Tesla Supercharger network enters final form, Autopilot HW 4.0, FSD Beta recall, and more
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Okay, and we are live for a new episode of the Etric Podcast. I am Fred Lembert, your host, and as usual, I joined my set with Troub. We just did a little bit of a mistake here, which I need to admit, I didn't catch it either, but we've been talking to each other for 12 minutes, thinking we were live and we weren't. It's the first time that this ever happened. Yeah, so we're going to have to jump back into...

I'm even gonna have to stop the screeching here and go back here. So sorry about that. Yeah, I was saying that there was no comments either. I was like, oh, this is weird. I believe people are commenting by now. Now we're live and nothing's happening. You can hear us. That's good. That's good. We are back live now. You can definitely hear us. Let me just pull up the page real quick because I want to relaunch the show.

this time. By the way, my microphone, I don't know if you guys are hearing me fine too because I'm traveling right now and I broke my travel microphone through my travels over the last week and now I had to buy a cheap one. It looks pretty sweet though. It's got the pink and red and RGB colors. Yeah, a little RGB on it but that's not what you want from a microphone. You want good sound. You don't want RGB on it.

This episode of the Electric Podcast is brought to you by SAE International. Join the global mobility community in Detroit from April 18th to the 20th for WCX.

the largest technical mobility event in North America. You can register now to attend the event in the show notes. We have a link for it and we're going to talk a little bit more about it later on in the show. But now let's jump in. It's such a bummer, guys, because I feel like we just had... We had a very lively conversation. Yeah, we had a very great conversation about the first piece of news, which I think is a very important piece of news today.

That came out this week, really, that it's the announcement of Tesla opening up the supercharger network to non-Tesla electric vehicles, which is something that we knew was coming. But there's been some... The waters were murkier in the last few months because of Tesla's announcement that they want to make their proprietary chargers the new national... North American, I should say, standard. And so that, like...

through some cold water on the actual opening of the network and obviously it was supposed to happen last year and it didn't happen so that also like created some concerns but now uh it was made official and in a sort of a weird way too in a in the White House announcement that it was made official uh the White House announced that uh well I'm going to read the announcement here because uh there's a

That's the information that we got, other than another quick announcement from Tesla on the timing of the opening. But this is the meat of it. So let me read it for you guys. Again, direct from the White House. Tesla, for the first time, will open a portion of its U.S. supercharger and destination charger network to non-Tesla EV, making at least 7,500 chargers available for all EVs by the end of 2024.

So 7,500, that's for all EVs. It's not just a supercharger network, destination network. It's the...

I guess new stations or existing ones being retrofitted for it that are going to be deployed within the next two years. The open charger will be distributed across the United States, obviously. It will include at least 3,500 new and existing 250-kilowatt superchargers along highway corridors to expand freedom of travel for all EVs.

So that's specifically for new supercharger and existing one being retrofitted for CCS. Basically, that's what they're saying. And CCS being the standard connector for all electric vehicle in North America other than Tesla vehicles right now. And level two destination charging at location like hotels, restaurant and urban and rural locations.

So that one's interesting because Tesla already does that a lot when they deployed level 2 wall connectors at hotels and restaurants and other places. Most often than not, they will also include a normal J1772 connector that all other AVs can use, at least one, sometimes more than one. It's just like kind of a goodwill thing, I guess.

All EV drivers will be able to access the station using the Tesla app or website. Not sure why they mentioned the website here because I think everything's going to be through the app. Additionally, Tesla will more than double its full nationwide network of supercharger manufactured in Buffalo, New York. So that's the other big part of the announcement here. So even though the timing is not clear of it, it sounds like the timing is also for 2024. And we're going to get into that in a second.

But yeah, like I think earlier this week said when this came out, you called it like the biggest announcement in the EV market in North America this year so far.

Yeah. As somebody who drives a Tesla and a non-Tesla EV, uh, you know, having access to the supercharger network kind of changes my like outlook on, you know, driving the Chevy bolt around though. Truthfully, I'm probably not going to drive too often, uh, on long trips with the bolt when I have a Tesla, but, uh, that's, you know, for other people who don't have a Tesla, that's probably going to change their long distance travel. Um,

you know, ideas quite a bit. Um, but there's a lot, there's a lot to this announcement. Um, you know, one of the things I think about is, uh, in Europe, we've seen, you know, when a Porsche Taycan, for instance, pulls into a supercharger, the charging port isn't located at the same side. So they have to pull in either perpendicular or like they have to kind of stretch the cord to reach their location. Um, I wonder if Tesla is going to do anything to address this, um,

Because it will probably cause some issues. Yeah, you're right. Tesla is notorious for having the Tesla superchargers are notorious for having short cables compared to HFR America and other network, especially in Europe, like Ionity, where they take a solution where the base of the cable is much higher and much longer, which gives you a lot more maneuverability.

But yeah, there's solutions to that. And we've seen Tesla in Europe where, like you said, they're already starting to open a supercharger network to other EVs.

We've seen them not necessarily release superchargers with longer cables, but they are designing the parking spots differently. So it's more like right now when you get to a supercharger, normally they are all lined up in one row, the superchargers, or maybe two rows, one on each side. Now it's more like in the middle of a parking lot with a side-by-side supercharger. So you can pull in on one side or the other side, right?

either forward or reverse and you can use either of those chargers on one side so it does potentially create a problem for the other side but you have less chance to do so so it's it's like I guess it's the most efficient way to try to curb that problem not completely but at least to a portion a longer cable would definitely be the solution and we we know that this is coming with supercharger 4.0 or v4 I guess

super that version four of the supercharger it is a little bit taller and uh the cable is on the outside at the top making it longer too so that's going to be part of the solution i think too yeah so uh you know some other things to think about like exactly how many and where the superchargers are do you think tesla is going to be strategic about this or have they been is the government going to be in charge hopefully not uh which chargers get allocated to

regular EVs because, you know, obviously, you know, some Tesla superchargers are already pretty much full. Theoretically, they'll build those out more, but, yeah,

you know what what do you think do you think the government's pretty much figured out which charges they want to use i don't know all granular the government's been involved in that i mean i think in the announcement they sort of point to the fact that they want to cover the ioe corridors for freedom and travel and so i i think that's but that's already what the supercharger does basically so i don't think that's going to be an issue that much

I think the main thing is going to be achieving that 7,500 chargers total, 3,500 superchargers specifically open to all EVs. And Tesla can do that, obviously, by adding all new stations. We know that the solution is going to be what they call the Magic Duck, which is...

basically the receptor of the proprietary, excuse me, Tesla connector. But at the same time, if you pull both the receptor and the connector, it becomes a CCS adapter, which you can plug right to your non-Tesla EV. So either they can retrofit some station to that or some chargers at existing stations, I mean, or build brand new ones with that solution.

And that's the name of the game here, because I know that a lot of Tesla owners are concerned right now about adding more traffic to the network, more electric vehicles to the network, where considering that there's already places that are EV trafficking, especially during holiday travels.

