Tesla Model Y AWD disappears, Tesla software, Chevy Equinox EV, and more
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We are live everyone for a new episode of The Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host, and as usual, I'm joined by Seth Winthrop. And today we are on the regular time, a regular spot. How are you doing, Seth? Feels good to be home, sleeping in my own bed. Yes, it does. All right. We have plenty of news to discuss this week.

Nothing super major, but a lot of interesting stuff if you're a hardcore AV fan. So we'll get right into it, starting with one story that raises a lot of highbrows. What's happening with that is earlier this week, Tesla removed the cheapest Model Y, the Texas-built Model Y, the Model Y all-wheel drive, the Model Y 46 CDI, whatever you want to name it.

remove it from the configurator. It's not available for sales anymore. And it's not like what happened last year with the Model 3 long range where Tesla graded out of the options where you couldn't click on it, couldn't order it, but it was still there. As we know, it's an option out there. Now it's just gone from the online configurator.

So why? Well, of course we reached out to Tesla's PR department and then they, nah, I'm just kidding. We can't do that. Uh, we have to speculate then that's what happens. And, uh, speculation. Well, few things right now for the whole week, it looks like gigafactory Texas was shut down, uh, production wise. Uh, sorry, let me, uh, put my do not disturb on. Oh, sorry. It's not working. And, um,

The production has been shut down. Now, if it was a temporary shutdown, I don't necessarily see the need to remove it from the configurator. It can still take orders. That's still a useful thing to do. So I don't know if it explains that exactly. Of course, the factory shutdown,

is itself speculated for different reasons, like especially the Cybertruck. We think that Tesla might be shutting down in order to focus some of its resources towards bringing Cybertruck production to a real start.

We know that they've been doing batches of release candidates, but they should, from what we are hearing from suppliers, production should start fully in October. So that's just a few weeks away. So it would make sense that something's brewing within the factory. But yeah, other than that, it's not clear why they would remove the Model Y. A lot of people also have been speculating that a Model Y refresh would be coming because of the Model 3.

We haven't heard any serious sources on that, though. It's just rumors. And Malawai is a lot more recent, still selling very well. Would it make sense to have a significant upgrade? Not really.

Do you have any other theories set on this? I mean, obviously Cybertruck's a big deal around those parts. It's probably due to that. I don't think there's going to be like a Highland version of the Model Y coming out of Texas anytime soon. So yeah, I'm in full agreement with you there. I mean, it's not going to be permanent by any means, right? Like they're going to be...

they're not going to just take over cyber truck is not going to just take over texas right they're still going to make model wise there yeah i would assume they still would it was a big investment in the production line there they just recently brought it up to 5 000 units a week uh even though there's been rumors that like slowed down a bit since so i don't know i mean

Elon announced it at the last conference call or earnings call that there would be factory upgrades without going into the details. And those factory upgrades would result in factory shutdowns. So we're seeing what we're seeing now. But again, there's other...

There have been other factory shutdowns at Tesla in the past that didn't result in removing a vehicle completely out of the lineup. However, there hasn't been that many vehicles that were just produced as single factory other than Model S and X. So this is the Texas built Model Y, even though Texas also builds other Model Ys with the 2170 cells also. We have no mix of that, unfortunately, so we don't know exactly what's happening in details.

Maybe we get an update on that in the next earnings calls because Drew Baggino has been pretty good about that, about going quite granular, especially with a 4680 production. Maybe if he could elaborate on the next call about where are those sales going? Are they going in the new Model Y? Are they going for the Cybertruck? Because that's another potential factor. So Rodrigo Jimenez here on LinkedIn says it might be a supply chain issue.

And it might be like an internal supply chain issue where like Tesla might be shutting down the 4680 production of the Model Y to keep all those 4680 cells for the Cybertruck. That's a possibility too. That's true. Because we know they've been ripping that up, but have they ramped that up enough that like they can support production of...

That's right. And the Cybertruck is not going to have the 2170s, right? I would assume not. I would assume it makes no sense to have both of them. So maybe they're just stockpiling for that ramp up. That's true because there's like a mix of 2170s and well, then they would just go back to 2170s on the Model Y. I don't know. Mm-hmm.

While we're still talking about Giga Texas, I'll jump to this story right here that came out yesterday. It was interesting. It's some employment data coming from Jason Shahan. This is director of manufacturing at Giga Texas. He did a public presentation that was reported by the Austin Business Journal. And he revealed some employment data at Giga Factory Texas that were quite unbelievable to me, honestly.

He revealed that at the end of last year, Tesla had 12,000 employees at Gifford, Texas, which is already high, already more employees than most factories around the world. Already at the same level of Tesla's other giant factories like Giga Nevada, Fremont, and I don't know about Shanghai exactly what's the kind of employment right now there.

But that's nothing. That was at the end of last year. He says now that Tesla employs about 20,000 people in the Austin area, which I would assume that most of it is at the factory. So a single factory with 20,000 employees is just...

