Tesla Model 3 LR gets cheap, Fisker goes bankrupt, cheap EVs adapt, and more
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And we are live, everyone, for a new and special early episode of The Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lemberg, your host. And as usual, I'm joined by Seth Winchell. Are you doing this fine morning, Seth? I'm good. As per usual. That's what I like to hear. All right. So we're having a little early show this week because I need to be on the road this afternoon.

A little bit of a road trip. But anyway, it was kind of a slow news week anyway because I think I would assume the holiday in the middle of the week kind of slowing down. And I would also assume that the heat just slowed everybody down. There was not a lot of news coming out this week. But still, you know, we're electric. If there is any news out there, we'll find it. And we found some, as usual. So we're going to have quite a little bit to talk about.

And then at the end of the show, we're going to get you guys' questions. So if you guys have questions, you can put it in the comment section right now. We're going to get to it in about like 40 minutes or so. And I want to start out also by saying a quick shout out to the Electric American Solar Challenge 2024 coming out in just a few weeks. We're going to have a little bit more to say about that later on in the show. So stay tuned for that. But we would like to see you come and encourage these cool student teams that are making progress.

fund solar electric cars all right we're going to start with uh quite the good news this week the tesla model 3 long range has officially been uh eligible to the full 7500 federal tax credit for electric vehicle or you know tax credit or point of sale incentive now you can get it directly uh so this is this is pretty big because um

With the refresh of the Model 3, the new long-range version didn't come with the tax credit. We assume that it has something to do with the new requirements for battery sourcing, both component and critical materials. Most likely, you know, things coming from China. It made things interesting because...

With the recent launch of the Model 3 Performance on the new Highland Refresh, it made more sense if you were eligible to the tax credit or if you go for a lease rather than buying. It made more sense to buy the Performance version than the Long Range because of that. Like the $7,500 difference made it so that Performance was cheaper than the Long Range.

So probably cradle this as well. I shouldn't say that it probably didn't affect it that much because I don't know exactly what percentage of people are eligible. The eligibility criteria are on the vehicle itself, but also on the buyer, which is income $150,000 per year. But that is if you're a single filer, if you're a joint filer, it's $300,000. So, you know, I think a lot of people probably fall into that, that can afford a Model 3.

But now the performance version started at $47,500. So with that $7,500 tax credit, it literally is a $40,000 vehicle. So really not a bad vehicle for $40,000. Again, Tesla doesn't really discuss these changes, like what happened to enable the fact that you have access to the tax credit now. But again...

My assumption is that this was using a battery coming from China. Now it's using a battery coming from the U.S. Maybe it's going back to the Panasonic cells from Nevada. Not sure. I mean, that's obviously kind of a big deal if they're making a ton of batteries in the U.S. that were previously made in China. Why wouldn't Tesla be more transparent about this? It seems like that's something that they could...

kind of hang their hat on yeah you know they've been very opaque everything when it comes to batteries for a while now you remember that transition of like not even talking about the energy capacity of the battery pack now focusing only on range we've seen other automakers go the same route too there's just no people want to focus too much on that i i get the argument a certain degree but um and also battery sourcing i'm sure most you know most people don't care about it

But yeah, it is interesting, especially is it using LFP? Is it using NCA, NCM? It's all interesting stuff that some of the nerdiest Tesla buyer would like to know. I guess we're the nerdy ones, right? Yeah.

In the less so good news regarding Tesla, we learned about that last weekend. Tesla Cybertruck had the delivery halt. And of all things that are making it halt deliveries, it's this giant windshield wiper. Apparently, that's a problem. So we got last weekend, we got a bunch of reports from the owners clubs, the Cybertruck owners club, from a bunch of people that were about to take delivery of the Cybertruck being told that they had to delete the delivery because there was an halt on sales.

And not everyone was being told exactly what was going on. But at the same time, a bunch of people with Cybertrucks in service were being told that they needed to replace the wiper motor. There was being the effect on it. And some even were being told by Tesla employees that Tesla might need to replace all of them, just over like 5,000 or so.

You know, in my review, my recent review of the Cybertruck, I had some issues with the windshield wiper. I chalked it up to just the auto wiper system sucking on the Cybertruck and on Tesla vehicle in general. It is, you know, it's a running gag at this point, just how bad the wipers are. Just yesterday on my Model 3, I was driving back from Tuareg Vial. It was beautiful, you know, blue sky. And then my windshield wiper was like, oh, the sun is up, like, da-da-da.

You don't need to wait for the sun, dumbass.

But with the Cybertruck, there was a few of that happening, but I didn't notice a weird issue that I couldn't really, now that I look back at it, it doesn't make sense to attribute it to the actual auto wiper system is because sometimes it would just go down. The resting position for the Cybertruck, as you can see on this picture, for the Cybertruck's wiper is up because there's one giant wiper that sits like that because there's no crease in the middle between the hood and the windshield to hide it.

So this is the resting position. And sometimes it will just go down, decide to go down and just stay there. That's not good aerodynamically. Yeah. I mean, it's a cell. It's like putting down a cell. You hit the brakes, parachute. Maybe that's the idea. It's like it's an extra braking mechanism. Yeah. It's like autopilot. So I was not even autopilot on the Cybertruck. But they did that thing that was going too fast. It's like we need to slow that kid down too. Yeah.

So maybe it was that. I cannot tell, but apparently there's some issues. There's some people that took deliveries in the last few weeks too that said that their wipers just wasn't working at all, all week. So it looks like there's a serious problem with the motor on the windshield wiper. I mean, you know, there's two separate issues. One is like that's a huge wiper and it's obviously going to have to have a motor that's bigger than any wiper motor that's ever existed, right? I mean, so they're probably, you know, running into torque problems or something.

But then there's the other problem of the auto wipers that have never been great in Tesla's area. Tesla does a lot of things great. Windshield wipers, not one of them. It might also have contributed to the auto wiper issue. They might have attributed issues with the wiper to the auto wiper system. And in fact, it was the motor all along. That might have hidden the issue. Yeah, that's a good point.

