Tesla getting close to FSD?, Equinox EV is here, Chinese EVs, and more
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Welcome to a new episode of The Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host, and as usual, I'm joined by Seth Wintraub. How are you doing today, Seth? I'm good.

All right. Before we jump right in, let's give a quick thank you to our sponsor for this week's episode, Splitvolt. The Splitvolt splitter switch automatically shares power from your existing 240-volt dryer socket with your level 2 EV charger. You can learn more about it in the show notes, in the link in the show notes. But we're going to talk a little bit more about them later on the show also because they have a pretty cool product that I think is useful to the EV community. And we thank them for sponsoring everything.

this week of the ATX podcast. This week was pretty light on news, not any title giant news this week, but a few interesting items that we wanted to discuss. And I think especially a big one that's probably going to have an impact for a while.

But what that's going to do is that it's going to give us plenty of time to discuss with you guys what you want to discuss in the EV world this week. So if you have any questions for us, you can put them in the comment section right now on any app that you're watching. We're live on YouTube, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and all that. So put the comment in the comment section. It can be about any of these topics that are listed in the show notes or any other topic in the EV community that you want us to discuss this week. All right.

First off, Tesla FSD. So we've been talking about how impressed we were with V12.3.whatever version you're in right now. And Elon, last week we discussed about Elon giving some kind of framework for the upcoming FSD update, mainly 12.4 coming probably next week, and then .5 after that coming the week after.

So a lot of exciting stuff coming. V12.4, Elon already gave his normal hyperboles, mind-blowing and all that. We talked last week about Elon saying that there's going to be

No nags, no steering wheel nag, no alerts to put some torque on the steering wheel. That's apparently coming with the next update. So that's obviously a big change. Yeah, it's a significant change. Now he goes a step further and he says 12.4 goes to internal release next weekend. We already talked about that. Limited external beta next week. So that was this week. So this is going to be this weekend, internal release.

external beta next week, roughly 5x to 10x improvement in miles per intervention versus v12.3, which is what we're on right now. So obviously, if true, like I always... We used to be, but we're not anymore people that just take everything that Elon says as fact. But if it is true, obviously, it's a massive deal. Now, why I put an if on there is like...

compared to what compared to 12.3 but we tesla never actually released any kind of miles per intervention data of 12.3 they just never did it so we have some you know crowd source data that's available out there uh there's the fsd beta data website tracking that has been pretty useful but again a very limited set of data compared to tesla's entire fleet that has fsd right now but

I guess we could take that and see what kind of improvement 12.4 comes in.

If it is, it comes close to a 5x to 10x. Even the fact that Elon says 5x to 10x, those are giant difference, like 5x to 10x. It's a wide range. Even the fact that he says that would point to me that he doesn't really know exactly. Even though Tesla has to have this data, if he's talking about mass intervention here, this is a data metric that they are tracking, I would assume, right? Yeah, I think it goes back to the hyperbole thing.

Yeah. And also like, and I understand when every time we talk about miles per intervention and disengagement and stuff like that, people are like, this is not like perfect data to assess the quality of a self-driving system.

I agree, but there's not a lot of better data point, better metrics to follow. Aside from just it performing and you using it, you have to look at the data and see, okay, when does it fail? And it fails when there's an intervention or there's a crash and all.

Hopefully, there's an intervention before there's a crash too. So the miles per intervention are useful. I know that some people like to use critical intervention rather than just regular intervention in the sense that sometimes the driver is going to intervene even though...

the fsd system could have found a way to continue uninterrupted but people felt uncomfortable unsafe or whatever so i think miles per intervention for the most part is right just especially at the scale that tesla is in right now where you know these outlier circumstances where someone is you know

intervening when they shouldn't or when they didn't absolutely have to, I should say. Because you should intervene whenever you feel like you should. I think that should be clear. So I think that the size of Tesla's data set should be able to work those situations out. But we don't even have that comparison right now. I'm sure that if Tesla can actually deliver on that 5x to 10x that Elon is predicting,

they will release that data for the first time and they probably will limit the data like to maybe like the V12 only, like V12 forward. Because I think if they release the historical data of this as my apparent intervention, we might get some pretty interesting surprises of like, you know,

the data going worse at times, even though Elon was saying publicly things like, "Ah, it's going to be mind blowing and everything." And then this update is actually terrible on the Miles Per Advention. So I think now that they have V12, they have AI end to end, no training compute constraint anymore. I think going forward, if this step works, they're going to start releasing the data. I wouldn't be surprised. Not very transparent, but

If it actually works, if there's improvement, I can get past the lack of transparency in the past. Because this sounds like a crazy improvement, 5x to 10x, but I don't know about you, Seth, but I know you're a technologist and you're following this space closely, but it feels like there's a lot happening with AI where it's moving like crazy fast right now.

Absolutely. It feels like AI is moving very fast. On the other hand, every time I hear Elon say anything about FSD, I feel like it's Lucy teeing up the football for Charlie Brown. I have both of those things in my head right now. I know AI is moving very fast. I know there's a lot of jumps. My own Tesla is actually driving a lot better than it did a month ago.

Those are data points I have, but it's been seven or eight years of Elon saying, this one's going to be the good one. I have both of those things in my head and I don't know which to believe or probably somewhere in between. Also, I have to say, I don't forgive Tesla for not providing data up until this point. I feel like that is something that they should be doing and

If that's, you know, if this is 5 or 10x, like, that means that we need to see what they started from to believe that 5 or 10x because right now, you know, they're just going to put out a number and say, well, that's this is 5 or 10x or whatever. So what is 5 or 10x from what to what? Yeah, I think they're going to release it for 12.3 if they do achieve it. But again, that's only if they do.

