Tesla EV tax credit update, Ford Explorer EV, and more electric RVs
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One, we are live for a brand new episode of The Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host. And as usual, I'm joined by Seth Wintraub coming out of New York. How are you doing, Seth? I'm good.

All right, let's jump right into the news this week. Starting with a little exclusive that I have this week, I talked to a few sources and Tesla communicated to employees this week that they expect the IRS to release their guidance for the new federal tax credit for electric vehicles. The updated one with the guidance specifically for battery sourcing and battery material sourcing. Battery...

Battery pack and assembly, battery cells manufacturing and battery material sourcing. So these are all the guidance that are missing that are expected to have the biggest impact on the revised tax rate that was launched earlier this year.

Well, I mean, the most complicated impact, the most difficult one to understand for automakers, I think the biggest impact is most likely the cap on the income that eliminated a bunch of people, the electric vehicle buyers, and also the price caps on the vehicles. But that

We found that automakers have found a way around that quite often, including Tesla. So Tesla's vehicle, all the Model Ys and Model 3s were eligible for the tax credit, which is a big deal for Tesla. But now Tesla has made it clear to the employees that even though they don't have the IRS guidance just yet, they expect them in the next few days, which makes sense because we're at the end of the quarter. And they were expected by the end of March.

And they say that they are fully expecting to lose the tax credit, the full tax credit on the Model 3 standard range, which is the cheapest vehicle that Tesla offers right now. And the cheaper the vehicle, the more the full tax credit has an impact on the purchasing decision.

And, yeah, the reason for that is pretty simple. This Ternin range model 3 is using iron phosphate LFP battery cells. And those right now are solely produced in China. So Tesla sells Ternin.

for that version of the vehicle even though the vehicle is produced in fremont at fremont factory it is using cells coming straight from ctl in china so that's going to eliminate the 37 uh the 3750 dollars tax credit associated with that but they should still get access to part of the credit and at that price it should have an impact

Everything else so far looks pretty good at Tesla. They won't know for sure just yet until the guidance is released. But Tesla has the big advantage of, one, having all the other vehicles using cells produced in Gigafactory Nevada and now more recently, Fremont Pilot.

factory for the 4680. And I'm pretty sure that right now Tesla is producing at least part of their cells coming to the Model Y standard range or the all-wheel drive with lower range, whatever you want to call it, with 4680 cells like Gigafactory Texas. So those are all cells coming from the US. So that

Check that on the IRS list. But the battery material sourcing is a little bit more complicated. But Tesla also has sourced a lot of materials there from Vale Canada for the nickel. So Canada has a free trade agreement with the US, so that's good. A lot of lithium from Australia, also good. The thing that's going to complicate a lot of things is how the IRS is going to look into

the processing of those minerals. So the lithium has to become lithium hydroxide and this whole process is still vastly dominated by China. So let's say that Tesla gets the actual lithium metal from Australia, but then the metal goes to China or any other country that doesn't have a free trade agreement with the US, then do you still get

for having sourced that in Australia, that's the big question that we need answered. And we're probably going to get an answer in the next few days. But that's going to have a massive impact on Tesla for that, but also on any other automakers. And a lot of other automakers also don't have the benefit of having the cells even being produced in the US just yet. So that's also going to be affecting a lot of people

relatively soon yeah so um ford recently announced that they're going to start making lfp batteries uh in detroit or or maybe at blue oval but they're going to be making their own do you think tesla does that same thing i mean for the for the tax credit well i mean we do know that tesla said that the 46 cd cell is a chemistry um what's the term agnostic agnostic thank you

And that they imply that it would produce the 4680 with LFP chemistry. So I would assume that that's coming. Yeah, probably just can't get that up to speed in time for this thing to go over. But I mean, obviously, it's a lot of money to kind of leave on the table. It probably makes it worth producing those in the US. I wonder if there's some sort of like half produced, you know, if they can send...

you know, the naked cells over. And then they just like when the mole SNX was assembled in Tilburg. Yes, exactly. In the Netherlands. Yeah. I don't think you can do that with cells. They are sort of becoming commodities to a degree too. Like you just have to produce them in extremely high volume with low capital expenditure for the manufacturing capacity that you deploy. So yeah,

We need a cell industry in North America. That's what we need. And to this new AV federal tax credit, no pun intended, it has been successful, extremely successful as bringing investments for that. Like North America, especially the US, Canada, and more recently, Mexico has benefited from it too with the giant Gigafactory Mexico announcement.

These are all mainly because of that. Maybe Tesla would not have built a Gigafactory in Mexico if it wasn't for that. Now Tesla has made also a huge investment in Gigafactory Nevada to produce both the Tesla Semi and also their own 46-City cells. I wouldn't be surprised if you see some LFP there too. Of course, Canada has benefited a lot too with Volkswagen announcing this huge factory, battery cell factories in Ontario just a few weeks ago.

