Tesla FSD Beta wide release, Cybertruck reservations, TSLA investors ask board to help, and more
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and we are live for new puzzle electric podcast i am fred lambert your host and as usual i'm joined by sep windtrap how are you doing set i'm good must be feeling pretty good because i know you're in vermont and the ski season is starting so i'm sure yeah for sure weekend as long as some snows come in uh all right we have a big show today we're gonna discuss um

We're going to start out with the FSD beta full release and what the implication of that is. And is it exciting? Is it not? We're going to get into that. Some Tesla shareholders news. Cybertruck, a new referral program with a little bit more information about it.

And then we're going to take your question as usual. So if you guys have any questions, put them in the comment section right now because we are live and we can take your question live later on the show. And if you do enjoy The Electric Podcast, can I ask you to quickly put a like,

and subscribe. That helps the show tremendously, and we appreciate it. And if you're listening on your podcast app, a five-star review is free to do. It takes a second, and it helps the show more than you can imagine, and we appreciate every single one of you that does it. All right, let's jump in right away with the Full Self Driving Beta Wide Release. So

It's kind of an underwhelming news for me. Elon tweeted out that Tesla self-driving data is not available to anyone in North America who requested it from the car screen. So that's like the advanced software. You can request full self-driving data from that, assuming you have bought this option. So, of course, you have to have bought the full self-driving data package, which might have cost you between $1,000

$3,000 on top of Enhanced Autopilot during the best of days to up to $15,000 now if you have that to spend on some software.

And yeah, he says, congrats to the Autopilot AI team on achieving a major milestone. So that's where I'm like, is it really a major milestone? Because to be fair, I haven't tried the new update just yet. I got it in my car, but I have a flat on it because it's Quebec right now and everybody's getting their...

winter tires I cannot get an appointment to put the new tire on it even though I was early I already had my winter tires but then I got a flat on one and it's just not like anyway it's very frustrating but I'll be able to test it out if I have the guts to test it out in the snow because we're snowed in right now

But from what I'm hearing right now, it's not a giant update. It's just one of those other incremental updates that FSZBit has been having for the past two years, really.

And so the biggest news is that now it's not about the safety score, it's not about people whether you can get it or not, the update. Anyone who's bought FSD beta in North America, specifically US, Canada, can get it. I don't know about Mexico, I don't know if it's working in Mexico. Technically, that's North America too. Tesla is in the Mexican market. Don't hear enough about the Mexican market from Tesla.

So the only difference is that if you ordered it, you can get it. But is it a major milestone? Because if anyone has been following the program, remember that the original goal was 1 million robo-taxi by the end of the year. And the end of the year was the previous year and the year after that. So more recently, it was this year. But...

So we're nowhere near any kind of robo-taxi situation. It's still FSD beta where it's Tesla consider it level two driver assist where you need to pay attention all the time. You need to be ready to take control. And it's just not a robo-taxi situation. So that's not the goal anymore. Then it was one million people with FSD beta by the end of the year.

Now, are we anywhere near 1 million? Because we know we were at around 160,000 before the wider release. I would be shocked. This, of course, is not releasing information, but I would be shocked if the wider release even doubles the number of people in the FSD beta. So let's say that it does double it, which, again, I'd be shocked just based on what we know of the take rate of the FSD beta package.

being I think less than 10% or 15% at max. There's just not a million people that have it in North America. So if you can have it and you can request it, I would be shocked if we're nowhere near a million people. So really what is it? It's really increased somewhat the number of people on BFS debate, which you can...

You can hope that that might accelerate the improvement of the FSDB2 program with more data coming in. But there's been a lot of expansion of the program from like 1,000 to 10,000, from 10,000 to 100,000, from 100,000 to 160,000. And we haven't, or at least personally, and I would like to get your opinion on that, said I haven't seen a giant improvement in the FSDB2.

pace of improvements of the like it's not like an exponential increase it's been very incremental like building on the last update sometime a step back we've seen some step back we've seen like two steps forward a step back situation with the whole program so

I don't know what you think, Seth. Yeah, I mean, as you try to get closer and closer to 100% error-free, you expect that last little bit to even take longer. So it would be surprising if we saw the rate of improvement increasing. And I have to say, like, my experience hasn't been great. You know, it's on my wife's car, and she will never use it. She tried it and hated it.

We went out to a whiskey tasting thing and we were like, hey, maybe we'll just let this thing drive us home and we can have some drinks. And so we used it on the way to the thing.

Of course, we wouldn't do it. Let's put a disclaimer on this. You were still below the limit of alcohol. Right, right, right. It was kind of a joke. So we went in full self-driving there. And we had enough problems on the way there that we both were joking that we would get pulled over.

by the cops on the way home if we let this, if we just let full self-driving drive us home. Because, you know, it drives worse than, you know, any drunk person would drive. That said, you know, like, it's still improving. I feel like it's getting slightly better. We just had an update before we came up to Vermont. And we're on the highway and it went into...

full self-driving the fsd mode with like the red you know the and i and i thought a divider yeah and as the v11 apparently it's not fully rolled out yet it's just uh the first like there's maybe like a thousand people on whatever so it's not they haven't merged this tag just yet apparently

I wonder if we got the merge stack or something because... There are occasions where I would experience that where the highway is a little bit different where normally it would be autopilot on it but then I get the FSD beta. It depends on the type of highway. I've seen some

I've seen some occasion where it does do that, but I normally I can tell, okay, like I can see why it would detect this as like a road, like a country road, whatever, instead of a highway for whatever reason. Yeah. This, this is called the Taconic Parkway. And if you've driven on it, you know, it's not a great, great road. It's not an interstate by any stretch, but it, you know, it does work on certain stretches of it. It's just nobody in the car trusts it. And the kids all freak out if I put it on. So yeah.