So you don't want to add to that problem. But let's be clear, this announcement came as part of the guidance for the distribution of the $7 billion that the federal government is investing in charging infrastructure. So this opening of the network was a requirement for Tesla to get access to that money. And obviously, Tesla having access to that money is a big deal because

If we go purely by market share, they should get the majority of that money if it makes sense. I think it's going to probably be more fairly distributed in order to encourage more third party network and a little bit more balance in the market that Tesla already dominates. So yeah, Tesla is going to be using that money to increase the capacity a lot, not just for non-Tesla EVs that are being onboarded right now, but also for existing Tesla owners.

If this is done right, and so far, I mean, there's been hiccups for sure. Tesla has done extremely right with the supercharger network. It should be good for everyone involved, in my opinion. Yeah, and we were talking about this last time before we hit the record button. But it's not just...

Tesla drivers that are nervous about, you know, like, you know, what does this mean for my experience? It's also Tesla investors who are saying, hey, you know, we're getting rid of one of the best moats that Tesla has. But, you know, our kind of contention is that you're not

you're not just giving it up. You're actually adding a revenue stream and you're, you know, Tesla is kind of going to be the best name in town for electric vehicle charging, which is, you know, probably a marketing plus. Like next time you're going shopping for an EV and you've been charging a Tesla's network and it works a hundred times better than the rest, then maybe you're thinking Tesla first. I don't know. There's so many, like, I understand that,

There's a big advantage to, like, it's been a reason so far for the longest time, myself included, to buy a Tesla vehicle over another EV because of the supercharger network. So giving that up by onboarding other electric vehicles on the network is

It's a big deal. You're giving that up for sure. But there's like anything, there's pros and cons. And that's the only con in that list. And again, from an investor standpoint here, because I think at Electrek, we're just trying to play devil's advocate and look from the standpoint of an investor here, because in terms of the mission to accelerate the advent of electric vehicles, for sure it's good. So let's get past that right away.

from a business standpoint though that is the only con then the pros like you said there's the marketing aspect to it because uh now very quickly if depending on how fast they open the network because like they said 7500 by 2024 but tesla said that they're going to start soon open the first few select stations so so it's going to be a gradual ramp up obviously but every time that uh again soon enough

Most probably most of the long distance charging for electric vehicle is going to be done at supercharger station. And when you have your non-Tesla electric vehicles showing up and you have a bunch of Tesla vehicles around going on the network that is so far by far the best.

you're going to start thinking twice about, okay, maybe my next car should be a Tesla. If they're getting this right, they might be getting the whole EV thing right. So that is one, though, I wouldn't say necessarily the biggest advantage from an investor standpoint. The biggest one is like, Tesla's going to own a massive market share of electric vehicle charging, which I know for the longest time, they've been saying that they don't want to make supercharger network a profit center. But that is obviously changing now with opening up

to other EVs. It makes no sense not to. We always knew, even though it hasn't been a profitable business right now, we always knew that EV charging is going to be big business and most likely than not, like a profitable business, especially once we get more control over the peak power

that are plaguing the industry right now. But with the deployment of energy storage at the stations, we were starting to address that issue in a big way. Yeah, I mean, that's a great point. They're also hitting Tesla's other strong points where they have the battery, they have the energy network, they have their solar, power walls. It's just kind of made for Tesla at this point. And I was thinking that when we were talking earlier about

offline

I don't know if Tesla can get access, because obviously they're going to get access to a few billion dollars here, I would think. I don't know if they can use that to deploy energy storage at the stations here, but we know that the government and the infrastructure build separate from the infrastructure part of the money coming in. You have subsidies also for energy storage. So Tesla is going to be subsidized to deploy energy storage at a charging station, and

that that's like let's make this clear it's not uh if it will or if it won't happen like energy storage is going to be at charging stations all over the world all over the US because it's it's not a natural way to use energy for I mean there there's been peak powered charges big power demand going through the industry for a long time but not to the degree of

how a supercharger or charging station works just because of the way the traffic flows and the way this work, the way a charging station works. Sometimes you can have like no EV, sometimes you can have one or two EVs or sometimes you can have all 50 charging stations charging all at the same time. So the peak power difference versus the average output is so wildly different than the rest of the electric grid.

that yeah it creates these giant dimension charges and if you can just like every single person that you can shave off the top it's giant money like big business we're talking about here so yeah it's gonna happen it's gonna be all over the place and like you said that's plays right into Tesla's um strength of having already being already being the leader in energy storage

In fact, we know that Electrify America is using Tesla energy storage. So it's not even just Tesla's own network. They can probably make a few bucks off of the other charging networks as well. Yeah, that's happening too. That's a fair point. So yeah, this is very exciting news, basically what we wanted to see happen. And hopefully this happens on time. We know that Tesla has made some claims before in terms of the...

Everything? Everything, but specifically about the pace of deployment of the network. They talked about doubling the network a few times before. But, oh yeah, I didn't mention that. I try to make sure that I mention everything that we mention offline while we're live. I'm working on a story right now where

tesla just posted a ton of new jobs all related to the charging network deployment uh energy storage too at the same time because uh they're both like closely linked like if if you deploy the well also they can be literally deployed at the same location like we just discussed but uh you need a lot of people just going through the planning it's it's the planning of the supercharger of a supercharger station that takes a lot of time because you need to coordinate

You need to build the chargers. You need to ship it to electricians to install it. And then you need to coordinate with the electric utility. You need to find a property where to install it. You need to get a deal with the property owner to like some kind of lease, a long-term lease to have it, a deal on the maintenance. Then you have to build it, like I said, normally with contractors, local contractors, install

and then you have to have that deal with the electric utility to supply that power so there's a lot that go into it that that's why you see a lot of like uh supercharger station that are start getting built up and people in the region test the owners in the region get excited but then nothing happens for like two years so that's why but now tesla is hiring um i didn't get the whole account but there's dozens if not a hundred new uh

postings to hire people. So I think this is going to happen pretty fast right now. So this is exciting. And we reported just a few months ago that Tesla had a big ramp up in Canada too for supercharger station designer and planners. So exciting stuff happening.

Yep, absolutely. Other exciting stuff, though, a little bit worming for current Tesla owner, is the new self-driving hardware for computer that has leaked this week, giving us a lot more information about the entire new hardware for suite sensor with the new computer. So it comes thanks to, of course, Green the only famous, infamous Tesla hacker and tinkerer. He somehow got his hand on

The whole board, the whole computer, someone sent it to him like, hey, check this out. So obviously, we're not going to go into the details of who sent it and whatnot, but I think you can put two and two together.

And Green basically did a whole teardown of it to give us more information. Just an interesting side note, we know that it came from a Model X. And at the same time, we reported this week that Tesla has been liquidating all Model X display vehicles, which is very early for Tesla in the quarter to do that. Normally, it happens in the last few weeks of the quarter. Now, we're just midway through. So,

It could indicate that Tesla is just completely getting rid of any inventory Model X because there's already the new car being produced or with hardware 4.0. And that could be announced March 1st at the investor day event, potentially. But that computer is going to be for all vehicles that are going to be equipped with hardware 4. And we got a lot of interesting information for it.

