Tesla slows production, Audi Q6 e-tron, GM Ultium turns a corner, and more
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We are live, everyone, for a new episode of the Electric Podcast. I'm Fred Lambert, your host. And as usual, I'm joined by Seth Winchell. How are you doing today, Seth? I'm good.

All right.

This is kind of big news. This came out this morning. It's not confirmed, but it seems like a serious report coming out of Bloomberg based on employees at Tesla Gigafactory Shanghai. Is this Tesla reportedly reducing on purpose production capacity at the factory due to lower demand?

So if you've been following Tesla, obviously this is the biggest global EV automaker in the world, though BYD is sort of catching up as caught up as of last quarter, not for the full year. Anyway, don't need to get into that. Very important, obviously, automaker for the transition to electric transport. And, uh,

They have had some demand issue to a degree over the last few years, and Tesla kept slashing prices in order to address that. So Tesla hasn't really, other than some unforeseen circumstances, like supply chain issues, Parsons attack, uptrends.

upgrading production lines for a new version of the vehicle, and things like that. Tesla has kept producing as many vehicles as they could and then just adjust pricing to match the demand for the demand to match the production capacity. Now, this would be the first time that Tesla would on purpose reduce production capacity in order to keep it with demand, which is a completely different approach for Tesla.

So this is based on Bloomberg saying that earlier this month, Tesla instructed employees at Shanghai facility to lower production of both Model Y and Model 3 by working five days a week instead of the usual six and a half days, the people said. Not to mean that the five because they're not authorized to speak publicly. So yeah, they cut basically one and a half day of production work at the factory, which is significant.

And we don't know exactly about how much production has been reduced.

We know that so far for the first two months of the year, Tesla produced 131,812 vehicles in China. That's a 6% down year over year over the same period last year. And also the mix of vehicles going for the local market versus the global market has also gone down at 53% China-made vehicles sold in China, the rest being exported, of course.

So we reported just a few days ago too that Tesla is digging deeper into its pocket to sell vehicles in China with some of the biggest discounts we've seen to date.

If I share this time instead, it was these big discounts that were announced this week up to 34,600 yen or basically $5,000 of discounts on Model Y and Model 3. And why I say that's interesting is because Tesla has done a bunch of incentive in the US to sell their cars this quarter, especially for the end of quarter, but mainly on the Model Y, the biggest, best selling car in the world.

Because Model 3, we assume, still has a lot of pent-up demand for the new version of the vehicle, which just launched in January in North America, while it's been in China since last summer. So Tesla hadn't really incentivized to sell that car because there was also a lot more demand coming out for the refreshed version. But it looks now both the Model 3 and Model Y are in need of more demand. So this is very interesting. This is a big change for Tesla.

slowing down production in order to manage demand. If the report is correct, which, you know, it seems like a serious one. I don't see any issues with it. Coming back to the US, they announced that they produced enough 4680 battery cells to build 1000 Cybertrucks last week. So in a single week,

They didn't confirm the number of cell, but we can put that together pretty easily. The battery pack in the Cybertruck is roughly 123 kilowatt hour, so 123 megawatt hour a week or last week. Or if you extrapolate that on an annual basis, that's six gigawatt hour of battery cell production, which is like...

Decent size, for sure. There's full-scale factories out there that don't produce that. But for Tesla, they're still ramping up and they're there. And that's just in Texas? That's just in Texas. They also have the Cato facility in California. Drew Baglino, Tesla's Senior Vice President of Engineering for Energy Solutions, said the last earnings call that Tesla is...

refitting this factory for a new production, a new version of the cell and new production equipment. So they probably have little production capacity there right now as they make that upgrade. So Gigafactory Texas is the main place. And we know that Gigafactory Texas used to make decent amount of batteries for Model Y, but late last year, they switched their production line to the new cell for the Cybertruck.

And so basically now it's just confirming that they managed to rent that back up. But even then last running calls again, like Lino saying that 4680 cells is not a bottleneck for Cybertruck production. But right now they couldn't make enough battery cells to produce a thousand Cybertruck per week. I don't think they're quite there, but it might be close. Yeah, go ahead. No, I mean, if the battery cells aren't a bottleneck, then...

I guess that doesn't really matter because something else is the bottleneck and, but it seems like they're ramping pretty well, like seeing a lot around. Yeah. And at the factory too, like I think I heard this year, you go over 300 cyber trucks were spotted at the same time in the parking lot, like getting, getting ready for deliveries, getting ready to be charged up. So now it's,

It's still early in their production, so sometimes people are going to assume, oh, that means they're making 300 trucks a day. It's not quite as simple as that. Sometimes they pile up and they don't... It's multiple days and they pile up there, not necessarily for logistical reasons, but sometimes it's for production reasons. Tesla is still...

fine-tuning the production of the Cybertruck. So if they find out something went wrong in the production process, they may need to go retrofit some of the Cybertruck so they keep them there. So there's a ton of things like that that can happen. So I wouldn't take too much from those. Those come from drone flyover of the factory. But this is still good news for Tesla for a Cybertruck program. Well, that's good news for a Cybertruck program, though not that big of a deal, if I'm being honest, is the resale market has taken a big hit, like a huge hit, actually.

We reported like a few weeks ago, Tesla, well not Tesla, but someone re-signed the Cybertruck for just over $244,000, more than twice the MSRP of the Foundation Series. And people were talking about... Wasn't it Ford that bought it too? Yeah.

I'm not sure if this one was Ford, but I've heard of two or three selling for that price range. And apparently Ford paid around $250,000 for theirs. So I don't know if this exact one is Ford. No, no, no. In fact, I know this exact one is not Ford because this exact one was for the Porsche Orlando dealership, which then tried to reset it for $270,000. I don't know if that's so. But...

John Clay Wolfe, president of Gimme the Vin, is a large car wheel seller. One of the persons that flips a lot of these trucks said that two weeks ago he sold one for $195,000 and another one for $189,000.

