Weird Tesla price increase, Model 3 Long Range comeback, lithium lab, and more
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We are live for a new episode of the Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host. And as usual, I always have Seth Wintraub, co-founder and publisher of Electric with me. How are you doing this week, Seth? I'm good. All right. Let's jump right in because we have a bunch of interesting news to start with. And as it has often been the case on the Electric Podcast for the last, well, for the whole year, really, we discussed some Tesla pricing news.

And this time, it's a price increase, and it's a weird one because the amount is weird. Well, the fact that it's an increase in itself is also weird because there's been a lot of price decreases over the last four or five months. And so it's an increase, and it's an increase of $250 on all configuration of Model 3 and Model Y. So it's the smallest amount yet.

And it's an amount that has never been seen for an increase or decrease before. So it's just like this tiny little thing that...

It's hard to understand. We know that Tesla has been saying now, and Elon made it clear on the last call, earnings call, that Tesla is tracking very closely everyday production capacity against orders. And they find that the best way to adjust the demand to the production capacity and to increase those orders or to decrease them is to

adjust the price. And for the last five months, that is meant to decrease the price for the most part and now increase it by $250. It's hard to understand just how significant of an impact it can have on increasing or in this case, decreasing orders, I guess, since it's an increase in price. But my only thing that I could think about is

the inventory. So we reported last week that Tesla's inventory has reached a new high

that it is becoming a problem to a certain degree. Like it's not normal for Tesla to have that much inventory. And when Tesla changes a price on its configurator, it most often than not changes the price on its inventory vehicles because I'm talking about new inventory. So it's not, it's a new car. They're still eligible to the federal tax credit in the US as a new vehicle. And this time Tesla didn't do that.

Did it just didn't do that because it's just $250? Or does it sort of ends up being a tiny little discount on inventory legal? Again, it's so tiny that would it really do a difference? I doubt it. But at the same time,

It's sort of a double benefits of if you find an inventory vehicle that you like, and there are, like I said, quite a few available right now, you have both the benefit of having the vehicle faster because it's in inventory. It's there right now or it's however close it is to your location. And then on top of it, you get $250 off. I don't know.

Any theories there, Seth? Yeah, I don't know. $250 doesn't seem like even much of a... I mean, that's not even what the state delivery charges and all that other stuff. I don't know. Maybe they're going for press. Maybe they're like, hey, we need to

get in the press this week or hey we need to be shown right raising prices as well as lowering prices i don't know yeah that that last one maybe a little bit like it's it's sort of like look or order right like as because with the inventory news and all that people are starting to think okay this is there's a demand problem so maybe this is a sort of an indicator like look it's not really a demand problem because we're increasing prices but for for the news thing

I mean, beyond like specialized media like ourself, I don't think a lot of mainstream media is picking up such a small price increase like that. Right, yeah. Because I've seen a lot of people having that theory too. But yeah, so we're kind of scratching our head a little bit on this one, like what's happening with this price increase. But a few other interesting, what's happening with this page right now? Shaking all over the place. The Model 3 Long Range, actually we did discuss that. So do you see that, Seth?

It's not as bad, I think. It just looks like a flutter. Okay. So we talked about it last week. Tesla still hadn't reopened orders for the Model 3 Long Range. And we were questioning ourselves why, what's happening. Of course, Tesla's narrative since the beginning, but that was like over a year ago at this point, is that the demand was too high for it, which started making less and less sense over the last few months.

But now they relaunched it, and they relaunched it. It was happier to be a Model 3 built in the U.S. with Chinese cells, most likely LFP cells like the standard range version, though it's not clear. But it does come with a reduced range of... 325+.

Yeah, so that probably means that EPA is not solid just yet, but they expect it to be through the fire. But that's about 30 miles less than the previous version with the nickel-based cells.

Other than that, not that many things change. Of course, now the tax credit, well, I mean, the tax credit wasn't available before, so it's not like it changed, but it is half of the full credit, which is the thing that point us to it being from Chinese cells. Now, the fact that it would be from Chinese cells would likely mean that it would be LFP cells because there is not that much value for Tesla to...

import cells from China if it's not going to be LFP because you would use another manufacturer at this point in order to get the full tax credit because I doubt that there's like how do I say this like a Chinese nickel based cell who

would not be worth the $3,750 to get it under another supplier like that. The price difference from a Chinese supplier wouldn't be that big. So it doesn't make sense unless you go with LFP. But you did find something, Seth, I think that you thought that, okay, yeah, very cool weather for the best long-range driving experience in the coldest region. We can recommend long-range or performance model 3.0.

So this is what I think pointed you to, you think that might not be LFP cells because they don't perform as well? Yeah, I mean, yeah. So that's one part. And the other part is obviously it's longer range than the LFP pack. So maybe it's an optimized version of the LFP. And we actually did a story on different chemistries that cattle was working on. Yeah, so that might be a possibility or that might just be like a legacy thing.

yeah it's from the page very possible that they didn't upgrade it but this pack certainly has more uh capacity and i don't i don't know if there was a weight on that vehicle but um um yeah so so the weight is the same as the long range from europe so uh it's not still a bit confusing um

When the EPA, does the EPA tell? No, the EPA doesn't tell you the chemistry of the pack, but it will tell you the capacity of the pack. So that would be interesting. So from the capacity of the pack, we should have a good idea of the range. Because my assumption is it's probably going to be a similar capacity as the last pack. But if it's LFP, it makes sense it would have a lower range. Because for the same capacity, you have an heavier weight, less efficiency. Yeah.