Yeah, I'm a little bit nervous with that V11 and that merge of the two stacks where, if I'm understanding correctly, it would be more of like the FSD beta stack taking over Autopilot or Aiway. And on my own experience, Autopilot has been a lot smoother than FSD beta. But we'll see. Maybe there's some improvement that make it more confident. And also, obviously, it's easier to drive on the Aiway. It's less complex. So maybe FSD beta will perform even better. I don't know. Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, you touched on an interesting subject here where you're like, you just, you feel like it drives dumb and everything. And I feel like the best tester of autopilots are those that have just no chill whatsoever and they don't care about

in a weird way around other people. I don't mind if it's a deserted road or something like that and no one is looking at me and wondering, hey, is that person okay? Because literally, if I would be watching someone drive like that from outside, I would be like, oh, then that person might be distressed or something. So I don't want to do that around other cars just to create some kind of situation where people... I feel like it's...

It has danger around the situation. But then at the same time, if you don't do it, the car operates all the time without being around other people. So like, what's the actual usefulness of that? I just don't know. But yeah, this is happening. So I guess the biggest takeaway of this whole thing is be careful out there if you're using it.

Hands on the steering wheel at all time. Make sure that you're paying attention at all time and you're ready to take control at all time. One quick question before we end. If you were able to remove it, would you do that? And get my money back, you mean? No, just pull it off your machine and go back to off your car and go back to just regular autopilot and...

Well, we'll see. I'm still open to it because, like I said, highway driving is so much easier than the city driving that FSD Beta might actually do pretty well on the highway.

So I don't know. I'm still open to it, but I'm skeptical and I want to test it out. Because autopilot, especially I do so often like Chamonix between Montreal all the time. And it's been a lifesaver for me. Not literally, I never say that, but it is.

a lot like I did it on Monday I had to drive to Montreal and I did it because of that flat tire issue I did it with my Model S 2012 Model S so zero dopout whatsoever in this there's a cruise control but it's not even adaptive and uh

Still a great car. 10 years old. My last almost 10 years old and I still love it. But it was really different. It took me maybe like 10 miles on the highway. I realized I never really controlled the car on the highway anymore and I haven't for like four years. So I'm like, oh, I forget to drive on the highway. Autopilot is so good at staying in the lane too. My girlfriend at first for the first few miles, she was like, are you okay? I feel like you're driving so weird. I was like, yeah, it's me driving on the highway. I really don't drive on the highway.

But on the city, though, I always give it a shot. I'll let FSDBit.org get on the off-ramp, try it out, and then as soon as it screws up, I'm like, all right, I'm done for now. Unless I go out there to test it, but if I'm just driving and I'm trying to get somewhere, it's stressful as hell. I'm just surprised. I mean, last thing I'll say, I'm just surprised that people...

say that it's you know almost usable or whatever because i've never had an experience where i was like oh this could this could get me from you know point a to point b like it does do well for like blocks at a time or like there's no interventions for maybe a mile or two but like i've never felt 100 comfortable in it ever yeah i mean these things i see on youtube and stuff

Yeah. I mean, I, sometimes I'm, I'm driving, I'm like, Oh, I can understand these guys in California now. Like it does well, especially like in suburban streets and all that. But when it screws up, it screws up so bad. Most often that's just, it kills all those, those hopes. Like you're like, all right, then forget about it. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's it.

Alright, Tesla investors had a bad week up until Wednesday, I would say, because Wednesday they did have a good day that helped recover. But yeah, stock took a beating. I did a report on it that Tesla basically erased almost half a trillion dollars in market capitalization over the last three months alone.

That's a lot of valuation going, disappear, going bye-bye. And I mean, the market has been taking a beating throughout that time too, but I think Tesla is down like 30%, 30, it was down 40% when I did the report and then the S and P 500 or no, I checked the NASDAQ since Tesla trades in NASDAQ and NASDAQ was down like 8% or so, which is a lot for the NASDAQ within that period of time, but nowhere near, uh, Tesla's, uh, drop of almost a half. So, um,

The Tesla bulls are always a little quieter when the stock is not doing so well and they're not as happy with Elon. And Elon doesn't get as many supporters when the Tesla stock is down too. It's a very strange situation. Not strange. It shows where some of the priorities are at.

And when you touch people's money, that's when things go awry. But Tesla investors are holding strong, but they are asking the board to help. So we reported over the last, what, since a month and a half, no, a month since the last earnings call, Elon revealed that the board is considering a buyback program between $5 and $10 billion.

So that opened the door because normally the Tesla investors were extremely against buyback, extremely against dividends. They're like, yeah, that's a sign of a company that's slowing down. They don't find anything to reinvest in. But Tesla has been accumulating capital for a while now and they already claim to be spending cash as cash.

as fast as they can. And I kind of believe them with that because, I mean, they have a significant free cash flow and there's a point where you just...

you have that much personnel and they are hiring and all that, but there's a limit on how much you can spend fast at a certain rate. I feel like the other ways that big companies, when they have a lot of cash sitting in and that they can actually like spend it is through acquisitions because then you acquire also a workforce that's going to spend that cash and the acquisition itself is spending and all that. So,

And we know that Tesla is not big on extremely large acquisition. There's been a few exceptions, but for the most part, they're not like a Google or Apple. Even Apple, I mean, you would know more, Seth, but they had times where they make a lot of small acquisition, really. A lot of small acquisition, not big ones.

Yeah, Apple buys a few companies a month, but they're really small, like mom-and-pop shops. The exception is Beats by Dre. They bought to create Apple Music, and they still have the Beats headsets. But Google, they buy companies, big companies like YouTube and

double click and that become big parts of their business. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Tesla is not really like that. So they spend the cash as fast as they can and they have large projects that do spend a lot of money like all the gigafactories and we know that there's more of the ways too. But that's like billions of dollars of investment over years and that ends up being peanuts for Tesla that has billions of dollars in free cash flow every quarter now.