So that's 12.4 and it's apparently coming next week. Obviously, we've heard that one before, but if they are talking about next week, it should come in the next few weeks at least. So we're going to see it. Now, he also mentioned briefly 12.5, which he now puts in late June. So just over a month from now.

And he says that we'll also see major improvement in MPI, miles per intervention, and it's single stack, no implicit stacks on IOS anymore. So I know that's confusing because they were supposed to do the single stack in V11. But my understanding is that it was single stack in V11, but with the neural nets end-to-end,

With v12, that was only transferred back to City Street and not Iowas. So the Iowas sort of stick to v11 or a v11-based neural net that was released with v11. That's basically my understanding. So now with 12.5, they're going to re-merge that again. So they are both going to be in a single stack. Again, I don't know if I explained this correctly, but that's my understanding so far.

All right. Speaking of software stacks, I also have hardware stacks. And this one is a new one that looks like this is testing. So this Model 3 looks like I'm having some issues here with some jumping. I don't know if you see that on this. No, it's still. It's still. Okay. Might be on my side. Anyway. So this Model 3, now it's doing it again. Yeah.

I don't know what's happening. Let me restart my screen sharing maybe. Give me a second. Now it should get better. Maybe it's the top comment thing that's missing with the Twitter post. Yeah, it's possible.

Anyway, I don't really need to have the actual pictures. Let's move the pictures right away. So this Model 3 has a manufacturer plate, so we know it's owned by Tesla. It's operated by Tesla. And it has new camera setups. So this is the fender, the front fender camera. Normally it's in bended inside the fender. Now it's

popping out here. It's not clear if it's supposed to pop in and out or it's just standard like that. It's not. That also doesn't mean that this is being tested for specifically a Model 3. It's also maybe the angle of the camera testing for another vehicle and a future vehicle or a new version of an existing vehicle. We don't know. Or it might just be testing also just new cameras and actual hardware.

This one too, instead of being normally, if you remember, the camera is just over the plate, but it's not over the little curvature here. This time it's completely over. So different angle for the camera, for the rear camera. And finally, the B pillar camera is the biggest difference. Instead of being in the B pillar, it's now a little bit further out. Now inside of the window, but obviously that wouldn't be the goal of the... Yeah, I don't think that's the end product.

No, there's two main theories here. It could be, well, like kind of three really. Tesla could be just using this setup for ground-truthing. So to compare the data of the current system. And Elon has talked recently that he doesn't plan on using LIDAR going forward for ground-truthing and all that. So that might be it.

Or it might be, like I said, a new, a complete new setup for Tesla to, you know, use these specific angles of cameras and these new camera hardware on a new vehicle like the next generation vehicle coming with the robot taxi, for example. That makes sense. Yeah. All right. That was a big move this week from Tesla. Tesla launch in the US. So we talked about Tesla doing that in China last week.

last month. But in the U.S., they launched 0.99% APR financing for the Model Y for a limited time. So it's just for this month, I think. Yeah, until May 31st. New Model Y in the U.S., if you have good credit, you get 0.1% APR, you know, compared to 6% isn't generally what people are offering right now.

So Tesla is the one discounting that themselves. So if you get, here's an example, if you get $4,250 down, you get a 72-month loan, that adds up to monthly payment of $603 for the Model Y. That's the base Model Y here, the new one that was launched a week or two ago, the long-range rear-wheel drive. It comes down to, like I said, $603, but...

If you have a single income of less of $150,000 or a joint income of $200,000 or less, you can get access to the federal tax credit that brings it down to $500 a month. And then if you're coming off of a gas car, you can add your gas saving to that too. And you're basically driving for free. Not necessarily, but you know what I mean. It's very attractive. Obviously, this is...

something that Elon has been complaining on for a long time. He basically blamed Tesla's entire demand issues on macroeconomics and especially the high interest rates. So this is a good occasion to see if that's true.

Obviously, it's Tesla that's going to hit the difference anyway, so it's not going to be good for Tesla necessarily. But we'll see if Elon was right at least about the interest rate, which I think for sure it's to a certain degree. I think Tesla's demand issues are not just that, but I think it's a big part of it. And it makes sense because that's like six, I think just for this specific move, it's like $6,000 or something that you're saving. Yeah, it would be almost crazy to buy it, right? Yeah.

Yeah, it's free money. If the interest rate right now is 6%, and someone is offering you 1%, it's almost free money. You have to take it. So yeah, if you're in the market and you are waiting for interest rate to come down, this might be your time to get it. Yeah, and so basically Tesla is eating a $6,000-ish amount on that, which is significant. That's going to hit their...

their bottom line a little bit a little bit their margins yeah something that came out today Tesla announced that they are dropping their uh their Steam support so this is something that was also launched in the late 2022 first on the mall SNX you know the malls and next have this new gaming computer inside uh that is you know reported to be better than like the latest consoles and whatnot

And Tesla decided to do this Steam Beta, this native Steam app that allow you to have access to Steam's entire library. So if you bought a game on Steam, you can play it on your computer and you can play it on your Tesla too. Cool idea. You know, we know that Tesla has been big on video games. They've been big on improving entertainment inside the vehicle, especially ahead of self-driving. They know that when self-driving arrives,

entertainment inside the vehicle is going to be more important because you're going to have more free time inside your car.