Unbelievable. But then it goes with an even wilder claim where he says that when Cybertruck production is going to be fully ramped up, which who knows when that's going to be, but you expect Tesla to have 60,000 employees around Gigafactory Texas. That's a small city. Yeah, I mean...

I was thinking it's like a big football stadium worth of people. Yeah, you can visualize it like that. Like a college football stadium in Texas. It's popular there. Yeah, Austin. So Texas is used to the logistic of having 60,000 people at the same time. Of course, this is on several shifts, obviously. Not everyone is there. But there's some logic to Gigafactory Texas having so many employees, which is...

It's more than just vehicle production. Now, of course, once you have a cyber truck all ramped up, so you have a factory producing. We know that Tesla aims for over 300,000 vehicles a year. So that alone is a significant truck factory there that is normal to have over 10,000 employees just for that. But then...

Then you have the Model Y production line also. But then you also have much deeper granular production of components, mainly the 4680 cells that we've been talking about. So normally that's a whole other factory by itself at the level that someone's produced to if they want to produce there all the cells for the Cybertruck and the Model Y and

sounds like a new generation vehicle is going to be built there too um then that that's a giant factory also and then tesla is even as a cathode factory at the at the plant too that's also a giant factory uh in itself so tesla gigafactory texas is like multiple factories at the same time i would have assumed that eventually would ramp up to 20 000 employees i didn't think that it

it would already have 20,000 employees and aim for 60,000 employees. That's just madness. And this isn't going to contribute to the headcount a ton, but it is also the HQ. Yeah, that's fair. It's the HQ. They've moved a lot of engineering teams there too and built new ones, a new video game team, a new like there's

So it's not when we say Gigafactory Texas, like a lot of them, I'm sure works there. But I know Tesla has other offices around and they are building other buildings also on this giant campus because the building that you see on screen right now with the Tesla logo written in solar panels on top, that's the main Gigafactory. But like the cattle factory is a separate building and we expect other buildings to show up too for Tesla's

other departments, even though the core engineering team, Tesla wants it within the factory on the production lines. Did you say video game team? Yeah. Like implementing other people's video games or building? Yeah, I think it's more integration of the video games into the Tesla OS. That would be an interesting story.

I did write that story. No, but if they're doing their own video games. Oh, yeah, yeah. If they do their own. Yeah, I don't think that this is going to get into that. Don't you never know. You remember when we first reported like Jim Keller being hired? They were like, they're not hiring Jim Keller to do a chip, right? They're not going to do their own silicone. That's insane. And then they did. Remember when they were going to do a music streaming service? Yeah. Yeah.

I think Spotify is actually pretty good at what they do. I'm a big fan of Spotify, to be honest. I think their algorithm is one of the best. If you use the app right, they suggest you some incredible stuff. Anyway, moving on. Another

Another little NACS update, Jaguar signed up to be the next automaker to adopt NACS in North America. They signed a deal with Tesla. So it seems to be like part of why it's getting slow a little bit for, we have like a steady stream of automakers being announced and that like everyone is jumping on board at the same time. It's like all these automakers, they want to have a deal with Tesla soon.

first to get access to that supercharger network, not to be left behind in the transition to NACs. So even though NACs are an open standard, currently being standardized by SAE,

tesla also gave a license to forget the uk manufacturer electronics to to build it so tesla is not even like now the sole supplier of the connector so much on its own standardization you wouldn't necessarily need to deal with tesla to move to nax but for automakers that already have a lineup of electric vehicles offered uh it's the what's the effect again like

announcing new features that Osborne effect. Thank you very much. Keep forgetting that as well. I can't, I can't want to see the Streisand effect, but I know that's not, that's completely different, right? Different, but awesome.

Also interesting, the Osborne effect, like they don't want people not to buy the current vehicles because they won't get access to supercharger network. So they need that deal. They need that adapter. And that's exactly the deal that Jaguar did talking about 2024, an adapter coming to the current lineup. And then the new Jaguars, a new electric vehicle from Jaguars, which they very much need after the

Kind of the fiasco, I don't know if it's too harsh of a word, fiasco, but the high pace was a dud a little bit. It was nice at first, it was like a new interesting entry, but they never significantly updated it. It went past its time, and then obviously there was the battery issue that they suffered.

with the fire risk. So they very much need a new generation of electric vehicle. And the new generation in North America is going to be backed by NACs. So now we have Ford, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, GM, Volvo, Polestar, Rivian, and Jaguar all on board with NACs. Not that many left. Well, a couple. Yeah, a few. People keep talking about Lucid. Like Lucid needs to get on board. I don't know what's... I thought Lucid...

