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Going live in 3, 2, 1. We are live for a new episode of Electric Podcast. I'm Fred Lambert, your host. And as usual, I'm joined with Seth Wintraub. How are you doing this week, Seth? I'm good. All right. We don't have a ton of things to talk about this week, guys and girls. This was just a slow week. I don't know if it was Memorial Day, like a long weekend. People just...
There weren't that much stream of news coming out of the EV community this week. We can still discuss a few things. And then what it does is it leaves us more time for us to either answer your questions or if you guys have suggestions of topics to jump in. What was that? And I need to put my notification down. I keep getting notification right now. Just a quick second. Focus on...
All right. So if you guys have any specific subjects you want us to discuss, you just put it in the comment section right now. If you have a question, just put question and then the question right next to it. And we're going to have plenty of time to discuss it because I don't anticipate the news portion of the show to last more than 30 minutes this week. You're going to see why pretty quickly. First off, Tesla is liquidating...
Well, I mean, we are starting to think that Tesla might be liquidating the Model 3 because of the new Model 3 coming to refresh, the Highland Model 3, however you want to call this thing that's coming up. So why we think that is because there's this new thing where there's a discrepancy between the Tesla in new inventory and the Tesla that you can custom bill order.
That's new. So we reported on that last week. It was a smaller discount. Actually, they started like last month with a very small like $400 discount. Then last week with a $1,200 discount. And now it's a $2,400 discount. And again, the important thing to note here is the discrepancy between the new car and inventory. So you can pick them up fairly quickly. And the new custom bill order.
So we have a new like lowest price for a mobile tree right now, which is $37,830. $368 a month loan. That's a Tesla star set. Pretty sure that's the lowest it has ever been.
And that's pretty incentive, I should note, by the way, because, again, the cheapest Model 3 is the Model 3 that's coming with the Chinese battery pack. So it only gets half the federal tax credit. But with half the federal tax credit, that's $34,000. Starting to be a pretty good deal, right? Yeah. And last time Tesla offered the $35,000 Model 3, was there a tax credit at that point in the U.S.? I can't remember.
It must have been pretty close. It must have been around the time. If not, if it wasn't the full one, there was a phase-out period where, I guess, six months, it was half of it and then so on. So it probably was around that time. So probably with the tax incentive, I would be surprised if it's not the cheapest it has ever been. And there's not a decent amount on inventory too, which that leads us to believe that
They might try to be just liquidating what's left with those discounts. And the new island coming...
At the end of next, at the end of this month, really, because then we are in the last one of the quarter right now that would make the most sense to me. Now, of course, the biggest question that everybody has been after this article came out, I have no joke, I got like 20 emails about this. Should I wait for the new one? I'm like, I'm in the market for a new car. Model 3 is interesting. Should I buy this one or wait for the refresh? Now we have limited information on that refresh. It's,
We've seen the exterior of it with the leaked pictures. I'm going to go back. I didn't put it on this one. Share this. This leaked picture. So it's a fairly significant front end update. Looks pretty good.
We saw the interior picture, but with heavy camouflage, the only thing that it confirms is the lack of stock. So that might be a negative for some people. So that's maybe something to consider. Maybe it's if you want, like if the stocks, the steering stocks are important to you, maybe this is a good deal. Now, the thing that we don't know about the island is what's under the hood, basically, like what else has been updated that we cannot see. And that's the gamble that you're taking if you're,
to take one of those on-sale cars. Also, normally, the idea of liquidating a whole model means that after the liquidation is done, the new version is going to be more expensive. Now, for the island, there's been rumors that...
Part of the idea behind it is that it's going to be cheaper because Tesla is just streamlining it a lot and hiding things like the structural battery pack, potentially the bigger rear end broadcasting and things that would make the vehicle more efficient to build and potentially cheaper. Now, maybe Tesla doesn't pass those savings on to the
though. We don't know. Are you starting to believe my Project Highland is the $25,000? That would be a big leap in my opinion. When we're talking about $10,000 less than cars that are being liquidated right now. If it's true, Tesla has made some... It's not an incremental improvement in cost savings. It's a breakthrough really.
And it could be the robo taxi too. So you have all three, you have three cars in one. Yeah. You say that it's kind of a joke, but at the same time, like the way that Elon has been talking about robo taxi and all that, like it's, it sounds like it could almost be true.