Battery material investment here in Quebec has been insane too with this battery valley that people are talking about around Pékinco. A lot of lithium refining, a lot of graphite production, a lot of...

basically everything is being produced there now except for the cells but we've been hearing things that things might be coming for the cells in that area too and it would just make a ton of sense. The real question is who's going to build it because as of now like GM has a big hold on everything there. They bought all the capacity from everyone so it would make sense that GM slash LG big partner for GM. Has GM confirmed any other partner for battery cell production than LG? Are they like fully on? No.

So there was some controversy over LG. There was like a disagreement about making their next factory. I think that had to do with GM wanting to get cylindrical cells versus the pouch cells or something. Okay. Yeah.

And then of course, you know, there's the, the bolt fires, which couldn't have helped the relationship. Yeah, no, that's for sure. But cause you know, you have Ford, like obviously Tesla now is, was a long time just with Panasonic and then now they're fully diversified and

Ford got in bed with SK Innovation, but then more recently opened up and started working with CATL. So everyone is seeing the need right now to diversify your cell supply. So I'm a bit concerned about GM if they are just with LG, even though LG is a massive producer of battery cells.

All right, we have a few more Tesla news to discuss before moving to other news this week. If you guys have any questions, we have Farf Olamu already in Farf Olamu. He even produced the pronunciation. I have a question, but if you guys have any questions, any topic you wanted to discuss this week, please put them in the comment section right now. We're going to have plenty of time at the end of the show to discuss them. But moving on.

Cybertruck, we love some Cybertruck production news. It is by far the most anticipated electric vehicle program of the year of 2023. And I know that some people are very excited about Tesla possibly lowballing it and getting

being ready sooner than we think. I'm not, I'm not on that train to be honest, but, but I, I do feel more and more confident about a startup production this summer. And now we saw Tesla is taking delivery of a second nine ton, a giga press. So this, these are the new giga press that, um,

that Hydra from Italy are producing. They are known as the biggest casting press in the world. And Tesla used a six-ton one for a while. And that's what's produced the rear casting of the Model Y that changed 70 parts into two parts. And now they want to use an even bigger one, a nine-ton one for the...

uh for the cyber truck and they already took delivery of one a few months ago they were assembling it and so that was exciting by itself and hydra has been teasing that they were building another one and they were shipping it out a few weeks ago and now we just learned that it arrived at the port of houston and on the bill of lighting guess who's the customer tesla so it confirms that tesla is getting the first two now it's not exactly clear whether

The second one is needed for the production line of just the startup of the production line of his having Tesla having a second one is going to allow more production capacity, overall production capacity. So it's being deployed right now for, because it takes a while to assemble those things. Like, look at that. This is like barely like probably 10% assemble. Once it's all put together, it's massive. It's like two like,

decent sized single story houses, two stories houses put together. So the big question is, is it going to be, does it need to be ready by the time Tesla start production or is it just going to be ready after as Tesla rent pop? Because we know that the rent pop is not expected this year. Cyber chart production in volume. That's more for 2024 if we're lucky.

But the fact that Tesla is getting a second one is still exciting because we know a lot of automakers are also looking to get some of those since Tesla has moved to bigger casting. A lot of automakers are not on board with the idea because there are some drawbacks, especially...

claim to be drawbacks when it comes to repairability, especially if there's a crash or something like that. It can be an issue if you have to scrap the whole frame of the car, basically. But a lot of auto makers have seen the big advantages in terms of the

footprint of the production lines in terms of all the welding that you avoid with it, the time of production. And this is making some claims about also just the overall rigidity of the vehicle and that could help with safety, of course. So, which it's supposed to be the number one priority of any automaker.

Therefore, a lot of them have place order. I think Hydro confirmed like 10 automakers over the last two years have place order with them. But Hydro says that it could take like a decade before other automakers can implement that into their own production processes. We have a new Tesla Safety Score 2.0.

All right. So that's been one of the more controversial programs for Tesla, the safety score, which I mean, a lot of people have known it for the FSD beta program, but now it's not so much in play because everyone that paid for the full subsiding package can get it regardless of their safety score. But so now it's more about Tesla insurance. So if you're in the market where you have access to this insurance and now there's like a dozen states in the U.S. that has it.

The whole product is based around real-time data that Tesla can connect from your car and use that data to determine how good of a driver, how good with air quotes here, of a driver you are based on that safety score.

So this has been saying, look, we're going to improve that safety score to be more representative of your driving behavior over time. And this is the first big update that we get. And it's a welcome one because there's been a lot of complaints like, um,

As Tesla started out, the things that were affecting your score were the number of forward collision warnings you get, which can be a problem because sometimes you get a collision warning when you're nowhere near having a collision. Then you have heartbreaking events too. So that makes a little bit of sense because if you're not supposed to be heartbreaking, you're supposed to see what's coming and slowly decelerate at a normal pace. Aggressive turning.