I think Lucid's on board. Oh, did they? Did they announce it? I think they did. I missed it. All right. Let's talk a little bit about Tesla custom software. It's interesting it's happening. Tesla announced this week that they have this new update for all Earth's Tesla rental vehicles in North America, where they have this new software in-car, custom software in-car, that allows customers to directly link their Tesla account with the new vehicle that they're renting.

And you could already do that already if Hertz would get involved because Hertz had to...

basically send you an access to via email to the specific vehicle and then you will get it to your uh your phone that would work but i guess it was a little bit too hard to manage for them so tesla has now a custom software solution which you see on the screen you have the qr code appearing right here you scan that gets you to your app to your tesla app on your phone and automatically

adds it to your vehicles for the duration of your rental, which is awesome because now you can use your phone as a key, don't have to manage the suboptimal key card entry. And obviously, you also enjoy all the other features that come with the Tesla app.

So this isn't obviously a good feature, but I think what makes it even more interesting is Tesla now opening up to the idea of having custom in-car software for specific application. In this case, obviously, it's the one that makes the most sense because Hertz is a significant customer of Tesla now with the 100,000 vehicle order. I don't know how many exactly have been delivered already, but we know as of last year was at least 50,000. So yeah.

Yeah, it makes sense to put some effort to make it easier, especially now that it looks like Hertz is locked in as a big fan of Tesla. They say that Tesla vehicles, when they rent them, it increased Hertz own customer satisfaction. Customers like the idea of renting a Tesla vehicle from them.

And that will make probably the experience even smoother. So when Hertz needs to update their fleet again, which is very often, I would see them sticking with Teslas, even though they also added some Polestar and

Yeah, they have a bunch of EVs, but nothing compared to the number of Teslas. And I think the Teslas are at almost every place versus other EVs are only at places where there's a lot of EV infrastructure. Like, for instance, in the South, the Hertz in Birmingham, Alabama probably does not have

anything besides Tesla. So the Tesla charging infrastructure in Birmingham is not bad. Like they have a few superchargers. No, that's what I'm saying. They only have Teslas. Oh, they only have Teslas. Okay, okay. Yeah, no, you're right. Okay, okay. Misunderstood. They don't have any Polestars there. Yeah. And now still sticking with custom software inside Tesla vehicle, even though not necessarily from Tesla. But we've heard that Tesla is working on that too. We had Larry Helleson.

who until recently was a Tesla board member and a close friend of Elon Musk. He's very well aware of what's going on at Tesla, but he's obviously more well-known for being the founder of Oracle. And he's still, even though he was in the 70s, he's still a CTO and executive chairman of Oracle. And he did the keynote presentation at Oracle's Cloud World 2023 conference. And the Cybertruckman appearance was,

Larry said, our next generation police car, police car, while showing that image, is coming very soon. It's my favorite police car. You know, it's my favorite car, actually. It's Elon's favorite car. It's incredible. I know too much about it. Some still to be disclosed, but amongst other things, it's incredibly safe, very fast. It's got a stainless steel body. And also he said that they are...

So during the presentation, right before that, he was unveiling the latest generation of Oracle as law enforcement software. So Oracle does some of the software that you see in police cars. Obviously, you don't see in police cars unless you're maybe in a ride-along or something. No, you're in the backseat. Yeah, but in the backseat.

They have these screens that have all their software that interacts with their dispatch and whatnot. And these things are getting very smart and they use artificial intelligence and whatnot, even though there's some controversy around that. And now he was talking about implementing it in the Cybertruck specifically, and they say that they are working to use the in-car screens technology.

and camera system in the vehicle. So they wouldn't even have to add anything to the vehicle. They could have their own software in there, which is new information. Like I said, Tesla is not big on letting third parties getting involved in their in-car software. But if someone is going to do it, I would think Oracle would make the most sense because of how close Elon is with Ellison. But not only that, what's interesting is that

Tesla had previously talked about that too, specifically for law enforcement, where they said that they were looking to work directly, especially I think, I remember the UK, they were talking when Tesla developed their own vehicle to be certified for UK law enforcement, they talk about custom law enforcement software within the vehicle. So,

It's possible here that Ellison was teasing at Oracle working directly with Tesla on the Cybertruck being a law enforcement vehicle, which in the US makes sense. I think especially in the South, I saw a lot of pickup trucks being police vehicles, right? You don't see that as much in the Northeast. No, but I've seen a whole lot more SUVs.

I mean, it used to be a sedan. It was a police cruiser. And now almost every one I see is an SUV of some sort. Yeah. Still sticking to Tesla custom software. This is an interesting one here. Tesla launches the wall connector app integration. And it's one of those that I saw a lot of people commenting like, what, what?

Why was it not already available? Because you didn't need to because the Tesla car was always the one doing the connectivity stuff when it comes to charging. Everything you could do connectivity-wise with the Tesla chargers, you could do with a Tesla car and all Tesla chargers were charging Tesla cars for the most part.