So there's a limit on what they can spend and now they are sitting on like $20 billion. So they have room to try to pay back investors a little bit. And with that giant drop in stock price, what makes the most sense is just share buyback program. So remove some of those shares from the market, create more demand, lose the stock price. But even then, $5, $10 billion is not going to be that much. But

Alexandra Merz, I think that was M-E-R-Z. I'm not sure how you pronounce that. She is a test of shoulder and she started a petition recently

to ask that the board to start to because we haven't heard a peep from Tesla for a month about Elon announced that this is something they're considering but they haven't pulled the trigger on it despite the try and share drop so the share went a little bit back up so and in the petition she lists for good reason to to do it right now and because apparently there's some changes to

taxes and benefits and SEC rules regarding share buyback programs coming by the end of the year. So she's sort of putting a timer on this so that Tesla moves quickly. She said they benefit from a currently very unvalued stock price. Well, that's obviously based on our opinion. I know that a lot of people don't share that opinion. Show confidence in Tesla's future results. Sure, that's

Normally, a company does that when they believe that their stock is undervalued. Act before the 1% tax on share buybacks becomes applicable on January 1st, 2023. So that's the change in tax. So right now, there's no tax on share buyback and then there's going to be a 1% tax. I feel like that's kind of fair. There should be a tax on share buyback that's...

That would be another tax loophole for people who would spend that money. But yeah, 1% is nothing. But I guess it's a reason to do it before. Say 1% on a few billion dollars. Operate the buyback on their current SEC rules will change reporting standard in the foreseeable future. So I don't know how big of an impact that is because she doesn't list the rule change. To be honest, I didn't look them up.

There was 4,000 people that signed that petition, which is a decent amount for something niche like that. That was when I reported... My cursor is going a bit crazy. Let me see how many people there are that signed this. 6,300, so a decent amount of investors signed that. We'll see if it's going to have any influence because they kind of need to stop the bleeding because Elon isn't doing much for it. No. Other than...

claiming that Tesla's going to be more valuable than Apple at the last shareholder meeting. Apple and Saudi Aramco combined. Yeah, that's fair. So quite a few trillion, like $2 or $3 trillion. All right. Here, the Cybertruck. That's what really is going to be the next big catalyst for Tesla. Let's be honest, because...

Yes, the Model Y is on its path to be the best-selling vehicle in the world right now. And it's been a very successful vehicle program for Tesla with all the good reasons, I think, for good reasons. But there is a limit to it at some point. Like, there's just... It looks like Tesla thinks it can sell over a million Model Ys per year. But...

I think that within a year or two, that's going to be a lot harder to do, I think, just with the competition and just with the program being a little bit older. I'm sure Tesla's going to keep making improvements. It's going to be incremental improvement. I don't expect any kind of breakthrough. Tesla has been relying more on those incremental improvements.

So Cybertruck is going to hold new markets, a pickup truck, and also it's kind of merged. It's not just going after the pickup truck market. It's just such a radically different vehicle that's going to attract other people to it. So it's going to be very different. And also the way that they're going to build that thing with those new giant gigapress casting machine, the fact that they're not even going to paint, they're not going to bother to paint it because it's stainless steel. Like the

there's a lot of opportunity to make that truck like high volume because people don't even think about that. But the paint shop has been a giant bottleneck for Tesla at several occasions. Maybe not now. Now, maybe, maybe there's some production facilities, but over the years, the paint shop has been a giant limiting factor for a long period of time for long periods of time, several times. Yeah. And I think, I think it's also one of the hardest things to get through the like environmental production phase.

That's a good point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fremont, they had limitations in Fremont a few times before because of that, because of the EPA and all that.

So, removing that alone, like, it's a giant headache that Tesla is not going to have in ramping up. So, that's going to help the ramp up going a little bit faster, maybe even a lot faster. I'm not so sure. But, like, you got press, too. Once they get that tuned in and it looks like they're already working on that and have been for a while. And, of course, the depress is coming in in the coming weeks if I have the first one. There was a second one coming after that. The first one is coming fairly soon. So, yeah.

They could have an opportunity here to ramp that up fairly quickly. And it doesn't really... Tesla has never disappointed. I had some disagreement with Tesla over the last few years on how they approach things, especially Elon. But Tesla has never disappointed me when it comes to an actual vehicle program. And I don't see how it would be the case this time. I don't know.

sure we'll get disagree on that but i mean i mean you know as we'll talk about later the 1.5 million people uh reservations i think that's a huge number it's it's surprising to me though like i have to say the cyber truck is not like you know an f-150 or even a rivian which you know looks mostly like a normal pickup truck it looks like nothing else out there like nobody's going to mistake any other vehicle for this thing i just wonder is like

you know with elon's recent uh you know twitter stuff like i wonder if people are going to be as uh excited to kind of represent his idea uh as they were you know a while ago like you know when the cyber truck was released everybody was gung-ho on tesla gung-ho on elon and now i think he's kind of split the uh you know split the country down the uh

political lines, perhaps a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, it's just like, look at that vehicle. That's not like, is that a mainstream vehicle? You mean that it's a clear statement? Like you feel like if people, some people might be afraid that if they show up with that, like they're making a political statement or something like that. Political or just, you know, like you're very like, you know, with a Model Y, you're kind of just like, you know, I've got a CUV and it's a Tesla and it looks like a Tesla and nobody's going to mistake it for anything else. But it's not like,

stainless steel triangle thing. Also, you can always say, oh, I got this before Elon went crazy or whatever. I actually saw somebody with a Tesla bumper sticker that said something to that effect. They said, I bought this before Elon went crazy or something. Yeah.