I don't know what that means exactly. Sometimes I do like to be more aggressive in my turns. I don't know, like...

like how aggressive it is that it affects your score negatively. Unsafe following distance, that's a good one, obviously. And if you get forced autopilot disengagement, so Tesla loves the fact that you use autopilot. Actually, the more you use autopilot, the more it's supposed to positively affect your score too. So that's something to take in mind. But if autopilot is as a forced disengagement, meaning that you're not responding to the alerts to put pressure on the steering wheel, for example,

then that affects your score negatively. However, I don't know if... Because sometimes, I don't know if you get that set when you drive with other pilots and out of nowhere, it gives you the red alert and you have to... Without... I've been...

I've been paying attention. I even have my hands on the wheels, but having your hands on the wheels, you know, doesn't necessarily have an impact. But I see that I don't have the blue lights flashing or anything like that. I don't have like, you don't have to do anything, but then out of nowhere, it disengages. Like grab the wheel, grab the wheel. Did you get that sometimes? No, I haven't gotten that. No, you never got that. For me, it happens sometimes. And normally I can see why, like if there's,

Like a level change on the road, on the highway or something, then the car doesn't see for a second. It doesn't see the road ahead and it freaks out, things like that. On the 20 here, we have a spot like that around Drummondville where there's a big elevation change and it doesn't see in front. And if I don't catch it first, it gives me this engagement even though I'm going straight. So you can run into that and then that can literally increase your premium the next month from your insurance. Yeah.

But Tesla has made an update to tune things over to make it a little bit more fair, I guess fair. And first one, added excessive speed as a new safety factor. More time spent over 85 miles per hour will lead to a lower safety score. So that sort of makes sense everywhere outside of Germany. What's 85 miles per hour?

In kilometers? Yeah, I was just for... It's like 120 or 130? 137. So yeah, that's fast. I rarely go over 120 if I don't have to. So that makes sense.

And do you have a speed limit at 85 over 85? In the US, it's pretty rare, right? 80 is the top one normally? There's one place in Texas you can go 85, I think. There's some places in Montana that you can go pretty fast too, but not much. If not most of the time, it's 80 then the top limit, right? 75 is usually. 75? Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Had it, unbuckled driving is a new safety factor. If you're over 10 miles per hour and Tesla detects that you don't have your seatbelt buckled, lower your safety score. It's also fair. It's also fair, but at the same time, that's bodily injury. That's not your insurance, right? That's not your car insurance. If you get into an accident and you're unbuckled,

Your car is not worse for it. You're worse for it. Right, right. A lot more blood to clean up. Yeah, and well, does car insurance in the US includes your own personal insurance? Like your health insurance? I get into a car accident, does my insurance or the other person that involves insurance goes into play? Or if it's your health insurance that covers your own cost, your own compensation cost? That's a good question. I don't know for sure. I mean, I know that...

if you hit somebody else your insurance pays for their hospitalization but if your car insurance pays for it yeah yeah your car insurance pays for their hospital insurance or their hospital stay yeah i don't know that's a good question yeah because that would make sense for that but otherwise it doesn't because like it wouldn't affect tesla's uh if the other person that you hit with your tesla vehicle with this insurance doesn't have their seat belt buckle then that would happen in fact on tesla's insurance

Anyway, this is a big one here. Updated late night driving to be risk weighted based on when you are driving from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. The impact of late night driving on your safety scores will depend on the proportion of time spent driving in each hour from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. The impact on your safety score is now reduced earlier in the night and increased later in the night.

So that's an interesting one. So before I assumed that whenever, how much time you spend between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. driving, that would affect your score. Now, less so if it's, let's say, between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m., but if it's between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m., that would have a bigger increase on your premium. So that's one of the biggest complaints that I've seen from people.

um that have this insurance like if you like i get what this is saying there is a higher risk of accident at night and also like late night driving can be associated with not just like sleep deprivation but also like being inebriated and all that uh however like you have some people that just have to like let's say that you uh work in the city

And then every week, Friday, you leave at 8 and you drive to your cottage and then it's four hours away. Then you have like two hours of driving between 10 and midnight every week. What are you going to do about that? There's nothing to do. And that would increase your insurance, even though it doesn't seem to have much added risk. So now it seems that Tesla would try to weigh that a little bit better, but it's still not exactly clear from what they talked about in the update.

And the last one is updated the hard braking safety factor. So now it excludes braking events that occur when the vehicle detects the yellow traffic lights. That makes sense. You're trying to be a good driver by braking harder in those occasions, so you shouldn't be negatively affected by it. So that sounds like a good update from Tesla if they do detect that yellow traffic light. But Tesla is not. That would be like autopilot, FSD, but it obeys.

Overall, it seems like a good step in that direction. And Tesla came out. I don't think Tesla wanted to have an insurance product. They were kind of forced to do it because Tesla owners were complaining about higher insurance from a lot of the bigger policy writers in the US specifically, but also in other markets. So, yeah.

Tesla kind of tried to put pressure on them with that by offering lower insurance that is based on real-time data. And it makes sense to be based on real-time data, too, if you're willing to share that data with your insurers. Other insurers have been doing it, but Tesla obviously has way more insight into how people drive their cars because they're fully connected. Yeah.