Yeah, but you're right. Like the protest that couldn't go with like a half the shelf like motor here. This is gigantic. Elon Musk sent out an email to employees this week telling them that they're going to get some new stock options. Weird timing, but interesting nonetheless. So this was one of the things that I was kind of disappointed about the shareholders with this whole like proxy battle for Elon's stock compensation because, you know,

We reported on that earlier this year, but Tesla did cancel the stock options for employees at the end of last year, early this year. They canceled pay upgrades. They canceled compensation plans with stock options. And then the judge rescinded Elon's own stock option.

Which, you know, you could argue that's the same thing that he did to his own employees. And the shareholders fought like hell to give him back. And they didn't do the same for the Tesla employees, which, you know, they contribute just as much, if not a lot more than Elon Musk as a whole, I would say.

And I see it's not agreeable. They definitely contribute a lot more than Elon as a whole. In raw hours, yeah, man hours, I would put them at a little bit more. And direct contribution to the company too. I mean, even if Elon is the single biggest contribution to the company, which I think is agreeable, they contribute a lot more as a whole, obviously. And they didn't get any stock option last year.

So now Elon sent out an email this week to an employee saying, over the next few weeks, Tesla will be doing a comprehensive review to provide stock option grants for exceptional performance. There will also be an ongoing program to award spot option grants for anyone who does something outstanding for their company. Thanks for everything you're doing to make Tesla successful. So it's not everyone that's going to get the stock option back. It's apparently only top performers. And then separately, there's going to be a spot option grant program for outstanding things that people do in the company.

The first part, I mean, obviously, top performers should get stock option. I'm not denying that. But they took away everyone's stock option last year and they gave it to Elon. And Benzone. Yeah, and Benzone. So if Elon is getting a stock option, I think all these employees should. But...

I do like the second thing, though, like special spot options directly for someone does like something great. Let's say like someone, you know, it's kind of demoralizing someone like you do something like incredible for a company that just saved, like it's going to save them hundreds of millions of dollars every year going forward. And like you get a little pat on the back. It's like, yeah, I mean, I'm getting paid like $200,000 a year as an engineer. And I get just, I paid for myself for like,

you know lives ahead for my work at this company so it would be nice for when you do something like that like you get all right you know what like here's some stock option which you know obviously you become like a part owner of the company if you weren't already of course uh and or a bigger part owner of the company and then you your stocks gonna benefit from these crazy nice

cost-cutting effort that you did through, you know, engineering effort. I like that stuff. I think that stuff is cool. So kudos for Elon to doing that. Moving on. Elon announced that he's working on the Tesla master plan part four.

If you haven't been keeping up with these, we already had part four. So the first two came early. Well, not that early. 2006 and then 2016, I think, the part two. Yeah, 2006, part one, 2016, part two. And then part three was just last year. But part three was very different from part one, part two.

Part one, part two were more like clear, like product roadmap plans, like a part one, build a sports car, use that money to build an affordable car, use that money to build an even more affordable car while doing so also provide zero emission electric power generation option. So, you know, that was Roadster, Model S and X, Model 3 and Y, etc.

solar city acquisition. This basically part one is done even though people have even more affordable car which is supposed to be a $25,000 Model 3. I mean you can basically get one for $25,000 now. Let's put that one complete. Master plan part two

It was more about justifying. It was in the middle of the acquisition of SolarCity, so it built on the number four here and tried to sell that pretty hard. Talk about Solar Roof, which is still...

uh not the greatest as the product out there not not it's a great product it's just hasn't been as impactful as it was sold to us yeah it's not really scalable either like it doesn't seem like they're making any money on it yeah it hasn't definitely scaled the way we thought it would

Expand vehicle lineup, product line to address all major segments. This is not quite done yet. Develop a self-driving capability that is 10x safer than manual via massive fleet learning. Hasn't been done, just hasn't been completed. Enable your car to make you money when you're, so that is completely dependent on three, so not worth that much, but

Yeah, so in that two expanding lineup, Elon mentioned a new kind of pickup truck. So the Cybertruck, okay, it's been delivered. Compact SUV has been the Model Y, incredible success. EV truck, so that's been the Tesla Semi, hasn't ramped up the volume production yet, but apparently going next year, pretty confident it will. And then a high passenger density urban transport vehicle. This is the one that's completely missing from the whole thing. Hasn't been there yet.

So part two hasn't really been completed at all. We got part three, but part three was more of like, you know, it was a presentation last year and then the white paper came and it was more about doing the math on how you scale EVs and energy storage and solar and wind to achieve a sustainable economy. Like this actually like went down and did the math, which was really cool.

And they just showed it was possible and they show that Tesla is going to have a big impact there through things like a $25,000 vehicle has been canceled through a supercharger development that's going to increase and, you know, has been slowed down. So, you know, part three of the plan is also far from done. And then Elon now announced this week that it's going to be a part four and it's going to be epic. So there's obviously, you know,

Maybe a bit of lack of credibility going on. I think a little bit of rushing to plan four because of everything that he said at the investor, at the shareholders meeting last week, things about Tesla being the most valuable company in the world, focus on AI, focus on humanoid robots. I think now he's going to have to include that in the master plan. The robots were never really in that category.

One, two, three. So I think he's trying to like, you know, he made all these grand announcements and now he's trying to actually build the plan to make this happen after the fact, which is kind of weird. Let's be honest about it. It's kind of...

snake oil salesman type of things to me, at least. Even though these things are real. And I'm bullish on the robots. I'm bullish on the robots. I'm getting increasingly thinking that Tesla is going to achieve self-driving in at least hardware four or five in the next few years. So that's the weird thing about Tesla. You criticize it for clear reasons.

you know like pumps let's call it it's a pump a lot of what Elon does is pumping okay this is pumping but at the same time they are doing some incredible things about it's just the incredible things never quite match just all grandiose Elans announce anything like

So you can, and I know it's hard in this cult of personality stuff and everything, but there is a way I think that you can exist where you can both appreciate all the great things that Tesla does and acknowledge the fact that Elon sometimes is just straight up pumping and there's a discrepancy between what he says and what is actually planned. Not even what's delivered, what is actually like in the works at Tesla.