So yeah, anyway, to answer the question that I was asking earlier, I truly don't know. Like this is the information we have right now. You have to make the best decision. I've got a lot of people that reach out to me that are knowing those information or interested in buying the current Model 3. I would assume that the thing that is most secured about the island would be hardware 4. So if you're thinking of buying with full self-driving in mind,
That might be something. But how many people do you think are buying Teslas right now thinking self-driving? Zero. Well, maybe not zero, but probably not a lot of people are. And that's an interesting evolution of Tesla sales because when the idea of FSD came out,
A lot of people bought with it in mind, myself included. I'm like, all right, this is long-term. This might be a good idea. And now it's very long-term. But these days, because of how FSD bid is, I don't want to say flop, but it's just, it seems like a lot of people that bought FSD are like,
starting to live in this sort of reality where FSD beta is what we were promised of FSD, which is so far from the case. I've noticed that as well. I kind of want to rally those Tesla owners not to settle in this reality because it's not what we were promised. Not at all. I know there's people that are
way ahead of us in terms of suing Tesla and all that. We haven't taken those steps, obviously. But
So there is both spectrum of owners, I think, right now. Those that bought with FSD in mind when they bought their cars, and now they're very disappointed in FSD Beta, and they are going all the way to Sue. And those are like, all right, I guess this is what we get. And maybe it improves slowly through a way where I can take my hands off the wheel, which is still pretty far from that. Oh, by the way, I got the new FSD Beta update yesterday. So I'm going to be testing that out tomorrow.
In the coming weeks. All right. Is it going to be any better than... I mean, it's not going to... It's not going to be the one that, like, magically you can go sleep in the backseat. Definitely not this one. So, I mean, that's... I feel like that was a promise way back in the late... Before the pandemic was like, we're selling cars, hardware. The hardware now that you're going to be able to just go to sleep in the backseat and wake up at your destination. Well, that was...
verbatim what they said. So we can't just pretend that didn't happen. Yeah. Because it's not what Elon is saying these days. I mean, he's still using the term robo-taxi, I guess. What does that even mean now, though? Yeah, I mean, it's very self-explanatory, robo-taxi. When I hear robo-taxi, I'm thinking like Uber-like service minus the drivers. That's what I'm thinking. So Tesla has...
the loop thing right in Las Vegas where all these cars have to do is stay on like they just know where you're going in a path in a circle and they can't even do that. And, and the, the, like I was in a, I took a video of it of a driver with one and I was like, Hey, have you ever tried to put it in autopilot to do your job for you? He's like, it wouldn't work at all. We tried it. It's, it's like not even close.
So like if it can't even do like a loop, a closed loop circle, I like, I don't know. It just doesn't seem like in Marl, you know, in our lifetimes. Meanwhile, though, Waymo and cruise are doing robo taxis all around San Francisco and Arizona. So Austin. Yeah. So it's,
I think it's happening. It's just not happening in Teslas. Yeah. I mean, again, we are very well when we say that because what you just said is completely true, but we're also very aware that the approach of Waymo and Cruze is
and very different than Tesla's. But the problem with Tesla is like, yes, Tesla's approach in theory is much better. Like if you can truly achieve an AI that can drive anywhere in any condition like a human would, then it is better than something that relies on map and then geofence within those maps and all that.
But they have a commercial service and Tesla, well, technically Tesla found a way to have a commercial service basically with FSD by just selling it ahead of time and slowly recognizing revenue as it improves. Yeah. Eventually, probably like, I don't want to, I know that Tesla and the SEC have a very contagious relationship, but the...
I think that's something that maybe eventually they will look into, like the way that they sold that and the way that they recognize revenue from it. Because the promise was full self-driving. How can you recognize revenue before delivering that? Because Tesla's argument is that it improves the experience right now if it's the beta, but...