But for years now, since I think the second generation wall connector, the wall connector has had Wi-Fi capability. It just wasn't really being used because of what I just said. But now that Tesla is opening up the chargers to other EVs, especially in North America, and now specifically that they have the new universal wall connector that can work with virtually any electric vehicles in North America,

Then you have a different opportunity now to enable those connectivity at the charging station rather than the vehicle so that you can take advantage of things like scheduling charging and monitoring charging and those charging history features and all that. So that's exactly what they're doing. So how you do it is as simple as...

Having a Tesla account, going to the Tesla app and setting up a new wall connector or an existing one on it. You tap add product and then you stand the QR code in your quick start guide in your wall connector. And then you can control your wall connector on your app like you can any other Tesla product. So if you're charging a non-Tesla vehicle, you can control the charging experience from your Tesla app rather than on the app.

app of the vehicle if there is. I assume that's the thing. I didn't do it because I don't have to because I only have Teslas here. Yeah, I imagine most people won't even ever use it. Most Tesla owners, I mean, you can still do it and just, I don't know, to have it in your app. But again, I would assume all the features unless there's something that they had in the futures. But right now, all the features are only...

on these charging schedule and charging history. So this is things that you already have in the Tesla app. All right, this was interesting. A new study from Recurrent, and we like the Recurrent studies because they are pretty good, at least data-wise. They have access to a lot of data on Tesla vehicles, directly on the batteries. We reported on a story from them a few weeks ago about, or a month ago.

about the superchargers, frequent supercharging versus non-frequent supercharging, how it affects battery longevity. And it confirmed something that we knew for a while that it didn't actually have a negative effect long-term, unless maybe ultra-excessive supercharging, but that's another thing in itself. Now, they looked into the effect of cold climate on battery longevity. So obviously, we all know that colder temperatures, harsher climate,

affects negatively your range, your real-time range for a bunch of different reasons. But what about the longevity of the battery? How does it affect battery degradation, energy degradation over time? And that's what they found that was interesting is that colder climates are actually better slightly for longevity than warmer climates.

so that's uh that's an interesting twist here not by a giant margin so they have something recurring they call the range score which is basically the

uh energy retention of your battery pack so a range score in 95 which is what they were getting in those colder climate and coastal climate too because it goes all the way to california but on the on the coastal side rather than the harsher warmer uh desert side um so he gets a 95 so that means that on average the cars are retained retaining 95 of the energy capacity

Now, if you go in the South, like all the US South, all the way up the East Coast, Arizona, Texas, they have on average 92, which is 3% lower. So significant enough to be mentioned, but not a giant difference. I thought it was pretty cool. Yeah, I wonder why cold. I mean, I know we used to put batteries in the refrigerator to make them last longer. I wonder if that's a similar. Really? You did that?

Well, I don't remember us, like my parents doing it, but my grandparents always had batteries in the refrigerator. Was it like lead acid batteries? No, they were, oh, maybe they were, I mean, they were like Duracell batteries, but they weren't. Moving on. Yeah. You got Texas, so we already covered that. Oh, yeah, this year. This year we can talk a little bit about it.

So it's still that Project 42 thing that originated. We talked about that before. There was apparently a DOG probe around the Project 42 that Tesla internally had an investigation around about misappropriation of some company resources to order glass, special glass, apparently over a million dollars worth of special glass that was for something, a special project called Project 42 that...

rumor was that it was related to a house that could have been home by that was being built for Elon Musk rather than for the company. And the story was denied by Elon Musk, but denied. I don't like deny because you need to read between the lines. What he denied is that it was very clear about he denied that

there's no house like find a house okay right and uh that he doesn't plan to build a house hasn't built a house there's no house he doesn't plan to build a house that's not a true denial of the actual story because the actual story is that there was a plan to build a house and maybe it never happened sure and it could have fell but the

If it was an order place to potentially build a house, it's really the only real, if you want to deny that, then that would be a real denial of the actual story. Because what added to this whole thing too, and probably what resulted in now the new story this week, is that the DOG probe has expanded beyond that and is looking at a bunch of perks and transactions between Tesla, Elon, and companies controlled by Elon Musk.

And it's the fact that, again, the biography came out. And in the biography, it did confirm that last year, Elon was looking to build a house in Austin, met with an architect and draw up plans and everything. So, sure, it confirms now that he didn't go through with it, but he never denied that they actually did that order of glass, which is amazing.

the main thing that's been discussed in those few articles this week. So I think that in itself is a good example for Tesla fans to look into when they just like,

you believe everything Elon Musk said, like, cause they jump on that every time. Like we, and we've been victim to that ourself where Elon jump on one of our stories and denies the story when I'm like, you have to look, what are you denying exactly here? Like, cause he's, uh,

He might be some guy like he always says that he's a truth absolutist and all that, and he's all about the truth. And that might very well be, but he's not above playing semantic and like read between the lines type of thing. Also, I don't know about his free speech absolutism when he's blocking journalists and stuff like that. No, I'm not saying free speech, the truth absolutist. Like he said that before. I think he's neither.