So this could be a big business for Tesla, but it only works if it works, if that safety score is representative of how good of a driver it is. And so far, I mean, I know Seth, you've been frustrated with the safety score for a long time, even though it's not about Tesla insurance, about FSD beta. But like based on your experience with the safety score on FSD beta, you wouldn't get Tesla insurance with it, right?

Well, I would probably be at such a high rate that it wouldn't make sense for me to get insurance from Tesla. But all my safety score points were like problems getting out of my driveway where Tesla thought I was doing something that I wasn't. So it's like if the FSD gets better and the fuel

stuff gets better, then theoretically I won't have as many false positives and my safety score would go up. And then theoretically my cost of insurance would go down. Although anecdotally, we've heard that people making claims with Tesla have had some issues getting the money. And I don't know. I mean, we've heard... Not just getting the money, but...

I mean, if you ever made an insurance claim before, you know it's not an easy thing to do and there's a lot of investigation involved and all that. So you have to talk to people and customer service is not Tesla's biggest strength. Like just getting someone on the phone is hard sometimes. And you would think that for Tesla insurance, if you've just been in an accident –

And you need to get someone involved relatively fast. You need to talk to someone relatively fast. And it's apparently not up to standard just yet when it comes to Tesla insurance. It's things that it can improve, though, for sure. But obviously also Tesla's goal is to never have any accidents. So we're also not very close from that either. Yeah.

Speaking of what is supposed to provide that lack of accident is this self-driving program for Tesla. And there was a report I was making around this week coming from SFGate about they interviewed a bunch of former Tesla engineers discussing the move to remove the radar. And they described a situation where a decent amount of engineers at Tesla autopilot program

were pushing back against the move to remove the radar. And the report described Elon Musk basically completely overriding the engineers and going full speed into vision only, no more radar.

which is not exactly surprising, to be honest. But I find it interesting because especially in the context that Tesla is adding back a radar now with RDR8-4, that has been confirmed, even though the company hasn't commented on it just yet. We have extremely strong evidence at this point that Tesla has added a radar to hardware 4.0, which is starting to be rolled out through the Model S and X.

But we did report at the time that Elon had confirmed, even at the moment that they were removing the radar, that he did admit that a radar, if it's a high-resolution radar, is safer than just a slow vision. So that's one of the last communications we had with Elon before he blocked us. But he said that a very high-resolution radar would be better than pure vision, but such a radar does not exist. That was in 2021. Okay.

I mean, vision with high-res radar would be better than pure vision. And now that's what we assume is happening right now. So the new radar is high resolution and it is in combination with the vision system. It is better. The report also had another interesting thing that I think is worth mentioning. And that's the fact that while we already knew that Elon has sent a bunch of Tesla investors, not investors, sorry, engineers to Twitter after he bought it last year.

But now we learned that even Tesla's head of autopilot software, like the Ashok Helaswamy, might be missing out his last name, but Ashok is the head of autopilot and self-driving software at Tesla, arguably the most important program at Tesla and the one that is the most behind on its timelines, the promised timelines. So it's pretty wild that Elon would let Tesla

The guy in charge of most of the program that is behind, like go work at Twitter on some. I know that if you base it on Elon saying that like the woke mind virus and all that is the most important thing in the world and everything. But you don't see him say that at the same breath that he's like, oh, by the way, also, we need to save the millions of lives that self-driving could save. Yeah.

I would think that that's a little bit more priorities, especially almost like

How big of an impact Twitter is going to have on wokeness, really? I don't see it. Even if it can level things out a bit, which probably would be good. But it's not. It's making it worse. Yeah. Just doing it is super hard to do. I'm not saying that they're going to do it, but let's say that perfect world, they fixed it. They managed to fix a cultural problem with engineering. Good luck with that, but maybe it's possible. Yeah.

But even that, like Twitter is just a small part of the public discourse these days. Like it's not going to have that big of an impact. While if you do solve self-driving, that's undeniable. The impact it's going to have on life saves from accident for sure, but also just on economical impact that it's going to have on the world. Massive. And then you're going to let the guy that's in charge of that go work at Twitter.

I wouldn't say what. I would say he probably made him go work at Twitter. Yeah, well, that's where I... He wasn't like, hey, what are you doing today? Not much? Oh, come over. I don't know. I don't know about... Because there's something... I don't know. SEC could get involved in things like that. I think it's more of a situation. You're right. He might have felt obligated to do it, but it might be a situation like, I need help at Twitter right now.

So if some people off your time at Tesla, even though Tesla is not a nine to five job, like I normally ask you to be there all the time. They want you to be there all the time. But like off your Tesla job, if you want to spend some hours at Twitter, like you'd be welcome and all that.

And then that email found its way into Ashok's inbox. And he was like, oh, that's coming from Elon. I better put a few hours in at Twitter this week. It makes no sense. It's pretty nuts. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of that, especially considering just how behind Tesla is on its self-driving promises. Yeah, it's not like full self-driving is just going really swimmingly. It's like in trouble and people start wanting out now.