that's funny. Maybe you shouldn't sell those. Yeah. I say that would be funny. Not that I'm saying that Elenissily went crazy. Like, I mean, I'm sure like there's, it's more complicated to die in my opinion, but I get what you're saying. And I, and I for sure, there's going to be a percentage of people that this applies to. There's no doubt about it. However, I don't know how meaningful is percentage of people actually is because with those things, like I,

I know there's a large percentage of people that are mad at Elon for saying that Democrats are a party of eight and all that, and even try to influence the election to a degree. But for the most part, the people that I saw personally that are actually like, I don't

I don't deal with Elon. I don't want to touch anything Elon Musk anymore because of that. I feel like that's a very extreme part of that political spectrum. I think there's a lot of people that are just like disappointed in Elon and what he's done recently.

but still are like super hype on tesla that's me uh that's definitely me and i think there's a lot of people more people like me like that i might be like just my bias but i think that's that's the most part just like when you look at the political spectrum in the u.s extremely polarizing but there's a lot more people at the center than at the extreme right and extreme left like they're those both part are extremely vocal obviously that's

That's how it works. But I think the bulk of the people are closer to the center, some more to the left, some more to the right for sure, but closer to the center. And I think those people, of course, at the left of that center are like, yeah, Elon, you should shut up sometimes. Maybe you should use less Twitter instead of buying it. You should just tone down your use of Twitter. But that's right for anyone. It's just that it happens to be extremely influential to a degree for good reasons.

And now it doesn't align with your political views anymore. So it's frustrating, but you have to, then at the end of the day, you're like,

Tesla's vehicles are still amazing. Supercharger network is the best by far. So you're like, I'm going to buy what's best for me, regardless of what the CEO of the company is like right now. So I think Tesla is still okay. However, I'm putting a little asterisk to this. If it gets just...

A little bit worse than this or a lot worse than this. I don't know. You posted this morning in the newsroom, electric newsroom, you posted this Ford features. What did they say exactly there?

They were making the case that it's killing his legacy. It's the MIT around him. Elon Musk's Twitter takeover is ruining his own MIT and Tesla stock. Tesla stock, there's no doubt about it. They're right about that. He had a super negative impact on the stock by directly selling the stock. And also some people not wanting to be part of Tesla anymore. But again, I think that's a smaller percentage. But...

In terms of killing his whole myth, I don't know because especially on the grain scheme of things and what I use as an example is like if you scale back like 100 years, like you zoom out like 100 years in the future, most people I think are going to forget about this old political bickering stuff and maybe not about Twitter itself. If it's still around 100 years, I don't know. I have no idea. But the whole political stuff around it, I think that's going to die down.

and be forgotten. I don't think Tesla and SpaceX, if humanity is still around in 100 years, I don't think Tesla and SpaceX are going to be forgotten, especially their impact on real electric revolution. And in the case of SpaceX, if it keeps going like they're going, the impact on humanity in 100 years is going to be quite substantial.

But then some people responded to that tweet by saying, like, look at Henry Ford. And I had a little debate about that because it's a good point. Yeah. Look at Henry Ford. And some guys suggested like people remember him as a Nazi sympathizer right now. I'm like, I mean, definitely, definitely was. But I don't honestly don't know.

If you ask the average Joe right now in the US, how many people know him as a Nazi sympathizer versus the founder of Ford and the realization of the manufacturing? And let's be honest, whatever Elon is doing right now, if you look at it objectively, it's far from being a Nazi sympathizer. Like it's so far. Yeah. Let's talk about the context of right now. It's far from being Nazi sympathizer like Ford, Ford.

I mean, to be honest, I've never delved into the details of it, but I remember reading some things that looks like, yeah, it's a serious allegation of having some...

hands at place and some money involved in the fascist movements in Europe. I don't remember exactly about the Nazis, but I know in England at the very least, maybe you know more about this than me. Yeah, so he had a newspaper called the Dearborn whatever, and he put it out in all of his dealerships. And he had like, you know, he would have

stuff about like the Illuminati and and really yeah it was really because I know the Illuminati had been linked to anti-semitism before like saying that like the Jewish people control the world and whatnot right like that okay so there was literally anti-semitic stuff some people are like making Iran anti-semitic by association with uh what's his face um Akania West too

So there is some link for sure, but I think we're far from that. Yeah, I just don't think he is that way, just generally speaking. I mean, he might say something stupid and there's a pretty solid chance he'll probably say something stupid in the next couple of weeks because that's just how things are going.

But I don't think he's that way. So, like, you know, I'm not too worried about him. But then to my point, like, zoom out 100 years, even Ford right now, I think most people, especially in the U.S., remember him as, like, this hero of manufacturing and the founder of Ford, not as a fascist or Nazi. Yeah, I mean, it's still an issue, though. Like, you know, there's a Ford Foundation. My wife works with them quite a bit, and they have to do a lot of work to kind of, like,

smooth over all that stuff and not get the whole organization canceled. It's something. His legacy is still tarnished from that. To come back to the point I had in hand,

This is all going to have an impact on Tesla's future vehicle program, including a Cybertruck. But I think the hype is still extremely strong around it. We just reported 1.5 million reservation according to the tally, which is a lot. A lot. And the hype sort of hasn't died down too much. The truck was unveiled at the end of 2019, in three years now.

And the hype is still strong. So if Tesla can keep the momentum going just a few more months until they get production, I think you still have a very successful vehicle program on their end. What do you think the base price is going to be? Yeah, that's something that I went into in the electric stake here, like what they need to do to ensure that the vehicle program is still going to be successful in terms of the spec and pricing, because we know that's going to be updated. Yeah.