I mean, not to get too far off on a digression, but like that was one of my problems with the book. We haven't really talked about the book, but like, you know, clearly Elon has like huge issues with honesty and the truth and, you know, all that stuff. And a lot of the book was based on, you know, what Elon's like telling of, you know, like his father's stuff and, you know, the camps he went to and bullies and all that stuff. And I'm like, well,

This guy makes up all kinds of stuff all the time that's either half true or, you know... Yeah, I think that's the point there, though. They are... And I'm not defending him, by the way, when I say this. They're always, like, not... It's not completely a lie. Like, he's just...

He's in his own reality. It might be based in some reality. Yeah, it's based in some reality, but he massages it. He's good at massaging the truth to make himself look better in those stories. I mean, I don't know. I think that's it. I think in his head, he's like, I'm telling the truth. I don't think he's necessarily like intentionally lying. I think he's like, he knows how to present it to make himself look better and still being based somewhat on the truth. You know what I mean?

I know what you mean. I just don't think that Elon needs an anchor in truth for what he's saying. I mean, I guess he's, you know, like, hey, I believe that we're going to have full self-driving at the end of the year. Like, you know, I believe that, you know, that that's a big. But does he really believe that? Does he like.

I mean, he's admitted before that he was wrong in, he was too optimistic. He's admitted he's wrong, but like then he says in the same breath, he says, yeah, but at the end of this year, it's definitely happening. Yeah. You know, so like, I don't know if he even knows if he's, you know, if he's able to tell what's real and what's not real.

So that's, I mean, that's my point with the book that was really frustrating. I was like, all the, like, not 70% of the book was like single source Elon telling of things. And I'm like, I don't believe a thing that a guy, I don't believe anything.

Like most of what that guy says, why am I going to believe this book? So I don't know. Anyway, that's a digression. That's for another day. Yeah. But I thought that this new probe was interesting too, because it brings me to, I think we touched it in the last podcast a little bit, but it's this, I've been growing, especially as a Tesla investor myself, been growing increasingly concerned about Elon Musk

I mean, this is a small thing. Well, relatively small. It's a million dollars. And I know like the Jose says, the guy is a billionaire. He can build 100 glass houses. No, sure. I have no problem with Elon building as many glass houses as he wants. Although I would put it into...

perspective of him like saying the owning properties and then the attack vector I don't hold any property and I live in the $50,000 house and everything is like alright like choose one or the other I wouldn't care if he lives in the $100 million house like but don't go around like boasting about the fact that you don't own In the book he said he sold his houses because his daughter went communist

And he was trying to appease her. I don't know if that's true or not. I mean, that's not what he said on the Joe Rogan podcast when he just was selling them. Exactly at the moment, he gave the reason that houses were in any property was an attack vector for his enemies. Maybe he was talking about communist enemies. Communist, yeah. So two other things with this. Is the glass house thing, is that like a big joke?

Because, you know, throwing stones out of a glass house, is that the whole point? And, you know, are we talking about a million dollars just for the glass or is the whole house made of glass? It was the thing from the book, at least. It was, he said something, he wanted like something like a charred,

a chart of glass coming out of the lake because he has a lake property near Gigafactory, Texas. It's a farmhouse there and there's a lake on it. And he wanted a charred glass that comes out of the lake. And it was part of the house that would be underwater, part over water, and you could access it from outside the lake. So it was a whole thing. And then apparently he gave up the idea after his accent said...

That it sounded more like a hard project in the home. And he gave that up. Because apparently it's his, I don't know what she is to him, like Siobhan Zalas, the neural link woman.

She said that she was the one driving the project, saying that he needed a home for his family. It's a home where his family would come, which makes a ton of sense, to be honest. Good call. It sounds more like a supervillain layer. Yeah, exactly. It's not very homey. Right. No, because I'm sure it would have been cool. But anyway, that's not the point. The point is misappropriating resources from a public company, Tesla, without saying what you're doing. Right.

So beyond that, because I think that's obviously a small thing. And to add to the people that are saying that, oh, again, you know, deny, deny, deny. I don't think his deny was a strong one. But beyond that, in that latest report that came out this week, they confirmed that –

a company called Peninsula LLC that agreed to reimburse Tesla over the expenses about that project. So specifically that project 42 thing. And also 42 is the answer of Shaker's Guide to the Galaxy, Elon's favorite book. So it sounds like it has a lot to do with Elon, that project, whatever it is.

And that company, Peninsula LLC is controlled by Jared Burchall, which was known to be some Elon's personal like money manager type person. I don't know what exactly his official title is, but he managed Elon's money basically, his personal money. So yeah, it looks bad that itself. But beyond that, I think what looks even worse is when Elon goes to one of his top autopilot engineer at Tesla and

Amid critical time to deliver full self-driving and he tries to recruit him to come work at Twitter. That is, that hurts me bad. It doesn't bodes well, I think. And then at the same time you hear, he didn't talk about that publicly, but in the book, again, he goes on, there's a section where at the end of the book, he meets David.