But it's good to have one more option on the Moultrie lineup in the U.S. What were you saying, Seth? No, it's interesting because you would think if it was an important pack, you know, if they had an LFP pack that had the density of nickel, you know, Tesla would say something like, hey, we got this great new pack. Or cattle would say, hey, Tesla's using our new technology.

So it is weird that this just kind of came in under the radar. Yeah, but at the same time, Tesla is always like to keep their cars close to their chest, especially when it comes to batteries. Yeah. Okay, this is annoying me right now. I don't know what's happening. Um...

All right, the Model S Plaid track package has been released. And it's a bit of a controversial one because, well, we knew it was coming. We knew that the ceramic brake upgrade for $20,000 was the thing that was going to finally enable Tesla to get that 200 miles per hour top speed that was promised. That's the 322 kilometers an hour, excuse me.

And we reported last summer when someone actually achieved it, but by unlocking the speed limiter that Tesla has in the software of the Model S Plaid. And they had their home, of course, ceramic brakes at the time that they put in. But now Tesla is starting to ship the upgrade that they were selling for $20,000. And they are adding to that the Model S Plaid track package, which sounds like is also going to be needed to achieve that new speed.

that new top speed. So the package come with the zero G wheels that we've saw, we saw previously on the, on the Tesla model three track package. So the same design, uh, the more performance tires. So the Goodyear super car, three R tires and, um, well, the valve knots and everything, but the big difference obviously is the, is the ceramic blades that,

that are very much needed to slow down that vehicle once they achieve that top speed. So why is that controversial? It's because when Tesla first started seeing the Model S Plaid, which two years ago at this point, they were promising that 200 miles per hour top speed, but they were seeing through software update

And they weren't saying through a $20,000 ceramic break increase or a Plaid track package deal or any kind of payment that would have to be made to achieve that top speed. So I've talked to two different owners about this, MLS Plaid owners. We're a little bit frustrated by it because they feel like Tesla is now asking them for $20,000 in order to

get what they were promised originally, which I tend to agree with. I think that's fair. I asked those two owners to tell Tesla that because I think it's pretty straightforward. Like if Tesla promised that top speed through software update, well, that's the controversial part. So you would think they could just do it instead and remove the speed limiter and

But at the same time, like when NGINX, we did it by themselves, removing the speed limiter, when they were starting to have early discussion about offering that as a product to MLS Plaid owners, Tesla was like, no, no, no, no, you shouldn't do that. It's dangerous. So I would assume that it's also dangerous for Tesla to do it themselves without the brake upgrades or the right tires and wheels. So...

I think probably the only right thing to do for Tesla would be to offer those upgrades for free to people that ordered the Model S Plaid before they had... Because now they have added a mention of with the appropriate brakes and wheels or tires or wheels and tires. I don't know the exact phrasing. I could look it up actually. That would make sense. So I asked them to check out with Tesla if they're going to...

do something about it. But if they don't, I think that's a big customer service mishap. And it's no more than that. It's straight up false advertising, really. I don't think there's a way around it. So if I go model as planned and I go, the top speed is not even mentioned here. Interesting. Where is it mentioned? Do I know if you upgrade the wheel, that's the Arachnid wheels. There's no mention of the top speed if you order a new model as planned right now. Interesting.

If I go feature details, top speed, MOLES Plaid 200 miles per hour. Okay, it does say it here. Requires paid hardware upgrades. So now it does say it. It says desensitized Plaid top speed requires paid hardware upgrades. So now they put it in there, but for the people that bought it without this, this is a fine print there. It's not an ideal situation either. But yeah, I think it would be fair for them to get it included because that was the deal.

Do you agree with that, Seth? I mean, yeah. Like, that's... You get what you pay for, I guess. I don't know. Like, this is out of my kind of league in terms of, you know, buying a... A supercar, basically. Yeah, a supercar.

Well, also, I would argue that people that bought this when originally probably paid a lot more for it too than people buying it now because the price was much higher. So yeah, when you combine that with the fact that Tesla wasn't saying that you were going to need the paid hardware upgrade, I think it's fair.

We always get in trouble for defending. Yeah, we should ask Elon, hey, can you hook these guys up and then have 6,000 Elon fans after us? Last time that we're in trouble is because it was affecting me personally at the same time, so people attacked me on that. That was a weird thing, right? Because

If you remove the fact that it was affecting me personally, it was still the right thing to do. But the fact that it was the right thing to do and it benefited me, like, no, no, no, that's not... You cannot do the right thing if it benefits you also. I think we would have done the same thing if we hadn't... I would think so. And the fact that it was so clear to me is because also I was in Canada, so the Model 3 performance came a little bit later. So...

Like they gave me my car and right away, like they dropped down the price even though I was waiting for my cars for two years. So yeah, it was kind of like more flagrant for me a little bit, but it affected everyone the same way on that. In this case, it does affect me personally. I don't have a MLS plan, but anyway. Why not, Fred?

Yeah, I almost, I came pretty close at one point to get a Plaid. Yeah, yeah. There was one, a used one. I was negotiating. And back when the used car prices for the Tesla was like insane. So I still had a good price on my Model 3. So I was going to exchange it for the Plaid. But at the end of the day, I was still going to have to like pull like $60,000 out of the pocket or something like that. So I decided not to.