If they can keep the price range between $50,000 for the base one and $90,000 for the top one, I think they're still going to retain much of the original demand for it because of course a lot of that demand came from the $40,000 base price and the specs. Tesla has been generally pretty good at delivering on their specs that they originally promised. We know that the program evolved a little bit, like the top one instead of being a tri-motor powertrain is going to be a quad one. So we know that to start with that's going to be more expensive.

But I think a lot of what it is around this truck is ease of manufacturing and low cost and efficiency. So I think Tesla might surprise people with

not too big of a price increase with inflation like we've seen with the other vehicle program. I mean, Ford already announced the big price increase on also, like Tesla with the Cybertruck, even though it came in later, it was unveiled before all those other programs. And I think the price, the $40,000 base price influenced the base price of the

Lightning and friends, the base price of the Silverado electric, but then they all add to the, did they increase the price of the Silverado? So they pushed, they pushed it back. There's only fleet customers getting it next year. Okay. And I think they haven't upgraded. So Chevy has been super aggressive on, on prices. I don't think it's officially updated, but I, I think they're only going to release higher versions of it initially. So yeah,

Yeah, I don't know. The base price don't matter. Right, right. And then at the IRN, there's also a wide price range for the Silver Idol, just like there is for the Lightning and the likely for the Savage Rock. So wait, real quick, last thing. You have a Rivian reservation still, right? Yeah. And those are coming to Canada pretty soon. Are you going to take your reservation and are you going to keep it?

Are you going to wait for the Cybertruck? Are you going to get an F-150? I kind of really want the Cybertruck, to be honest. Like, I'm still super excited about it. I like the Rivian, too, but I look at the Rivian right now, and...

It might be just to hold on until Cybertruck if I get it. Well, you'll be able to make your money back. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too. I apparently locked in on the price, on the old price, but they haven't given me the Canadian price. So I need to look that up. But I know they started delivery, so I should be able to get the Canadian price.

Yep. Right now, because they started deliveries in British Columbia. Right now, they're telling me January before here. That's not too far. That's not too far, but I'm taking that with a grain of salt because they need to open a service center and all that before they start deliveries here. So we'll see. Got it.

So we've been reporting on this new referral program for Tesla for the last few months now. And we said they launched it in China. And it's sort of more from a referral program to now a loyalty program. And now it was launched in the U.S., the new version of it. However, it's not for cars yet. So Tesla is not making it for cars. So it's about solar. So the only way to get points, because now it's points, it's with cars.

buying solar and and now it's so it's really like it's they really cut out all the uh influencer aspect of it so it's not about influencer anymore it's more about like person to person uh really the original intent of of the program probably but um

Now, it's loyalty based. You can use your own code now. So when you buy something, you use your own code and you get points like that. So it's really like a pure loyalty program. The more Tesla stuff you buy, the more points you get and you can redeem those points for a bunch of things, mainly merchandise. So like T-shirts and short shorts.

and uh and the wall connectors so charging stations so of course these things like you i mean the t-shirts you can get whatever you want but the charging and internal money you just need one maybe two or something if you have two places or whatever so there's not that much you can do with that uh but there's there's something pretty cool that they did which is uh free supercharging mouths so you can always buy back supercharging mouths whenever you you need them so that's pretty cool because it's uh

2,000 at a time, and they are good for six months, though. You need to be driving quite a lot long distances to get 2,000 miles over six months because, again, most people just charge at home and whatnot. But that's interesting. So right now you get, what, 6,000, is it? Yeah, 6,000 for solar roof or solar panel installations.

So that was already the case. It was like $300 that you would get. Now it's 6,000 points. That's how it converts, I guess. And it converts pretty well because a wall connector is also 6,000 points. So you refer someone one solar roof or solar panel installation and you get a free wall connector, basically, which is worth about $300. Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah.

The supercharging mouse is 4,800 credits, so it's a little bit cheaper. I think a lot of people will go to that because the rest is all like a hoodie, the new Tesla sipping glasses. Have you seen those ones? The dumbest ones. I would get as a shot glass. It wouldn't make sense. But as a sipping glass, like sipping glasses, you use it for a bunch of times. You can't even put it down unless you put it in the socket it comes with. I saw that. That was...

a real head scratcher yeah it's the dumbest thing i was supposed to match the what do you call those it's uh tesla kilo right yeah but then now they don't sell the tequila anymore it's just like a carafe is that what you call it yeah it's a french word fred yeah i should know it right uh you see how much i don't drink i mean carafe is generally used for wine whiskey too i guess um

A hoodie, 2,000 points. Wall connector face plate, which is like a plate that you put on it to match the color of your car. It's 1,500 points. A t-shirt is 700 credits. So yeah, we assume that they are referenced in the new system. There are references to cars, to referring it for a car purchase. So we assume that this is going to have them as they need to for demand purposes.

But for now, there's none of that. So we'll see about that. But clearly, they're putting in place sort of a change from the referral program to this loyalty program.

All right. Supercharger prices are going down. It's rare that we see things go down when it comes to Tesla. But this time, the supercharger prices, which have been increased a lot over the last year, especially in Europe with the energy crisis they have there. And also in the U.S., especially in California with summers are tougher than winters for electricity use there.

It's completely the inverse here, the contrary. Right now, my prices are going up with electric heating here. So yeah, as much as the five cents per kilowatt hour, which is...

Decent amount because, I mean, in a lot of the more expensive places in California, it was like 50 cents. It was like a 10% decrease per kilowatt hour. It's a decent amount of decrease. And I saw some people report prices in Europe even bigger, like 10%.

euros 10 cents european cents uh per kilowatt hour so even the bigger decrease there and i think it's a sign of tesla's business a supercharger business of some maturing because if you remember when it was first launched they made it clear that it would not be a business center like at first it was even free though we knew that it wasn't that wasn't going to be forever it's inevitable but it was um

It was sort of more of a features to Tesla vehicles. Like you get a Tesla vehicle, you get access to a supercharger network, which is better than anything else. So that was always that. But then, of course, prices started coming in because it doesn't make sense to be free forever, obviously.