Walter in a top secret where he says like, Walter cannot even record the conversation and all that. But Walter tried to recall the conversation as best as he can. And he said that Elon was explaining to him in detail his plans for XAI, his new AI startup, where he plans to use data from Twitter, which again, I don't care. He's the majority owner, I think, on Twitter. I think the other investors should care probably, but

The new startup will use data from Twitter and use data from Tesla, the self-driving autopilot data. And yes, spoiler alert, by the way, for the book. And use that to create this general artificial intelligence. So he says that, but is there a deal between Tesla and this new AI startup, which he started, by the way,

when just after saying that he plans for Tesla to play an important role in Journal of Artificial Intelligence. So did he mean, is that what he meant by Tesla playing a role? And if he did, okay, does Tesla share in that company or is it, that's company going to pay Tesla for that data? How is that going to work? Right. And then also the old autopilot guy, Karpathy went to OpenAI. Like all this like incestuous, like,

AI stuff happening. Of course, Elon does not have anything to do with OpenAI right now. But that's still a good point because when he left OpenAI, which if you read the book, it's now much more clear that it has to do with he didn't like where OpenAI was going. But

Officially, what he said is that he left OpenAI because there was a conflict of interest between them and what Tesla was doing in artificial intelligence and in recruitment of talent in that space.

well that just confirms it because tesla recruited uh capperty from opening eye and now opening eye recruited jeopardy from tesla so that was confirmed and but elon doesn't seem to care much about conflict of interest when it benefits him so that's i i think that tesla board which i have no

hope whatsoever will do anything about it. But if they were good at their, if they, if they were thoroughly doing what they're supposed to do, which is look in the interest of the shareholders, they should look into it, a full investigation into conflict of interest between Elon and Tesla and other companies and make some clear guidelines about what's going to happen with that. Because I happen to agree that artificial intelligence is, um,

Right now, at a cusp of something great, something extremely impactful. I don't know how much of a role Tesla will play in it, but it does have the opportunity to play a role in it for sure. So if that's the case, then we need some clearer guidelines about how this whole thing is going to work. That's where I'm at right now.

All right, we have a few more news items to discuss, and then we're going to jump into the comments section. So if you guys have any questions for us, put them in the comments section right now on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook. It's going to pop up on our screen here, and we're going to put your comments on the screen and answer your question. It can have something to do with what we discussed today or any kind of topic in the EV space you want our take on it. Any questions, we'll get to it. But let's move into non-Tesla stuff real quick.

The Equinox EV, we might have the best look yet at the actual production version of it because it is launching right now in China. In China, the MIAT, which stands for...

The Ministry of Industry of Information Technology always gets the specs and pictures ahead of time for the vehicle to be approved for sales in the market. And so it comes with a very good look at the vehicle here. The specs, you have to be careful. The specs might not be the same as the one in the U.S., but the look should be good.

extremely similar and um i mean uh i was already very hyped about the the latest concept vehicle that came out but this this is this is cool looking yeah i think it's a great looking vehicle um yeah like you said uh things vary from china to the u.s especially in internally but uh it seems like a great car a good follow-up to the bolt euv maybe a little bit bigger a little bit wider a little bit longer it's going to have uh

stuff like, uh, vehicle to grid, it's going to have Altium faster charging. Uh, hopefully there's some more, uh, drive options instead of just front wheel drive. Um, so, you know, we know that Blazer EV is going to actually have front wheel drive, rear wheel drive and all wheel drive options, which is crazy. Yeah. It's exciting. Uh, the price is obviously the most exciting, but we're going to be careful about that because, uh,

That $30,000 price tag in the U.S., I'm not sure if it's still feasible since all what happened with the dollar and the inflation since it was announced. But it's most likely going to be one of the most affordable option in the North American EV market soon enough. Yeah, and it's supposed to be out before December. So we'll see if GM can hit their delivery target. Mm-hmm.

The Kia Niro EV, last week or two weeks ago, we talked about the updated Kona. Now it's the little brother, big brother, non-brother.

cousin yeah or two it's like no it's even more even closer and that's like the twin but like what was it when the twin is not the same doesn't look exactly the same fraternal fraternal twin exactly so it's a fraternal twin of the kona now that gets updated um a little bit more range uh slightly updated look again still that uh damn ridiculous uh front chargers

But so what is that actually? That's an adapter. Yeah. It's that bi-directional charging thing. Yeah. But you have a plug directly on the adapter. That's pretty cool. Yep. I haven't seen that before. Yeah. The look is pretty good. Like I always liked the Nero a little bit more than the Kona personally.