They're a bit early with that, obviously, but there's the concept that, okay, if you're stopped at charging for a charging station, for example, you can jump into a quick game. Personally, I thought it was, okay, it's a cool idea to have, but if you really want to be gaming inside your car, especially gaming at the level of a Steam game, and I know that Steam has every game on there, so there's smaller indie games, but there's also AAA, very performance-demanding games. If you want to play that inside your car,

I feel like a separate device is like as a gamer, like a separate device is useful whether you want to like carry your gaming laptop into your Tesla or even just like a Steam Deck, for example, the little mobile device and there's competitors to Steam Deck too.

Those are going to be better gaming experience inside your car than with the Tesla. It took forever, like the two or three times that I tried using Steam Beta. I was able to launch a few games, but it was taking forever to load and just not a great gaming experience in general. Have you ever used your Steam Beta on your... No, you don't. I don't know why. Yeah, so...

Somebody told me something one time that kind of ruined the Tesla dashboard experience. They were like, Tesla's really not doing much that a $500 iPad doesn't do. You could just have a $500 iPad, you get Netflix, Hulu, all this stuff that most people use. You got games.

You know, you got maps, you got all this stuff and that's 500 bucks and, you know, Apple upgrades it every year and it's, it's fine. So I don't know, like, I think this was kind of a, I mean, it's actually cool. Like my kids love playing games on the Tesla, but it's just like, well, you could just double-sided tape an iPad to the dashboard and get most of this, you know, as good a gaming experience, you know, as good a, um, you know, graphics card, what stuff. Yeah.

Yeah, I would argue even better. Right. All right. We can talk a little bit about our sponsor, SplitVault. All right.

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Thank you for sponsoring to Splitvolt. Yes, thank you, Splitvolt. All right, the Chevy Equinox EV has finally started deliveries this week. You know, it's been probably the most anticipated of the old Sion next generation EVs from GM. It's the cheaper one, obviously. But the cheaper one, the one that they're being delivered right now are not the cheapest version, they're not the $35,000 version. So this is the...

starting the pricing chart for the equinox for all the trims and right now only the 2rs is being delivered so this one here uh starting at 40 roughly 45 000 the 35 000 is coming later this year i think but for now the deliveries are starting for the 45 000 version and it is uh you can qualify to the federal tax credit for it so uh you gets a pretty a lot cheaper

The four-wheel drive packs 213 horsepower in the all-wheel drive version. That's right. It's only 288. I remember the all-wheel drive version was a little bit underwhelming for that. 319 miles of range for the EPA estimate. 285 if you go with the all-wheel drive version. Really, if you don't need the rear-wheel drive, like the front-wheel drive, I'm not the biggest fan of front-wheel drive, though.

I prefer the rear-wheel drive. Yeah, I kind of wish they only had rear-wheel drive and all-wheel drive. I don't know why. Front-wheel drive is a thing with EVs. Yeah, it's kind of a legacy of the gasoline era. Right. But yeah, it's going to be a new EV to track. We're going to see how the ramp-up goes. Obviously, GM, that's been the thing that has been lacking. You know, they have some great vehicle program, electric vehicle programs, but they haven't been able to deliver the volume, to produce the volume and deliver the volume that...

that they promised by saying that they're going all in with electric vehicle, basically. So we're going to keep a close eye to the Chevy Equinox. We have, I don't know, it's the Blazer that he tried this week, uh,

No, no. Scooter's trying the Equinox and the Silverado RST. Oh, right now, right. Okay, he's doing it. So earlier this week, he did the Blazer, and now he's doing the Equinox and Silverado. That's right. So we're going to have full reviews on those coming in the next few days. So stay tuned for that. But then after that, I want to track the ramp up of that vehicle. I think if there's one that can be like a high volume one, it's this one. Yep. Yep.

all right we also have a new version of the ev6 is it uh is it a 2025 version or new mall year i mean it's 2024 right now and they just released it so they're probably gonna go to 2025. yeah it's a bit too early for that so you have this new facelift it looks pretty good i actually saw um uh one in white i don't know if we don't have the page one was it uh or was it gray was it this one

I saw one in white that was really stunning with the facelift. But, I mean, I've been a fan of the EV6 design already, so this facelift is not... Yeah, it's kind of significant. It's interesting. Yeah. I think it works. Yeah, that front light is pretty interesting. It's kind of just like a spiral, like a triangle spiral. Yeah, Kia's really going up market. They, you know, Kia used to be kind of a, you know, I don't want to say like a, not a garbage brand, but it was kind of a low-end brand. And now it kind of feels like they're,

mid to upper tier brand. Yeah. I mean, I've been impressed with Kia and Hyundai lately, like even like their design in general. And I know we don't talk about gasoline, but I haven't, have you seen like the new Santa Fe, for example?

No, I haven't. It looks pretty good. They're doing some good work right now. So the EV6 facelift feature a bigger battery of 84 kilowatt hour up from 77.4. And then that enables 307 miles of range, 494 kilometers. But that's based on the Korean standard, which I don't know if they use WLTP there. I'm not even sure they do.

But generally, it's a little bit more lenient. They don't have cabin temperature control included in that. But if you compare to the same Korean standard, it's up from 295 miles. So you have a good 12 miles, more miles on that new battery. Charging at Kia and Hyundai has always been great.