Yeah, I actually came close to getting a Model X Plaid. When I say close, I mean, I was thinking about it for a few minutes, but a Google employee I know had one. He had purchased one and didn't want it anymore for some reason. And he was like, hey, do you want it for what I paid? And I think it was a good price at the time. And I was thinking about it, but then I was like... That would have been a tough one to pass by the wife, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although she does like the Model X. She did like the Model X, though. Then you had one, yeah.

Yeah. It's so hard to justify a Model X Plaid because it's just like, it's the same as a regular Model X, just super car speed that you are basically never going to use. Right. Um,

All right, moving on to the next news. This was all exclusive from Electrek here that Tesla is building a new lithium lab in Nevada. And it's not, what do you think? It's not Gigafactory Nevada. It's in Sparks, just like the Gigafactory, but it's in downtown Sparks, or if there's a downtown in Sparks, but it's in the town of Sparks, which is directly adjacent to Reno, instead of in the boonies, like Gigafactory Nevada.

So we found that out through a building permit application that Tesla had on this little building here. I can show you on the map too, like it's in Spark, like Reno's right here. Spark, it's like in this little industrial park.

And there's not a lot of information. Tesla is calling it the Tesla Lithium Lab, and it's a manufacturing R&D lab. And Tesla says it's a tenant improvement project for the purpose of a manufacturing R&D lithium lab facility. The scope of work includes mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and minor architectural upgrades to support tool installation and process optimization. So from that, we can, from the name of it, obviously,

It could be a few things. So we know that Tesla is building this lithium processing facility to produce lithium hydrate out of Corpus Christi in Texas. So it might be related to that process where there's a novel one that Tesla is using there. So maybe some

that's related to that. But the fact that it's in Nevada would maybe point that it's more related to maybe their mining operation for lithium that Tesla is supposed to be doing in Nevada, though there hasn't been any updates on that since the... Well, there's been a little bit of talk, but not much since the battery day when Tesla announced that they acquired like 10,000 acres of mining rights in Nevada, which is known for like there's a big...

lithium deposit there. Lithium America is exploiting it, but a few other companies have rights around the place, including now Tesla. And Tesla was supposed to develop their own technique to extract the lithium from the ore and

uh this lab might be related to that in order to refine the process and make sure that it works those are my two guesses i don't know if anyone has other guesses if you do you can put in the comment section right now but it's interesting that this has a new facility in sparks and it's called the tesla litium lab quite quite in the comments right now we usually have quite a few by now

Yeah, if you guys have any questions, we're going to have plenty of time. This week was kind of a slow news week. We still have a few news items to discuss, but if you guys have any questions, you can put it in the comments section below or any subjects you want us to get into. We're going to have plenty of time to talk to you guys today. So get on it.

All right, this was, this is not like a big story, but it was the biggest story of the week, interestingly, like 300,000 hits on it. So I guess we should discuss it because people find it very interesting. And it is somewhat, there's a little interesting thing about it really is the, so it's these three brand new, like never driven Roadster, original Roadster, first generation that have been found sitting in the container in China for over a decade.

So the story comes courtesy of Gruber Motors. If you guys remember Gruber Motors, they're sort of specialists into reviving roadsters that have like brick battery packs or any other issues. They specialize in fixing roadster really and specialize in burning them down a little bit. I'm just joking. I'm sure. They don't specialize in it, but they seem to like they had two separate fires. Yeah.

And they also burned a T-Zero, which is... Yeah, a prototype T-Zero. Yeah. Yeah, they had two separate fires that burned, I think, at least two dozen cars, if I remember correctly. So that also contributes in making the Roadster a little bit rarer and making these... Yeah, but now, like, so they were part of...

a few of them disappear over the years. Now they were part of finding new ones. Well, at least not necessarily finding, but they are like kind of managing a little bit this project here of this guy in China that found these three roadster in a container that were sitting there. So some guy imported them back in 2010 and

uh, from the U S, uh, to probably to sell them in the Chinese market. But the, uh, they never picked them up from the port and it just sat there, uh, just accruing fees from, from, uh, the port. And, uh, I guess some guy got involved now and settled the fees. I assume for, for a deal, otherwise he's going to lose some money because I'm sure 10 years worth of fees. It's a, it's no joke. Um, uh,

So now he's trying to sell them and he reached out to Uber Motors originally, I guess, to fix them because the electric vehicle is sitting there for 10 years. There's going to be a ban, especially the Roadster has been known to have a braking problem with their pack. So if the pack was never plugged in, it's going to be an issue.

So we don't know for a fact right now. Gruber says that they just don't know the condition and they won't know until they have access to the car. And the cars are still in China, though they will be shipped to the U.S. within the next week or two unless they are sold somewhere else because they put them up for sale already as is. So it's just for someone that's willing to take the risk. Obviously, they are in great physical condition, but they are most likely than not, they are bricked.

So it's just a beautiful ornament at this point. So I wasn't so sure like who's going to be interested in buying those. But today we got the news from Groover's that they already received five different bids for it, including one for half a million dollars for all three. So quite a high bid. And I reached out to Pete Groover, the owner of the Groover Motors.

asked him are all services those bid and he was like pretty serious and not only that he thinks it's actually low and he believes that he's gonna sell for a million dollars all three and um the way yeah i mean for collectors these are zero mile cars like i don't think these exist anywhere really yeah that was his argument uh but again they are brick though so you're really just having them as uh

as ornaments like to put in the collection or you could send them to space yeah that's a good point and the red one is the same one as the uh no i think it's not it's a soft top uh is it the soft top i think so i mean it's like those you know original iphones that sell for fifty thousand dollars whatever yeah that's fair so good boy

So yeah, an interesting story. They found those. And now if you have a million dollars, they can be yours probably. I mean, it's not, if you're like, if you're already a car collector, you're basically betting on what cars are going to be collection items. And the roadster is probably a good bet just for its historical value of, in my opinion, being a major contributor to the resurgence of electric vehicles in the 2000s.