Last week, so that's down obviously for 244. Last week, it sold one for $175,000. And earlier this week, sold one for $170,000. So in the space of basically two weeks, you're almost at $100,000 slash off the resale price of the vehicle. Now...

That's kind of normal. Obviously, there's not a big market for people paying $250,000 for a truck. It's not that big. But I thought that might last a little bit longer, especially since Tesla took initiative to limit the resale market of the Cybertruck by treading to sue people for up to $50,000 if they resold their early VIN truck.

And we haven't heard of anyone getting sued just yet, even though plenty of people resold their truck. But we've heard of this blacklisting some people for doing it. So...

that limit the number of equal available inventory. So that normally boosts pricing, but it didn't do it for long. So Wolf noted that the market is continued to go down for the Cybertruck. We even noted some guy posted this, some reseller in, I don't know if that's in California.

One of the guys from the 49ers, Jair Brown, he's a safety for the San Francisco 49ers, went in the reseller to buy the Cybertruck. He had one for sale there for $230,000. That was earlier this week. And he was impressed. Brown was impressed. He wanted to buy it. And they posted the whole thing on TikTok.

And as they were negotiating the price, I'm sorry, the reseller said that he was willing to go down to 220. And then he was like, all right, that's it. I want it. Then he calls his money manager. And his money manager shut that down. He's like, nah, you're not paying 220,000 dollars. Get out of there, man. Get out of there. Which is a good money manager. Yeah. Good for you, bro. I know the NFL, there's some horror stories about NFL players going bankrupt, right?

at an extremely high rate. I don't remember. I don't want to throw some numbers out there, but whatever you think, it's worse than that. So this guy probably won't go bankrupt thanks to that money manager. Just shut that thing down. And then there was this one earlier this week on cars and bids. It's a really popular auction site for vehicles by Doug DeMuro.

And when I wrote that post yesterday, it was stuck at $155,000 for a while. And now it just finished a few hours ago and it sold for $158,000. So like I said, they didn't do a great job staging that one. That's pretty rough. It looks terrible, right? Like the panels, the body panels looks like they are 100 years old. That car is like 70 miles on the odometer. Yikes. Not a great look.

yeah just get get some uh stainless steel cleaner or whatever yeah i need to buff that thing out a little bit sorry uh all right still on the cyber truck the cyber truck is wireless inductive charging ready that's interesting so if you haven't been following for the last year we've been reporting on this kind of change of heart from tesla to go into the wireless charging ev space

Prior to that, Tesla was never super interested in that for a good reason because wireless charging doesn't solve a big problem. It literally solved the problem of not having to plug in...

your car, which for a human is not, it shouldn't be that big of a deal. I know some people are like, yeah, I hate it. I keep forgetting it. They're like, you're in the minority if you're one of those. I haven't heard this as a big issue. However, for a non-human, it can be an issue because non-human don't tend to have arms to plug things in. So in a potential self-driving future, you can imagine wireless charging being more important because

or a self-driving car could just drive over a charging pad and charge without having to manipulate any charging cable. So that makes a lot of sense. And there's a discussion solution for that. They even discussed instead of using wireless charging, because wireless charging does have

or did have a lot of issues with efficiency compared to cable charging. So Tesla instead wanted an automated robot arm at the charging station to plug it for the self-driving robot or the human that is too lazy to do it himself.

So yeah, with those changes, everything changed last year when Tesla at the investor, they teased this image right here. They didn't say anything. They just say like some cool things are coming, but they didn't go into details. They just show this image, which shows a new Tesla wall connector with a cable going down to the floor. And then what clearly looks like a charging pad at the bottom.

So we're like, all right, Tesla is working on a wireless charging connector. And then, of course, Tesla also bought this German company that does wireless charging more specifically for industrial robots. But they did also talk about the potential of electric vehicles, electric cars. I guess robots are kind of electric vehicles, industrial robots. But yeah, yeah.

Tesla ended up reselling the company within months of buying it, but they did brought in a lot of their staff to staff up their German engineering arm. It used to be, sorry, it used to be Grumman, I think. So yeah, and then just two months ago, Frans van Hulhassen, the Tesla chief designer, did confirm that Tesla is working on a wireless charging solution.

But that's one thing. So Tesla is working on having a wireless charging product, home product, it looks like on that picture, but could also be a commercial product. But you also need something on the vehicle side of things. You need the vehicle to be able to receive inductive charging. And we don't know of any vehicle. We didn't know of anything vehicle until now. Some nice internet slurs at the Cybertruck Owners Club found a reference in the Tesla's service manual for the Cybertruck inductive charging headers. And you see them here.

on the battery pack so it looks like two connectors for a charging pad that would be directly mounted on top of the Cybertruck's battery system so that means that the Cybertruck once having this retrofitted would be able to go over Tesla's supposedly upcoming wireless charging solution so this is pretty cool we don't know of any of that for like uh

the model 3d model y s or x it does make sense for a cyber truck it's more premium product and this is probably going to be a maybe premium charging solution we've heard said before of like third-party companies like virtual fitting like the vault and yeah even mls i think for wireless charging i don't remember how much they cost i think it was like

Like one or two thousand at least, right? Yeah, I mean, that was part of it. But I think the bigger concern that we had was the efficiency of like how much power you lose doing wireless charging versus wire charging. And I think before it was like 20 or 30 percent. And yeah, Tesla solutions a lot less, but still probably notable. I don't know.

A lot of people are talking about magnetic resonance instead of the traditional inductive charging technology. And they say that that is as much as like 95% efficient, which is almost the same as a cable, I think. I think cables still are like 3% to 5% loss, I think.