They don't have all-wheel drive options. I really think that they're missing the boat on that. It's not super expensive, dad, all-wheel drive. And I think that'd be really something that people in the north would enjoy. Yeah. They still have the same battery packs, but a little bit more efficient this time. The wins start at $39,600, so that's pretty good. Unfortunately, these are not federal tax credit. Lease them. Yeah.

i have to lease them and toyota is uh teasing a new a little bit smaller smaller a compact suv so if you if you see that new concept uh this week so it's a bz compact suv the bz 4x the design cues are pretty clear it's very similar but apparently a little bit smaller i mean it looks super good in these these images but uh oops but um

Yeah, it's still very much a concept. So what is that? Most of the video has nothing to do with the car. There's no car in there. Yeah, it's the other images that are here. There you go. But it's super concept-y right now. Yeah. All right, so we jump into the comment section? Yep.

All right. Regarding the Model Y in Texas, Rodrigo Jimenez says it might be supply chain issues. I think we talked about that a little bit. But like if you have supply chain issues, why can you make them in Fremont and not Texas? Yeah. And why would you remove it completely to like why? Why can you not keep taking orders? That's that's the biggest concern I have.

All right, Spikes43, question, any insight on what makes the CyberCell different than the Model Y 4680 cell? Do you think they had to retool the line to make the 4680 CyberCell and not Model Y 4680? I don't think there's a difference, is there? Yeah, I don't think there is an intended difference between the two, but we know that the 4680 cell...

is not yet where they want it to be, meaning that they keep introducing improvement to it. What was announced originally in 2020 when they unveiled the 4680, that was the aspiration of when we were full ramp up production, this is the best. So people think sometimes that the prototype is going to be better than the production.

because you can make a great prototype, but then you find in the production process, you find limitation. The other way around is true too, where you end up finding ways to make the product better at higher volume, investing in different technology. So as they ramp up production of 4ACDC, they actually are improving the product itself with the cell. So

You might get better cell in the Cybertruck than you do in the 4680Mult Y. It's not because they are reserving the better cell for the Cybertruck, but more because they have made improvements since I think the same cells, if they can, will also make it into the Mult Y. Yeah, makes sense. All right. Sean Goggin.

Tesla is using the barcode Hertz access for its loaner cars. I was using it with multiple loaners end of August. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Put it for their service vehicle. Put it for the test drive vehicles. Put it for everything. That makes a ton of sense. All right. Regarding the glass house, the guy's a billionaire. He can build 100 glass houses.

Stop spoiling the book. Sorry about that, everyone. There's lots more tall tales in the book. CADR PR says you are wasting your time by concentrating on trivial personal issues of Elon. That's true, except that trivial personal issues of Elon affect the companies that he deals with, specifically Tesla. Yeah, and I'm not sure it's like conflict of interest between the CEO of Tesla and other companies is...

a trivial personal issue that I kind of, it's business. It's very much a business issue. I don't think there's nothing personal about it. I don't have any personal. And we're not talking about it as like wives. Yeah. Let's not get into it. It's very complex family and love life. There's a big rabbit hole we could go down. Yeah. We're not going to spoil the book about that. You got to read the book and get all of that stuff in there.

All right, Carl in San Diego. I like front-wheel drive only for Equinox to help reset the U.S. market over fascination with all-wheel drive. For most EVs, for almost all driving, all-wheel drive is just wasteful for efficiency, resources to build, and cost. I agree, actually. I feel like Carl is probably in a warm climate like San Diego. I don't know why. No. Obviously, he is. But, I mean, even here in Quebec, like...

Most of the time, you don't need all-wheel drive, even in the winter. Obviously, I know people that are nervous about driving in the snow and all that, and all-wheel drive reassures them a lot.

That's great. I understand that. But from day-to-day driving, for the most part, you don't need it unless you live in... My parents are a good example. My parents are like, we need all-wheel drive. We need all-wheel drive, absolutely. And my mother is a little bit nervous about driving in the winter. That makes sense for that. But the only real reason they need it is...

their driveway is insane. Like they have a very steep driveway and in the winter, yeah, it gets frozen. And if you don't have all wheel drive, even if you have all wheel drive, it gets, but that's, that's a point. Even if you have all wheel drive, it can be difficult to get off of it. So for the most part, you just don't need all wheel drive. The roads, they get cleared by this, the,

the snowplows, and if they don't get clear by the snowplows, even with your all-wheel drive, unless you have a lifted-up pickup or something, it's not a great situation. Yeah, I used the ID.4. We got one in a snowstorm, and I couldn't get up my driveway with the rear-wheel drive version.