I mean, other than a few hardcore Tesla fans and Tesla investors, a lot of them are Tesla investors. I'm a Tesla investor myself. So I know how the pressure comes of trying to speak...
good at Tesla and everything so I know where they're coming from but you take that away and you talk just like regular like owners that try to FSD beta most of them will tell you that it doesn't improve the experience you feel like you're a drive-in instructor to now I used to say 13 years old maybe now we're at 14 year old and instead of taking hard drugs every time it's every other session that it takes softer drugs softer drugs yeah softer drugs yeah yeah
14 year old on it's not PCP anymore it's just like a little dash of crystal meth right but I'm not even sure which one is worse but right all right
Moving on, there's this nice little stealth update that happened last week with 2023.11.4.2. Thanks to Tesla hacker and friend of Electric, Mr. Green, the only. You always find some under-the-hood features that are in the updates but not in the release notes. And it was somewhat of a significant one this time. Normally, it's just so small that you wouldn't have noticed, but these ones could have made it to the release notes.
Especially the big one is the AutoWiper V4. So that's been one of the, let's say, frequent complaints from Tesla owners that the AutoWipers are not very good. Or I saw someone tweet something like...
Tesla's, people believe that Tesla's AI will deliver full self-driving when its AI cannot replace a $4 sensor, rain sensor that does the job pretty well, which is kind of an accurate description. So what we're talking about is deep rain. So AutoWiper V4 enables you to basically disable deep rain and use the standard version of the AutoWiper instead.
which is not personally i think the brain was a small improvement not just not a significant improvement so i don't know why you would remove that but anyway apparently it does come with some improvements to auto wipers too so another big one is automatic emergency braking which used to be just uh if you have sorry i'm losing my voice if you have something on your path it would activate the brakes in order to either avoid an impact or reduce the force of an impact
Now it does it also for cut-ins. So if someone cuts into your pad, it will do that. So prior to that, it would try to avoid it, but the brakes wouldn't necessarily engage for safety reasons. Like it's a more complex kind of calculation, I guess, to do if someone cuts into you in terms of the impact of braking. But it starts doing that now, which is good news. Also, we were just talking about FSD Beta.
The timeout that you get from having too many violations, the suspension used to be two weeks. Now it's one week. So for those of you that have problems with the FSD beta nag, there's a bit of a silver lining, I guess. Penalty box has gotten a little shorter. Yeah, I've had a warning at one point of looking at my phone.
that I did that I have to admit. Other than that one, it never got to a suspension. Just one little warning. But now it's getting... The nag is getting pretty hard. Sometimes it's just... I'm looking at the... I'm changing a song for a second on the screen. Not even on my phone. On the screen. And it warns me like, hey, look at the road. I'm like, dude, I'm looking at the road. Calm down. So the...
Driver monitoring from the camera is getting more significant. All right, moving on. A new Model Y long range in Canada, another Chinese import. So we talked about the launch of the new, I was going to say short range, standard range Model Y that is coming from China. And that was an interesting one last week when it happened. Did we talk about that? That I cut rotors?
Yeah, we didn't talk about it. We didn't talk about it. We talked about it offline. Yeah, that was a weird one. Is that how you pronounce them? Routers or routers? Depends where you're from. I pronounce it Reuters. Reuters. So they did something very weird on that one. So Elon, they reported like last year that Tesla planned to import cars from China to the U.S.,
And then Elon said, that's false. And then shortly after, they changed that report to say the U.S. and Canada. And now when Tesla started importing last week cars into Canada, the standard range Model Y more specifically, they reported about it. In the report, they were like, oh, we did report it. That was coming. And Elon called it false.
And so they kind of implied that Elon was wrong to call the report false. But I went back and looked at the web archive, and when Elon did say false, it was only mentioned in the U.S.,
They corrected it after he said that. They corrected US and Canada. Turns out the US was completely wrong. So Canada was like, yes, now it's true, but it wasn't at the time it sounded like. So, I mean, Rutgers...
They had a few of these lately, like in the last year or two specifically about Tesla. And to be clear, like a lot of people, especially when you talk about media doing shenanigans like that, people always think like it's malicious, like they are against Tesla. That's why they're doing it. It's against Tesla. This is not really against Tesla. And it's not necessarily negative about Tesla. I think it's just pure incompetence.
And you see a lot of that at riders when it comes to the Tesla stuff. And,
I tweeted about it and the tweet went viral because Elon retweeted it, but he commented on it and everything. And I tagged all the people responsible at Reuters on this, the writers, the two writers and the two editors, like four people, like work on this thing. No one responded to anything. No one changed anything whatsoever. Like this is how you lose faith in the media people, like just...