Which people don't think about that much. Like it's a cable. Like where are you losing it? There's still some energy loss in a cable. It's not a perfect solution. Yeah, I know. When I'm in the snow and I have the cable, it like melts through all the snow. That's all heat loss. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it's useful sometimes because I have a lot of cable that just hangs down at my condo because I don't have a great charging solution. And sometimes it will literally like ice on top of it. It will pull some water and ice on top of it. And then I just start it for a while, like let it charge. I'll literally pull it out of the ice from the heat. Yeah.

All right. This is probably the only interesting thing that came out of the Dunlap and Elon Musk interview earlier this week. Sorry. I'm a little bit sick still, people. Sorry if I sniffle and cough. I'm trying to hit the mute button, but when I'm in the middle of talking, it's hard.

So we teased that interview. I think someone asked us at the end of the Q&A section of the show, which again, we're going to do as usual at the end of the show. If you guys have any questions, you can put it in the comment section right now. We're going to get to it in about 30 minutes or so.

And people asked about it and they were like, yeah, it's going to be an interesting one based on Elon canceling his contract, Dan Lemon's contract on X right after the interview. Turns out it was not that eventful. It was just like Elon getting a little bit upset at some arguably dumb question from Lemon. He didn't get the most out of his opportunity, let's say.

but he did ask about the roadster like he didn't touch the tesla at all other than at one point he talked about the roadster uh and uh he did say kind of tiny bits of new things in there that are worth mentioning uh so um

All right. So again, Elon reiterated that it's going to be a SpaceX and Tesla collaboration. And then Lehman specifically asked, is it going to be a flying car? And then Elon was kind of tongue-in-cheek, like maybe, and then said it's going to have some rocket technology in it. I think the only way to do something cooler than Cybertruck is to combine Tesla and SpaceX technology to create something that's not even really a car, something that's never existed before.

So that's the new thing. It's not even a car now. All right, what's it going to be then? Lemon said, like, it gives me some Jetson vibe. And then Elon approved. Yeah, it's going to be really Jetson-like. Reiterated the 0-16 in under one second. He said that before. Then Lemon asked, is it going to have wings? And Elon says, no.

It does not have big wings because big wings would be a problem on the road. Right. But maybe like a spoiler or something. Yeah. I mean, some people do call spoilers wings. So maybe he's talking about that, like, but it doesn't have big wings. So that's small wings. Like, what does that mean? And then he was asked about the steering wheel is going to have a steering wheels. And then Elon says, not exactly. It will have a drive by wire yoke, essentially like an aircraft or like our modern jets are controlled. So.

or a cyber drive by wire, just like cyber truck. Now, yoke, I would assume it's closer to something that was on the prototype itself. The prototype did have very much a yoke looking one, even more yoke looking than the yoke in the Model S and X, in my opinion. So I don't think that's exactly new. I mean, that was so long ago. It's hard to even remember. It was like seven, six years ago or something. Exactly. Exactly that. All right. Um,

This was a first this week. The first non-Tesla branded V4 superchargers are being deployed. So it's something we talked about late last year. Tesla reached a deal first with BP to sell them $100 million worth of supercharger hardware. Completely new business for Tesla. Sorry. Completely new business. They are selling fast charging station to third parties.

And the goal of having a non-Tesla branded charging network. So normally these companies, they buy from ABB, from Tritium, from my bad. I'm having a rough run. But now they're going to buy directly from Tesla to build basically their own version of a supercharger network that they operate themselves. Tesla just provide the hardware, maybe the maintenance, something like that.

And when the BP deal was announced last year, Rebecca Tinucci, Tesla's head of charging infrastructure, said this is a new business that Tesla is entering. So it's not a one-time deal with BP. Sure enough, a few weeks later, they announced a similar deal with EG Group, which operates, it's a UK-based company that operates 6,000 gas stations and convenience stores all over the world. And now this, the first station from that EG Group, that Asda Express in, I don't even know that England had the city name like that,

Uto Exter? Is that how you pronounce that? I don't know.

It's a weird one, right? At 10 supercharger stations, so they have 10 stalls, which is nice. Like a lot of other companies, they don't go up to 10 for their charging station. So they did here. On there, now the banner EVPoint. So it's really cool to see clearly a supercharger stall, but with no Tesla branding whatsoever, EVPoint. And they go hard on their branding when it comes to the actual stalls for the parking.

uh so you expect you can expect to see a lot more of these and a lot more of the bp also coming all right still on the supercharger network rivian announced this week that they are gaining access to this supercharger network another free adapter just like ford is coming next month in april

So this was kind of a weird launch for Rivian. But at the same time, it's good to know exactly. It's given us a good idea of how the rollout is going to go because we had first Ford last month, or earlier this month, that they launched it. They announced the integration in their own app, in their own charging network. It can also be done through Tesla's app. But if you're a Ford owner, better to go through the Ford app.

And then they announced that they were giving a free adapter to every Mackie and F-150 Lightning owners. So, okay, is it going to be the exact same rollout for each automaker after that? Sounds like it so far. At least Rivian is keeping up the momentum. They announced the integration in their own app and their own charging system. Plug-in charge protocol installed.

And they are also going to offer a free adapter. The weird part is that they announced the integration before the free adapter is coming. So right now, if you are a Rivian owner, if you have a third party Rivian,

ccs to nags adapter or the other way around next to ccs adapter uh you uh you can make it work uh as of right now but they do say that within the next month they're going to send a notification through your car system and you're going to be able to scan that set in your r1s to then ask for the free adapter so there's no really need to buy one as of now

unless you really need the next one so i have uh a le electron one coming a um one from this other uh a2 i think a2x it's called and then i don't have one to have one from rivian so um i'm gonna have all three of them probably in about a week or two um so i'll be able to you know try some of the third party ones should note that uh rivian and tesla don't back the the third party ones but um

I've been talking to the CEOs of both of them a little bit. They do have some OEM customers. So theoretically, there's going to be some backing up behind them. So it sounds like Tesla is making these things. And it doesn't sound like they're ramping up too quickly. Ford owners still haven't gotten all theirs yet. And Rivian people are looking at like two months wait.