And putting the head guy on that on Twitter is just like really bad publicity. Not a great look. All right. There's already some automakers that are taking advantage of Tesla opening up its network in the U.S. to non-Tesla electric vehicles. And Rivian is one of them. And Rivian is not surprising that it's one of them that's getting on board as early just because they basically have copy-pasted their charging strategy from Tesla. They went...

Instead of relying on third-party network, like most of the automakers, they want their own. The adventure network, which is the equivalent of the supercharger network. And then they have their waypoint network, which is just like Tesla's destination network. So yeah, I mean, they're like the exact same thing. But at the same time, the adventure network is just like, I think they have a dozen or maybe two dozen stations open just yet. So it doesn't have a massive impact yet.

So as soon as they saw that Tesla was opening the network with the first magic dock stations in New York and California, they already released less than a month later, they released an update to their software where they added those locations directly into their navigation system. So now when you're planning a trip in your Rivian, the superchargers stations show up and you can use them

to charge if they are at an optimal location. Now, obviously that doesn't have a great impact right now because... But...

It doesn't have a great impact right now, but long-term, it's a great strategy because I think there are roughly the same numbers of Tesla supercharger stations in the U.S. right now that non-Tesla viewers can use and Rivian drivers can use as they are Adventure Network from Rivian Adventure Network stations. So it's going to be interesting to see what's going to grow faster, Tesla's Magic Dock stations or Rivian Adventure Network. I would have to assume it's going to be the Magic Dock so that soon enough,

Tesla supercharging network is going to have a bigger impact on Rivian owners than Rivian's own network, I think. What do you think, Sid? That's interesting. Also, we haven't really talked about Rivian taking money from the government and working on their network. Rivian was like Tesla was until recently, where they would only allow their fast charging to be done on Rivian's. I don't know if that's going to

If Rivian's going to take some money from the government and open theirs up, it would be obviously a lot easier for Rivian to open theirs up because they have a CCS combo already. They haven't announced anything, right? We wouldn't have seen it. Yeah, they would have said something. I guess I think it's just such a small startup-y type thing.

program for them i mean you know they're planning like 600 or something though like yeah they're planning to be like a full-size like charging network yeah and they're they want to focus kind of not where like electrify americas are but more like you know near national parks and places where um you know chargers aren't already you know adventure network or there's adventure to be found i guess um

We saw that MKBHD and a couple other Rivian drivers tested Tesla's network, and they were getting good 200 kilowatt speeds on the Rivian. So it's clearly a good network for Rivians to jump on. Yeah, it's just interesting that Rivian...

You know, they're being very advantageous in jumping on the Tesla network. But at the same time, it's kind of curious that they're not just saying, hey, like there's free money out there for building infrastructure. We're also going to I mean, you know, if they're copying Tesla, Tesla is opening up their network. Rivian should open up their network, too. I mean, I know they have like single digit stations at this point, but it would seem like a good thing to do.

Yeah, but maybe they think that right now they have a bigger advantage having it closed because the first one that they are opening are the ones that, like you said, are really aimed toward adventure. Like there are locations that maybe you won't find any other charging solution. So because let's say you have a Hummer EV, for example, that you can also take off-roading and you could use that adventure network that would be super useful, but then...

the only options that Rivian wants are like, why didn't I get a Rivian instead of a Hummer? It could be useful. Maybe they're thinking that way. Not that, I mean, Rivian right now is a problem. I don't think it's the men that much. You know what's kind of weird is, I wonder if Tesla is still testing this, but you would think that by now there would be more than the original, what, 10 or 11 stations open? But I've

i would assume it's testing they already deployed those because i was surprised that he even made the announcement so soon after deploying the first few ones so it could make sense that they deploy those and then they are just testing to see how it goes before they move to more and at the same time you know we we just we said that the magic duck is a nice solution everything but

the short cables are a real problem right now like it is it is uh locking up substation and we said that we were surprised that this launched it like that at the same time so they might they might be slowing things down thinking that they need a new solution but that's because especially if they are getting the money for new stations it makes sense to just go supercharger v4 longer cable with magic duck like those those two together seems to be the the nice combo if uh

If you're deploying new stations. Yeah. I don't know if you can put, you know, old stations and new stations together, but like you would think that it would be easier just to retrofit one or two stations per, you know, location rather than making a whole location magic dock compatible. At least that would give more options out there. Yeah. Yeah.

But again, it might be part of the test in phase two. They were just testing that maybe. Yeah. And it was easier to just have them for the testing phase two existing station. All right. We're going to move on from Tesla news right now. But if you guys have any questions, put them in the comment section right now. I want to get to them in about 10, 15 minutes after we're done with a few non-Tesla news items that we're going to discuss this week. Starting with Ford unveiling the fully electric Explorer EV. Now...

In Europe, yeah. The big caveat is that it's not for the North American market. It is for Europe because it is the first Ford that is built on Volkswagen's MEB platform. So we weren't sure what's going to happen with that because that deal was made basically before Ford went all in on electric vehicles. And we were criticizing that deal a little bit because...