I feel like that's our whole shtick. That's why we exist. This is great. This is crazy. This is, you know, and, you know, kind of cutting through like the hype and what's real and what's good. I wanted to jump back. You're bullish on the Tesla bots.

Do you think that a general purpose robot is the way to go for like, you know, automation? I kind of feel like, you know, we've been going robots for building cars for a long time now. You know, the big, you know, even Tesla's as hyped there where they call it the dreadnought or something. I feel like.

Building a whole humanoid robot to do like, you know, screwing in a thing or whatever. I feel like, why aren't there purpose-built robots for those things? I get why a humanoid robot would make sense for, you know, a lot of stuff like, you know, a maid for your house or, you know, whatever. But it just, to me, it seems like for specific tasks in automation of a car factory, it's

Why build humanoid robots? Why not build perfect... I get your question. But there's a bunch of different layers. Like you said, there is also... It can be useful for completely other things outside of industrial applications. So there's...

your leverage, all the work you do for that. Obviously, I think the value is going to be mainly there first. But the big thing is like people, I think, underestimate just how capital intensive and resource intensive it is to onboard a new purpose-built robot. So you have to like include that in your production line design. It has to be, you know, specific to a very, you know,

narrow purpose of like you know like you said like screwing this basically screwed or whatever the the the thing is is like we already have and we we already have processes to onboard humans in a bunch of these you know um

stations in the initial level. So the idea is that if you could make a useful, you might have a robot that is learned, you know, much like a human learns, then you can just use all your existing human onboarding systems and just put that robot in there that is so much cheaper than a human to operate. So this is this giant

onboarding cost that you eliminate that is billions and billions and billions of dollars worldwide that you just take off right away.

if you can make that robot. And so I think there's a ton of value in that. It's just you need it to have both a humanoid robot where the robotics are at a level high enough that you can replace a lot of skill or even at first unskilled and then even starting to work up some skilled human. And then...

The AI behind it, the software, both of them needed to be at a certain level. And I think we're just now reaching at the same time, the robotics have increased a lot in the last few years. I think the AI was a bit behind and now the AI is catching up and surpassing robotics. So we're reaching that threshold now, I think, where you can have a useful human with robots. And then as soon as you have that, then you can just start chipping away at all the jobs.

So I think there's a real usefulness to this that people are kind of underestimating a bit. Oh, yeah. So we're going to be expecting now any day. Maybe not any day because Elon announced like early last year that Master Plan Part 3 was coming. And then it took quite a few months before it actually came. So I don't know exactly when Part 4 is going to come. And what do we think is going to be in that one? AI robots. AI robots. AI and robots. And unrealistic timeframes. Yeah.

You know, timeframes were not too much into the other plans, to be honest. Like Elon was, you know, that's putting it black on white, like on paper. Yeah, I'm sure his lawyers are like, do not put a timeframe on any of this. Elon, you have to give him credit for that. He's pretty good. Like, if

If you listen to the actual language he used, like normally he's going to insert in there like this is my guess. Like this is I'm just, you know, it's just a complete estimation. It's just my prediction. Like he's just he's good at putting those things in. I would also say that that's very it's like Donald Trump. So for some reason, Donald Trump says all these things that are, you know, hey, let's insurrect. I've heard this. People told me. Yeah, yeah.

And it's always like, but isn't that? No, it's not. Okay. It's such a cop out there. Like people, I always attack journalists, like sources said like, oh yeah, right. Sources said everything is like, yeah, I mean, this, this, this, this is a lot worse than my opinion, but anyway. Um,

All right, Elon also talked a little bit about the new AI supercluster coming to Gigafairy Texas. So we reported on this earlier this year, like amid all the layoffs. And then just before the layoffs, Elon came in like a wrecking ball and he canceled some programs and put the resources back on this. So I reported that Tesla was having a little bit of issues completing that south expansion at Gigafairy Texas. And that's when he killed the Model 2 project, the

NV91, NV92, the two new vehicles that were on the OnBuck platform, but the cheaper vehicles and not the two that were not the Robotaxi.

And they diverted those resources to completing the expansion for the supercluster, AI supercluster to train self-driving that's coming to Gigafactory Texas. And at that time, we heard that it was a 100-megawatt cluster. They were calling it the Dojo project, but we were hearing that it was going to use NVIDIA hardware, so we were a little bit confused about that. And Elon actually clarified a lot of things there. First of all, he said 130 megawatts.

of power and cooling. So probably 100 megawatts of actual power, 30 megawatts cooling, something like that, would make sense, would be in line with what we heard. But he said that it will increase to over 500 megawatts.

in the next 18 months or so, which is pretty wild. That is wild. And then he said that aiming for about half Tesla Hi-Hat hardware, half NVIDIA and others. So that's clarify what we heard. That's why he said Dojo. But at the same time, there's Dojo, but it's not just going to be Dojo. He said that the Tesla hardware is going to be mostly hardware 4. So Tesla is using now its inference computing, the onboard computing in car, as also training compute, which is interesting.

And might point to some problem with Dojo, by the way. We've heard some issues with Dojo. Tesla fired two of the top executives on the Dojo program. So it makes sense that, honestly, I think they're the same guys that also design hardware for the others. It's not like they did a bad job with Dojo, but they did such a good job on our fork that we were both using for InCore on both inference computing and also training. Yeah.

And he said then, he said that the AI5, which is what they are going to rename the Outwear 5, that's going to be the new in-car hardware, is going to have 10x the capability of Outwear 4. You know, the meeting last week said that Tesla has NVIDIA level, even surpassing NVIDIA level chip design. So he's putting some kind of a number on it now.