That combined with obviously the biggest thing for collectors is scarcity. So it is a fairly rare car at this point, probably fewer than 2,000 units, I would say. I think it's 2,400 or so total that were produced. But I mean, one's in space, a bunch of them burned. There's also just regular used and after a while, it's just not a usable car and not a nice one at least.

so yeah it's a good bet and if you have three like that then you can make a deal like I'll buy three well it's pretty good though yeah I'll keep one in my collection because then if you're a car collector that's and if you're a big one like like what's his name the chin the oh Jay Leno I was gonna say Jared Leto for some reason I knew it was wrong

Yeah, I should know. Of course, like it's hard to get rid of your cars when you have like emotional attachment to them. I don't know if Leno sells them. He's such a big fan. And he literally has like four warehouses full of cars at this point. But if you want to make it like an investment, also like you want to keep one, it's a good deal. Like you.

You keep one and you sell those when they accrue some value and maybe the one that you keep pays for itself at this point. So I don't know. It might be a good deal. I don't have the million dollars to make a bet on this. Yeah. Maybe they'll trade it for a new Roadster. A non-existent new Roadster. A new Roadster reservation. Yeah.

All right. Ford is... That's interesting that the Ford... Just last week, we were talking about Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, sort of warning Tesla about this price war that they launched and how it becomes a problem. And now they are following through with more price cuts on the Mustang Mach-E and also reopening orders because...

They did shut them down for a while because they had to slow down production because of tooling issues.

at the Mexico factory. So I think last month or last month or last quarter, yeah, last quarter they just sold 5,000 units. So that's very low for them. But now they're trying to ramp things up and they do it with lower pricing. So we have the chart here. So through 1,000 to 4,000 price cuts across the entire lineup now starts at $43,000 for the SEDEC rear wheel drive standard range.

And if you want the fully equipped GT all-wheel drive extended range version, now start at $60,000 instead of $64,000. And all Mach-Es are eligible for $3,750, so just half the federal tax credit. So below $40,000 now starts after tax credit. So interesting. Interesting.

Yeah, it's starting to get some. You can see that what's driving this, obviously, Mackie and Model Y are probably the closest competitor in this. When you want all electric SUVs, crossovers, they are the closest. So the big price cut that this has done over the year, since the beginning of the year.

They already did one shortly after the big one in January. And now they're following again, following these two significant ones that were done last month by Tesla. I cannot click on anything. I'm going to have to figure that out. Like a space bar or something? No, I don't know what's happening. Yeah.

I think it might be the screen sharing thing. I don't know. I wasn't doing that when I was working earlier before sharing the screen. All right. Fisker. Fisker is starting the deliveries of the Ocean electric SUV in Europe. That's great. So they did the first deliveries in Denmark and Copenhagen. Isn't that where Fisker's from? Isn't he a Danish guy? That would make sense, I think so. He looked Danish. He's tall. Pale, like light hair. Yeah.

Yeah, so it's a good step. This is something to celebrate because EV startups, they are often a lot of talk, a lot of money invested, and not a lot of production vehicle. Obviously, Fisker, we kind of knew, always knew that they would reach production because of their deal with Magna.

So Magna is in charge of production and Magna has a lot of experience being in car production. And we do like that for Fisker, knowing what happened last time, like the manufacturing engineering part of things was not, was not a forte, let's say. So now that they have a big partner that helps. However,

I'm still, I'm not very hyped up by the, like the prospect of it. It's a, I guess they're going to sell 5,000 of LEM lunch edition for 70,000, $69,000. I find that a little bit expensive for like, for that vehicle. Like I just, I'm thinking as a consumer, like why would you want this over like a fully equipped Model Y or Mustang Mach-E? We just discussed the Mach-Es like,

10,000. And also, those are the European prices too, I should say. They haven't confirmed when, how it's going to come to the U.S. market. Well, is this... So we're using the prices here for Europe? Or because this is in dollars, we didn't put euros. So it might be the U.S. prices. Yeah, but the Ocean was supposed to come in at really low prices. Yeah, no, the Sport one is $3,700. $3,500.

Those are theoretically going to come much further along down the road. Yeah, yeah. This is going to take a while if they do get there because if you look at the financials of Fisker, it doesn't look good right now. They're going to need more money because I don't... So my problem is like if I look at them, it's like nice, they get to production, but what Fisker does then is... Okay, so they are part of the design and engineering of the vehicle, not the production. Okay. Okay.

But then they're still in charge of all the selling of the vehicle, the servicing of the vehicle and all that. And I know they are partnering with companies on this, but we know how big of a burden that is. We've seen it with Rivian, which I think most people agree that in terms of startup, EV startup,

Again, Tesla is not an EV startup in my head anymore. Sometimes I say that. Rivian really is the best EV startup. What about Tesla? Tesla produces 2 million vehicles a year now. This is not a startup anymore. So in the wave of EV startups that came after Tesla, Rivian is often cited as the most advanced one and the best one so far. And they are seeing a ton of pressure from Tesla

Reaching production, reaching volume production, and now having to sell and service and warranty these cars. This is a huge financial pressure. And Rivian at least has the coffers to do that. They have a ton of money to do it. I still have memories about them for the gross margin and all that.