And then now slowly Tesla is opening up the network to non-Tesla vehicles. So it's really becoming a business center, which wasn't the goal initially. And it makes sense for Tesla to do that because they have the biggest and best network in the world. So the

at this point at this stage in the electric revolution it starts to make sense to open it up and have other companies benefit from it so that the revolution just acts alright and for Tesla it's just becoming an actual business like they want to not

not just be an automaker but they want to be or an energy company and they are selling energy to that so it starts to make sense and Tesla announced this week that they have 40,000 supercharger stalls around the world now so it's by far the biggest global charging network or fast charging network around the world and now that you have non-Tesla vehicles on it it's I would be curious to see like what kind of numbers it's pulling in terms of revenue like

If anything, it could be like a spin-off at one point. It could spin up that business on its own. Yeah, I mean, they're in such a better place than like Electrify America or EVgo because they don't have to have screens. They don't have to have credit card things. They don't have to have RFID. It's basically an app and like a plug coming out of the ground. And...

Because they design their systems really well, their overhead is going to be way lower than their competitors. So they can either beat their competitors on cost because they also have the scale, or they can charge the same and make a whole lot more, have much better margins. So they're in a good place on the charging front.

Yeah, for sure. And the cost of deployment from what we are hearing is a fraction of the average. Or at least what other companies are charging because we know like...

It's still a construction business. Building new charging stations is a construction business. And construction business, sometimes you have to be careful, like the budgets or suggestions, really. And companies, especially when subsidies are involved, companies have been known to jack up the price and all that. So you have to watch for that. So it might not be the true cost of Tesla, but I think even then, I think Tesla is a big advantage. They literally have factories producing those supercharger things, like large factories.

Yeah. And they do things like they have the modular one. They have the one that, you know, you can just send out on the back of a truck and deploy, you know, just run a wire. And so like they're already so far ahead. And, you know, the fact that Electrify America has to have a screen, has to have buttons, has to have the RFID thing, you know, these big things they have to test against, you know, 30 different cars and a bunch of cars don't work. Yeah.

plug plug and charge is here or there so tesla's in a really good place since they have the app that just needs to communicate with the the controller now they just need to roll it out really

Yeah, and it sounds like it's accelerating, the rollout too. I've been tracking it and it looks like it's accelerating. And of course, Supercharger V4 is coming now. The first station could be coming online any day, really. And I think every time that we set this up, bringing a new generation of Supercharger, normally it coincides with the

of an acceleration of deployment because the production shifted the new one and it comes in at higher volume after that. Of course, the production of the actual charging station is not the only bottleneck. There's a ton of different bottlenecks within the installation of it, but still it's important to note.

All right, we have two more news items to discuss, and then we're jumping into the comments. If you have any questions, any subjects you want us to discuss, put them in the comment section right now. I see we don't have a ton of comments, so if you put them in them right now, we should be able to get to them. I see Brent doesn't like when we talk about Tesla. What's it?

90% of our coverage in Tesla. It's about the percentage of Tesla's market in North America where we're located. 80% of the market. Yeah. I think you're exaggerating with 90%, but probably like 80% or something like that, which is about their market share. So it makes sense to cover it like that. And we see great American who actually likes their Tesla coverage. Appreciate that. But yeah,

Put your question or subject you want to discuss in the comment section right now. I want to get to them in about five, ten minutes. And if you do enjoy the show, please give us a thumbs up. It helps the engagement, helps with the algorithm and all that, and helps improve the show or reach more people, let's just say.

All right. Still on the Tesla supercharger stuff, Aptera confirmed this week that they're going to adopt the North American charging standard next, which is the Tesla connector because as we reported, was it last week or the week after that, before that, where Tesla opened up their charging standard and renamed it the North American charging standard.

in the hope for it to actually become that. It's kind of a full self-driving approach. Let's make it.

let's name it that and hope that we get there someday the charging connector is now the north american connector and we hope that it becomes that um even though like again i'm talking about market share uh there is more nax connector in north america than the rccs right now just because of this how much of market share tesla has in electric vehicles and also in charging stations so

they have a good point. They have a good argument. And all they need now is other automakers to adopt it to their actual vehicle. And Aptera...

kind of had maybe a hand at place here in term of convincing tesla to actually open it up because they did petition um the adoption of tesla as the new standard in america a few months before tesla announced it and like they got like almost 50 50 000 signature on on that which may not sound like that much but it's a ton for something as niche as a as um a

a charging standard, like there's not many people that get involved in that. So 50,000 is a ton of signature. And now they confirmed it that in an email thanking the community for participating in that petition, they said that, I'm quoting, we look forward to incorporating NACs in our SEVs, which is what they call their solar electric car or solar electric vehicles. Thank you for challenging the status quo. So they confirmed that the Aptera solar electric car

He's going to have a Tesla plug. And we saw originally when the first the project first emerged. Well, for us, kind of a weird history because the project first emerged like 10 years ago, really. But at that time, it was like a super efficient gasoline vehicle. And the project died like it wasn't successful. And then we launched it two years ago as an electric solar car, which makes a ton more sense.