But yeah, this is a cluster that has been delayed and is at the center of this issue with Elon diverting NVIDIA hardware to X and XAI that was supposed to come to Tesla.

Which people say, yeah, but Tesla was not ready. Yeah, it was not ready. But why was it not ready? And the next day I were ready for it. That's the big question there. And now what we are hearing is that Elon says it's going to be ready soon. We heard that they're now aiming for August.

We've seen some images, drone flyovers. Elon commented on this, by the way, because of new drone flyovers. It looks like Tesla is building a giant GPU. Like last year, you have giant fans that look just like a GPU fan. So that's basically it. Tesla is building a 130-megawatt, eventually 500-megawatt GPU system. But you know what?

This, as crazy as it sounds, and I know now the Elon fan is going to go down on me pretty hard for this, but this is actually a bearish look for me on the self-driving because just a few months ago, Elon said that Tesla was not compute-contrained for training self-driving. And now he's talking about having 130, 500 megawatts of compute training. And what that tells me is that Elon doesn't really know

what it will take to get to self-driving. That's what it's telling me. Because like a few months ago, he said, you know, not compute constrained. Now he's saying we're hiding more compute power than anyone in the world at this point. So to be fair, I don't think anyone really knows what it's going to take to actually solve self-driving. So it's not like I'm, you know, digging in on this. Like you should know. But of course, you should know if you're claiming that you're going to achieve it by the end of the year, every year for the last five years.

So, again, this is the weird line. Tesla is trying to do something absolutely incredible, and I commend them for that. They've made incredible progress towards it. I don't think they are quite as close as Elon claims to be. But it is problematic when you're using statements like we're going to achieve it by the end of the year to sell cars when you don't actually know what it's going to take to get there.

I cannot blame you for not knowing, but I can blame you for claiming that you're close to it when you don't know. Does that make sense? Yep. Oh, yeah. We got a new list of the most American-made cars out there, and the Tesla Model Y is still on top of the list.

The list had a big shakeup in the top 10 because last year, if you remember, Tesla had number one, number two, number three, and number four. Then after that, the others were coming in, especially Honda. In Alabama and Lincoln, they're pretty well integrated and they're doing cars that are sourced locally.

But now the Model Y in Fremont and Austin comes first. Honda Passport second. Volkswagen ID.4 has been climbing the list over the last few years. Now it's at the top three with the ID.4 made in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

And then Tesla has two vehicles, only one or two vehicles in the top four. Model S is still in the top four. But the Model X has number nine, which, you know, I'm not sure why exactly. I would assume because the others have climbed up because Model X hasn't changed that much in the last few years. It's the Model 3 that's taken the big, you know, fallen off the top. It's now fallen to 21. And so...

This is car.com that makes these rankings. And they said that the Model 3 landing at number one is due to changes in workforce and domestic part content, respectively. I don't know how workforce plays into that. Like if they fired a lot of people, but the car is still made at the same place. It's still being sourced in the same place. But domestic part content...

has fallen. So obviously this is where I think it makes the most sense. Tesla has increasingly used more Chinese batteries in the car. I think that's where the bigger impact is. The Cybertruck also made the top of the pickup trucks, but Cybertruck is like tougher to...

gauge because all the pickups are, I think, vehicle over 6,000 pounds. They don't have the same requirements for listing the sourcing. So they don't have the same amount of info for it. For our last Tesla stuff, I wanted to end with this because I thought it was an interesting idea that I think we should promote. It's Martin Vieca, Tesla's exiting head of investor relations.

Last week was his last week at Tesla. He said he was leaving after he spent almost a decade at the company, if I remember correctly. And he was active this week on X despite leaving Tesla. And he said that, personally, I've always been pro-advertising. One percent of the revenue spent on ads, both digital and TV, would, I think, be margin accretive and mission accretive.

I don't know if he's just saying that now, he's saying that he was promoting that within the company before, but I do like this idea because 1% of this revenue is roughly $200 million a quarter, $250 million a quarter, like a billion dollars a year in advertising spend. You can do a lot with that.

And you could do a lot like of direct advertising for Tesla, obviously. I think a lot of people don't know that you can get in a Tesla for $299 a month in a Model 3 standard range lease. It's that. It's $200 a month. You can get into a Tesla, start saving on gas. Depending on how much you drive, it's probably like $200.

the very least $100 a month or so that you're going to save in gas savings. It's starting to get to $200 a month vehicle. Yeah, there's a lot of value in that. I think Tesla could push that more. But I think Tesla could also have a giant impact if they sort of split that budget into like, yeah, it's like advertising for Tesla budget, but also like half of that budget going for advertising for just general EV education.

I think that would play into Tesla's mission a lot, obviously, to accelerate the advent of electric transport. It would inform the public a lot more about the advantage of electric vehicles, the advantage for a consumer, but also for the environment and all that, just to dispel some of the EV myths.

And obviously, Tesla is going to be the one that's going to benefit the most from that anyway, because it's the biggest EV brand out there. So some broader EV education is going to benefit the entire market. But Tesla is most of the market in the US still. So it would benefit Tesla. So I think a giant marketing effort from Tesla, billion dollar budget, half of it C-REC on Tesla vehicle, other half on EV education would have a giant impact.

I think Elon should really consider that, especially now he's warming up to advertising. Tesla has kind of stopped their advertising effort that they launched last year. Elon complained that it was too generic and everything. And I'm not completely, you know, I think he has a point. But now Tesla had a pretty good effort trying to sell the competition package through advertising. So maybe they should put that team on that and give them that billion dollar budget a year.

All right, Seth, do you want to talk a little bit about the American Solar Challenge coming up next week? Yeah. Not next week. Next month. Next month. So we're excited, obviously. Electrek Solar Challenge is two different events. One is the first event is July 13th through 15th.

is scrutineering. And the actual race is the Electric Formula Sun Grand Prix, July 16th through 18th. And that's in Bowling Green, Kentucky at the Corvette Museum Racetrack. Fun place to go. Anyway, if you're in the area or your kids or your dad or your spouse wants to go check out solar and electric vehicles, a lot of fun to do. And then

That race kind of determines the pole position of the cross-country race, which will start out in Nashville. And that's going to go all the way to Casper, Wyoming. And that's going to take place toward the end of July. We're going to be on hand for some of it, certainly at Nashville. I'm not sure how far along the route we're going to go, maybe all the way to St. Louis.