But they have at least the money to survive for a while while they try to improve that. Fisker doesn't have that right now. So they need a quick turnaround on this, on making this business profitable. And I...

I'm having issues seeing it at this point. I'm open to discussion about it. If there are any Fisker investors out there right now in the chat, they want to debate me on this, go ahead. But I have just serious doubts, guys, serious doubts. And it's like Rivian. I love the product. The product is great, but it won't save them at the end of the day if they cannot make it profitably and they cannot service them profitably and deliver them and all that. So,

It's the same thing with Fisker, though I cannot say I like the product just yet. I've never put my hands on it. Is he just a giant or the car is like super short? I think it's a little both. He's a tall guy, but the car is also not. It kind of looks like a Chevy Bolt there. I don't know. Yeah, even shorter. The Chevy Bolt is narrow, but pretty tall. Yeah. All right. Speaking of EV startup, let's see if I can click on it. There you go. Abterra had a big update this week. They had their...

meeting with shareholders where they share the production progress that they are making. And they just came back from their trip in Italy where they're going to be producing the bodies of the Aptera solar electric vehicle. And they have the entire dies. I don't know if you can say dies because it's a carbon. It's a very interesting process, really. They are making it. They're using CO2.

Do we have it? CPC? No, CPC, that's the money. CPC, I want to say? CPC, yeah. CPC Group, they are in Italy, they make supercars. All the carbon fiber supercars is their old process that they make the bodies with. And that's going to be what they make the body of the Aptera, which is obviously not a supercar. But it's an interesting approach because a lot of supercars have incredible aerodynamic performance and that's the goal of the Aptera. So, yeah.

Using similar process, so extremely light body and very simple frame too. The old teardrop shape, very interesting. And so look at that. So it's really cool. They just pour the carbon fiber, like it's almost like a goo or like a Play-Doh type of texture.

and then they squish it like that and then they form it really quickly and they can produce a part in like eight minutes of forming like that. So it's a fairly recent carbon process that they're doing that hasn't been used before. It's not like when BMW did the i-tree, for example. I don't know if you remember that, but that was like an insane process to make the body on this. So this is a much more advanced carbon-based body structure. Very interesting. Now...

They still need some money to make it to production. They're not quite there yet. We reported on the California Energy Commission giving them $21 million in grants to establish a production line. And the accelerator program that they were doing at the same time, which is already at over $14 million. But they think that they're going to need about $50 million to get to production within the next year.

The next nine months. And I actually decided to participate in it. You guys know I've been very hyped up on Aptera for a while now. And I decided to contribute to the accelerator program, which gives you the opportunity to get one of the slots for the first 2,000 vehicles. So I get a slot for 2,000 vehicles and also invest in the company at the same time.

Are they going to deliver it to you in Canada? You have to pick it up at the factory for the accelerator program. So I'm going to have to do a little road trip. It's going to be fun. I want the 600-mile version anyways. It's going to be easy to do the road trip. And the supercharger network is going to work with it. Hopefully, by then, there's going to be more stations open. Hopefully, it's summertime. I mean, hopefully, it's sunny days. Yeah. I mean, sunny. I'm not...

I'm not hyped up for Abterra because of their solar capacity. I'm hyped up because of the efficiency aspect. And that's what's cool about it. The efficiency aspect enables the solar thing because now the solar is useful from the hyper-efficiency of the car. So I'm really hyped up about the hyper-efficiency. And I think it's sort of cool that with the hyper-efficiency, well, you know what? We can put solar on it and it's actually somewhat useful. Yeah.

Right. Not a ton useful, but I mean, here in the summer, I'll be able to just leave it outside. And for the most part, I'm not doing 600 mile journeys all the time. So I'm just not going to be going to have to plug in the car, just leave it outside in the sun. And yeah, part of the presentation to the, they had very encouraging things to say about, um,

How since it's going to be a car that people are going to leave in the sun a lot, and we know the sun can be damaging on cars over time, they are taking a lot of approach on that front to mitigate that and make it so that this car is going to last a long time in the sun. Obviously, the entire glass structure for the solar cell is going to help on that. And on the rest of the body, it's not painted. So it's only wraps.

So that helps too. But even wraps, like they don't last as much in the sun. So they're trying to find a wrap that's going to work well for an extended period of time in the sun. So I think it has a chance of success. But things that they need to accomplish besides actually producing them, like I think they really need to get the price down. Like,

you know, I think that, uh, the lowest priced one is like $30,000 and 25 or 20. Yeah. So, um, the fact that you can, you know, you could almost get a Chevy bolt, but like, I feel like under $20,000 in this, you know, two seater makes a lot more sense. Um, they also have to kind of convince people like the three wheel thing is, is viable. Um,

I think it is. I think it, like, it works. I've driven in a couple, like, electromechanicas and Archimodos and stuff, and they handle just fine. They're not, you know, they're not tipping over or anything, but I think the general public hasn't gotten there. You know, they don't quite understand that yet. And then, so the price down, you know, convinced about three wheels and then also safety. Like, we don't know how this is going to crash test. It doesn't have to crash test well. It's basically a motorcycle. Yeah, that's a big difference, yeah.

But if I'm going to be driving this thing around and somebody rear-ends me and I'm over because somebody hit me going 12 miles per hour, then that's not something I want to be a part of. No, that's completely – everything you said is completely fair. In terms of the demand thing and the price, I'm not so concerned about that. I do think for high volume, if they wanted to do $20,000 a year like you're talking about, yes, they would need to reduce the price at some point.