Very good. 10 to 80% in 18 minutes, 250 kilowatt. I don't think that has changed. Well, 250 kilowatt doesn't change, but I think the 18 minutes also didn't change. They're betting heavily on the CarPlay and Dotto stuff. So I'm not familiar enough with the interior to see a big difference with the interior lift. I mean, it's the same display. I think maybe the center console might be a little bit upgraded. Mm-hmm.

Do we have new pricing? So it's coming in June. In Korea, it starts at $40,000, but that doesn't tell us much. $38,000 with tax incentive. Yeah, they have pretty good incentive in Korea. It's a pretty good car. Yeah, it's very popular here. I see a ton of them in Quebec right now. I see a ton of EV6 and I see another IONIQ 5. We haven't seen the EV9 much here yet.

all right this is a big news that's going to affect i think the market for a little bit or while we knew it was coming we talked about a few weeks ago but uh the binary administration as officially this week quadruple the tariffs on chinese evs coming into the us so from 25 to 100 so now if you buy an ev built in china in the us you're paying the cost of the car

Plus 100% tax on it, basically. Crazy. Or whatever. Double the price. Yeah, double the price and double the cost, at least on the manufacturer's side. And then if they want to give that back to you or not, which normally that's what they do. That's what is happening here. Obviously, this is something that...

A lot of companies have been adopting, including not a lot of companies, a lot of countries, including China. So this is like this war between China and the rest of the world where, you know, the prediction is laws are being implemented in China. They force people to work with Chinese companies, foreign automakers to work with Chinese companies to sell in the market. You know, some notorious example have been able to get around that like Tesla. But for the most part, it is the case. And

And the U.S. has been particularly scared by it because the U.S. auto industry is probably one of the last few major manufacturing industry in the U.S. other than like defense. So we need it in the U.S. to survive. And the Chinese automakers are producing some really good.

impressive stuff right now. Well, they're pretty, everything that they, like, they take it over the world with manufacturing. Like, their manufacturing is not, it's not cheap anymore. It's very good or it can be good. It can be cheap and it can be good. Like, they can do everything really and they can do everything with electric vehicles too and they're doing some cool things that are coming and the U.S.,

thought that 25% was not enough to prevent them from taking over the US market. And I think they might have been right. That's a great point because we've always wondered why the Volvo EX30 would be priced so low even with that 25%. But I think that's pretty true for all the cars. All those cars could probably come over to the US. And even with the 25% tax on them,

would be very competitive. And 25% tax and no access to the tax credit too. Right. That's a good point. So, you know, you start off 25% more expensive and $7,500 down versus the competition that's being built in the US. So, they already had a giant advantage and the Biden administration look at this and like, they were like, nope, not enough. We need 100% and they might have been right. When I say, I mean, I say they might have been right. Like,

They might have been right if your goal is to protect the auto industry in the US, which I think is a valuable goal, obviously. But I'm also a big free market guy and I think that I would want to have access to these Chinese electric vehicles in the US. So kind of a bit torn on that where- Well, I would also add that the Chinese government has been subsidizing the Chinese auto market for so long and they've been kind of just this whole ramp up of getting

you know, massively cheap vehicles, like building the supply chain so that the, you know, economics of scale makes sense. I mean, you know, China just didn't, doesn't have like a magic formula to make EVs cheap. What they do have is like scale. They have like all the, you know, the supply chain, like all in-house, they don't have to go, you know, across the world to get stuff. And, you know, they're ahead, like they're clearly ahead, especially on, you know, low cost vehicles. So yeah,

you know, what do you do in that case? Because, you know, what we should have been doing in the last, you know, 10 or 20 years is saying, oh, they're, they're spending all this money getting their supply chain for electric vehicles, like really tight. We should be doing that same thing, if not more, but you know, we, we had Trump and all the other stuff. So. Yeah. And so you glossed over it for, for, for, for, to, to be fair, but, uh,

That's exactly it. If Biden did it in the last few years, you have to give him credit for that. The IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act, maybe didn't reduce inflation that much, but it did actually help...

create or at the very least greatly accelerate the creation of a supply chain for electric vehicle in the US and in the broader North America too because you know the way it's set up it's set up to boost the allies of the US also to be fair so it's not completely just a protectionist act it also boosts the allies because we are benefiting from it too in Canada for example where there's been a lot of investment just

near where I live of suppliers for like GM and stuff like that. So it makes sense on that front. So you have to give them credit for that. Like now there's been a ton of investment to do it, but it takes so much time. Like you said, the Chinese have been doing it for decades before us and it's paying off right now. And we can actually, I think the next example, the next article is an example of that, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah, our last article is on the NIO Envo. So Envo is like a new sub-brand that they're launching, a cheaper sub-brand. And today they are, not today, this week, they unveiled the Envo L60 EV. It's a Model Y size EV, size and also profile looks very similar, familiar to the Model Y, which, you know, I see people like Tesla fans being upset by that, but

when you make the car that becomes the most popular car in the world, that's what happened. Tesla made a great car that has become the most popular, the best selling car in the world. People are going to copy that because people want to have the best selling car in the world. And when I say copy, it's not a copy. It's inspired by it greatly. But also, it's basically the same size also. Yeah, and there's tons of other CUV-sized vehicles out there that go

It could also be considered copied. Exactly. Well, we know that this format works. So if it works, like, all right, let's use this format basically. But let's talk a bit about the specs on this thing. Yeah, they think this is going to be a model for like 20,000 units a month. So that's a volume vehicle. So yeah, we talked about the size. Okay, here are the specs here. You have the cheapest one is a 60 kilowatt hour version.

of the vehicle gets 341 miles 555 kilometers but that's on cltc standard it's probably closer to 280 you know short of 300 miles i would think which is like decent that's 30 000 dollars

the equivalent of thirty thousand dollars uh so very good then you have a 90 kilowatt hour version that we they don't they haven't announced the the pricing we can compare for example the um model y rear wheel drive gets very similar range again on the cltc so at the end of the day it's going to be a similar range uh through real world range and that's 34 600 so we have a four thousand dollar difference here it's significant before incentive

Then they have a 190 and 150 kilowatt hour version. 150 is probably that new semi-solid state battery that we talked about a few weeks ago. That's TBD for the pricing on it. It's going to be over 1,000 kilometers, 600 miles on it. But you have a mid-range 90 kilowatt hour version that's going to get over 400 miles. That's also to be determined.