So we are super excited about this. These are solar cars that are driving on major streets and highways and stuff. Is there going to be like police escort and things like that? No, these are street legal vehicles. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. And they go quite fast. I mean, they actually have to kind of scale back the amount of solar they can have on their vehicles.

the actual vehicle because they were starting to go so fast that they were becoming unstable. Cause they're, you know, they're kind of like bikes. They're so efficient that the tires are so small.

So it became, you know, they have to constrain that. So anyway, you can see on the show notes, we'll have a link to the solar challenge. And on there, you can kind of get the route where we're showing it to those people watching right now. So, yeah, if you're in the Midwest in mid to late July, come check it out. It's a lot of fun, a lot of science going on. And these are going to be the engineers of the future, right?

We're going to build all the solar and EVs that we're going to enjoy. So come check it out. Really cool. Really proud that Electric is sponsoring that stuff. All right. We have a little bit more news to discuss, and then we're going to jump into the comments section. So if you guys have any questions for us, you can put them in the comments right now. I see we already have a bunch today. I appreciate you for doing that. And we'll get to it in just a few minutes. All right. We're going to discuss now a Saturday thing a little bit. Fisker has officially filed for bankruptcy.

So we've been anticipating it for the last few months now, if not a few years. You know, we've never been super hyped about Fisker. You know, the ocean was not a bad project. It was interesting. It was, you know, a very popular segment, too.

The timing was not bad. The vehicle was... We didn't review it very well, obviously. It was not a bad vehicle.

It was just not fully baked in. It needed a little bit more time, a lot more software development. It came to market a little bit too early because it had to, otherwise they were going to go on there. But we just weren't really taking Fisker very seriously because they unveiled like 60 different prototypes over the years.

They look like they were spread a little bit too thin. They should have really focused all their energy on the ocean, make that a success, and then move on from there because...

Because this is what was going to happen, and it's exactly what happened. They announced this week that they are fully filing for Chapter 11, which doesn't always necessarily mean the end of everything. But in this case, they are making it clear that they are now looking to just sell their assets, which is worth between 500 million and a billion dollars, they say.

uh the talking about you know continuing some programs in the meantime but uh you know i wouldn't put so much hope on it if you have a notion right now or you know considering one of the cheap ones that are for sale out there just don't expect any service i think that's the safest route but what does it mean for the industry really that's what people are saying right now like trying like

They want to say that it means that others are coming, which is not impossible, honestly, but I think every company, it's its own thing. They have their own management. They have their own balance sheet. And Fisker was never the strongest one out there.

There's other ones that are at risk, Lucid losing a lot of money, Rivian losing a lot of money, but there are different companies. Does that mean because Fisker went on there that others went on there? It's important to get to positive gross margin, to get to profitability. A car company is nothing if they don't make any money off of it, and even if they're making great products, which is the case, I think, for Lucid and Rivian, Fisker is

you know was not meaning an horrific product it just was not great was not he made about 10 000 of them but they only sold half of them

So there was not exactly a market for it there. They got over 70,000 or so reservation. So they made 10,000, only sold 5,000, but they have over 7,000 reservation. But I think that's where the timing was not great. There had been all that inflation that happened. The car ended up costing more than originally was supposed to. At $35,000, I think Fisker does very well with the Ocean.

At $50,000 plus, this is what happens. Yeah. I don't know. Do you have anything to add, Seth? Yeah. So I am obviously sad to see an electric vehicle company go under. But I have to say, the strategy there, make a vehicle that kind of goes up against the most popular EV in the world, the Model Y. People definitely want things that are different. But

Like, you know, if the software is not working well and, you know, your price is good, but not amazing. And, you know, obviously Fisker wasn't even building these. They were being built. They were being outsourced to what's it? Magna. Yeah. So I don't know. It just like it's and, you know, we've covered Fisker in the past. Obviously, he has a Enric Fisker has a long history of

Being in the EV world with, you know, he worked at Tesla for a while before the Model S came out. Claims to have been, you know, behind that a little bit. Then, you know, did the Karma stuff. And then he's not been successful. I mean, we've always enjoyed his designs, but he's not been successful spooling up an EV startup. Yeah.

So I don't know. It's one of those things where I hope it doesn't affect the rest of the industry. I hope people don't have less expectation. They're not worried about Rivian or Lucid in kind of the same way. I think both of those companies have a better shot, especially Rivian. So yeah.

I don't know. It's one of those things. I think you have a good point. What's that? You said they're going after the Model Y, most popular vehicle out there, and they have all these issues with software and everything. So I think that's a good point because I think you have to have something that differentiates yourself with everyone else. So if you're going into a market where there's an existing product out there and there's a bunch of existing products,

and your product is arguably worse than that, how is it going to work out? So I think this is maybe a lesson for other companies. Because I think Rivian at least, for example,

Rivian, they are in the market now that there's competition, obviously. When they first announced, there were not any pickup trucks out there, electric pickup trucks. But now there is SUVs, pickup trucks. But they have a great product. Unarguably, it's great. And it's competitive with everything out there. Same with Lucid. Lucid has its own thing to also super high efficiency, longer range. They are differentiating themselves within an existing competitive market.

If you're an EV startup, you're going out there and you're going in one of those markets with high competition, it's going to be hard because you're going to have to compete with the big boys in something that they're already great at. As a small startup, it's hard to beat that.