But I think there's demand for, especially with, I think a lot of people are interested in the super high long range one, the 600 miles and the thousand mile version. And those come at a big premium, obviously. But I think we're going to see a shift in the broader electric vehicle industry now. Well, people that start thinking less and less about range, like longer range and more about efficiency, they're

And around that time, hopefully Altera is going to be up and running and be going to be able to bring a version lower range, but still very interesting for people because this is a commuter for the most part. You can go on road trips with obviously like two people and use some cargo space in the back, but it's not really what it's meant to. I think it's going to be just a super efficient commuter. Like this is basically between, yeah,

If you want to do it by foot, commute by foot in public transportation, obviously very good. Then you have your bikes, your e-bikes. Then you have your electric scooters. And from there, we jump to a car right now, like a full-size car.

I think this is going to be like a new step in between. But like you said, for that step in between, you're going to want a price that's in between that of a scooter and of a car. And right now, it's not really that. But I think the early adopters that are fans of hyper-efficiency like me and the solar aspect at the same time, I think we should be able to close the gap with those people.

Just like the Mercedes EQXX, whatever, if you bring that to market as a premium car, I think a lot of people would buy it just for the efficiency aspect of it. That's true. But I want to see this become a mass market thing. I want to see hundreds of thousands. Yeah, that's the goal too. That's what Aptera is going after.

And they have an interesting approach for it because of that partnership with CPC making the bodies with the fact that they don't have to paint it too. That is a big deal. There's a reason Tesla is doing that with the Cybertruck. It makes the deployment of a factory so much easier because 80% of the environmental impact of a car factory is from the paint shops. So if you can cut that down, you cut down the entire process of building up a factory significantly.

So that's a big deal. So they're going to be able to like, once they are up and running and it makes sense to make them in the U S in California, they can make factory in, uh, in Europe and Asia and all that. So yeah, I might top on it on, uh, as a potential consumer. And now as an investor, uh,

Obviously, I wouldn't encourage anyone to invest in this, any kind of money that you're not willing to lose, obviously, because it is a startup that is crowdfunding, which is always an issue. But a lot of people, when I posted that I participated in the XTERRA program, I had a few people like, I invested in Atlas and it's all screwed up now. So I think it's not a good idea to do it in Aptera. Aptera and Atlas are like night and day for me, like

And the big part of that, I mean, the actual people behind the company and all that, I think is one thing too, like to take into account. But even beyond that, just the fact that the Atlas was trying to bring a pickup truck to market and it's not even what they're doing right now. They're now sort of shifted into a strange battery company or battery cell company. But bringing a pickup truck to market versus what is an auto cycle or a

depending on which states you're at. It's completely different in terms of regulation and the process to bring it to being certified to go on the road. So I'm not too worried about that. Yeah, it's just, I mean, it's a neat looking car as well. Yeah, it's cool. And they're working with Coma AI? Coma AI, yeah. Yeah, which I haven't used Coma AI in a while, but I've used them, I want to say like six,

five six years ago and i was impressed five and six years ago and apparently they improved a lot so i'm like i wouldn't be mad to have them in in a car in the future so i like that i'm gonna try to put it in the uh the bolt oh that could be interesting yeah is it one of the supported so it's sort of supported you have to buy it so i should have got the i got the one lt it's supported in the two lt bolt but uh you can get this thing called the pedal which uh you know

it works on your accelerator pedal which i'm a little bit like i don't know about that but um i can get that and and actually i've talked to some folks at um comma ai and they said just buy it and we'll re you know like you know you can say you returned it after whatever whatever it okay so it's low risk for me i tried it in the tesla at one point too like a bunch of uh engineering here in quebec made it a warning to tesla and it was impressive

And again, that was six years ago. I think they improved a lot. Yeah. I mean, the Bolt doesn't have any kind of autonomous. So it's not like competing with what's already built into it. No, that would make an interesting article because I feel like ComAI is kind of the android of self-driving of what Tesla is to Apple. Yeah.

All right, should we jump into the comments? I think we gathered a bunch since then. And maybe not so many because everybody's parting because it's Cinco de Mayo. That's a good point. Carl in San Diego, getting close to buying a BMW i4 because it's a car, not an SUV, has a rear hatch, good driving dynamics and interior, and is in a Tesla. Do you guys have thoughts on the i4? Yes, I reviewed the i4. I really enjoyed riding it.

Some things, though, that I didn't particularly enjoy, like I didn't find the autonomous software to be much more than traffic aware cruise control. It is like it's a four series car. So they have this huge front.

No, they have a huge front area, but like almost nothing, you know, there's nothing in there. Like it's a big waste of space. So if you park it next to like a model three, you're like, wow, the model three has this big cabin and a very small front area. And that front area is actually useful.

versus you know this bmw um bmw is like very roomy in the front uh the back is a little tight um and not as much cargo space in the back so that's comparing it to a model 3 which is pretty much the only other electric ev car like sedan out there right now yeah the polestar 2 is is good and that's a great car as well um so i mean

Drive the i4 if you love it. Get it. It's a great car. If Tesla's out of the question, then yeah, Polestar. I guess that

ev6 is kind of a car yeah i mean it's lower than most uh of the suv type things out there i've been seeing a bunch of ionic 5 to around and the more i see it the more to me like i know when when you get it like when you compare the dimensions like it is kind of like a crossover suv looks like hatchback to me when i see it from afar i'm like what is that is that hatchback and then gets closer i'll say an any five

Yeah, I was like, I'm everybody I know loves that thing. And I'm like, yeah, I get it. It's kind of cool with the 8-bit lights and stuff, but it wasn't exciting to drive where I, you know, I know it's the same, you know, underpinnings, but I really like the EV6.