Yeah. You know, continuing on that scaling thing, like I don't know if Tesla gets enough credit for knowing that, you know, a lot of car companies will release like 12 different cars. Right. But Tesla spends all their time on basically the model three and the model Y and now maybe Cybertruck. But like and those cars are pretty sparse inside. Like they've taken a lot of like expense out of the cars. And I don't know that they get enough credit for like knowing that

Like, hey, we need to really make this car cheaply. We need to scale up, you know, battery production. We need to get the economics of scale up. And outside of China, I don't know that anybody else is really doing that besides Tesla, maybe Hyundai Kia. But that's kind of the big deal right now. Yeah, I mean, these are highly complex products, making them cheap, cheap.

is very difficult. And even like cheap, we can argue what it is, but $30,000, I think the average sell price in the US right now is like $48,000 and that. So it is, it is, you know, not arguable that these are cheaper than average vehicles.

And they are typically top of the technology out there right now. It's hard to argue that too. I mean, unless you want to go with like the, you know, Celestic, like hand-built stuff and all that. But like those things are not really moving the needle for EVN options. For sure not. Actually, I don't even know if like, have they ever released, like has anybody bought one of those Cadillac Celestiques?

Yeah, I think they're using a kind of like a Ferrari-type distribution model. I think you have to get an invite almost to buy the car. It's not ask, get, and try. But yeah, that's it for the articles this week. We can jump into the comment section right now. If you guys have a question for us, you can put it in the comment right now. We're going to get to it in a few minutes. We already have a few to get through. All right. OKS Film says, Model 3, 2020.

21, sharing my gripe. Even though I end up getting used to it, I always regret updating to the latest software update. I feel that most of the UI was very good, but then I have to get used to it again. That's true. A lot of Tesla's software updates, there's some UI changes that are not expected. And you're doing the update right before you're driving and you don't have time to do that. Teslas are way more...

different per update than you know other cars other cars will you know their software updates are almost unnoticeable yeah i i've seen some people having a gripe with the latest ui changes that happened like you know over the last year or two personally i haven't had much problem with it but uh you're not the first person i've heard saying that they didn't like it

All right. Spikes43 question. Has Rivian said anything about improving their driver assistance? It seems like they are not equipped to advance this internally. They have talked about it quite a bit, but it's just not. So you're right. I think that that's a good assessment. They're not moving nearly as fast as Tesla. I mean, I would even say like, you know, not as fast as Ford or GM. Like I think.

Rivians, I think they have other fish to fry, maybe, you know, with their money issues and trying to break even. I think maybe they're not spending as much time on self-driving as other vehicles. It works. It works pretty well on freeways, but it's more like traffic aware cruise control than, you know, full self-driving kind of experience.

Yeah, that's a fair assessment. I wonder if Rivian would be open to work with somebody else on that. Because obviously, Rivian right now needs to focus on driving down costs of their current vehicle program and work on successful launch of the R2. And that also be profitable or at the very least, significant gross margin on it. So...

Maybe it would make sense for them to focus on that and offset that to someone else, which is what is going to happen anyway, I think, with a lot of companies. They're going to have to license autonomous driving to others. I don't think that every single automaker is going to solve self-driving. So that can be Tesla. I don't know if it's going to be likely with Rivian. I think Rivian is positioning itself as

as like a tamer version of Tesla without like a maverick CEO that potentially unstable. So I don't think they're going to do that, but you know what comes to mind? Comma AI. I really like, I really like what Comma AI is doing lately. Like they've been, they've been like quietly having like, I see Comma AI as like the Android of self-driving to Apple, to Tesla's Apple of self-driving. Like,

tesla is very much like hardware software even though they've been open to license both of those to other automakers the very close hardware software combination while um obviously comma ai is like we can basically deliver what tesla currently delivers short of fsd into any other car through a telephone like

device plus a cable. That's what they're doing, which is very impressive. And by doing that, by delivering sort of the auto-palette

with that they are doing what tesla has been doing for a long time which is gathering the data to and the training uh the training is set to train potentially a full self-driving system other instead of just an ads system that you're doing i don't think they're going that far in their you know they're being a little bit careful in the way that they're presenting their their product but

I do think that probably is the ultimate goal of Karma AI. And what I've seen from them is really impressive so far with the limited deployment of their system and much more routine than Tesla, obviously. So I would like to see them work directly with OEMs like Rivian in the future. I mean, that's their goal, right? That's it.

The idea behind comma AI is to eventually license their software out. And, you know, if you're an auto manufacturer and you have, you know, you're behind and you're thinking to yourself, all right, should I go with my competitor Tesla or should I go with this company that's only doing self-driving? So, you know, I think that makes a lot more sense.