And the project has been quite successful since then. They raised like $60 million to crowdfunding and now they're on the verge of starting production. But two years ago when they first unveiled a new prototype as an electric vehicle, it had already a Tesla plug on it, which was interesting. I assume that they got that off like a salvage vehicle or something and then they hacked it in or something like that that would make more sense. I don't think they were working with Tesla. But now...

nah, I wouldn't be so surprised if they were working for Tesla. Not that they need to really because Tesla opened up everything. They released all of the, I think they even released the CAD drawings and all that. Everything is, anyone, any company can just pick that up, put that in their car, build it, put it in their car. Everything is out there to do it. So that's great in itself. But Tesla really needs some automakers, or at least one, just really, really need one. But obviously, I think they would like more than one to adopt it so that

Because we said that it's not fully altruistic opening up the standard because of the situation right now with the infrastructure found that the Biden administration released billions of dollars for new charging station to be deployed. But to get access to those subsidies, you don't need to have a CCS connector, but you need to have a connector that is available to electric vehicle from more than one automaker.

which disqualifies superchargers for now. But if just one of the automakers like Aptera adopt the standard, then it is open to more than one because Aptera owners could use a supercharger.

And that would let Tesla have access to a lot of funding for building new stations, which they don't necessarily need. But still, now it would be a giant win from Aptera because if they can get access to the supercharger network, it's going to be a lot useful. And the Aptera car is also kind of...

advertised not only as a super efficient vehicle but as a long range driving vehicle with up to a thousand miles of range apparently so I'm sure people are going to want to use it for long distance travel so using a supercharger network for that is going to be super useful

All right. And then the last piece of news I want to discuss before we go into the comments is the Genesis JV60 all-wheel drive performance, which set out of access to last week. Was it last week? Yep. Yeah. Actually, it might have been a week before, but I finally got around to running it last week. What did you think? So, you know, it's a great car. It's kind of, you know, like the EG MP, the Kia...

EV6 and the Hyundai IONIQ 5 and also the IONIQ 6. It's a great car. It charges really fast. This one is a performance car, so it has like a 3.4 second 0 to 60. So super fast. Great car. Charges like faster than any other car on the market. It's got power coming out of it. I was just a little bit...

upset by some of the shortcomings. And the biggest one, strangely, is the lack of wireless carplay. So you've got all this stuff, all these tech trinkets and stuff, and you still have to plug in your phone. I mean, the Chevy Bolt, $25,000 car, has had wireless carplay for two or three years already. So it's like one of those head scratchers. Why would you spend all this money on all this? Most of it was trinkety.

But like, why would you spend all this money on this tech when you like the one thing that really would help people out is, you know, wireless carplay. There were some other things, you know, like some of this tech would actually slow down

getting into the car and going so for instance you turn on the car the crystal ball that you have in the middle of the thing you know it's kind of silly uh turns into a gear shifter but that takes a couple seconds so instead of pushing the car and what are you looking at right now like on that yeah yeah that thing so that that thing is a crystal ball and you have to

turn on the car for the crystal ball to turn into a gear shifter. And that takes a couple seconds. And it's just like one of those flow things. Like you get in the car, you put in the gear, you go. And this has like a lot, it just seems like a silly thing.

um but again overall it's it's a great car the other thing that kind of stuck out is something i didn't enjoy was um to get the full acceleration the full 3.4 second 0 to 60 you have to push a boost button on the steering wheel and you can see it on the screen there if you're watching that yellow button and that's cool for tricks like it feels like your night rider it feels like uh

you know you've got this like cool little toy but when you're trying to get on the highway and you know there's a big semi coming you don't want to have to reach down and find that button or you know you're trying to pass a cement truck or something

You don't want to have to look around your steering wheel to find the boost button unless, you know, your fingers on the boost button all the time and just click it and click it and click it. How does that work? Do you click it or hold it? What does that work? You click it and then for 10 seconds. So the screen turns red and you kind of get like the hyper screen. Yeah. And then it's on for like 10 seconds. And then you have to actually hit the brakes for it to stop.

So it's, it's like boosting you forward for 10 seconds. I don't know. It just like, just put that in the accelerator pedal. Like when I stomp on the accelerator, push me forward. Like I don't want to have to push other buttons. And I heard somebody say, I don't know if this was official, but I heard somebody say that the Genesis can't go like, you know, 10 times in a row that fast. Um,

So this kind of limits people the amount of quick acceleration. But still, if it can't do it, then just don't have that ability. I don't know. So that was something silly. You can see from the image here that it's a similar size to the Model Y. There's no frunk and there's no... I mean, there's a frunk, but it's like a glove box. And there's not as much room in the back. So if you're comparing...

a cargo space it's not going to hold up well to the the model y but i would say inside it's it's much more comfortable um more luxury feeling um

but you know tons of buttons and like there's always like three ways to do something so they have like this scroll wheel there's a touch screen and then there's also like on the steering wheel there's like a trackpad so it's like it's like having like six mice on your computer you know just like why why would you do that yeah i think i think it's clear right now the industry like every time i test a car an electric car that's not a tesla i always like i i think within like 10 years

software inside vehicles is going to be Tesla, Apple, and enjoy it. That's it. All the other automakers are going to give up the

experience inside their vehicles within 10 years. People were laughing at Tesla for a long time because there's no buttons. I like my buttons. I get it. I know there's some people who are like that. I understand it and everything. But as an overall experience with the new generation that grew up on iPads and with touchscreens and iPhone and all that, it's going to go towards that. There's just no way. And

automakers as far as I can tell like and no automakers has really embraced it enough where they're gonna be able to compete with the likes of Android Auto and what's the new Apple thing it's not CarPlay anymore yeah it's the in-car one the whole car experience I don't it's like

the Apple car something. I don't know. Yeah. But yeah, I agree. And we've seen like, it's already happening. Like the Volvo XC 90 that they just announced, I think last week or the week before it looks like the interior looks like a model S like an old model S with a vertical screen. It looks like, you know, it could have been like a, you know, a Tesla render or something.

uh so i think they're getting the idea slowly more and more companies are starting to pick up android auto i'm sure as soon as apple comes out with their in-car experience there'll be more people there as well um yeah i mean kind of weird to me the wheels are very weird uh there was like it's a super aerodynamic looking car but then they have things on it that aren't super aerodynamic like the wheels or the front grill that's

It seems like that was designed and not... So that grill, you can't really tell from that, but the grill is very not aerodynamic. It's just like a screen.