And I know I say that as someone who works in the media, but I think there's a big difference with specialized media like ourselves and just more broader mainstream media. I know that some journalists are specialized in a certain thing within mainstream media, and that can be good and everything. But for the most part, they are pretty diversified.
Yeah. And I think they just sometimes they just don't know what they're talking about. And and at least the things like that. I mean, I hate to say this and I don't know the people involved, but it seemed to me like they changed the story to kind of like maybe it was an evolving like, hey, we're going to, you know, import these to the US or maybe they said North America and somebody was like, oh, yes, going to the US and.
But that's also incompetence to me. Yeah, I mean, it's incompetence, but changing it without correction, that's just dishonest, really. Yeah, it's a stealthy thing they called it. Yeah, you shouldn't do that. We stealthed it for like...
typos and things like that all the time. But we don't tell Tidit to change the whole meaning of the article within the title. In case the title was a big one, obviously, if we do change the title for, again, anything other than a typo, we do put update on it. That's our protocol at 9 to 5.
But, yeah, I mean, this is a bad one. I just – not that that has still had a lot of fate in the media, but this one really like was kind of a nail in the coffin type of thing. But now on top of the Model Y standard range, we have the Model Y long range, another Chinese import. And this is a little bit of bad news for Canadian buyers though because –
I'm not too down on the Chinese import itself. Especially Gigafactory Shanghai seems to be producing some very high quality vehicles. But in this case, you're getting just less for the same price. So specifically the range. So the Model 3 long range in China
what used to be the American version sold in Canada, would have 531 kilometers of range. Now it's 497. So it's down 35, almost 35 kilometers, which is somewhat significant. And with that, the slick kept the same price of...
69,999 69,999 Canadian dollars so you're getting less for more you're getting LFP most likely in LFP packs that's why I think the range probably went down though I cannot confirm until the car get there and can verify but you have the capacity maybe to charge it more like 100%
with better longevity. So that's an advantage, I guess. But at the same time, LFP has not as good performance normally in colder climate. And for the most part, Canada is a colder climate than at least part of the US and Europe.
All right, we're already done with Tesla news this week, people. That was a quick one. But we have a few interesting other news items to discuss. But before we do, quick reminder to put your questions and your subjects you want us to discuss in the comment section right now. We're going to get to them in just a few minutes. And if you do enjoy the podcast, please give us a thumbs up, a like, a subscribe, or whatever you can do on the app that you're watching right now because we're simultaneously live in a bunch of different apps.
And if you're listening to the podcast right now on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or whatever, you can give us a five-star rating. That helps a ton. It's free to do. It takes a second. We appreciate every single one of you that does it. All right. The Volkswagen ID Buzz. I did a review, a test drive, first-time test drive of that last year. Was quite impressed by it. Very liked it and everything. The only thing that was kind of disappointing is it was like an early teaser because it
Even though this thing launched in Europe, it's not coming in the U.S. until next year. But when it comes to the U.S., it's going to come with a third row option. And they kind of unveiled the third row this week. We already had a pretty good look at it in the review, even though it was... Can I click on this? Because the back, all the frame on the side were already in place for a third row.
like this, I can't see very well, but these things here. So we had a good idea of what it looked like, but now you see it with the actual seats on. Yeah, and I think there was some question whether it was going to be a three-seat back row or a two-seat, and then obviously it looks like it's going to be a two-seat. Yeah, two-seat. The second row is a three-seat. So that's a seven-tall.
I think this thing is going to do really well in the U.S. There's not a lot of inexpensive three-row EVs out there, and this one looks really cool. They have an all-wheel drive version, so that market's satiated. I mean, it looks really cool. I just think that this is going to be... It's not going to be a sleeper hit because I think people expect it to do well, but I don't think Volkswagen has any idea how many of these they could sell in the U.S. Because if they did...
they would be selling them like crazy already. Yeah. Yes. It depends on the price. We don't know exactly what the price is going to be in the U.S., but it starts at around $65,000, $70,000 in the equivalent of $65,000, $70,000 in Europe. But I think it reveals the specs for the U.S. version. And yeah, the specs are a bit different. So it's $10,000.
10-inch longer wheelbase, 10-inch longer overall too. And then you have 9 kilowatt hour more for, this time it's 263 miles WLTP, which should translate to over, well, especially with an extra 9 kilowatt hour battery, you should translate to easily over 200 miles, which is decent for. So 91 is the top one. So you get 100. Yeah, I think we already knew that though.