So it might be a good idea to go after a market that is not really addressed yet, like especially in the EV space. Like instead of starting with the most popular segment that everyone is competing in, maybe start with, you know,

i know i've been saying that for a while but a little like me either like you know like like you know convertibles lighter electric cars something like that like there's nothing like that out there like maybe at least you you so you don't you don't get compared yourself to everything else all the time and you know it's

It's hard to beat them all in a crossover segment. There's other things out there that, you know, even like Ford is having some issues, like beating Ford, an established company, is having issues competing with Tesla, with, you know, a great car that is the Mustang Mach-E. So that a small startup like Fisker could come in and, you know, carve itself a place in the market. It was always hard to believe. And I think we've seen the result of that right now. All right. I'm going to talk about, you know, a lot of cheaper electric cars after that.

First of all, the Volvo EX30. Volvo with, you know, everyone is trying to adjust now to all these Chinese tariffs going on.

And the EX30 has been one of our main concerns because it looks like a very impactful, potentially impactful vehicle. But coming from China, 100% tariffs now dead in the water. Volvo is inting that instead of building them in China, they'll build them in Belgium for the U.S. market, which would avoid those Chinese tariffs. There would still not be any tax credit or anything like that, but at least...

Not 100% tariffs. Yeah, crazy. Yeah. So the EX30 still come to the US and be successful if they are built in Belgium. Just a different route. And this is kind of something when we were, so we went to Europe to check out the EX30. And we're super impressed by it, especially at the price points that they were talking about.

Um, you know, it isn't a expensive Volvo. There is, you know, the, the, the inside is built inexpensively, but it's a great vehicle, especially at the $35,000 price point that there's, they're talking about. Um,

But at the time, we were like, how are you going to make this in China and expect to compete with a 25%? At the time, it was 25% or 27% or something tariff versus vehicles that are built in the US that are going to not only have no tariff, but also get a $7,500 tax credit.

And they were like, we can do it. Yeah, they were not that worried. They were not that worried at 25%. At 100%, they probably went back and said, oh crap. I don't get why. I mean, they have a plant in South Carolina. They're building the EX90 at it and they're not, I mean, they've had to

Their original plan was to bring the X 90 to the U S from China. And they, they put the kibosh on that. They, uh, and you know, that was supposed to happen at the beginning of this year. Uh, they're not going to have X nineties, uh, until August. I think we're actually going to go to Los Angeles and check that out. Um, at the,

the kind of the end of August. So I imagine that the first ones will be delivered around that time. And those are going to be made in South Carolina. I hope that, you know, this Belgium thing is a temporary fix and they are actually spooling up EX 30 production at that same plant or some other plant in the U S because why not take advantage of that $7,500 tax credit instead of doubling the price. So, you know,

And it's kind of a chicken and egg situation too because these smaller vehicles, sometimes, especially the European automakers, they have concerns about bringing them to the US and all that. They think the US only wants those big vehicles. So now they kind of want to see the demand for it first, which is going to be a little bit more difficult to do with the more expensive version from Belgium. But if the demand is there...

Maybe that convinced them to do exactly what you just said. Yeah, I just, nobody's trying it. And it's really kind of frustrating because like, I think there's a lot of people out there who want a, you know, a hot hatch. I mean, look at the, look at all the, the noise around the Rivian R3. People were kind of losing their mind. And Volvo showed off a off-road version of the,

the X 30 at their event, they have that in the wings. It's, it's, you know, it'll be available in a year and, uh, some, some markets like spool it up in the U S people would love that thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree.

All right, still on the subject of getting around the protectionist laws to sell in the US. Kia is going to build the EV3, which is an interesting cheap $30,000 vehicle in Mexico to get access to tax credits. So we've talked about the EV3 when it was in Villarreal this year. Probably an EX30 competitor too from Kia. Yeah.

And that's their plan coming to Mexico. I guess they are betting on Biden winning the election. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I can't comment on that specifically, but you got to give it to Hyundai Kia. They're really putting out some impressive EVs. I mean, I would say behind Tesla,

Like the company that's doing the most cool stuff with EVs would probably be the Hyundai Kia Consortium. Yeah, I agree. They're, you know, in more places they have the EX9, which kind of competes with the Rivian R1S. Yeah.

They have obviously the EV6, which is like kind of one of the better Model Y competitors, although it's more smaller. But then the Hyundai IONIQs are also pretty cool and the IONIQ 7 is coming out. So there's just a lot of stuff coming from Hyundai Kia. And I like that. I like that they're going up and down market, not just like, here's our Model Y competitor.

Yeah, and I like that they're doing different things. EV3 looks nothing like the EV6, and then that looks like the EV9. So everything is different. I like Kia a lot. But yeah, they're going to Mexico to build the EV3. And then two quick news that we want to discuss real quick about BMW. So BMW confirmed this week that the Series 1 is going to go electric.

So it's going to be their entry-level, it's already their entry-level vehicle, the ICE lineup, but it's going to be an entry-level electric vehicle. So beyond the Mini brand, obviously. They are aiming for the electric Series 1 to come in 2027, followed by the i2, that is also a cheaper electric vehicle, 2028. So BMW has been going a little bit upmarket first, you know, i7, i7.

and INX and all those stuff. Now the down market, they've been taking their time for it. 2027 and 2028 are now the expected date. Those images are the new class sedan and platform that was unveiled. So these vehicles are going to be built on that platform, but don't expect it to look like that.

Those kind of seem a little muscle car-y. Yeah, those are very early concept for the unveiling of the new electric platform from BMW. Then finally, BMW canceled a $2 billion contract with Nordvolt. So Nordvolt has been seeing a lot of delays.

And BMW has been one of the two main partners for the company. BMW has been one of the two main partners with Volkswagen to Nordvolt. But now they have dropped out. So I think they just exercised an option to leave the contract because that deal was signed in 2020. And it's just they've been behind on the production. So they were able to get out of the contract. Obviously, Nordvolt is coming right now.

From where I grew up, they're building a $9 billion factory in Quebec. And it's also a very controversial project because they apparently got an incentive package worth more than the factory itself. Oh, geez. I guess it's a no-brainer when it costs more. Obviously, it's like tax abatement over years and years and years, but still makes no sense to me. All right, let's jump into the comment section.