I've seen an Ioniq 5 around town here in Shenmue again a lot. A gray, black one. A dark gray one. And the Ioniq 5 looks better than the Genesis, I think. Which is supposed to be the luxury version of the Ioniq 5. I'm sure inside it's probably better. Yeah, it's really nice inside. It feels kind of like a German luxury car inside.

And it's got a lot of room in the back. It's, you know, not as like, there's my son's tuba. Forget how big a tuba is. A cello or something like that.

He stopped playing the cello. So around the two, but now that's the pricing. Let's talk about pricing for a second. So you tried the performance all drive version. That's $78,000. $68,000. And if you want the all drive version, it's $59,000. So you get a little bit more range out of this, of course, too. Yeah, but you lost the tax credit.

These are made in Korea. That's right. Also, take a look at the range on those. $248 for the all-wheel drive. If you want performance, $235. $235. That's a little... For a $70,000 car, yeah. It's the same... Go with the EV5. It's the same battery pack as the Onyx or the EV6. Those things start at over 300 miles.

And I think that's just because they have those, you know, the larger tires and the, you know, they didn't focus as much on the efficiency. So, yeah, I was a little disappointed, I have to say. Like, I had high hopes for it. I really like the EV6. I really like the Ioniq 5. This one, you know, like if you really like a luxury interior and a crystal ball, go for it. Or do I stick to the Ioniq and the EV6? Yeah. Yeah.

all right we don't have the i don't know what's happening you guys are not commenting it's black friday uh it's about everyone talking about deals yeah uh all right myself i got my uh i i was telling myself i'm not gonna go buy anything this year on on black friday i have enough expenses with this selling thing but i did get one thing they got an electric which is relevant to this an electric snow blower

Oh, nice. Which one did you get? Old Joe Snow. Nice. Old Joe Snow. Yeah.

You got to get one of those for your new place. That makes sense. There's someone that comes here and plows for me, but it's such a weird driveway. It's such a huge driveway and it's a weird one that goes all around the property and everything. Even though I get it plowed, the parts that I still need between the doors and all that, we got a lot of snow over the last two weeks. I was doing it just with a little shovel and it was killing me. Yeah.

So I went with the, uh, yeah. Save your back for, uh, MMA. It's a good workout though. It's shoveling snow. It's a good workout and it's satisfying because you're actually doing something that's useful. Yeah. And, uh, and it's, it's a great workout. All right. We have a few questions. Just some comments. Uh, Tesla club, uh,

South Africa, it says, when do you think Elon will eventually open South Africa, the place of his birth? I feel like South Africa has power walls. Is that right? Or something? Yeah. Yeah, they do as far as I know. But that's a cool logo that you guys have here. Why is Z-A-R? I think that's South Africa because they're like kind of Dutch. So Z, South is with a Z. Okay. Yeah. Anyway, they're trying to get a mascot for their club. Anyway.

Any assistance and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. We also tweet Elon constantly, but no joy. Well, that's not surprising. But maybe Twitter, make your icon a... A bird? A bird, yeah. I don't know. Like a Shiba Inu or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know when they're going to launch in South Africa. I don't know how's the market there in terms of electric vehicles and stuff.

I always keep an eye on when Tesla opens up on a new market, especially like looking for jobs openings and all that. And the first thing that's going to happen is mostly likely job openings for deployment of charging station and service center. So that's something to keep an eye on. But no, I'm not so sure. All right. So Brett was not happy with us 90% covering Tesla. It's exhausting. It's always about Tesla. Yeah.

Sorry. It's a lot about Tesla, but I mean, some, some would like last week, we had a lot of non Tesla stuff with the LA auto show, but even, even, even then it was, there was not a lot of electric vehicles out there. Like it's not our fault. Like Tesla stuff. There's always Tesla stuff. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. And then Steve Souser, my bet on Cybertruck pricing is 50K fleet model and 70K for the intermediate combined with the 7K rebate. It's virtually no price increase for buyers with qualifying incomes. And Tesla is a hero. I don't think Tesla is going to do any kind of fleet. I mean, unless you're just meaning like that's going to be the model that fleets are going to go for. But Tesla is...

quite clear about like no fleet discounts or anything like that so there's no uh the car is going to be used for commercial purposes i am sure there's going to be fleet buyers are going to go for it but i don't think there's going to be necessarily a fleet model it's going to be a base model like the pro lightning and things like that and fifty thousand dollars is probably a good guess but i think it's going to be for everyone it's just probably not for everyone until

2025 maybe late 2024 because tesla is going to focus on the more expensive ones for sure but yeah it would make sense for tesla to try to keep the price below eighty thousand dollars to do get the incentive um because of suvs and pickup trucks have uh eighty thousand dollar price uh top price limit so yeah that that would make sense and uh

Yeah. Okay. So Great American, Great American says, I like the Tesla coverage. That's why I come here. And then taking my shot says, heart Tesla.

And then finally, we have Tesla Club again, South Africa. I would love to chat to you guys about the Tesla Club South Africa. Yeah. If you guys have any news, you can always reach out. I'm always open to discuss with you. Especially, I don't know how you guys have any imports. If you guys are importing them yourselves, that's generally what Tesla looks for in terms of opening in a new market. They look at how's the demand in terms of people going through the hoops and everything.

to get the cars themselves. And then after that, they actually open up a market. So that would be an approach to look at. But thanks, everyone, for listening to the show this week. If you do enjoy the show again, please give us a thumbs up, subscribe, notification bell, so you know when we come online. And I hope you had a great Thanksgiving.