First of all, the bummer, like you see in these pictures here, the form factor is a lot different, which makes it not retrofitable, something that Elon already hinted to that's not likely to happen just based on cost and complexity.

But so obviously this is a big concern for everyone that already has a Tesla vehicle with hardware 3 because Tesla has been promising self-driving capacity on that forever and hasn't delivered on it. And now they are upgrading to a whole new suit of hardware. And a lot of people are thinking, okay, does that mean that we'll never get self-driving on our cars?

And Elon has recently said that no, that it's just going to improve the performance, but they still plan to deliver self-driving on Autoware 3. But that's what Elon says. And Elon has said a lot of things about self-driving that hasn't panned out yet. So take it with a grain of salt. You have the new board here.

That's the infotainment because Tesla has combined, of course, the cell-dramic computer with the infotainment computer. They did that last time too. Green noted some rework on the infotainment unit with the GPU is now on the same board, so no more GPU daughterboard. This makes the whole unit thinner, otherwise no change, so it's still the same 256G NVM6 and 16 gig of RAM.

uh same amd cpu and gpu so they're sticking with amd for the infotainment system so as for the actual hardware 4 computer also known as the self-driving computer uh you have a lot less improvement than uh many hope for i guess primarily than green hope for uh so still a samsung exynos ip based uh cpu bump core from 12 to 20 so i guess that's that's pretty good uh that's

decent improvement i don't know why we were expecting a lot more than that um five clusters of four core each maximum of 2.35 gigahertz adults at 1.37 gigahertz number of trip cores increased from two to three uh 2.2 gigahertz max frequency also 2x and then one

Okay, there's two system on chip per board. So yeah, so that's the main thing that actually is the improvement with this. A lot of redundancy improvements that is noted by Green on the new computer. And obviously, that's important when you have a self-driving car. It's the brain of the same loving car. So if your brain shut down while you're driving, it's not good. It's the same for self-driving vehicles. Is the second SOC like a redundant SOC or is it?

That's if one of them, there's two on two boards. So that my understanding is like two of them are like the redundancy ones. Yeah. Got it. Um, on the downside of it, uh, green noted that the power requirements are higher, uh, even twice higher, uh, it also, uh,

That's obviously not good because that affects your efficiency. That has been a big concern for electric vehicles going self-driving for a while because you want to get as much efficiency as possible to get as much range as possible with a smaller battery pack.

and um any kind of electronics inside a vehicle will affect that and the computer has a decent power requirements especially a powerful computer like a self-driving one and Tesla was supposed to like that it was supposed to be like their main focus is like keeping the power consumption down appears that uh it's not necessarily the case with this one uh the or at least it just when it's it'll I don't know like when the power consumption is like uh

when the unit is like working max power if it's uh not as bad but we'll see once we uh we get it in the core working maybe okay we discussed the redundancy already okay now the sensor so obviously it only has the computer but with the connectors on the computer you can sort of uh do the math and know exactly what kind of sensors you're going to have with the hardware for and um so

We knew that there was going to be some changes to the cameras with the filing that Tesla did in China. We know that the front-facing cameras went from 3 to 2, but we didn't know exactly. We suspected that Tesla was going to add cameras because on hardware 3, there are some blind spots. And now, Green found 12 connectors for cameras on the board, but 12...

One being marked as spare, which I don't know exactly why you would need a spare on this. So maybe there's going to be a retrofit in the future. It's not clear because you don't... If something breaks, it's probably like... Honestly, it's really the connector that breaks, but I don't know how often that would happen. But yeah, that would point to 11 cameras. And it's confirmed that the front-facing one went from 3 to 2. Then there's the...

There's something called the SVC camera that it's not clear what it means because he's just reading off of like the code that's coming down from the computer. But according to Tesla's EPC, which is the catalog, the parts catalog, SVC is bumper cover.

So if it's an SVC camera, it would make sense that it would be a camera that goes inside the bumper. And that would be a big deal because that would cover some of the blind spot here. So there's a huge blind spot. Okay, I'm quoting Green here. There's a huge blind spot up front on Legacy car. Welcome to the Legacy camp plate owners. So front bumper camera and two in the rear. So that's his assumption right now. So one front bumper.

two in the here and the bumper corners. Any more inside? Well, I mean, I think that would leave one space for one inside. You just need one for like driver monitoring. But yeah, it adds up. So basically all the current cameras minus one up front,

Well, I mean, now the new one on front is going to be the one in the bumper, I guess. So it's still three front-facing camera, but one in the bumper, two in the windshield, and two new rear bumper cameras. But again, not confirmed. That's just like speculation based on the code here. Also a new GPS model, a tri-band antenna for the GPS module based on the computer. A radar connector too, so confirmed that the radar is coming.

And we just saw today that the FCC actually released some images of the radar. So it is the very high resolution radar that we've been talking for for a while. It is kind of a bummer because Tesla was very clear about, we don't need a radar to deliver on self-driving. And then now, so they removed it in 2019 and now they're bringing it back. So it's a pretty confusing situation. They were all in on like, oh, it's going to be vision only. We only need the cameras. Now they're like, no, actually we're going to need some cameras.

One radar or two. But Elon told us in June of 2020 that the probability of safety will be higher with pure vision than vision plus radar, which debatable so far, at least not lower. But vision, that's not the quote that I wanted. I guess he said, but vision.

a very high resolution radar would be better than just pure vision. So basically, he was saying Tesla was waiting for a better radar in order to potentially bring it back. He said, continued, but such a radar does not exist. Again, that was in 2020. No, 2021, excuse me. I mean, vision with I-Res radar would be better than pure vision. So that's the way he's doing it. And again, we work with Green around that time too on a new code in Tesla system.

that we thought was linked not to a consumer vehicle, but a test vehicle from Tesla. So green reveals a lot of information about Tesla vehicles, Tesla product based on the software updates. So if you see a software update that can apply to any Tesla vehicle,

It can sometimes apply to an actual consumer vehicle, but sometimes it's also just a prototype that Tesla is testing. And at that time, we saw Tesla was dealing with a 4D imaging high resolution radar with twice the range of the at that time the radar that Tesla was using. It was called the Phoenix radar. So we thought it was linked to an Israeli company called Arp, I think. And now it looks like this is indeed the radar that Tesla is adding based on the images that were released today.

R or RB, I guess. But yeah, so this is what we know so far about hardware 4. And just today, we saw images of Tesla Semi and Cybertruck prototypes being tested with a LiDAR sensor. But don't get too excited. Tesla is not hiding LiDAR sensor. LiDAR, which stands for light detection and ranging. It's basically a laser-based sensor. And most sensors

Companies working on self-driving vehicles are betting on this technology to deliver on their promises, not Tesla, even though they are using it there on the cyber truck that was spotted yesterday in Palo Alto. Same thing for the Tesla Samai, thanks to the kilowatts that spotted it.