So, you know, my wife was like, yeah, well, we can get one of those, but it has to be all wheel drive. I was like, I guess for this, you know, we, we kind of proved, but you know, 360 days a year, we don't need all wheel drive. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Um, one interesting thing, uh, GM showed us at that, that battery day that happened like right before the COVID, um, they, they showed us these very low power, uh, motors that they said they were going to make, uh,

what would normally be rear-wheel drive cars. They were going to put these like, you know, 50 horsepower, not even, like really low power motors on the front wheels of some of their cars so that they could be all-wheel drive. But they wouldn't be activated until the winter or, you know, whatever. So they wouldn't hurt the efficiency. They were kind of just like... Did they tell you how much they weight?

Uh, they were really small. I mean, when you say really small, like what do you think? Cause they, you can get like a pretty small, like a hundred kilowatt motor these days. Like, yeah, no, it was, it was more like the power output was really small. I think it was only like 50 kilowatts, uh, or maybe even less. And it was, um,

it was like only for vehicles that are, you know, it was basically like, look, we can make a, we can make an EV all wheel drive from a rear or front wheel drive version for under a thousand dollars. So like, yeah, why not? Why not have that option? Yeah. So maybe we'll start seeing some of those come along. Yeah. Yeah. That, that, that would make sense. And like you said, but it would actually be interesting. Like it would be a good, um,

Buying, like thinking exercise for people that buy all wheel drive vehicles were like, okay, you have this option cost a thousand, $2,000, whatever. You can upgrade to all wheel drive. It's a super small motor. I will drive it only. It's literally only going to work for those small occasion, those rare occasion where you do need it. When you did need a little bit more traction to get up, um, uh, high C hill or whatever, uh,

is awarded two thousand dollars for the few times you need it like that that's that's like as clear of a decision that you can make and i'm sure other people will do it yeah

all right uh aldi eed uh from general motors it seems like thank you for continuing to provide ev news and commentary great podcast chevy equinox ev is a game changer starting at 30 000 us dollars if that happens we need to give gm credit for their transformation commitment on the path to 100 ld ev by 2035 with billions of dollars already committed

This sounds like an ad. The transformation in this industry takes time. Headwinds, batteries, minerals is real. So let's not put blame on GM. I'm sure the milestones...

pan out. It's not for a lack of trying. Thank you. I feel like... So we need to give them credit, but also not criticize them, not blame them if it doesn't work. I don't know about that. I like... You're right. The Equinox, if it comes anywhere near $30,000, it's going to be a winner. I'm all about giving GM credits when you need to. But also, Seth and I have been in the EV game a long time. We...

We know that all the EVs skeleton in GM's closet. We know where they're buried. The EV1 is still fresh in my mind. I mean, go to any GM dealer now. There's no EVs on the lot. Yeah. Talk when we're going to be thankful for what GM's done. They're going to have a bunch of EVs on the lot. Exactly. Not until that point. Yeah. There's no bigger fan in the world of the Bolt than Sett.

But we're also very aware that they came out with that in 2016 and then didn't come out with anything until now. You could stay until at the end of this year, really, because the Cadillac Lyric is low volume, the Hummer EV is low volume.

See those Equinoxes and Blazers. All right, Carl in San Diego. Cars like the EV6 begin to persuade buyers into all-wheel drive to get the highest set of features. Sad to see folks buying it despite never using it here in SoCal or the South. Yeah, I think if you don't have winter, there's no real reason. Anyone know if there's a straightforward way to ask for charge point operators to install in a mid-sized town?

I think some of them have these like request location thing, like I think Evigo, ChargePoint have those. Tesla even at least at one point had one. I'm sorry. I mean, they still do their quarterly like request a supercharger location thing where you can vote on them. So yeah, there's some options for that. By the way, supercharger in Bennington, Vermont, if anybody at Tesla is watching.

we need one go vote i mean you can you can get that i do every time every time you can just write an article on electric and let people vote on it yeah that's true i feel like we i feel like last time we talked about it i was like everybody go vote for bennington but all right uh rich tier uh lol at carl's comment try living in a place with snow and mountains all will drive is handy but agree it's not necessary our model 3 is real will drive but i'd prefer all will drive i live on a mountain

And now a lot of this comment then that you basically agree with is common. Like most people don't need it. Some people like you do need it. So it's nice that you have the options. That's simple. I was asked by a lot owner how to invite the big players to consider an installation thinking DC fast chargers to serve renters. Yeah, I mean, you can just buy them. Like you can buy and put them in if you're a lot owner. Yeah, you guys said to you.

Yeah. And then Nico loves bacon. That's, I think we can all agree on that. That's a good way to end the show. Yeah. Who doesn't love bacon? Well, a lot of people actually, but we're actually, we're kind of heated, but what veggie bacon? Yeah. Uh, Canadian bacon is also a thing. Ham. We call that ham. Yeah.

All right. Well, I appreciate everyone for listening to the show this week. If you do enjoy the show, please give us a thumbs up, a like, a subscribe. Hit that Netskin Mission button to know when we are back on. And if you're listening to your podcast app, give us a five-star review. We appreciate every single one of you. Have a good weekend. Bye-bye.