That's not exactly. Yeah. And there's a, an all wheel drive version, dual motor, 330 horsepower. So that'll have some good, you know, climbing hill specs. And I mean, this is not going to be a dragster in any sense of the words, although 330 horsepower, nothing to take a stick at. Um,
I'm sure some company will try to do like a camper version if Volkswagen doesn't do it itself. Yeah, I'm not sure if you're in the Slack room right now, but Jamie's actually at the event in Huntington Beach and he's sending videos of a camper version of this thing. A third party one? A third party one, yeah. But, you know, I think that'd be quite popular. Yeah. It's got like a camp kitchen in the back and all kinds of cool stuff.
Well, I'm sure you can expect an article on Electrek later today or this weekend maximum. Or unless there's an embargo or this and we're not supposed to. Never mind. Is it a press event or is it like? Yeah, it's like they wanted to fly me out and I was like, I don't want to go all the way to California for this.
I mean, I did want to go to California for this, to be honest, but Jamie's right there in Huntington Beach. Yeah. Oh, that's right. Newport Beach is next. Yeah, he could have rode his bike to it. Yeah. He probably did. Speaking of Jamie, he's the one we reported on this thing today. Well, not today, this week.
Honestly, I haven't checked too much of a look here, but we're talking Faraday Future. We're talking FF91. We've been talking about this car since, I want to say 2017 or something, like not far after I joined Electric. Faraday Future was kind of the first startup after Tesla, first EV startup after
It was Lucid around the same time too, but Lucid had kind of a different path where it was like a powertrain company first. And it took a little while before they focused on the car itself. So that time, Faraday Future was like the Tesla killer. Yeah.
These days we used to like hammer people, the media and calling everything a Tesla killer. This is that this, this whole idea of a Tesla killer. Thank God. Um,
The FF91, this car was the – well, actually, it was like a supercar that they launched first as a concept at CES, but it was never meant for a consumer vehicle. So the FF91 was always the first one. But if you've been following the Faraday Future story, they had a lot of ups and downs with –
Problem with their investors, problem with their CEO. The CEO was like the owner of like a Netflix equivalent in China and that thing went on there and it was a whole nightmare for years and years and years. But they were always able to just survive at the last second, get a little cash infusion and keep going.
And now they kept going enough to bring this car to production, the FF91, and they unveiled it this week. And they are starting deliveries. Now, let's just go with a few specs. I mean, a lot of that was already released, but 1,050 horsepower, 130 kilowatt-hour battery pack for 381 miles of range, which is actually not that much for a battery pack that big in the form factor like that, but
it's you'll understand when we'll talk about the interior and everything this is like a heavy luxury car but still a 0.6 acceleration in 2.2 seconds so yeah same time as you have super car spec um
Yeah, those are on payments. Oh, yeah. Well, Jamie listened to the whole presentation and from what I understand, he was not impressed with a lot of it because there was a lot of buzzword, especially AI going around where they kept claiming that this thing's going to have all AI, upper AI, AI ability and all that. So I think...
I'm on board with that when it comes to Jimmy's opinion on this. A lot of times, these companies, they just...
what's hot at this moment, like what, how can we differentiate ourselves from the rest of the competition and the, the true things like that in which may or may not materialize. But, uh, so when I was talking about luxury, this is your view from the backseat here, you have a 27 inch display. So this is very much like a luxury, like backseat vehicle, kind of a, you can think about Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose,
I can't pronounce Rolls Royce. There you go. And that's the problem with Faraday Future is that it's not Rolls Royce. They're trying to sell this car at $309,000. Crazy. And it might be...
I've never been in it and everything. It might be worth that. It might be super luxurious, super high quality and everything like that. It's just so hard to convince buyers of $300,000 cars to go with a no-name company. It's not an insult to Faraday Future, but compared to a name like Rolls-Royce, compared to a name like Bentley, it's just they are nowhere near there. And
I would like to talk to a buyer of $300,000 cars and just poke their mind about what it would take for them to buy a car like that versus a Phantom or whatever. Will Schwarz has one coming, too, an electric one. I mean, I guess you're the only one with a Faraday. You know your neighbor and you know nobody else is going to have a Faraday on the street.