And this is generally used for what they call ground-truting, which is basically confirming, calibrating and confirming the data that their sensor get by using another sensor, in this case, a LiDAR sensor. So we've seen other like Tesla vehicle, like a Model S and X with like basically strapped with LiDAR sensors on top.

i assume this is the same thing they're trying to do here but doing it with the tssmi which tesla even though they are being delivering the production version of the vehicle since december they haven't talked at all about autopilot or self-driving capacity for that truck so we i assume that they're still finalizing the the capacity on that and this this prototype is now validating the data for the autopilot i don't think you're gonna this is gonna want to venture into self-driving for the tssmi just yet but

I would expect an announcement on that soon. And the Cybertruck, obviously, it's coming to production very soon. So it's going to have hardware 4. So Tesla is most likely here validating hardware 4 using the LiDAR sensor on the prototype. So that's what's happening. We should probably put the context of Elon's statement about visual versus radar here.

in context here. And interestingly, I was looking back through our Twitter conversations with Elon, and I noticed the last thing we talked about was his feelings on LiDAR versus just pure visual, or radar versus pure visual. Before he blocked us. That's right. We're on block now. Yay. It's a cause to celebrate.

All right. Moving on. This was a big story this week in the mainstream media, but I really don't see why it's big at all. So the big headline is Tesla is recalling all vehicles linked that have full self-driving beta on it.

You're supposed to do the quotes when you say that. Yeah, recalling because the fix to it is a software update. So they're not actually bringing the car back to the dealership or I should say the Tesla store. It's not really a dealership. And a lot of people have been using it because in the recall notice, it says because it may cause a crash.

So a lot of media have been losing using the headline, Tesla says that their FSDB may cause a crash or they are voluntarily recalling it. Tesla is not saying that. It's NHTSA saying that. The regulators are saying that. And Tesla made it clear in the defect notice that they don't agree with NHTSA. They are doing it because it sounds like they had no choice, even though it's a voluntary recall. And where things get really weird is that

It's not clear what the fix is. So let's read the summary of the notice here because it is pretty wild when you think about it. Because we knew that it might be coming at some point, but not exactly in what form. So Tesla is recalling certain 2016-2023 Model S, Model X 2017-2023, Model 3 2023, same for Model Y.

Vehicles equipped with full self-driving beta software are pending installation. So everyone that has FSD was about to have it. The FSD beta system may allow the vehicle to act unsafe around intersections such as traveling straight through an intersection while in a turn-only lane, entering a stop sign control intersection without coming to a complete stop, or proceeding into an intersection during a steady interception.

yellow traffic signal without zookocean in addition the system may respond insufficiently to changes in posted speed limits or not adequately account for the driver's adjustment of the vehicle's speed to exceed posted speed limits so all these concerns i've basically all these concerns i've ex i've experienced personally on the test life as libero and so we kind of know this is not like it's not like a classic defect where like with the the

Did something wrong here is like the they know this happens. They just they're just trying to improve the system so that it doesn't happen eventually, which leads to the fix. So like what is the actual fix here?

And the remedy, I already call it in the recall world. Tesla will deploy an over-the-air OTA software update at no cost to the customer. The OTA update, which we expect to deploy in the coming weeks, will improve our FSD beta and negotiate certain driving maneuvers during the conditions described above. Description that I just gave you guys. So basically, they're just saying that they're going to improve on OTA.

the current version of FSD beta which is what they try to do with every single update so the recall is basically Tesla pushing the next FSD beta update that's all it is so it's not really a recall it's

but does tesla have any obligation to prove that it's any more safe than the version well i mean if it does if it's not what's gonna happen is the same thing like that's gonna basically now going forward every new fsd beta update is going to be a recall

Because unless it's perfect, until it's perfect, or as perfect as it gets, I guess. But what if NHTSA is like, hey, this software is not good enough? Like it's still causing accidents? I mean, if NHTSA is the one testing it first, I guess that would make sense. But it doesn't sound like that's what is happening here.

And just for some context too, like the Tesla posted like the chronology of the event and basically starting on January 25th is when they reached out to Tesla saying like, hey, we have like major concern with FSD beta for all the reason mentioned above. And then Tesla met with ETSA a bunch of times until February 7th. So last week or a week and a half ago when they decided to do the voluntary recall.

And then Tesla said on February 7th, 2023, while not concurring with the agency's analysis, Tesla decided to administer a voluntary recall out of an abundance of caution. So really, it sounds like a kind of a...

just a moral victory like or or from its source just like i we're watching we're we're watching you guys and the fsd better so i be careful because you're gonna have to call every next update a recall if if it goes continue that way um so i do think it's a bigger deal than maybe uh you think but um well you know backing up a little bit i don't think it should be called a recall like i agree with everybody who even elon who says uh

you know calling it a recall implies that you would have to go into the dealership to get an update or uh have a mobile service person come out and you know deal with your car so i think it should be called like a mandatory patch or software patch or whatever but um the fact that they're getting involved with full self-driving and actually setting a bar

um, to me, it kind of feels like the beginning of a longer term, like, Hey, you guys have to prove that this is improving because sometimes you get an update and it's, you know, it's worse. Like, you know, people said that their early versions of full self-driving that I didn't have, and you didn't have, I don't think, um, were more daring and wouldn't slow down through intersections and stuff like that. So the fact that they're getting involved here, it kind of

It feels like, to me, that NHTSA being involved with FSD is not a good thing for Tesla. Yeah, but just to make it clear, there was already an ongoing investigation from NHTSA on FSD better, and it's still ongoing. So this is not like the fix to that investigation. This is just...

It looks like it's NHTSA exploring, can we use a defect notice to do something about FSD beta or anything? And Tesla is just doing their best, Tesla lawyers doing their best to keep that away, at least for a few weeks it sounded like, or a week and a half. And then be like, you know what, let's just do the voluntary recall and call it the next update, basically.

Like that's what it sounds to me, but yeah, but is, is NHTSA going to be okay? Yeah. So that's the thing. So that might be just kicking the can down the road. Uh, but I mean, that, that has been the FSD program since the beginning, kicking the can down the road. Like, it's just like, all right, this is coming this time. I'm like, I don't know about that. We're still working on it and all that. So, uh, I don't, I don't see, I don't see how this is major, uh,

considering that the net sun investigation into fsd is still ongoing so like this is this is still the bigger deal i think this is more like it's like trying to do something through the defect notice and honestly i don't see a major impact with even though it crashed as a stock the other day i don't think it was crashed but went down a few percentage points that it wasn't down before yeah it definitely affected it uh yeah i mean we'll see it's for me it's

feels like the beginning of something bigger, but we'll see. Yeah. All right. In the better news for Tesla, we reported this week that Tesla sold out of the Model Y for build slots in this quarter. So the next build slots are opening up in April. So that means that new vehicle built for the Model Y in the US is not available until April. So Tesla sold out for the quarter, basically, other than some inventory vehicle that

are building batches and made available later in the quarter but that's uh far and few and generally move pretty fast so this is uh good news for tesla it means that the price drops are working in the us not only the price drop but also it's uh the 7 500 tax credit is uh is also having an impact especially as a kind of an urgency thing because there's a chance that it won't be fully available among the y starting in april

because of the new battery requirement guidances that are expected to come next month. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. We won't know until the guidances come out. So just a little tidbit of information on that.