Yeah. So I guess there is going to be some sort of market for those third party ones. But so far, if everyone is providing them for free, it'd be a tough market to play in. Oh yeah. A2Z is the name of the other one. Okay. Yeah. And they're based in Quebec, I think, in Laval.

Where was I going with that? Oh, yeah. But Rivian did have a nice integration with Tesla too. Like now you get also directly in the car. You get all the charging information and all that. So it sounds like it's going to be a pretty seamless experience for non-Tesla EV owners on the supercharger network. I'm going to start seeing some Rivian around in the coming weeks. All right.

New car unveiling, the Audi Q6 e-tron. So last week, Audi brought me to Germany, to Munich, to get what they call a sneak preview of the car. Basically, it was the unveiling just before the unveiling on Monday.

And full disclosure, they paid for my flights to and from there. And they also paid for my stay at the hotel while I was checking out the car and checking out also the PPE platform. So Seth already got his own first look at it when he checked out the Macan. I really like the Macan. The Macan is going to come a little bit before the Q6 e-tron. So the e-tron, the Q6 is...

Audi's own twist on the PP platform tuned differently and also completely different design with the Q6 SUV. But the main thing, especially with Audi, Audi has always been pretty conservative when it comes to electric vehicles and they had like this big battery buffer. It wasn't the most efficient vehicle out there.

the ppe does fix a lot of that especially they use a new ctl nmc cell prismatic cell that's um they talk about 150 more percent energy content in there but i assume that has to do with format too i think that's compared to like the first generation cell they use 50 15 more energy density uh that's translated 23 percent more engines density at the cell at the module

level and 30% at the pack level. So there's been improvement, all three levels of the battery leading to a 30% increase in energy density. Now they do lose some of that with the, in Europe, they're going to have like the smaller battery, like 83 kilowatt hour battery in it. They just remove the two metal module, all of it. So not the most efficient way to do it, but still. Anyway, we won't have it in North America because Audi is

It's pretty adamant that they don't think there's demand for shorter range electric vehicles in North America. They only want to do 200 plus mile range now, or at least for this vehicle. Do you think that's because of the wider expanses throughout North America, or is it because of the charging infrastructure is not as good? Probably all of the above, like a different mindset also from buyers than...

than in Europe, I guess. A lot more city drivers. Yeah, and their idea is like, all right, we already have an 83-kilowatt-hour battery in the Q4. Now, the Q4 is not exactly the Q6. The Q6 is bigger and is a little bit more luxurious. So I thought maybe different buyers, but still, they have a point. So now with this new 100-kilowatt-hour battery pack, 94.9 is usable. It works 800-volt architecture,

It weighs about 570 kilograms. Yeah, I already used prismatic cells. They made a bunch of improvements at the drive unit level, 62% improvement in power density versus the first-generation e-tron. 50% energy consumption at the drive unit reduction. That's huge. Yeah, they did say that. I was like, what are you talking about? Well, apparently, they did a lot of improvement to it.

They talked about a lot of advanced cooling and lubrification system. They have this new pump system for the oil in the engine that's in the electric motor that is a lot more efficient too. It makes the motor a lot more efficient. So that's the two main, obviously, part of your powertrain. You have your motor. You have your battery. A ton of improvement there. But they also made a lot of improvement. Other level of the vehicle, like...

new battery preconditioning that they think can shave off to 18 minutes of their charging sessions. And the only issue with that is like you have an Android automotive system on the vehicle, which is a big software upgrade for Audi and for Volkswagen group in general. But so you're going to want to use the Apple Maps, Google Maps and all that to use battery preconditioning. You're going to have to use the Audi navigation system, just like in a Tesla, for example.

uh they have a new heat pump also so that's also saving a lot of energy i learned a lot on heat pumps during that uh presentation in my in my head like eat pumps were only like really useful in the like super cold climate and they are definitely useful in cool climate but i guess we have different definition of what's the cool climate is uh they they share this interesting charts here but you can see that the actually the biggest improvement you get is is

within the 10 to 15 degrees Celsius, which I don't know, like in Fahrenheit is like, what's that in Fahrenheit? Do you have an idea? It's like 40 to 65. Yeah, it's not that cold. It's just like chilly. You get a lot of improvement at minus 10 to freezing too, but not as much there, which is interesting.

They said that the E-pump between minus 10 and plus 20 Celsius increased the range by 30 kilometers, like 15 miles a show. Significant. Yeah, it's just another piece of equipment in there, and there you go. All right, so that's the foundation, the PPE, the foundation of the Q6 and arguably the Macan EV2. Now the design of the vehicle. I was really impressed by the design. It's

It looks a bit different on different angles. If you look at this angle, you have very soft line on the side, but a very pronounced, very aggressive front end with a lot of different air intake. They're using a fake grille. I'm not the biggest fan of fake grilles, but this one looks pretty good to me. They almost look like a real one until you get really close. You have a super long wheelbase, very short overhangs. It does make it a very elegant looking vehicle.

In terms of size, it's just a smidge bigger than the Model Y. So if you can imagine the Model Y, I think it has less than an inch bigger on all dimensions than the Model Y, something like that. And they did identify the Model Y as a competitor here because it is like a midsize premium SUV. And I think it is technically a competitor, but only very much on the higher side of the Model Y, meaning in terms of pricing especially.

You see it looks like a completely different car on the back. You have the more traditional looking, like they call it the Quattro blister on the sides. And of course, the signature lights of Audi in the back. A little bit more on the lights too. They have this new generation OLED. So Audi has introduced in Europe, like 10 years ago, the first dynamic digital lighting system. I'm going to shut that down.