Yeah, I don't know about also servicing it if something breaks and all that. Yeah, that's another story. Yeah. So, I mean, we should highlight the positive here. They brought an electric car to production. Good for them. Yeah. It's an accomplishment. Extremely hard to do. So congrats to everyone involved. Now, are they going to survive? That's the question, unfortunately. Yeah.
Because we've seen Lawrence down, they brought a car to production, and we see what's happening now. There are other examples. There's plenty of examples of failing before reaching production too. All right, this just came out today. Jaguar is recalling all their high-paced SUVs due to a battery fire risk.
And this is, there's been a long time coming and honestly should have happened before a long time before should have happened all the way back when LG did the recall with the Chevy Bolt and the Hyundai Kona and all that.
And it should have happened last year when we told Jaguar. I literally reached out to Jaguar. I said, I think I only had circumstantial evidence, but some very good circumstantial evidence telling them that I think you have the exact same problem. So last year, I reported on the I-PACE fire. And when I saw the I-PACE fire, I'm like, this sounds exactly like every Chevy Bolt EV fire. So I'm
plugged in or not plugged in but after charging the car for a little bit letting it sit for a little bit it's not like right after like driving it anything like that so all the circumstances were the same so i'm like let me let me uh take a look at it so i go back and i found i tried to find other
I-PACE fires. And sure enough, I find four and all four with similar circumstances. And then obviously, 2 plus 2, the fact that they also use LG energy cells, which were the problem for the Chevy Bolt EV recall and the Hyundai recall.
So I reached out to them. I'm like, guys, I think you might have the same problem here. And they didn't... I explained to them why. They didn't want to comment on that. They didn't want to answer my questions. They just said like, oh, we're investigating the new fire that I reported on last year. So that was almost a year ago at this point. And it took them a year to do the recall. And you know what? They were doing the same thing as GM did. So GM also was like...
And not fully committing to a battery recall for a while. Like they acknowledge the problem and everything, but they push this solution of just limiting the top charge rate. So the state of charge will limit it at 80%, I think. So now Jaguar is also pushing this as a software update solution.
where they say that they are changing the diagnostic system of the battery pack to see if they can find this problem in it. If they do, they're going to limit it to 75 and bring the car back for service and change the battery pack if they need to.
uh so that sounds exactly what like gm did basically and that led to a full battery recall if you remember yeah so i think jaguar might be just delaying the available here yeah and something interesting uh uh pop-ups now for for comments yeah uh if you're if you're in the comments um
Waymo's got a lot of Jaguar I-Paces. No, that's a good point. I wonder if they're involved with the recall. I mean, they have like thousands of them, I think, or at least hundreds of them. Yeah, I mean, it's 6,000 in the U.S. that they are being recalled, which it's probably every single one, I would assume. It's everyone from 2019 to 2024 model year. And then if they're doing that in the U.S., they're doing that worldwide. So it's going to be a bad day for a Jaguar because this is their only electric car, so it's not...
a good sign for them. And, um, coincidence or not, uh, this thing came out just when they announced their, their old, uh, Jaguar rebranding that they're doing. Like, uh, uh, the, the, this, this GLR, uh, rebranding where focus on EV and whatnot. Like it's just, it's just a bunch of marketing stuff, but, but they did announce a new Range Rover electric too, but they just, they confirmed that the auto car this week and it's coming. I think, I think we knew it was coming, but, uh,
Yeah, those would seem more like Range Rover splits then. And it's funny because there's like Land Rover, Range Rover. Now there's Defender. Like, guys, relax. So we'll keep an eye on this high pace recall because I think it's going to be probably the same. I really like the high pace initially back in 2019 or 18. Yep. There's like one of the only EVs that they really wanted you to take off-road at the time.
All right, moving into comments. It looked good, too. It looked different, a bit like it. All right, Glenn Stanford. Question, if I buy a new battery from Tesla for my Model 3 at end of use...
Can I not use the old one as a massive power wall that should be promoted as an option by Tesla as it is a win-win for everyone? That's a good question. I would be surprised if they let you keep it. I think it's a deal of like this is the price, but the price with us getting the old battery pack.
because Tesla wants to recycle those. Those are very valuable and they are probably honestly more valuable for Tesla as a recycling than they are for you as a stationary battery storage solution. Because it's also not as simple as just having a battery. There's a lot
A lot of work that goes into it. You can ask Jason usually has a video on this on how to do that because he did that with one or two more S-Patch pack, I think, for his home system.