But while the Model Y and to a degree the Model 3, 2 are selling very well right now, Model S and X, they're a little bit more difficult to move. And Tesla has launched a new program this week to try to help that, especially targeting older owners of older Model S and X vehicles. I keep saying like older Model S and X owner, which makes it sound like it's just old people, old people.

owning the cars so it's not it's not a senior discount it's uh it's a discount if you have like for me like i'm not a senior person but i have a model s that's a 2012 and it has unlimited supercharging which is what this is targeting here and it sounds like tesla also just want to take all unlimited supercharger vehicle off the road uh because some people have been abusing that um

Well, it's not abuse if you went into it knowing. Yeah, no, no, no. You're right. You're definitely right. It's not abuse. But I think Tesla might see it as a problem to some degree because let's say the unlimited supercharging on my Model S, there's some people that have used it on their own car, maybe like 100x, 150x more than me.

So it's a major difference. They made money on the unlimited supercharger on my Model S. On some other Model S, they didn't make money off of that. Right. And if you have unlimited, you just go whenever you want. You don't go high demand time. Sure. Why not? Who cares? So yeah, what they're doing is that if you trade in your Model S or X with unlimited supercharging,

you get an extra $5,000 off your trade-in for a new Model S and X. Not off your trade-in, an extra, like whatever value of your car was as a trade-in, you get $5,000 extra. So it reduced their cost of purchasing a new Model S or a new Model X, which of course don't have unlimited supercharging anymore. I have a bunch of other things too. It's also available to Canadian Tesla owners. It's 7,000 Canadian instead of 5,000 US.

So it's an interesting deal because as pure value, $5,000 is good for unlimited supercharging. Like you need to supercharge a lot to get to $5,000. So unless you're a taxi service or anything like that, it would be a good deal. But

But at the same time, Tesla is known for not giving the best trading value on their own cars. That might have changed a little bit lately with the prices coming down a little bit on the broader market. So Tesla doesn't have the same competition that he's used to in the used car market for their own cars again. So you have to factor that in. So is it $5,000 on a good trade-in deal or $5,000 extra on a bad trading deal? So those things are extremely different, of course.

also it's just i don't see like like when i saw that of course my head was like can i get a new mls can i exchange my mls for a new one but at the same time like the mls from now that you can buy is not the same model as that you like that's like set you bought one for like uh back in the day the mls40 how much did you pay for that i think it was 57 57 000 and then you get 7 500 tax back so it was under 50 000. okay under 50 000 so that's basically

That's basically half the cost of the base Model S right now. So my point is, it's not the same buyers. Like if you're someone that has an unlimited supercharger Model S or X, let's stick to Model S, you're not necessarily the same kind of car buyer that would buy a Model S today because the Model S today starts at $95,000.

Of course, Seth's example is a Model S40 that lasted. He sold a few thousand of them and stopped real quick. But even a Model S70 or 75 that they used to sell, that was a $70,000, $75,000 car. It's different than a $95,000 car. It's a $20,000, $25,000 difference. It's not necessarily the same buyers. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. I mean, it's been 10 years. There's been some inflation, but yeah, I agree.

But still, I'll be curious to see if the deal works. If you're actually someone that actually is taking that deal, I'd like to know about it. Know your thinking. That would make for interesting insights.

All right, in terms of other pricing changes this week, we again saw some slight changes to Model 3 and Model Y. Model 3, the base Model 3 went up again. So it went up two times before since the big price drops in January. Went up $500 again. Now it starts at $43,000. And the Model Y, only the performance version changed. So that's not that big of a deal.

And it increased. So decrease of the Model 3 base, increase on the Model Y performance. Again, because it's just... Model Y is selling a lot better now. Now it starts at $59,000. All right. All right. This was also a big story, kind of an ongoing story this week about the unionization effort at Gigafactory New York. We learned about it on Monday. So on Monday...

it was announced that, excuse me, on Tuesday, a bunch of Tesla employees led by organizers from the, I don't have it in this article, but it's the one that were behind the Starbucks stores, United Workers, I think, United Workers. So a bunch of Tesla employees, 25 of them to be precise, I think,

former an organizing community committee to push a unionization effort at the gift factory in new york those were specifically employees on the autopilot data annotation program so there's about 800 of them

that worked at the factory and all they do is basically annotate data that comes in from images and video from the Tesla autopilot fleet. So it's a very like monotonous job. And then they wanted better pay, more job security because Tesla has been threatening to optimize the entire system for a while. They have auto data annotation or auto data labeling. And so that's basically threatened their jobs.

And also they want less monitoring at work. They claim that they were being monitored to the degree that it would discourage them to take bathroom breaks. So that's what we learned on Tuesday. Then on Wednesday, Wednesday night though, I like that night, we learned that the same employees filed a complaint with the U.S. National Labor Relations Board claiming that this just fired the next day. So literally the next day after they announced the union effort,

The dozens of employees at the plant that worked in the autopilot, that annotation, including what now in the complaint, they were not clear. But now it sounds like it was just one employee that was linked to the unionization effort. So the complaint was filed based on the on the basis that they claim it was a retaliation for the union push, the union drive.

Tesla didn't comment on the story because of course they don't respond to journalists anymore. But as the story picked up some steam, the next day Tesla released a blog post last night, basically, I think. Yeah, last night. Where it defended itself against the claims with a chronology of events, basically. And I'm not going to go into the whole thing of it because we're already late in the show and we have a bunch of other things to discuss. But Tesla claimed that in December, the

The latest performance review were due. So they did the performance review in December and the managers were already told to fire, to lay off a percentage of the what they call a low performing employees. And those people were identified. Did they say?

We're identified February 3rd, so a whole week before the union push was made public. So Tesla claimed they didn't know about the union push and the employees that were going to be fired were already identified on February 3rd, a whole week before. And then from the 3rd, the layoffs were already planned for the 12th, the week of the 12th.