All right. Let's see. Different time zones, so different commenters it looks like mostly. Rene Pouliot? Yeah, Pouliot. Okay, Pouliot. In the past, using the accounting average made it possible to quantify vehicles that would be boring and could help the competition.

I'm not sure of the context, but he continues. Question, Fred, have you made a decision on the EV you'll buy, Rivian or Cybertruck? Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's going to be the Rivian. I'm still holding up, though, for I would like to see the Silverado because I've been looking at Scooter's review, and this week I got into a little bit of a YouTube rabbit hole of Silverado videos, and it is like...

very nice truck that battery is huge battery is huge but also just the utility of the back is uh is is very cool like i like all the you know the little attention to details with the useless stuff or so rado so i was trying to get one to review here but uh gm uh has been uh uh they they they don't have a lot or it looks like in quebec where's your uh road trip

couldn't be all right get back and get speezy i tried to get a few from them but they're like no we don't have that we don't have that they say that they are working to get me something soon but uh they couldn't get one for for me in time for the road trip bummer so i'm gonna go in the tesla all right which is nice supercharger and self-driving not too bad

All right. Oh, Carl in San Diego, waking up early. Musk is starting to sound like Trump. Oh, yeah. We mentioned that. Desperate and caught up in all his lies about how much he knows. Con man exposed. Okay. Thanks for the show, guys. Big fan. Chat, chat, words, show interest. All right. I appreciate that. All right. Master plan sounds like master race. Companies usually call that a mission statement.

Agree Seth Musk only believes in a humanoid robot because much of what he tries to sell to people is from sci-fi books. I mean, some cool things have come out of sci-fi books. Some scary things as well. Hopefully the cool things are what we get.

And he likes Arjun Ashwagandha. Okay. The dilution caused by Elon Musk's compensation package was more than offset by Tesla's performance as each tranche was met. Cost Tesla zero and shareholders shared in the gain two. Dan Harreld is an Elon Musk guy, it sounds like. Yeah, cost Tesla zero is literally not true, but...

All right. Question. Elon said himself that he is over-optimistic. He also added that if it was not a lot of his realization wouldn't exist. Do you agree with that? I'll defer to you on that one. Yeah, I'm not sure what he means. So if he wasn't so optimistic, things would not have happened. I don't know about that. I think...

There's a time to be optimistic and to have grand goals and all that. I agree. But I think Tesla now is a more mature company and a lot of resources at hand and all that. I think it would be smart to enter kind of an Apple era of work on things in the background and when they're ready.

announce them bring them to market this whole idea of like oh we were working on self-driving and you know it's coming soon it's never coming soon it's they use this to sell cars that's that's my main concern like the this is a tool that you use to sell cars and if people are buying those cars with those expectations uh you're opening yourself up to liabilities and you know you know in the past you know the you move away from saying that but yes said in the past

that all vehicles will achieve level five autonomy and it's becoming pretty clear that that's not going to be the case. Maybe level four, maybe even not. So this is a liability for Tesla. Now they're going to have to make it right and that's going to cost a lot of money. That's going to be hard to do if not impossible. It's just not an ideal situation.

All right, we're going to cut Carl and San Diego off here. Bike Angelus, question, shopping for a used Model 3 using the $4,000 EV rebate for standard range 2022 with LFP battery. Is real world range closer to the stated range? 272 EPA equals question mark. Real world range. Is LFP more reliable over the lifetime?

Yes, the last question is on degradation. Yes, degradation is similar on that front. Now, whether EPA is real range, I mean, it depends on how you drive mostly. It depends on what conditions you drive. You know,

I know a lot of people that always achieve the EP range, always beat it. And I know some people that never achieve it. And they're like, why? I cannot achieve that. And then, you know, I get in the car with them and they drive 120 on the highway. It's like, of course you want to achieve that. Like, that's not, yeah. So like right now I'm good. Like, and I drive fast too. I like to drive fast. And, you know, when I can, when, when, when I don't,

care about my range because I know I'm going to a place where I can easily get to that place and I can charge when I'm there. I'll drive wherever I want to drive. But for example, today I'm driving 700 or so kilometers. I'm going to have to charge in between those. So now I'm going to have to think a little bit more about how fast I'm driving and all that. But yeah, standard range, over 200 miles of range.

you're going to be fine bike injuries. Don't worry about it. And there are some good deals to be had with that. Especially with the 4K EV rebate. Yeah. I mean, that might be the $25,000 Tesla we're all hoping for. Now that Tesla has an overcapacity in production, publicity makes perfect sense. Yeah. I mean, that's a demand lever on the high level. I always think about why don't they make more colors? Why don't they make more options? I feel like

There's a lot of demand levers that Tesla could pull that they haven't yet. The colors one is always weird. All right. Dan Harold, Amazon's cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services is indeed more profitable than its retail operations. If FSD were to fail, I don't see the farm as a waste. Well, then I guess Tesla would have to go back to

selling server farm stuff that would be in yeah it's not even like server farm it's more like it's it would be like uh cloud computing yeah services it wouldn't be exactly like amazon or services but uh like training like ai training right they could sell it to xai yeah yeah i could see that happening

Oh, boy. All right. Fisker's flameout is representative of a greater challenge for all of them. Remember, they thought they would sell crossovers for 40K. That's been the delusion of most EVs designed five years ago. Yeah. I mean, that's the problem with inflation, too. I'm sure that Fisker ended up, you know, their cost protection were higher than Fisker.

they thought i think that's clear but it's also inflation the timing was not great on that all right who will be the first legacy automaker to join fisker in bankruptcy valhalla oh toyota that's a big one uh i would say maybe mazda i don't know i don't know how they're doing i don't even know if they're profitable all right companies will actually nissan's not doing well all right companies will under deliver on low price evs because they will lose more money on every unit 30 000 is how much

many companies lose on each unit. Yeah. That's true. Kia is definitely putting out better EVs than Tesla. Tesla is losing ground because they had an inferior early mover product. Yeah. I mean, I know a lot of Tesla drivers who are like, oh man, the model, you know, I got an early Model Y and the doors were, they didn't sound great. And like I had to take it in. And a lot of Model Ys actually have front suspension issues that Tesla hasn't, you know, they just charge you a lot of money for. They usually go out in about three years.