All right, MJ42Kramer, when the refresh models come out, think they will still sell the older models until those sell out and those will be cheaper or refresh will only go on sale with the inventory of the old ones is zero. Historically speaking, it has been the latter. Tesla generally tried to get the inventory down.

Ahead of a refresh release, there can be some overlap at times, obviously, but I think Tesla always makes it very minimal. They're pretty good at that. And yeah, generally price is used to achieve that too. So keep an eye out on that if you're on the market. Yeah, now's not a bad time.

to buy a Tesla. Transparent Utopia is the M3 long range perhaps equipped with the same battery pack as the base Model Y. It just gets more range because it is a smaller form factor. I mean, I don't think it's that much more range. And the Model Y... Yeah, the base Model Y in the US would be the all-wheel drive standard range one, which is the 4680 cell battery pack. So I don't think that's the case.

Yeah, and also it's like the different rebates, the federal tax rebates. So probably not the same. Carl in San Diego, Gruber will make those roadsters all work. It's what they do. Well, that's the thing. Well, yeah, that's what they do. But in this case, they're saying that right now they're basically just in the process of helping the owner sell them something.

If the new buyers want to fix them, sure, I'm sure they will be willing to do that. But for now, what Pete told me today is that he thinks that whoever's going to buy them just wants to use them as a zero-mile ornament, basically, in their collection. MJ40 Kramer talking about the i4. Amazing. It's basically the same price for the Ioniq 6 for a BMW. Oh, that's another car, the Ioniq 6.

which I think is pretty good. The hood seems very long. Yeah, that's kind of what I was saying. I should note that one of my neighbors has the M450 version of the i4, and he can't stop talking about it. Is he a new EV owner? Yeah, he's never owned an EV before. He had a Toyota RAV4

Plug-in. The plug-in version? Yeah, or his wife does. All right. Carl in San Diego. Ford price cuts correspond with the LFP transition. A little bit. They did start to move to LFP on their standard range vehicles, but Ford cut the price across the board on their vehicles. The LFP sales are coming from China now, so...

They don't get the full tax credit until their cattle U.S. factory opens in, I think, 2026. All right. Fisker has better size and looks better than the Model Y. Subjective, I would say. And it has buttons and a display in the front of the driver. That's why I would go for Fisker over a Y.

I mean, everything you just said is objective other than the size. And I think you're wrong on the size, if I'm not mistaken. I think there's more cargo space in the Mollwide and the Fisker, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I mean, certainly it looked like it from the pictures. Question. Do we have any data on the reliability of the Rivian charging network? Is it as good as Tesla's?

We don't right now, or it's not public as far as I'm aware. Also, it doesn't really matter at this point. There's, I think, Rivian has like a dozen stations or something like that, maybe less or a little bit more. So I wouldn't worry too much about that until the network is a little bit bigger.

All right. Forged carbon fiber production is a clever way to avoid hand-intensive layup. Not sure if the Aptera system is similar, basically using chopped carbon fibers in random alignment instead of a weave. I guess forged carbon fiber, forged would be a good term for it. But chopped carbon fiber, I don't know about that. I know that the big thing is there's basically zero waste because they're

You put the exact amount of this like Play-Doh goo type of thing in those giant dyes and it's forged super fast. And then when you put it out, like you do maybe like a tiny little trim around it, but that's it. And you get able to produce a lot of like super solid dyes.

lightweight parts super fast that are super precise so no it seemed like the right approach and and you know what's interesting too is like that it might help that technology to to become a little bit more widespread because right now mostly used for supercars but with the volume that aptara plans to do if they are successful would be interesting to see this technology being used more all right seth why are you making a thirty thousand dollar aptara sound expensive they need to make some profit on their cars

fair i just if they want to get to mass market they got to go down uh bolt was withdrawn from the market because it was unprofitable giveaway i don't know if that's totally the case but uh it was withdrawn so uh nick cedar it was said that the i3's carbon structure would be totaled with mild damage what about the app terra uh i mean i don't know about total like it's definitely gonna be expensive to replace the panels like the the body is gonna be an expensive part um

but yeah i don't think it's a super high concern of me like at this point yeah i wonder if it wouldn't be expensive because they can just make tons of those things and swap them out don't know what do you think about it's still very much like a body panel type of vehicle like it's it's two very large panel on each side for sure so like if you do break one of those yeah replacing it would be

very expensive but it's still a panel construction like it's not like a unibody type of thing either funny thing about the cf is that if you can try to lay out more carbon and make it strong there's just hasn't been much of a market for carbon repair in the auto industry i mean i know in the bike industry like if you if your carbon fiber bike breaks there's no like it i mean and sometimes they shatter like glass i don't think it's the same thing but um

If your carbon fiber bike even gets a small dent in it, it's just over. You get a new frame. A para body should be cheap to replace whole parts, moving the whole car's components to new shells doable, where it might be ridiculous with other cars. Maybe.

Mike Angeles question is anyone making a mini Aptera? Basically a tiny version. I thought the Aptera was already mini. Basically a tiny version of one that's more in the size of a Harley. Three wheel, uses a third of the energy to propel one person or two in tandem like a fighter jet cockpit. That's basically Can-Am or like a enclosed Can-Am, I would say, because it sounds like you want an enclosed Can-Am.