So basically, Tesla's argument is that the layoffs were planned. The employees were selected before the union drive and the layoff had nothing to do with the union drive. And only one of the 27 employees impacted in the group of the data annotation labors was related to the union campaign. So that's Tesla's argument. Obviously,

It's not a great look. The timing looks extremely bad. Normally, I would be all over this and I'd be like, yeah, I'm not very suspect. A big corporation doing that. A corporation that has an history of not liking unions and all that. But in this... That which is being nice. Yeah. They...

actively hate yeah yeah yeah exactly but to be fair actively hate uaw though like the auto workers union which has its own extremely horrible history to be fair so so there's reason to hate them so this is a different union um but yeah they have a bad history with union and though and after saying all that i have to give tesla the benefit of the doubt here because this actually matched something that we reported in december in december we reported tesla was planning a new wave of layoff in q1

And we reported that in December Tesla says that the managers were being made aware in December so I'm putting two and two together and it sounds like we learned that as the managers were informed like you're going to have to lay off some people in Q1 and this is basically what happened there. Well I would say like you know this was probably something Tesla can prove you know on the books and maybe some emails but like

It does have a look like, hey, oh, you want to unionize? We're just laying off 30 people right now. Not that 30 people is a huge amount, but the timing is interesting. And we know Tesla hates unions. We know in auto workers in particular. We know that I guess one of the people was one of the people involved at the union drive, but

Who knows what the scenario is behind the scenes? I will say, 27 people, that seems very small. I don't know how many people are employed at Buffalo. About 800.

Yeah, so I guess it's kind of a small group compared to like... But it's still growing. That's the thing. So that was one of the test disorder argument. The group is still growing. We're still hiring. It was just firing the low performer. Now, the employee in question that was fired, that was linked to the union drive, said that she was actually commended for her performance recently after coming back from a break because of COVID and then something else that wasn't clear. So I... She went...

off on COVID, she probably should get fired for that. But it was something else after COVID. It was COVID and then something else happened. But then she said that she came back and she was overperforming after she came back. I feel like that should be pretty easy to prove if that wasn't in writing or whatever. So we should be able to find out who was lying and whatnot. But I don't know. So far, I have to...

I think Tesla proved their argument a lot better, a lot more detailed than the union push. So we'll see. But at the same time, the union push says that the layoffs helped them because now that employees are even more nervous and they are joining the union drive in droves. So we'll see.

All right. We have a few more news items to discuss this week. Not that much. And then we're going to take your questions, guys. So if you guys have any questions, put them in the comment section right now. We're going to get to them in just a few minutes. But right now, we want to say a few words about our sponsor, which is SAE International this week and specifically their WCX conference coming in April.

Right. This week's episode is sponsored by SAE International, host of the WCX World Congress Experience Event. For 2023, WCX is set to return to Detroit from April 18th through the 20th at Huntington Place. As the largest technical mobility event in North America, WCX brings together thousands of engineers, suppliers, mobility professionals,

to exchange ideas, discuss today's challenges, and build powerful relationships to move your career and the industry forward.

Join the global mobility community in the Motor City this April to stay up to date on the latest technological advances, participate in roundtable discussions, and network with the brightest minds in the industry. Gain a competitive advantage and meet the people sharing the shape of mobility. Visit wcx.sae.org to register now. Uh-oh, I lost your audio, Fred. No, no, it's me. I thought I just unmuted myself, but I didn't click fully.

All right. Thank you, AC International, for sponsoring this week episode of the Electric Podcast. Moving on from Tesla news, Ford had a big announcement this week, though they kind of already hinted to it a few times in the past. But it is this new factory in partnership with CATL and the big, well, I mean, it's already being used that it's a $3.5 billion battery factory in the US by the biggest battery manufacturer in the world, China, CATL. But

But the big difference, the surprising news to a degree, is that it's going to be LFP, iron phosphate battery cells that are going to use. You went there for the announcement, Seth. Any kind of highlights you want to discuss? Yeah, I mean, it's a big deal. So Ford is going to try to make, what was the number? I think 400,000 vehicles in 2026, right?

And so they're making 2 million EVs in 2026, which is a pretty big ramp. That's what Tesla's making this year, theoretically. So not in the grand scheme of things, they're not expecting to pass Tesla or anything, but they're still ramping up pretty strongly, but like two or three years behind Tesla. But 400,000 of those vehicles are going to get LFP batteries from this plant. So that's a 20% of their 2 million EVs are going to be

using LFP batteries. And so as we know things about LFP and Ford was very, they explained that the advantages and disadvantages of LFP pretty well. And you can scroll down, there's like a little graphic they use, but energy power and cold weather performance, nickel cobalt manganese, the batteries that we're using now are much better.

um and then the lithium iron phosphate are better because they're lower cost uh iron is obviously much more plentiful than cobalt and manganese and the lifespan of lfp batteries they can take more cycles so that means they're great not just for uh standard range vehicles but they're also great for stationary storage and i'm actually kind of surprised ford is the first one to announce a u.s manufacturing of this uh you would think tesla would be right there they've been using

LFP batteries from CATL in their standard range vehicles for quite some time. So, you know, props to Ford for at least, you know, getting out there with this stuff. The other thing I thought was kind of interesting is Ford isn't going to geo fence their LFP battery vehicles at all, but there is going to be some degradation beyond nickel cobalt manganese batteries.

for so like a car that would normally get like a 30 hit you know in very cold weather uh an lfp battery will get a 40 hit kind of thing which is a big that's something yeah it's a big difference um and it's something that the engineers have to kind of figure out how to keep the battery warm and you know what percentage of electricity to use on what um the other thing is ford didn't

And Tesla's never done this either, and probably because they sell a lot of traditional batteries. But they didn't talk about the safety of LFP, but LFP is a lot safer. And Ford did say that they were saving some weight and some space in the battery pack because it's not reinforced as much because LFP batteries don't need the reinforcement. Right.

So the energy density is kind of offset a little bit by the pack density because they don't have to do as much packing, I guess, or as much armor, I guess, around the batteries. But it looks good. You know, obviously some Republican senators, Marco Rubio, came out and said, you know, what are we talking to China for?

China is obviously the leader in LFP batteries, although they were kind of invented in the US. So it's kind of an interesting situation. US large scale manufacturing, not the forte for a few decades.

It's just not. I mean, all the big players, it's ATL, China, Panasonic, Japan, LG, Korea, SK Innovation, which I guess that's also like, and we didn't mention it, but that's part of like what makes it big news is Ford is like,

kind of divesting from just being partnership with SK Innovation, again, Korean, with this CATL partnership. Now it's like a two-batchy partner, much like Tesla, actually, because Tesla is also partnered with CATL, but also partnered with Panasonic and LG.

and some samsung too yeah and as far as lfp is concerned the only game in town is catl and byd correct so i get oh yeah that's that i guess also partnering with the id on santiana right uh but uh so comment from greg paul in here that actually i think is fair if it's lfp batteries in texas will work just fine for pickup is number one in texas

But I guess that's not what he meant. But what I just realized is like actually Tesla is working, I think, to build their own 4680 with LFP technology too. Is that right? Or at least less nickel and cobalt in it. So like closer to an LFP chemistry. They want it to be like, what do you call it? Agnostic, like chemistry agnostic.