But is, what's his name still there? The... - He's still part of George Hutz. George Hutz? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, George is still, I don't think he's president now. I don't think he's like completely on a day to day because he has this tiny box company that he's doing too, that he's trying to like make a box for AI that like everyone can have their personal AI. So he's doing that too at the same time. So I know he's still involved with ComAI, but I don't know the depth of his involvement.

But I think his vision for it to be the android of self-driving to Tesla's Apple, I think that's still very much going on. All right. Mike, the car geek. With the Chinese ministry approved next step for FSD, the stock popped. Tesla needs to get a U.S. State Department of DOT Texas to approve Tesla for driverless testing. Yes.

I think you're jumping a little bit to the gun here, Mike. First of all, the Chinese ministry approved next, like, okay, well, you did say next step. So, okay, I think that's fair. It's not exactly like an approval that they give. Like, from what I've heard from the Chinese media, it's like an unofficial, like conditional approval that they receive right now. Basically, Elon has established a kind of what this last trip, Elon and his team, I should say,

some kind of track to get FSD, supervised FSD approved in China possibly. So, which is obviously great news for Tesla. So that's what I think is there. You know,

I was partly encouraged with the last running calls with Tesla sort of talking about the regulatory process to get a real full self-driving system approved in the US. But I don't think, Mike, it makes sense to equate what happened in China with…

with like getting approval in the U.S. because FSD, supervised FSD is already approved all over the U.S. So you don't need a state to do it. You would need a state to approve a true, like you said, driverless system, which has nothing to do with what the Chinese just did. So that I think is just not there yet. And the way that they talked about it in their last running calls was more about like, oh, we saw what Waymo did. We saw what Cruise did. We're going to follow their regulatory path.

to to it so that's what that's what I heard from uh from Tesla last time all right moving on uh where is Seth who is that young kid yeah I shaved um um the tech guy Santa Santafe is sister brand Hyundai oh Santa Fe is a model one of the model of

But I think you might have said Kia Santa Fe and not Hyundai Santa Fe, or I don't know. Maybe I said that. Maybe I misspoke. All right. Skeptic says, did you guys already talk about the Aptera securing some kind of funding? I did notice that on Facebook, but with Aptera, it just seems like they're just trying to make it to the next month or the next two months or whatever. Yeah. And we did write an article on this when it came out.

But I talked a little bit about it when it first came out. And I don't know if Scooter managed to get a little bit more information, but I was just not impressed with what they announced. So they were working with this new company. Well, not a new company, but they were working to have funding by this private bank, this private financial group called U.S. Capital Group.

And all they did is that they announced that they're going to work with them for the next step of funding. So that's all. They haven't announced any kind of official funding round. They said that we're working with US Capital, which I don't know them very well, to secure the funding to get to production. So it's not really a huge news, but until they actually announce some kind of funding, I think that's going to be a bigger news.

All right. There are reasons, including national security, to protect the North American auto industries from being destroyed by Chinese car makers. That's a good point. Yeah. I mean, it's a good point for a couple of reasons. One is, you know, obviously we want that industry to be something that we can do ourselves. But also like, you know, when inevitably we get into another big war with somebody, we want to have the ability to like make, you know, war machines, I guess. I don't know. That seems kind of weird, but.

If you don't have the ability to make vehicles, that's just not a good way to be living your life. Yeah. Well, I think we need maybe like...

ships and planes to make i don't think we're gonna really get like another war fought by tank like i guess i know i don't know i think you're probably referencing like the fact that the gm started making tanks in world war ii for example like so that's why we would still need that production capacity to switch it to yeah i just don't know how much like i think we need like shipyards i know like china has like 300 times the number of shipyards that the u.s has now so i think ships and planes are probably more important but yeah i do understand uh

I don't understand that point. That guy says China makes stuff at a loss. I think he meant to say at a loss until there are no competitors. I mean, it kind of feels that way sometimes. You know, like with the electronics market, the e-bike market, batteries, like...

They just come in at a low price until all the competition globally is gone and then they own the market. And I wouldn't just say that there's a loss, but I would say that China has, just from its domestic market, it has the kind of scale with the billion three or whatever.

people that you know it's like four times bigger than the U.S. market just just the domestic market so it's bigger than Europe and and um the U.S. the U.S. and Canada combined so just the scale there is just nuts and and it's and you know obviously the government's making a lot of overtures to to

There's something like China 2025 or something that they want to dominate a bunch of industries. They are buying EVs there too. Not only the market is huge, but they're also adopting EV at a faster rate than the US. It is positive for their domestic EV industry also.

It's an ecosystem that works. All right. Raman says, what we need is a total FSD accountability under all conditions. It can pull over with hazard to hand over. Human intervention is unacceptable. I mean, I do think that there's going to be a system that are going to pull over and start the hazard if there's a need for it. Yeah. I mean, I talked a little bit about that on the space that I did yesterday. I was talking to you earlier, I said, but yeah,

I do see, even though I'm way more optimistic than ever now on FSD, I think we are pretty close to it with great advancement in AI. I do believe that Tesla still has some liability issues with, you know, some promises that Elon has made. Like, you know, he said a few times on the record that Tesla is going to achieve level five on the current hardware market.

which everyone that's living in an Ortiz or any place that has snow will agree that this is not possible. So there's going to be a need for human intervention. You see, human intervention is unacceptable. I don't think that Tesla can deliver anything more than level four on the current hardware three and most likely hardware four also.

