, it also makes sense to not have your own charging network and have a global charging, universal charging for everyone, just like gas stations are. Gas stations are not for a specific brand of vehicle. So...

It would make sense. The logic is sound for the future market. It sounds from automaker, but they are taking a hit right now because the charging infrastructure is so far behind other than Tesla that it is making a harder decision to go with those vehicles for sure. But long term, you would think that...

The issue would fix itself. Well, not itself, but the charging network operators would fix it. So yeah, there's definitely two sides of this story. Yeah, and you would think some competition would kind of force prices down a little bit or maybe there's charging stations across the street from each other, like gas stations, like price wars or whatever. Hopefully that happens soon. And I think that is the end of the Q&A.

Well, thank you everyone for your question. A lot of great questions this week. A lot of interesting topics. If you do enjoy the Electric Podcast, please make sure to give us a like and a subscribe. And you can hit the notification bell if you're on YouTube. That will let you know when we're coming live, even though we're pretty good about being there every Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern Time. If you're listening on our podcast app, if you can give us a five-star review, that's free to do. It takes you seconds and it helps the show tremendously more than you would know. That's it.

for us this week. Have a good one.