It is weird that you're going to afford like a big automaker, like Ford is going to rely on a fully electric platform from another automaker, a competitor technically, uh, like that. So we felt like they were like just giving up, uh, EV expertise by doing that. But it's, it looks like Ford saw it as something that he needed to do to maintain, um,

in the European market because of the regulation. They're a little bit more aggressive, forcing automakers to have a larger part of their overall sales in the market to be all electric. And they sort of weren't ready for that because they just had the Mach-E, which is an electric SUV, not the most popular thing in Europe. Though they launched it with the Explorer, which is also an SUV. Is the Explorer smaller than the Mach-E? I think it's bigger. Yeah, my first thought was bigger too.

All right. What do we have on this thing? But it's similar. Like, none of these things are that different. They're all like the ID4, ID5. It's the ID4, right? It's a Ford-branded ID4, basically, is it? Pretty much. I mean, that's what it looks like. What are the specs on this thing? I mean, the shape's a little different, but... So, it's a five-seater...

The interior is sort of a little bit reminiscent of the Nike, but a little bit more streamlined maybe. It doesn't have the dial either. Yeah, it doesn't have the dial, but it has the vertical screen. Right.

Where are the powertrain specs? I want to see how they compare to the ID.4. 10% to 80% in 25 minutes. That's better than the ID.4. Yeah. That's like the next gen. Wait, we don't have the specs of the battery pack or anything like that? I don't think they publicized it yet. Okay. All right. So just a few pictures.

A few pictures and the price. Price of 45,000 euros, which is just under $50,000 US, even though it won't be sold in the US. So it's not like we need to compare it. But it's a good looking car, though. Good looking truck. Yeah. I like the exterior design. Yeah. It looks like it could do some off-roading, maybe. I don't know. Maybe not anything spectacular. You can explore. Right.

We're not super excited for it, obviously, just because it's not in the U.S. And it's going to be probably limited in production capacity because Ford is going to get what Volkswagen gets them in terms of the MEB platform. But it is really weird that Ford and VW are teaming up because the ID.4 and ID.5 are the same vehicle segment as this thing and the Mach-E is...

it just like maybe ford is like look we're not going to have time or resources to build a battery factory in europe so for this first couple rounds of evs coming out of europe we're just going to use volkswagens i mean i guess that's the idea and they they do team up on uh uh electrify america over here in the u.s so that's something everyone does though

Right. That's true. But also, you know, it's weird because like Volkswagen is now doing Scout stuff in the U.S. That's definitely going to be a big competitor to Ford. Yeah, it's just a weird thing. It's like it doesn't seem like a long term. Yeah, we haven't heard much from Scout lately, right? Things are moving. I don't know how things are moving. Yeah, there are ways off.

All right. The Kia, that thing looks a lot like the Ford Explorer. I just realized that as I opened up the concept image, the EV5, an SUV from Kia that's...

it's something that's going to be just below the EV9, so something a little bit smaller. No third row. Yeah, no third row. Obviously, the EV6 is a sort of sedan crossover, so it's a little bit different. But this is the concept. Obviously, not something that... Look at that. That doesn't look very production. But the exterior, you can sort of put some money on because the EV9's exterior was...

was similar and mandated production that way. So we can have some hope on that front. In terms of the powertrain, no specific information, but it's going to be the EGMP platform, so it's going to be the same thing. Probably going to have similar specs as the EV6, just not as efficient, most likely, since it's in the SUV format. Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean...

You know, I think a lot of people are waiting on the EV9. This is kind of an afterthought because there's already a lot of this already out in the market. I mean, that's a Ford Explorer. Yeah. Going back to that. It's the same car. It looks very similar to the Explorer. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of vehicles like that. Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. So that's why the EV9 is a lot more exciting for most people.

Yep. All right. RVs, electric RVs. We've been talking a lot about trailers, electric trailers made for electric vehicles. But RVs are coming and we had two new ones on the list this week out of electric vans. So they are made out of electric vehicle platforms from Automakers. So this one here is coming from Grounded, a Detroit-based RV startup that is using the 4D Transit platform.

So we're not as excited about this one, just unfortunately because of the range. The e-transit is limited in range. Grounded, by the way, was just founded last year by former Tesla and SpaceX engineers. So we always love to see some startups spinning out of Tesla and SpaceX. A lot of talent, obviously, in those two companies. And they do seem to be producing a very nice product. So why I'm excited about Grounded is

It's more about if they can get everything working nicely on this, well, when the next E-Transit comes out with a bigger range, then it's going to be easy for Grounded to just keep updating their RV offering with

vehicle platforms that are have a powertrain that's more in line with the needs that you have when you have an rv because like look at that this is a great looking little electric van here a van life hashtag van life and whatnot yeah um like uh set you like the modular modularity what's it yeah modularity uh so um i actually got to talk to those guys a little bit