So yeah, there's going to be some human intervention, but still it's a liability. I'm sure there's going to be lawsuits and all that, but ultimately I think the positives are going to outweigh the negatives on that front because if you solve FSD and free true car is going to be able to be level five and level four is still super useful on this current vehicle. It's just, it's not what exactly what Elon promised. Yeah. All right. Most Chinese manufacturers don't make a profit. So some won't be around in a few years. Tesla are a safe bet.

Have you heard of BYD? Yeah. I think that is wishful thinking, but we'll see, I guess. Daniel DeYoung says, does the hopefully temporary supercharger uncertainty make an FSD licensing deal less likely? I mean, apparently Test Day is talking to one specific automaker about FSD. So I don't know the level of relationship they have with that automaker, but...

Yeah, I mean, it is a little bit worrying when you have – that's one of the things that I hear the Elon fans say a lot about like this vote coming up and everything. A lot of the problem with Tesla price right now, Tesla stock and Tesla as a company is the uncertainty of Elon that Elon might leave the company if he doesn't get his stock compensation.

What about the uncertainty that Elon being there creates? Like there's that too. And that's one of it. Like people that work with Tesla are like, hey, they just fired like an entire team to prove a point. Like it's not – it's, you know, there's some uncertainty that comes with that. So, yeah, you have a point there, Daniel. It's a factor, I'm sure.

You know, Tesla had to do a bunch of damage control with its suppliers and its contractors related to the supercharger network and the charging network. Yeah, it's like an unforced error, man. Yeah. You think you want to work with someone like that after that? They're going to lose some. There's going to be things that are going to fall through the cracks and people are going to go, you know what? I'll work with BP instead. I'll work with other companies deploying charging stations instead. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, you almost have to be a certain type of person to work at Tesla these days because, you know, of all the crazy stuff. All right. Jesse C. Strand says, I believe you mentioned this in the past, but do you think Tesla would ever sell its FSD software and hardware to other manufacturers in the future? Yeah, we were just talking about that. And Elon's mentioned his, you know,

willingness to do that uh and there's one manufacturer in particular that they're doing that with now which we created might be Ford that was my main main suspect but we don't know that's just speculation but anyway yeah I mean if it works everyone's gonna want it like it's as simple as that right if it works and they look internally and like we're not even close to that

If you think internally, you're five or ten years away from FSD, which I think that's most people's assumption right now for the most part, I think. And Tesla is like a year, two years away. And they do get it in that time. And they're still like three to ten years away, three to eight years away at that point. What are you going to do? You're going to forfeit the industry? Or are you going to partner with them? Yeah, I mean, I think...

I think that's Elon's big bet right now, you know, over the next three years is like, all right, we're, we're at the home stretch of full self-driving. We're going to spend all of our resources and all of our extra effort getting to that finish line before anybody else does. And then once we have it, like we kind of run the, the road, the world. And basically, you know, we have this piece of software and I guess some hardware as well, but like that's worth like $50,000 per, you know, and, and theoretically they can just, you know,

copy the software and it's like every new copy of the software is free so every sale they make is like a fifty thousand dollar addition to a car i mean i'm just throwing out numbers i don't know what having full self-driving would be worth to anybody but yeah um it's different per market like it's it's going to be like a cost per mile thing at that point and but yeah you can assign after that like an average mileage value per car that will give you a value per car but

Yeah, it's a giant advantage. Like Elon said, it's going to be one of the biggest value creation of all time. And it's true. It just needs to happen. It's going to happen.

All right. Can you please discuss what effect possible Trump presidency will have on EV and green energy in general? I feel like last week you dismissed it as a nothing burger. We did. I don't think so. Um, I think Michelle did a story about how, uh, he invited, or maybe it was Jamie, um, a bunch of oil executives to Mar-a-Lago and they had, that was me. That was you. They had a meeting and, um,

supposedly Trump said, I need a billion dollars and I'll get rid of, you know, whatever, which, you know, it sounds like something he would do. So, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I just, I don't know what exactly can he do when he can do. That's my, my main problem. And so we're not dismissing it as a nothing burger, but it's like, I know that the president has some power obviously. And it sounds like, so right now the, the,

The Republican, do they have both the Congress and the Senate right now? Yeah, but kind of barely. I think maybe the Democrats have the Senate. I can't believe I can't remember that. Yeah.

But anyway, this is going to change with the election potentially. So I guess it depends on all that. It depends on how much actual power he's going to have based on the control of the Republican of the Senate and the House. I know that there's some executive orders that he can do that will damage probably the EV industry, the green energy industry. Yeah, I don't think it's going to be a positive for sure. I would prefer him not to win, but –

I think the U.S. – is it the 24th of June? When is the debate planned? I think the U.S. is going to get a shock from that debate. How old people – how like just out of touch these guys are? Oh, yeah. I think it's going to be –

What are we doing? He's reading on the prompter right now and saying pause when the prompter says pause. You cannot deny it anymore. You can't be pro-Democrat, pro-Biden. I'm a progressive and all that. But you cannot ignore the kind of guy. The only thing that Biden has going for him is that the guy he's going up against is...

Like almost as messed up as he is. Yeah, in his own ways, different ways. And different and probably scarier ways. But did I hear that Robert K. E. Sugar is going to be on that debate too, which would make things even crazier? I think he's not going to be in there. So the third candidate is a guy who got a worm in his brain and ate part of his brain. Yeah, I probably think that was a long time ago and that's been fixed. Yeah.