So maybe that Tesla is actually working to build in the U.S. also. They're just not. Because Tesla has always been very weird about, like, you know, they have their production in Fremont. They have their production in Texas being deployed right now with their own battery cell. But they are not going into details of the chemistry that they are using. Yeah, and Ford was also very cognizant of the current tensions between the U.S. and China. And they were like...

You know, we're going to be buying CATL batteries from China starting at the end of the year that will go into the Mustang Mach-E and then next year that will go into the standard range Ford F-150. And that can be problematic. But once we build them in the U.S., even using CATL technology, do you say CATL or CATL? I always say CATL, I think.

Anyway, once the factory is on US soil, China can't do anything about it. They can't pull the rights. They can't pull anything. So that's what Ford is kind of building in the US. Yeah. For the people that have those concerns, like those build in America concerns, I have to say that Mackie with LFP cells, it's kind of a bad look because it's like it's a Mexican built

American car with Chinese batteries. Yeah. So it's like all the, what the Republican hates basically. All right, moving on. The Genesis 2023 JV70 is the first Genesis electric vehicle built in the U.S., assembled in the U.S. Just got this price release. It's going to start at $66,000. Again, this is kind of, you know, it's all the...

EGMP is that yeah EGMP platform from Hyundai so all the same spec that you can expect from like the Ionix vehicles so all the good stuff it's all in there in a little more sleek and luxurious packaging thanks to Genesis which is again the luxury brand of Korea's Hyundai and we have more yeah detailed pricing here so only two version available

Advance and Prestige, both with all-wheel drive, 65,850 and 70,650. So the bolt motors are 160 front and rear, a 77.4-kilometer battery pack, so basically only the bigger version that's available for the IONIQ 5. Can we really compare that to the R1S? I don't know.

What? In terms of pricing here, we decided to compare it to a few SUVs. I don't know if the R1S, like, how big is the GV70? It's not even close. I mean, it's probably the best comparison is the GV60, which is a little bit smaller and very similar in pricing. Yeah, agreed. All right, finally, before we get into your comments in just a second, we discussed real quick the first images of the Ram R1S.

1500 REV, the first electric pickup truck from Ram that has been like kind of unveiled at the Super Bowl this week. So they started taking reservation. They said that they already sold out a reservation, but they don't sell many that they took. So it's not pointless information because we know like the Cadillac Lyric, for example, that we were sold out in 19 seconds and then we delivered 120 units last year. So.

Not really impressing. But yeah, the first images are here. Are you going to see that? So it looks a lot more like the current Ram truck rather than the concept that was the Revolution concept. Which is a bummer because that was really cool. Yeah, it was cool. But it's not bad either. Though the front end kind of hurts me a little bit for some reason. Like the fact that the headlights are like

good like six seven inch behind the front bumper uh with the hood uh being like curved on top it does i don't know it doesn't work for me the front hand yeah the hood seems very high like it would be hard to see over it yeah almost like if you've got like a kid walking in front of your car you're gonna just run them over so we just have the images we don't have the specs on this

No, I don't think they've revealed much there. The specs are supposed to beat all the competition and be revolutionary. That's what Ram said last week. No specs on this. All right. Well, that's about it for us. Let's jump into the comments. All right. Jumping in. All right. Real quick, I'm going to plug the other podcast. What is the other guy's name who usually writes and reviews e-bikes and scooters? I've never seen him live on your platform.

Dude, check out the Wheelie podcast. If you're into bikes and stuff, check it out. Micah Toll and myself will be on there. Micah is always live. He's always on this channel. We might be talking about Mikey, I guess. Oh, yeah. Mikey as well. Scooter sometimes does it. Yeah, Scooter does that too.

All right, Dan Oberstay, the ratio one to eight of chargers opening sounds like Tesla is opening the far right station so that cars could have to pull in forward and to the right of where Tesla would so they don't block others. That's an interesting point. Tesla could just make the magic docks on the outside to chargers so that people don't block and there's more ways to get in.

Yeah, there's a bunch of solutions that they can put here. Or also automakers can just standardize where they put the damn charge connector on it, which where Tesla's connector is, is the one that makes the most sense. The people that put it in the front of the car, literally like in the front hand of the car, that's just ridiculous. And then you have the front side of the car. I also don't think that's the best approach. I think back, driver's side makes the most sense.

All right, EB1888 says, question, when will Tesla make it easier to see all the rates at all the times? I think he's talking about the charger rates. I don't even look at the rates because what am I going to do? So what do you think? Yeah, I mean, I guess they might have to at some point because I know like in terms of fuel, there's laws about it in terms of like you need to show the cost of the fuel ahead of time. So there might be something that's going to happen there. I wouldn't be surprised. That's a good point. I wouldn't be surprised if regulations get involved.

uh but in terms of like seeing the rates i mean the find us website you see them and then you also see them on your um in in the app i don't know about yeah we probably see them in the app but you see them in the navigation system in the car too so in your navigation system you just click on this nearby supercharger and you can see the right there so uh it's not like this is hiding it or anything

All right. Moving on. Nick Cedar question. Any information about Workhorse and if they could regain the postal service EV contract? I don't know about the EV contract. We've seen some actual Oshkosh EV post trucks zooming around. So what do you think about Workhorse? To be completely honest, which I haven't followed Workhorse in a bit, in a minute. So I don't know what's up with them. I might, if I get some time soon, I'll take a peek.

That's the Lordstown one, right? No, Lordstown is the Lordstown one. Yeah, I mean, Lordstown was kind of split off of Workhorse. It's kind of spin off of it. That's kind of near that train derailment in Ohio. That's weird. All right. Real Team Me. Is Canada going to be left out in the cold as Europe and U.S. now have supercharger access? Well, not now in terms of the U.S. I would assume that, yeah, as soon as it starts happening in the U.S., Canada's going to fall not too far behind, I think. All right. Greg Poland.

Question. My Model Y is scheduled to be delivered between March 13th and March 31st. Do you think I will have hardware for...

In the Model Y. So the new hardware in the Model Y. No clue. I cannot. I've been trying to confirm that, like especially with the leak this week and everything. I poked all my sources, especially for the Model X. But obviously we want to know for every vehicle. I wouldn't be surprised if we have an announcement on March 1st, investor day.

All right. Mark Webb asks, as a result of the NHTSA FSD recall, do you think that Tesla might take away broad access to FSD? The issues raised by NHTSA have plagued FSD for years, so a quick fix seems unlikely. That's kind of my question as well. Like, you know, what is Tesla going to do to kind of alleviate NHTSA's concerns? And, you know, will Tesla, like,

offer a refund for people who don't get it? Or what's the story? I mean, we've been saying for a while that Tesla should just, like, they would get so much goodwill around FSD if they just, you're not satisfied with your experience with FSD beta, here's a refund.

I don't even know the take rate on that would be that high, honestly. Yeah. I would think maybe... A lot of people still believe in it. So I would think maybe like 20% or something like that, which it's going to be a big hit. It's going to hurt Tesla. That quarter is going to look bad because they're going to have to readjust. But it's a quarter. It's not the end of the company. Yeah, it's not. At worst, a few billion, not even. So...