So they're bringing that back with the Q6, but a new generation that has like a lot more, I don't know what you call them, but segments, I think they call them. So you can basically have custom signatures in your taillights. Now it's going to be different in Europe versus the US and even Canada, because Canada has more relaxed laws on this. The US is a little bit backwards on term of regulation there, where anything that's moving,

while the car is moving is a no-go. So you're going to be able to have some... So this is a no-go, but you're going to be able to have some static-looking signatures, which I think I'm going to show in a second here. And even some like warning system, they're trying to work on a warning system that does like some kind of triangle when you activate the hazard light or when you're parking or something like that. And they hope to work with other automakers to make that a standard at one point like this. This is a triangle.

So that people know, oh, there's a triangle. The car is going to do something. It's going to park on the side, a parallel parking or something. It's going to pass, whatever, whatever.

I don't know how much momentum they're going to gain out of that. I think they're going to have to work with the rest of the industry to make that work. But I thought it was interesting. It's interesting that the capacity for it is there at least. But, okay, these are the signatures here. So you have like eight different signatures that you can choose from. This is going to be like your signature, whatever you think looks best. Now, these are moving ones. We're going to get static ones in the U.S.,

Yeah, I wonder if they could use like a rear radar to like if a car is coming too quickly or maybe hanging out too close to you, it could like start flashing. Yeah, they did. They did mention that too. It's going to have like a bunch of different automated messages basically for people like including they mentioned specifically that like people following you too close. Again, this is going to be Europe only. I don't think it's going to be legal under the current regulation in the U.S.,

In terms of luggage space, you have a 2.2 cubic feet storage space in the front. It's not too big. It's a smaller front for this segment, midsize EVs, midsize SUV EVs. But you still can fit easily a smaller luggage in there. In the trunk, you have plenty of space, though. You have...

18.5 cubic feet of space, 526 liters. And if you fold it down, it goes all the way to 53.9 storage space total, 1.5 thousand liters.

If you have the air suspension, which is optional package, you can also have a button in the back to lower and lift the back depending on what you need in terms of whatever you're loading in there. The interior, I really like the interior. I mean, if you're familiar with Audi, they have very solid interior design. Now, I was a little bit confused during the show because obviously we're in Europe. These are the same car. They show that they're European reporters at the same time. So,

They were throwing at me like what was going to be available in the U.S. market and what's going just to be in Europe. It does sound like the European market is going to have some nicer choice of interior, but, and they are focusing more on like the artificial leather for the U.S. market, apparently, but there's going to be some cloth also option in there.

The backseat is very spacious. I'm six foot tall. I was able to sit in there easily with a good six inches from my knees to the backseat. And on top of it, they have indented backseat for even taller people. They have a foldable center display, two USB-Cs on the back there.

And then this is a star of the show. The cockpit is fully updated for Audi. You have the new curve display. That's actually two display that look like they're one in a curve. Your instrument cluster with everything you should expect in an instrument cluster. And then the infotainment system next to it, which is a touchscreen. And you can see here.

And then you have a third separate display optional for the passenger. It's very similar to what we've seen in the system from Mercedes and BMW, where they have a privacy mode, they call it.

limits the field of view so that the drivers cannot see it while they're driving you can play video you can play video games you can everything while you're driving because the driver won't see it you can also like play with the navigation system like if your passengers can choose like another destination and send it to the driver to their main screen a lot of nice options like that again super luxurious the seats are incredible but you have like three different seat options on that thing so if you catch a

Sorry, a team just yet? Like, all the options. You can rent that up pretty quickly. All right, let's go to the specs here. Now, again, European version versus U.S. version getting different spec. The U.S. version only getting, like, bigger, more powerful motors. The Q6 e-tron Quattro gets 215 kilowatts nominal, 240 kilowatts with launch control. So you do have the thing where you press the...

the brake pedal and then you floor the accelerator then you release the brake pedal to do launch control that will only way to get the max power capacity in that car

That gets boosted to 360, 380 for the SQ6, which is like the sport version of it, which gets down to 4.2 seconds, 0 to 60 miles per hour acceleration. So crazy fast, but you still get like five seconds on the Q6 without the sports package. So pretty nice. Top speed 130 for the Q6. The SQ6 gets 140 miles per hour. Now the range.

With all these efficiency improvements, they're talking about a 388 miles of range on the WLTP standard. They haven't released the EPA. They only say over 300 miles with the EPA, but I think they do have an opportunity to get quite over that 300 miles. I don't know by how much, but if they get 388 on the WLTP, they should get something very decent on the EPA. I haven't released anything for the SQ6 just yet. The SQ6 is going to be less efficient, of course, with more power and that efficiency.

bigger wheels too. I think it's available from 19 to 21-inch wheels, so big difference there. Charging. Charging has always been a big, strong force for Audi, especially the charging curve, not necessarily the peak charging rate. So the peak charging rate here is 270 kilowatts, just like the Macan on the 800-volt system. You can also do bank charging, parallel 400-volt at 135 peak charge rate.

The most impressive thing, of course, is the charging curve because the Q6 is going to be able to maintain that 270 kilowatt charge rate on up to 40% state of charge or so. So that's very good. And then at 80%, you're still at around like 140 or something like that. So it's very good. Basically, you shouldn't expect your charging stations to last more than 20 minutes if you're on 800 volt system. Okay.

Now, sticking on the charging, so this is the biggest downfall, downside of the vehicle is there's no NACs in North America on it. It's still CCS. It's not really Audi's fault there. It's just the timing is just a little bit too tight. I thought it might be because it is coming in Q4 2024. Before that...

Tesla and other automakers only announced that NAX integration directly on the vehicles is coming in 2025. So I thought it's too late. But more recently, Tesla said in Q4 2024, we're going to see the first cars. So I'm like, all right, this is good timing. But apparently not for the Q6. The design is all locked. Everything is locked. This car is coming a little bit too fast to market for that. And Audi is just betting people are going to be fine with adapters, which is not that big of a deal either.