Yeah, it's going to be tight in there. It's already pretty tight inside. But that's not a bad idea, though. I would think there's a market for that. And AppTailware was clear that they want to take their design philosophy, which is like hyper-efficiency and solar, and bring it to a bunch of different segments. Yeah.

I think that would be in their future probably, unless they want to go bigger. I know they're talking about the van too. They want to do like a van that is like hyper-efficient with solar. So I think that would be their second car, second vehicle, I should say. But let's focus on the first one. They barely, like every money that comes in right now, they use it for like the production and that's what they're going to do for the next nine months. So let's focus on that for now.

Someone made a frunk aftermarket for the I-4 rear wheel drive model. Not a bad idea. I'm sure it's very doable. There's tons of space in there. Fred, if you can imagine yourself in an Aptera traveling on Interstate 5 or 95 or CA1 surrounded by semis at 80 miles per hour, you have more intestinal substance than the eye.

Well, I would do that in a motorcycle and that's even more scarier than Abterra. It's basically you're in a motorcycle with an outer shell. Yeah, better than a motorcycle, I would say. So yeah, no, I'm not too worried about that. I'm fully aware that it's not as safe as a full-size car, obviously. Any comments on the Denver supercharger shooting? Hope it's few and far between sort of incident.

That was kind of crazy. Weird. Yeah. Well, like I wrote in the article, I think it's, it's more about, it says more about gun violence in the U S and it says about like the supercharger situation and the police has kind of like walked back their statement a little bit, though. It's not clear because at first they were like, it was an argument over a charging station. So like, that's more like, okay, like super charging etiquette is kind of involved in it. Um,

Uh, but then they said, and it wasn't about a charging dispute. They said both Tesla owners had guns, but like, okay, they both had guns, but then they just, they were like, you have a gun, I have a gun. Let's have a shootout like this. So the reason behind it is not clear either, but obviously it's extremely sad. And, uh,

I mean, this is basically a fight over a parking spot. It doesn't like if the Tesla Chargers weren't there, like these people were both trying to get in this parking spot. I mean, it was what it sounds like, at least initially.

But the argument, like to read the comments around this, like I cannot get into it. It's just crazy because people are like, yeah, well, this is good that it's getting publicized because now everyone knows like you need to be careful in the US if you have an argument because anyone can have a gun. Like, which I guess is true. Like you have to be careful. But is that really what you want your life to be? Like, just like be careful because everybody has a gun. Like it's just, it's such a scary thing to have in your mind.

Yeah, I mean, I don't think like that. But I don't know, maybe different parts of the country are different. Yeah, I wouldn't think that. When I saw Denver, I was a little bit surprised about that too. I think it's pretty, it's very much like modern city. Well, I shouldn't say everything is modern cities, but it's, my understanding is like even in the,

Well, Colorado is always like a swing between red states and blue states, I think. But generally, the cities like Denver is pretty liberal for the most part, I think. Yeah. A lot of ski resorts. Get a Twizy. So, yeah, the Renault Twizy is kind of like that. Not quite as aerodynamic, obviously, but it's a fighter pilot. I don't know what you call that front back seating situation.

But, you know, I do like the app Terramo a little bit more. Like in the Twizy, I feel squeezed a little bit. I feel like I'm tall and thin. Like it feels a little bit weird.

And also, are those still for sale? I know that in Quebec, they brought some at some point. Renault sold a batch. Oh, did they? Yeah. Does Renault sell cars actively? Not anymore. Not for a long time. But I think they did something with the Twizy for a little bit. Okay. Because I saw some Twizy here. Unless people imported them. I thought Renault was involved. Okay. It was a while ago. This was maybe six, seven years ago.

All right. The other Vander wall is a small electric three-wheeler that drives like a car. You know, I would say that the smaller ones, there's a couple of bikes, like electric bikes that have like a cone thing around them. And because they're so hyper aerodynamic, the power from an electric bike is enough to get them going like 60 miles per hour, which is, you know, really interesting because, you know, you have almost zero wind resistance or, you know, very little relative wind resistance and,

the amount of power that getting somebody to like 25 miles per hour is enough to get somebody to go to 60 miles per hour that's just it's been their hall too it's not been their wall oh yeah uh yeah mini apterra's arkimoto but no wind resistance there the underhaul yep and they're also not as efficient as the apterra obviously it's not yeah in close in close wheels and like teardrop thing it's just uh

They're a little bit like fancier. All right. Question. Do you think the cattle semi-state battery will go into production this year? What's semi-state? I think they had an announcement about a hybrid, like solid state, not solid state, hybrid battery. Must have missed that. Yeah, it was part of their like big yearly announcement or whatever.

And then finally, Colorado is a microcosm of conservative versus liberal trying to share space. That makes sense. That makes sense. Smoke weed, don't shoot guns. That's what they do like Colorado. When I first thought about Colorado, I thought, first state to legalize recreational marijuana and said, no, let's shoot each other.

Anyway, stay safe out there, everyone. Thanks a lot for listening on this week's episode of Electric Podcast. We appreciate every single one of you. If you do appreciate this podcast, you can give us a thumbs up, a like, whatever it is on the app you're watching right now. We are live everywhere. And if you're listening to the podcast on the audio version, we're doing very good on the option top 10 in the automotive section on Apple Podcasts.

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