So, yeah, they should just do that just to – they would get a lot of pressure off their backs, I think. A lot of the people that are affected by it, they have the option. Like, all right, you take it back or you stick to – you believe us, basically. You believe that we will deliver someday. Yeah.

All right, Philip Lavoie, question with Ford soon to report Ford Blue and Ford Model E separately. Do you think Legacy Auto, GM, Stellantis, VW, Nissan, Merc, etc. are going to spin off their EV businesses in the future? Thoughts on that?

I mean, how split up is Ford blue with the rest? Like, that's my biggest question. Like, I know that there's different teams and all that, but it's still very much Ford. I do like that the Ford, actually, they're going with, like, new model. Like, the Mackie is a brand new model. The F-150 is a F-150, but, I mean, if there was one vehicle that I wanted to see, like, getting electrified, it would be probably the F-150. So I'm happy with that. But for the most part, like, I don't like when you have, like, a...

a Kona and you have the Kona EV for example. So that I don't like. So I think there's value in separating your brand. Ford's approach is like kind of in between, I feel like. So it might be like a good compromise, especially the Ford brand is extremely strong and has been strong for like a hundred years at this point.

So yeah, they can stick with that. But GM, which already goes extremely granular with their brands, like Cadillac and Chevy and name it, GMC and all that, they might benefit from rebranding or what they were doing, for example, with Cadillac, they are making it an electric brand by 2025, 2030. Yeah.

So there's a bunch of different ways to go about it. But yeah, I would like to see more companies just go like, yeah, I mean, this brand is not an electric brand. Yeah. And I kind of wanted to see like that separation at the dealership. Like they should have like an EV area where people only deal with EVs. They don't like if you want an EV, you go to the EV area. Because right now you typically go into a dealership and they steer you away from EVs. So yeah.

Uh, Ron King. Oh, wait, let me really quickly address this one. Why does everyone have to, uh, be like electronic on an EV, a manual latch for a glove box works just fine. Maybe I'm officially a 40 year old boomer. Yeah. That's, I have the same feeling, uh, glove box. And also, uh,

I got the Chevy Bolt, and I love the fact that the hatchback is just manual. I don't push a button, I don't wait, and whatever. I get it. The glove box is just Tesla, though, right? Because you see EVs in general. No, Cadillac Lyric is even worse. You have to find it. Yeah, for the glove box, I have to admit, it's pushing it a little bit too much. Not that I use my glove box that often.

Right. That's the thing. You don't use it that often, but it just, come on, just make a latch. I guess. I don't know.

We're all boomers. All right. Ron King question. Are either of you going to investor day or to the annual meeting in May? We have not yet been invited. I don't know about you. I don't think we are on the white list. We're back on the white list with Tesla's events just yet. I mean, we just got deblocked last week, like unblocked last week. We're making progress. We're working towards that. Next step is going to be...

I mean, I've been pushing so hard for bringing back a PR department and I think we would do so much better with a PR department and like whatever is the situation right now. Uh, so maybe if that comes back, uh, we, we can start getting back to like, uh, which is weird to say because I feel like when there was a Tesla PR department, we were always complaining about them. That's, that's a good point. Like, uh, the grass is always greener on the other side. Right. But, uh,

We complain, but I mean, it's the nature of it. We are investigative journalists, investigative media, so we're pushing the buttons and everything, and they fight back. But I think the good ones at Tesla, for the most part, the good PR people, they appreciate it or work, even though they still butted heads with us at times. Right, and often we would talk to them after they left Tesla, and they'd be like, holy crap, that was a nutty thing. Yeah, and...

everything would be easier than dealing with Elon, to be honest. Right, right. Yeah, it's usually like they take a couple of months of just like, you know, going to Bali and sitting on a chair and decompressing. But if anybody has any invites to either one of those events and wants to share them with us, we will happily be your plus one or...

you know, use a fake ID to get in as you. All right. Greg Poland question. I noticed my Tesla app under service that I can get a CCS adapter retrofit.

Are they now allowing the 2018 Model 3 a CCS adapter retrofit? I think they've always offered that as a, I think it's $200 or $300. Yeah, but it was not supposed to happen. Like the actual taking the appointment and everything, that might be new. That might be. Okay. So they always said like the appointments are going to be available in 2023. So yeah, I guess we're in 2023 now, so.

Yeah, that might be already happening. It might be just in certain markets for certain vehicles, though I don't know if it's available for everyone just yet. Yeah, so I have a 2018 Model 3, and I was actually thinking about getting that, but I have a CHAdeMO adapter. So if I'm in a bad situation, there's a good chance I can find a CHAdeMO charger, at least for the next couple of years.

So I think I'm probably just going to stick there. And then I have a CCS adapter for the Model Y. It's newer. All right, moving on. How long does Tesla have to complete these updates? I know Takata was given years to replace all the airbags that were killing people. Yeah, that's a fair point. But again, it doesn't really apply here. I think it's more of a warning shot than anything from what happened this week. I don't think...

I don't think that's going to be the approach that they're going to take going forward if they have more issues with FSD beta. I just don't.

All right. We got to kind of get over here. We're, we've got a lot question. Tesla have stopped at Tesla energy plan for power wall owners in the UK. What are your thoughts on this? And do you think it will ever return to the UK? Yeah, I think so. I think, uh, because that's, that's, uh, Tesla's energy plant with the octopus, uh, it's called octopus synergy, I think. Yeah. And, uh, obviously Tesla is now working on Tesla electric. I think that's where things are going to go in the future. Um,

So probably you're going to see Tesla discontinuing those programs with third parties like that and launching their own sooner rather than later. Because the UK has a decent amount of power walls too, so there could be a virtual power plant slash Tesla Electric deal going on.

All right. This is a question for you because I gave up my Tesla before idle fees happened, but do people with unlimited supercharging get charged idle fees? I mean, I've always been good about that. It's not about the fees. It's about liberating the station. So I've never tested it, but I would assume that, yeah, you get unlimited free supercharging, not unlimited free parking. That's the idea behind it. All right. I'm going to

Let's see. Greg Poland comment, LFP batteries in Texas were just fine for pickup. Oh, yeah, we talked about that. Moving on. I think we'll go to the last one. I ordered the CCS retrofit this month for my 2019 Model 3, but was nixed by Tesla service thus far. So maybe they're getting a little ahead of themselves with the retrofit. Yeah, it might just be an issue of...

parts available at the service center and also just time at a service center because if they open up for a certain region maybe a lot of people are trying to get in and that happens but

Thanks a lot for everyone that stick on to the show. And sorry again for being late. Sorry again for the audio not being ideal because of this joke of a mic that I have right now. But we did our best with it. I hope you appreciated the show. We appreciate you for listening. And if you did like the show, please give us a thumbs up, a like, whatever on your app you're watching because we are live everywhere on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram.

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