But and their big spin is, you know, they have a client right now. They're sending like, I think, three to five vehicles to that there. You can order, you know, like, hey, I want two beds or hey, I want one bed or a full bed or whatever. And I want a desk and I don't want a bathroom or you can order whatever you want. And it's very easy for them to just plop in the modules themselves.

that you want so i think that's a good idea i think that's going to be quite popular especially as they start building out um and you know as you mentioned building on the e-transit platform you're kind of you've got like one power train to pick from and uh that's gonna improve so you know and they'll already have the space but i think they are they also want to you know even though they're located in like the ford um

innovation space, I think they want to be agnostic in their vehicle choices. So maybe they could put this in a Mercedes or a Bright Drop or whatever. So I like the idea, but with the current 120 something miles. 108 miles.

yeah that's that's not great it's it's just it's just not what you usually use an rv4 i normally what you would be aiming for is like just one charge a day you drive the whole morning you stop at lunch you charge while you stop as soon as your lunch is over you're fully charged you get back on the road you drive the afternoon you just move 400 miles or plus in your day and you park somewhere and you camp and

That's the van life I just mentioned. But now like this scenario, it's more like 108 miles and then you charge for like snacks after two hours of driving or something. And then your snack is going to be a long time because that's charging back that thing up

too full, it's going to take a while. So it's just not an ideal situation. But like I said, the exciting part is that if they can nail that... There's a 650-watt solar panel on top too, which is nice. Not like Aptera, but it's going to be a little addition. Maybe if you're out in the woods and you want to power your stuff for a little while, that'll help. Going off-grid completely. No, it's...

it looks to me what they're trying to do right now is to get all the pieces together for when the next generation, when they get an electric van that has more range, you can do it. Now, this is basically what the other startup this week that was on the

electric RV is what these guys named roll away. They're Silicon Valley based and they are partnering with GM's bright drop, which their division to make electric vans. And the bill is electric luxury electric van. They call it, they call it the hotel room of tomorrow. So,

So now you're talking about a little bit more decent range. You're 250 miles of range. So that's a full morning of driving, and then you stop for lunch, charge it full, drive back again. Though Bright Drop, are they good on the highway? It's a highway vehicle? I mean, they're as good as a thing like that can go. I don't know. I mean, if they're saying 250 miles, it must be a big battery pack. I would assume.

So spa class toiletries, a set of Yeti animatronics. Oh, I love Yeti. I have Yeti all over the place here. How do they do the farm-to-table breakfast package from a local sustainable farm? You just drive up to the farm and you get a... Oh, wait a minute. Is it like... You can't buy that thing? Is this just for hotels right now? I don't know. Makes no sense to me.

On-demand apps including room service. Okay, yeah, it's a fleet. So it's going to be like an Airbnb only experience type of thing? Different accommodation options. Okay, right now it's only pre-booking, but you're going to have to sell that thing. Come on. Especially with the Airbnb economy right now. It is incredible looking though. That's a van. That's crazy. Look at that picture right there. Yeah, right on the beach. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I mean, the best way to do it is you sell that to people that want to do these. You just kind of manage these and find locations to put them. But especially if you have them move like 250 miles, like you're right, how do you cover this room service and this form to table breakfast if part of the appeal is that you have 250 miles of range? Right. If you bring it across the country and then they're like, right, I want my room service now, please. Makes no sense.

It's brand new stuff, but we'll keep an eye on it, see how it evolves. Yeah, I'm really excited about the electric RV space. I think maybe next year is going to be the big year for that. Yeah, and the trailers too. The light ship that we reported on last week, that's cool. Yeah, that's super cool, especially when you pair it up with a Rivian or a Tesla Cybertruck or F-150. All right, we're going to jump into the comments section, guys. So if you have any questions, any topics you want to discuss, now is the time.

We're going to start right now with Farfallamu. All right. Question. If Tesla were actually serious about NACS or NACS, they would make available a cheap CCS adapter like the J7721. Has the ship sailed? Has Tesla missed the boat? Are we stuck with CCS forever? Well, what's cheaper than the Magic Dock, though? It's already there. Yeah. Yeah.

I think there's also limitation in term of cost when it comes to CCS. I think there's a cost attached to it, like licensing cost. Yeah. And there's also like a handshake. It's not just like a metal to metal.

But I do get where the question is coming from, though, is like questioning whether Tesla is serious about making this a charging standard in the first place. And yeah, I don't think they're that serious about it. So I think it was more of a last ditch effort, really. Yeah, it's kind of weird. It seemed like it came out of nowhere and it went nowhere.

All right. Uh, Kirti Shah, will there be a grace period? I think he's talking about the, uh, cheap Tesla. I think the grace period is about to end. No, that's the thing. That's why the Camilla, I should have said that by the way, I wrote it in the report, but I didn't say it on the podcast. Uh,

Part of the reason why they communicated that to the employees is like, let them know, let customers know if you have someone that's like, oh, we might get delivery on April 1st. Well, you're going to get a nice April 1st joke where you think you're going to get the tax credit and then you won't. So yeah, you need to be aware of that for if your timing for delivery on the mall through standard ranges around that time. All right, Dan, overstay says the takeover immediately warning does not ding your safety score.