So you can expect to have to use an adapter to use that. The good news, two charge ports on this car. So this is nice. One on the driver's side of the back, which is the fast charging one. So this is great for the supercharger network. It's going to be easy. You're not going to be bothering people by straddling the line on the other side. There's one on the passenger side too in the back, which is going to be great for street charging. So you have like the best of both worlds. It's only level two, unfortunately, but still. So you get a good charging experience regardless.

So yeah, I mean, if you haven't taken note just yet, I was pretty impressed with the vehicle. I think they have a nice entry in there in the market. My only concern is going to be like pricing. I don't know where this is going to fall. The only thing they wanted to see in terms of pricing, it's between Q4 and Q8. So right now with the Q6, they're going to have a full EV lineup in North America. And the Q4 starts at $51,000 and the Q8 starts at $74,000.

So this is a nice $23,000 price range that you can find yourself in there. So I would be probably surprised if it's lower than $60,000, probably around $60,000 for the base one. And then you're going to be easily able to get that over $70,000, $75,000 with all options, I think. Yeah.

I mean, it's an Audi. Yeah. Audis are going to command a higher price. The interiors are gorgeous. The, uh, you know, I know an Audi guy, uh, he's been waiting for this for, I don't know, four or five years. He's really pumped about this thing. He's, uh, you know, he's kind of just been waiting for this car to come out. So, and I think he's pretty happy with it. Oh, it looks amazing. Like I really liked it when I was like walking around and I'm like, this is a,

This is a nice car. I was looking for things I don't like about it, for cons. NACS is a con, but again, not their fault. The other thing is a con is no bi-directional charging on this. The old PPE platform, they didn't look at bi-directional charging at all. They say it's not going to be available on this. Yeah, same with Macan. Yeah, so they didn't want to go for that. I have to say, I don't hate the look of it, but it's not like...

you know, incredible in any way. And, and, you know, we, we give people, you know, issues with like weird mobiles. I don't want a weird mobile, but I kind of feel like this is a too normal, too normal. Yeah. This is going to blend in too well, especially. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people do like that. Obviously I, I, I, I know what you're saying at the same time. I think it's like not groundbreaking in any way, but it is a nice little evolution of,

The headlights are amazing looking. So I think this car, like in the dark, it's going to look super good. They do have this design accent on the side that emphasizes the battery pack. It's exactly what the battery pack is. So they wanted to include that in the exterior design. That was a nice touch. You can see it better here, maybe. I really like the car.

And it's a big step for Audi because it's a new generation platform, big step because it completes the SUV electrification lineup in North America, around the world. So if you're not familiar with Audi, so they have the Q4, Q6, Q8. So they're doing the even numbers for the electric ones. And then they have the Q3, Q5, Q7 for the gasoline ones.

And that's one thing that I tried to do when I was there was poking around, asking everyone with Audi badge, what's happening with the electrification plan and everything. Your competitors at Mercedes just down the road, they just backed off of their plan for stopping producing new ICE engines, new ICE vehicles. Everyone was on point telling me that Audi is still committed to stopping introducing new ICE vehicles in 2027.

And then doing all electric by 2033. So this is a big step for them because obviously the Q5, which is the gasoline equivalent of this, is one of their best sellers, if not the best seller. I think it's the best seller in North America at least. So they want this to take over that. So in the U.S. alone, I think that was 75,000 vehicles last year. So this is not nothing. So this needs to work.

Obviously, it's going to be harder for them, I think, in the market pricing wise, because a lot of people are going to want to have that tax credit and Audi is not going to get that tax credit. Now, at the same time, I think I don't know how many people would actually be eligible to that tax credit in that market. Who's buying Audis? And I think you need to make $150,000 a year.

Yeah, single or family. Dual filer, $300,000. That's more realistic if you're a dual filer. But single people, you probably don't even have access to it anyway. So it shouldn't really affect your decision buying process. And you can get it on a lease. That too. Yeah.

You know, you mentioned that the NACS is a downside, the lack of NACS on this. I have to say, like, I'm not, like, I wouldn't buy, I wouldn't not buy a vehicle because of the NACS thing. Because, you know, at home where I charge 90, 95% of the time, you know, I'll have whatever it needs. And then on the road, I don't mind using an adapter. These adapters are small. They're not like, you know, the original Chatham-O adapter was like a big, like...

cable thing and it was kind of clunky. I mean, you wouldn't lose it at least though. Yeah, that's true. But I mean, those things are huge and they're like bulky and kind of a pain, but these things are just like, you know, like, just like the, uh, the level two adapter. So yeah, you can, I leave my level two adapter in my center console. Like it's just not lose it. Like you could almost do the same. We could probably do the same with this one. It's just, it would take the whole center console probably, but no, that was cool.

All right, already 47 minutes in. All right, we have a few more news items we want to discuss, and then we are jumping to the comment section. If you guys have any questions for us about things we discussed today or other things in the EV space, you can put them in the comment section right now. We're going to get to it in a few minutes. If you do enjoy the show, you can also give us a like or subscribe and all that stuff. It takes a second to do. It helps the show more than you think. So Ford confirmed plans for smaller and much cheaper electric pickup and SUVs starting at around $25,000. We heard that before.

So earlier this week, it was unveiled that Ford is working on the new electric vehicle platform, much cheaper electric vehicle platform using LFP cells. They're already working with LFP cells for the new Mach-E, the cheaper Mach-E. So now they want to use the leverage, what they know from that, and put it in a brand new vehicle platform that's going to be much cheaper. And so it was Alan Clark who,

that is leading the team for a super talented trunk works team to create this new platform. And this week it was revealed, is it a report or is it actual? I think it's from, yeah, it's from anonymous sources that the first vehicles on that platform is going to be a smaller SUV and a smaller pickup truck. So you might get your wish set. Finally, there's going to be some kind of Maverick style electric pickup truck from Ford.

Can't happen soon. I don't know about $25,000 though. What do you think the Maverick start at? I think the Maverick starts at around $25,000. Yeah? The current one, yeah, the gas. I think there's a hybrid one that may be a little bit more expensive. You're right, $24,000. Yeah, they made that one really low priced. It's very popular. Yeah, yeah.