I think a lot of people are going to be kind of burned by that and they're going to be like, you know what, let's go with the legacy auto EV. Like I like the EV part. I like Tesla's charging network, but if I can get, you know, a legacy automaker with a good charging network, it makes more sense.

All right. Dan, I hope BMW learned not to use the silly rear doors that only open if you open the front doors. Everybody hates those. He's referring to the i3, and that was kind of dumb. As somebody who had a kid in the back seat and dropping off at school, I had to open the front door for him to get out of the back. When I was testing that thing, I was like, does nobody try this stuff? Yeah.

Yeah, but this is a long run. I don't think they're coming back with that. All right, a couple of weeks ago, you guys discussed how the U.S. presidential election could affect the EV industry in the United States. He continues, Trump has intensified his attacks on EV specifically and announced policies against the industry. Specifically, Trump could use his policies in the DOT, EPA courts, etc. to hamstring the IRA. And one example would be crippling the federal EV charging bill.

Without actually repealing any of the EV charging funding. I think that's it. Yeah, I think it's pretty clear that there's one president, one candidate that is more pro-EV than the other. I think that's pretty clear. At the very least...

He said like all these EVs coming from Mexico, he pretty clearly said that he would be slashing that, not approving that for the tax credit if the tax credit even survive his presidency. So yeah, I think the US is going to see a step back in EVs if Trump is elected. Yeah, I mean, there was a step back the first time he was elected. And he wasn't even, like, I don't even think EVs were on his radar.

Yeah. No, you just didn't do it. We needed that reform for the tax credit during his presidency because everyone hit the 200,000. Not everyone, but Tesla. Tesla was the one that mattered, obviously. As soon as Tesla hit it, you slow down Tesla, you slow down the entire industry in the US because Tesla is the industry in the US, or at least was. So, yeah, it was problematic. All right, Mr. Turkey Neck, the Silverado's folding middle looks promising. Wish the Cybertruck had one.

I don't know if they could build that into the Cybertruck. I mean, with the tunnel cover in there and everything. I don't know. No, you could have it with it. Well, yeah, the tool cover does take a little space in that back when it's all folded in. Yeah, it makes sense. Fisi Omanuel Omani from Facebook wonders why Mexican-made cars enjoy the U.S. EV tax credits using U.S. taxpayers' money to pay Mexico tax.

Mexico made cars should be removed from the tax credits. Thoughts on that? I mean, I'm for what's going to bring the most EVs as possible. So I'm even against the tariffs on China, on Chinese EVs, to be honest with you. They make sense to bolster the domestic market. I understand the goal of it and everything is just

I'm more broader mission of transitioning the world to transport and if the Chinese can make the cars cheaper. The only thing where I think it does make sense is this. If you go with the idea that China is beating the US because they have government subsidized company because they are walking this weird line between communism and capitalism. So I do get that argument. But then

You know, you could make the argument that the American government is subsidizing U.S. cars, too. They've done that for years. They've given like cheap loans. They've done a lot of these things. So I don't know. It's a weird thing. Yeah, I mean, the question is, I guess, why can China make them so inexpensively and nowhere else in the world can make them as good as cheaply as China?

And, you know, cheaper labor is part of that for sure. So like this, this idea of like, yeah, you're losing slave labor, which, which is a stretch. I think now I think there's a growing middle class in China is like these jobs are actually good jobs now in China that they have in manufacturing. I think the bigger difference is the manufacturing expertise, right?

is is there in China they have this crazy like prison labor yeah there's some of that and like if when you do when we do find clear evidence of that I'm hauled for the boycotts of those companies 100% on board with you down on there but for the most part you we've seen those Chinese companies Chinese factories making electric cars it's it's not prison labor it's it's good labor it's just they have a manufacturing expertise that is far beyond what we have in North America

all right i think we're coming toward the end uh gandalf says level four certificate uh level four not possible without radar or lidar i mean i think that remains to be seen i think at some point maybe not as soon as uh tesla has been saying but i think you could probably i mean like humans to elon's argument is like we are able to do level five and all we have is eyes and ears and

I think that's a good argument because I think that's the best argument because what drives cars right now is the only answer to that is humans. I mean, I've seen some monkeys and some dogs behind the wheels like they've trained to do, but obviously not to a level that I think will pass a driver's license. No offense to those dogs and monkeys.

And so the only answer is human. And like you said, humans don't have LIDARs. They don't have radars. They have eyes and they have a brain. That's what we use to drive a car. So I think that so far, that means that that would be the route to go. Now, that doesn't mean that radar and LIDAR cannot enhance driving capability of a driver system, but...

We have no proof of that just yet because no one has achieved it. I mean, there's Waymo and all that, but there are geofence systems. They have those limitations. I do see values in those. I don't want to diminish them and everything. It's just my only point is like I think that the real future of self-driving is certainly like an autonomous driver that, you know,

doesn't need to be any like IHD map just like us I can drive in my car without any map I can just get in there and you know if I know where I'm going I'll get there but we I think that's the obvious path to a true self-divisive that's the long term yep right now I'm completely on board with geofence stuff it's super useful all right that's about it for the comments

All right. Well, thanks, everyone, for listening to the show this week. If you do enjoy the show, please give us a thumbs up, a like, a subscribe, whatever it is on the app you're watching. We're live everywhere. If you're listening to the podcast app right now and we're live on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all that, on any of those, if you can give us a five-star rating, it helps the show a ton. It helps propagate it to more people and we get more of you fans out there. So thanks a lot for tuning in early morning. Well, not that early, but not our usual time for the show. And we're going to see you next week. Have a good one.