Oh, that's good to know. I didn't know that. Again, we're talking about this thing. Okay. Yeah, you're right. It's probably different than the disengagement. It's not an actual disengagement. Well, it is disengagement, but it's not because of me. Yeah. All right. Denmark's speed limit is 130 kilometers per hour. That's... You're good. You're still under 85 miles per hour.

Backpack activates the seatbelt warning. Oh, that's a good point. Yeah. If you put like a heavy backpack in your backseat, sometimes you get that warning. Does it affect backseat? The score? Does it also match the backseat or is it just the drivers? If you put the backpack in the passenger. That's a good question. Something worth looking into if you have Tesla insurance. The late night driving sucks. I had to work where I had to meet at 3 a.m.

Yeah, it's kind of unfair that people who have to drive at night are automatically. Question, wouldn't the Tesla megacasting have a front and back? Therefore, we would need two megacasting? It's not clear exactly for a Cybertruck what's going to be megacasted. It looks like the bed is going to be one of them, but...

There's a lot more, like the whole origami thing that was unveiled in 2019, unveiling the Cybertruck, looks like it was quite the exaggeration, let's just say it like that. So yeah, it's not clear exactly what the body parts that are going to be megacasted are going to be. It would make sense though to have one megacasting specifically for one and then another one for another part.

So we might have to wait for that new giga press to be ready in order for the cyber-trap production to go. All right, Kyle. Kyle Rash. Yes, most U.S. insurance requires bodily injury, usually quoted as three numbers, where the first one is bodily max. My state, the minimum is 30, 60, 25 bodily total injury property. So your insurance covers your bodily injuries.

It sounds like we found the insurance salesman in the chat. James Corrine's question, what will be the next Tesla model that is made in Giga Berlin and when? Yeah, we talked about that a few weeks ago where Tesla had said that the Model 3 would be next, but that was a while ago and they haven't said anything in a long time. So it might be a situation where the Model 3 gets bumped for a next generation vehicle.

Maybe. Yep. All right. Regarding the Explorer, it's so much smaller than the ICE Explorer in the U.S. I think that's because of one, it's in Europe. Two, it's an MEB. I mean, the U.S. Explorer is like a seven seat. It's a big vehicle. So, you know, I think it's a European Explorer. I wouldn't like I think Ford might have messed up by calling it an Explorer because it's

They're probably going to have an electric Explorer in the U S and it's going to look nothing like the Explorer in Europe. So I don't know. Plenty of automakers do that though. Yeah, that's true. Different versions. Have you got a version 11 yet? I have not. Yeah, I've not received it, received it on my own car just yet. But I've seen some first drive reviews and,

As usual, mixed reviews, the same people that love FSD love it. The people that are a little bit more skeptical are still very much skeptical with the V11. So, you know, like I'm not too surprised, honestly, like even though for a while we thought that V11 would be the one that's going to get us excited and sort of make the path to truthful self-driving a little bit clearer. Yeah.

I don't... I had my doubts about that for a while and sure enough, the update seems to confirm them. But I haven't tried it myself just yet. Spring is coming too. The roads are clearing, a little bit less snow and whatnot. So it might be nice to try the newer version. So I'm going to do that as soon as I get it on my car. But I'm not...

overly excited about it. Yeah. And unfortunately, it's hard to trust the people who have gotten it because every release is the most amazing release ever. Yeah. And everyone is biased about it. Everyone. And the reality is not. All right. The European Ford Explorer is tiny. We already got a little over 4.5.

Is there any talk of castings in Model 3? Well, that's the thing that's exciting about if Tesla was building a new line in Berlin for the Model 3, where you would assume that they would do that. They would include the casting. But no, there hasn't been a change to casting. There was a Model Y with the Model 3 in Fremont, which is the only place that it's been delivered in Shanghai. Yeah.

Just because introducing, even though you get all these advantages for going from one part, from 70 parts to one part, you disturbing the production line for a vehicle that is so crucial right now to Tesla's numbers, it's not worth it right now. So no, there hasn't been any talk to updating the casting just yet. Though Project Island has been, the update to the Model 3 has been rumored to include that.

But that's not coming until like Q3 and the Q2, early Q3, something like that. So we'll see by then. It's still like three to six months away, three to five months away. We think it's that far away. I mean, we've seen them on the roads, but that's usually pretty far out. Most reports are citing like Q3. That'll be interesting. Yeah.

All right. And that's pretty much it for the comments. All right. Well, thanks everyone for listening to the show this week. We appreciate every single one of you. If you do like the show, please give us a thumbs up, a like, a subscribe and all that good stuff. If you're listening right now on your podcast app, we got a bunch of five-star reviews last week. We appreciate every single one of you that did that. It takes a second to do. It's free to do and it helps the show tremendously. So if you could do that, it would be appreciated. And otherwise, we're going to see you

Next week, a little bit early.