All right, GM says that it's getting out of production hell. More specifically, they say that they are turning a corner on the factory zero producing the new cells for the Altium platform. So we reported plenty on that. GM is way behind its plans for electrification.

They were supposed to sell like 100,000 EVs in the second half of last year. They ended up selling 75,000 for the whole year instead. Bad. Most of them were both EVs, EUVs. So even the Alcyon were supposed to bring that back up, but they sold 14,000 Alcyon last year.

They've been like a slow ramp up this year, like where we're looking at like the Lyric getting some momentum, the Hummer EV. Well, that's never going to be a big program, but the Blazer EV, Silverado, there's Equinox coming. There's a lot of vehicles. They've just all been delayed for a bunch of different supply issues, software issues. But on the battery front at the factory zero, we have Mr. Anderson, I think is his name.

Anderson, yeah. I don't have his full name. But one of the executives in charge of the factory said that they turned a corner at the battery production and now they think it's going to be more in line with GM's target. So we know they've been flirting with the idea of going back to plug-in hybrids instead, which use a lot fewer batteries per cars. So I don't know if he's saying that in relation to that. Like, oh, now it matches our production target more because the production target are with plug-in hybrids. But...

We hope that it's to support the Equinox EV, Silverado EV, which use a ton of battery cells, the 200 kilowatt battery pack and all that. So hopefully we keep an eye on GM's numbers in the next few months and hopefully we start seeing a ramp up in the old Sion based vehicles. Well, now they only have old Sion based vehicles. The bolt is dead for now. All right. Some news from Fiskars this week. Last week we landed the show. We talked about like a possible bankruptcy for the company. Look extremely likely.

Looks even more likely as of this week. They had a new SEC filing that confirmed that they missed an interest payment this month. So they are within 30 days of a default on a big loan. But they did announce some more financing, but only $182 million, which is nothing for their current situation. So to help with that, they announced that they paused production for six weeks. So the ocean is not going to be produced for six weeks. And they specifically said that the goal of that is to

bring down inventory. So the new vehicle, like Magna, was able to produce more vehicles than they were selling already, which is a big bummer because that's the one thing that Fisker fans were saying. It's like the demand is there. There's plenty of demand for it and everything. Of course, they are blaming MKBHD for that a lot and everything. But to be honest, I think before that, they had a ton of issues with Dominic because I kept seeing ads like crazy. Like they were investing in a ton of ads for Fiskers, for the ocean all the time.

If you had 70,000 people waiting to buy that car, why are you keep producing ads to sell more? It made no sense to me. So they already had them in issue and for sure, PTHT didn't help, but still. So now basically they are sitting on a little bit more cash with that investors producing 180 million, but they had 120 million as of March 15th.

So they are up to $300 million, but that's basically what they lose a quarter. So they're still not in any better situation. Still have that billion dollar convertible note. And now they missed an interest payment. So if they default on that loan, might be called back right away. So that's why we heard about the bankruptcy consultant being hired last week. Now,

Fisker halfway denied that. They were like, "Yeah, we are hiring people to talk to investors and all that." Investors, creditors, they can be used interchangeably sometimes. Obviously, a bankruptcy consultant is going to talk to your creditors and investors. So yeah, a lot of doubt about the Fisker program right now. I mean, it's basically a riddle passage for a Fisker EV startup to go through bankruptcy.

They're at the final stage. It's its final form is a bankruptcy. A Fisker startup final form. All right. Speaking of EV startup looking for financial boost, our own Scooter Doll did a report this week about Aptera CEO discussing a possible IPO.

That will match the production of the vehicle. So we know that like Aptera is basically scrapping every cent it has right now to bring the solar car to production. They did some great progress lately, secured some money from the California government, secure an investment from their battery manufacturers.

a battery pack manufacturer, I think. So they're trying to work with the close the accelerator program that gave them like $34 million. So they're pretty like scrappy in the way that they raise capital. They've done a great job so far, but bringing a vehicle to market is extremely capital extensive work. So in this new video, they did talk about

So a lot of people are pushing them to do an IPO, which I mean, to full disclosure, I'm an investor in Aptera. I did invest in the direct starter program, mainly for the goal to get the car sooner if I could. And to also like just, I encourage the program. I really like the idea of a super efficient vehicle. So efficient that you can use solar on it. Anyway, so a lot of these investors have been pushing for an IPO because that's an exit strategy and all that. I...

I've been very adamant that I don't think EV startups should look at IPOs before they hit production. I don't like this idea. I think they don't have a lot of credibility going in. And I've been right for the most part so far because you've seen a lot of startups having a ton of issues when doing that, Fisker being one of them. So I love what they said. They talked about matching the launch of the production start with the IPO. However, it's not clear how they get there in between the capital launch.

They talked about also the possibility of having a four-wheel vehicle, which I think is interesting, but I think it should be more in the future because one of the reasons I was willing to invest in Aptera is the fact that they are going with a three-wheeler, not a full car. In most markets, it's licensed as a motorcycle or something like that. It's a

not a motorcycle like you need a motorcycle license but not a full car either yeah you actually need a motorcycle license in a few states and in the few yeah and i think in a few others that you need to wear a helmet while you're riding driving it i think just one or two states like yeah they do require that a bit ridiculous but yeah require a down bed to ride a motorcycle yeah i think new york texas

yeah you're in new york too no no no in new york you have to wear a helmet but not on an aptera you have to wear a helmet on a typical motorcycle not enclosed i guess but um i'm also a reservation holder for i think it's like 100 bucks or whatever um so i'm also excited about getting one of these if my gosh if they produce them like it feels like forever yeah i mean it feels forever because the aptera was also like

even before the evs before they were an ev startup they were like a gas ev yeah that's vehicle startup yeah so they always been like a super efficient vehicle in mind and then that that went under i don't know how it ended exactly but it didn't work out but then when the ev uh momentum came back they were like yeah man we can use all our work we did on the hyper efficiency side of thing focus on the navy powertrain in there and then you can really have a solar car which i think is smart i think it works

Just need to make it happen. And it's not cheap to bring a vehicle to market. Cheaper than a real vehicle, than a full-size car and whatnot. All right. Good news from Sylvian. So we're going into the comments. Hey, I finally got my Highland, Fred. What a car. Cool.