I don't know, man. That's what we've been told. It's like, really? This is the best we can do. Yeah. I mean, so I think the U.S. is going to get like an old... I'm hoping that the U.S. is going to get like an electrical shock from that. But it's too late. Yeah. I know it's too late, but maybe it's going to just...

create something like big enough a shock big enough that they're like oh we have to just change the system completely at this point we cannot it we cannot be stuck in a situation like that again i'm hoping like yeah i'm an optimist at times okay all right

Yeah, I don't know. Let's move on kind of quickly here. We're almost at the hour. Which brands do you think will be around in a few years? So what will happen to those broke manufacturers' cars support-wise? So I guess asking what is going to happen to the brands that die in the next few years. Yeah.

Fisker is kind of a good test, like low-volume test right now. Let's see what happens when someone goes bankrupt. Let's see what's the process like. You know what I think is interesting? There's do-it-yourself or independent shops and all that. I think...

I think they're interesting for that. There's going to be, there's a nice market where people are buying these cars now, the Fiskars. Some people are buying the Fiskars right now and they are planning to fix them themselves. I know this is a small market of people that can do that by themselves. But there's a community of people that are building resources to be able to maintenance and service this vehicle as a community, as an open source community, which I think is super cool.

cool. So I think there is that happening. Now, obviously if a GM goes bankrupt and we're talking about millions of vehicles here, it's not ideal situation. I'm not saying that GM is going bankrupt, but using them as an example, not an ideal situation, obviously. Yeah. And I think they're almost too big to fail. I don't think the US government will. I mean, we've done this test. Yeah. We saw that before. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. All right. FSD, we're on what? 12.4 or something?

0.3 right now, 0.4 next week. Yeah. And it's been pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of problems on the highway, like a lot of slowdowns on the highway still. That's been my main issue so far.

All right. Skeptic, Kama AI is going to provide a self-driving system for Aptera. That's right. Honestly, most people would be thrilled just to have a decent level two system. Yeah. And it's more than decent right now, the level two of Kama AI. So yeah, I mean, I've been a big fan of Aptera. I would really want them to produce that car. And if they do, I'm sure it's going to be more than IP with a Kama AI system. Yep. And yeah, the level two system,

It's kind of the baseline of what people like right now. All right. Crimson Decade V12 still doesn't read street signs like local school zones and turn only lanes. So there is no chance it's near ready. Yeah. I mean, that last what, 10% or 5% or 3% of getting full self-driving ready is going to be the hardest part. Like the last little bit is going to be very difficult.

School zones, I've never seen work. That's true. Turn-only lanes, though, like that's... I cannot say if they can read it, like if the vision system can read it, but this is mostly in the navigation data, though. You know it if you put your navigation in, like you'll get the image when you approach an intersection where it's the turn-only lane and it's like tell you to get in it or not get in it and function of that. So...

I feel like they could use at least that data not to fall into that, make that an issue. But I would agree, though, that it needs to read it to the vision system to see it. It needs to drive like a human that doesn't have a GPS could drive. That's the true mark of a self-driving system, I think. All right. I read that there was only a 2% take rate after the free FSD month. I think Elon commented on that saying it's much higher. So it's like probably 2.3% or something.

Yeah, that's one of the things where I always tell people, like the people that just believe everything Elon says. And you're like, okay, so that story is false. Look, that story is based on credit card data from, I don't remember the provider, Yipit Data, I think.

So, you know, they apparently have the data and they can show that. It's on a sample of 3,500 people, which is like a decent size sample, but not perfect, obviously. And Elon said it's much more, that's not true, it's much more than that, but he didn't actually say what it was. I'm not sure that Elon knew what it was when he said that. You know, Elon is the kind of person that...

He reads that, he's like, nah, that's not true. But he didn't actually text his Tesla team before that and ask, what's the actual take rate of FSD since the trial has been done? Did he understand that Gipit was specifically about talking data of people that were on the trial and if they bought it after the fact?

I don't know. So, yeah, I would take that with a grain of salt. But I'm not surprised that if it is 2%, if it's lower than 5%, I wouldn't be surprised because...

it's not actually that useful yet. Like, enhanced autopilot is useful. Autopilot is super useful. FSD is not that useful right now. So getting people to pay $100 a month or $8,000 in one go, it's not an easy task. Even if V12 is fun, it's great. It's not that useful. All right, last for now. Question, do you think any third-party charging companies will capitalize on the disbanding of Tesla's supercharger team? And if so, which one?

Well, BP already raised their hands and they were like, hey, if you had the Tesla supercharger project that was dropped by the company, you can reach out to us. We might take your location. We talked to the guys at Revel in New York that operates a lot of the big charging hubs in New York.

And they were interested in picking up some of the leads that Tesla dropped when Elon fired the team. So, you know, there is that. And I think a lot of those companies are looking to hire some of the team that would let go too. So that's also good. Tesla is also hiring that team back, by the way. Last I heard, they have like 10 people that have been hired back.

And so, you know, and then that's going to keep going most likely, though I'm sure there's a lot of people that are not going to want to go back. But yeah,

Yeah, so I think it's going to result in a significant slowdown on Tesla Supercharger deployment over the next year. I think Q2 is not going to be too bad because there was a month where the team was there working and there was also a lot of projects already in the pipeline that are already in the hands of contractor and Tesla told them to finish those. So I think that

Q3 and Q4, especially Q3, probably going to be a big hit. And then Q4, Tesla's going to probably start rimping back up with the new team. So yeah, it's going to be a slowdown for a while. But hopefully, hopefully by next year, we go back to some kind of normalcy because we need more superchargers, especially in North America. Yep. All right.

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