I'm going to have to check it out. I don't know if you're still in the chat right now, but I would love to take a look at your island. Maybe you can find a few new things that we didn't know about the vehicle by looking under the hood and whatnot. All right. Connectors are probably more for the extra battery pack. I don't know. Was that on the induction thing?

Oh, yeah. He's talking about a Cybertruck. Yeah. No, I mean, it was specifically about, I think it's underneath the pack and it was... It said inductive, right? Yeah. Yeah, it did say inductive. So I don't think they're going to go with an inductive solution for the extended battery pack. That would be quite an extra loss for a pack.

All right, Josh X, any of you guys got the new FSD 12.3? I have not. How about you? Nope. I haven't checked my updates, though. I mean, I got it today. Yeah, I didn't get it either. I heard it was going way wider, but for some reason I'm always late on those. Christian Ruoff, Rebecca Tenucci, Tesla's current director of EV charging at Tesla, was the founder and CEO of Evotran. They did a bunch of wireless retrofits back in the day. Oh, that's interesting to know.

All right. Not in Canada either. A2Z was the name of the adapter. By the way, A2Z, they're near you, as you mentioned. But they also have a supercharger extension cable coming out and a couple other EV things. So we're going to do some investigation into their stuff because they make some cool stuff.

uh in your opinions what constitutes a car design change so maybe they're referring to the highland like is a highland considered a design change or is it just an update i don't know what do you think there's definitely design changes uh let's try to get the question there william all right uh electric brian think in the future uh will evs get 10 to 15 miles per kilowatt or we'll cap out at about five there besides app teralike design

And the advancement will just be a pack density. I mean, electric motors are close to 100% efficient, so it's kind of hard to make them much more efficient. But there's aerodynamic stuff. There's rolling resistance stuff. There's tires. There's a lot of things that they can still improve. Yeah, but not to that level like you said. I think the NEPtera, these are just needed for that kind of big step change. Right.

But for more normal looking vehicles, yeah, it's going to be like tiny improvement. They're going to add up like that.

So we always see a lot of excitement about the Maverick type of EV. So Jesse Stran, hybrid is a standard Ford Maverick, I think. I was just looking. It's got an EcoBoost as the low cost, like $23,000 variety. Is EcoBoost hybrid, though? No, EcoBoost is not hybrid. That's just what they call their engine. Yeah, they call the hybrid FHEV. I don't know what that means, but it's a little bit more...

more powerful and it's uh you know like a thousand bucks more um all right uh hell yeah small EV truck exclamation point as long as it's got at least 250 miles of range I think for the most part these days now with this generation of EVs people try to at least get 250.

$25,000, they don't expect a lot more than $250,000, I think. Yeah, that's getting pretty low priced. But they're small, so less weight, a little bit better aero. The all-wheel drive Ford Maverick is where the hybrid drops off. The all-wheel drive is more expensive. Yeah, it's like $1,000 more for an all-wheel drive. It would be smart to have the electric motor in the front and the gas in the back. I don't know. It would seem like it would be easier to do that.

Have we heard any updates about the Swedish union and Tesla spat? It's ongoing. It's ongoing. And that, unfortunately, I think that's not going to win that one because they seem to keep finding ways around, around these initiatives from a bunch of different unions. Cause it's not just the one union. Like they have a bunch of solidarity strikes or ways to affect this as business. And Tesla is still having like record sales in Sweden. So it's not working. So yeah,

I think this is on our path to win that one. All right. Sylvain is down to check out the… Well, Sylvain, we'll make something work. As soon as I can see right now, I'm not at my best. You probably don't want to be around me today. But as soon as I feel better, you'll check it out. All right. SQE says, I'll be buying an Aptera if they make it into production, if for no other reason, to help the product survive.

Yeah, I know there's a lot of people behind this product. I wish they could just put them out there and then get the price down because I kind of want to see it. I do share the sentiment of skeptic, whatever you pronounce your name. Because it needs to exist. It needs to... We've been the Vision EQXXX, whatever, of Mercedes. Yeah.

There's been a lot of interest in making hyper-efficient vehicles. It's just they haven't been someone that's been willing to bring it to market. Mercedes is not talking about bringing that to market. And Aptera is taking that a step further, obviously. But they are talking about bringing it to market. So I think they need to be encouraged to do so.

and then yeah i mean i don't i'm not just buying one just for that i think it's going to be a cool car too like especially in the summer i want to take that thing out and it's going to drive low to the ground i'm sure it's going to be a fun drive to to have too yeah but uh this idea of also having like you can i don't know if i'm going to go like this 600 mile version or something but i think like a all-wheel drive 400 mile version would be cool and then you can just leave it parked outside and uh

get some miles in front of the sun. It's so cool. All right. Jesse was talking about the Maverick configurations. Yeah.

And then skeptic is like, yes, it's like skeptic. Skeptic, just hard to read. All right. All right. Thanks, everyone, for listening to the show this week. I appreciate every single one of you. If you do enjoy the show, you can give us a like, a subscribe, hit the notification button to know when we go live. Even though it's mostly at 4 p.m. on Friday, although next week might not be that for logistical reasons, but we're going to still be on as usual.

So if you're listening on your podcast app too, you can give us a five-star rating. That helps us show a ton. We got a few people that did that last week. We appreciate you. Thank you very much. I'm going to see you next week. Bye-bye. Have a safe weekend.