So it's not like a plug and play situation, like the Powerwall, which the Powerwall itself is not a plug and play situation either. It's closer to that, but still like I have a bill from an electrician, a few thousand dollars that I can show you that tells you that doesn't sound plug and play to me. But yeah, it could be an interesting option for Tesla to offer, but I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon, to be honest.
All right. Moving on, Dan Oberstay, what happened to the larger text option that was supposed to be in V11.4? That's what I was looking forward to most. I think it was there. I remember seeing the release notes of it, but honestly, I didn't look how to activate it myself because I don't need it. But yeah, I would think it's there.
All right. Kwame Amos says, hey, I know you guys mentioned this before, but what's wrong with the Nissan Leaf and why wouldn't you buy one? Actually, you can buy a Bolt. And also, I would say Chattamo is a dead standard, at least in North America. So for fast charging, it's not terribly exciting in terms of acceleration. It's not huge. It's you know, it was kind of designed a decade ago.
um nissan has the aria out now if you're talking about a new car i think the aria is much more compelling um so uh yeah that that's it i mean buy a bolt they're much better a little smaller but uh nice hat set thank you uh where can i get one i think we have a merch store right yeah is this one in the merch truck because that's the nice one that's the the one that's like broadened and everything
I don't know. Check the merch store. Do a search on... If you're watching on YouTube right now, I think the merch store is supposed to appear below us. Shouldn't Tesla disclose LFP before selling to Canadians?
In the ideal world, absolutely. I'm all for as much information as possible being this close to the buyers. Because of the cold, I think you're saying. Yeah, I know. Specifically here for the cold. But in general, you should... But with Tesla...
And I might be wrong here, and please correct me if I'm wrong if you go to a Tesla store this weekend, but I think you could ask a Tesla advisor about it. I'm not sure if they're going to have the answer for you. That's how bad it is. I could be wrong. Are you going to go check out the Chinese Model Y at your local Tesla dealer? Yeah, I don't really have a local one. Like, it's a two-hour drive for me. But, yeah, if someone does, like, let us know this weekend, because I'm not sure that they could tell you. All right.
Daniel DeYoung, Fred, if you were comparison shopping the long-range Model Y versus the long-range Mach-E in Canada, which would you choose given the Y is a Chinese import and the Ford charging news? What's the Ford charge? Well, the Ford charging news doesn't have a huge impact short term. So it's like next year, what's going to happen with that is like next year, if you have a Mach-E, you're going to have access to an adapter.
And Tesla would open up all their stations through that adapter. That's nice. I think what was more exciting about the Ford charging news is the integration of the NAX connector in the vehicle itself. Yeah.
That's not going to be for the Mach-E, or at least not for the one right now. 2025, they said, for the next generation vehicles. So it's going to be the next generation Mach-E, basically. That's going to get it. Now, with that said, so Chinese import, like I said earlier, the Chinese import doesn't bother me that much. I mean, Ford is a Mexican import. Right. Yeah.
Do the Mexican barrels cars better than the Chinese? I don't know. I don't know that to be true personally. So, I mean, the Mach-E is interesting though. I would need to configure one for $60,000 or 69. Yeah, $69,000. Woo. Yeah. 69 or 59. Now I'm confused. I don't know the Canadian price.
I just said it earlier. Yeah, $69,000, well, $70,000 really. So yeah, so depending on, I would need to configure the Mackie one. If I can get a very nice Mackie for $70,000, I might go with the Mackie honestly, which is big for me. I've always been like Tesla over everything else.
But I did very much enjoy the Mach-E when I did a whole one-week or two-week trip in the south of the U.S. with it, which is a lot to say because that was not super easy because the south doesn't have the most CCS connectors. Yeah, and now the Mach-E has a nice Blue Cruise. Yeah, the Blue Cruise is nice too. But you see, if I have this Tesla adapter…
for the Mackies during that trip, my trip would have been a lot easier. So yeah, maybe like this actually, Daniel is right here in the Ford charging news might be the difference maker. If I were you, Daniel, I would configure one and if you like it more with the configuration for that price, I would go for it.
All right, Carl in San Diego. If you can't raise the roof to stand in the buzz, it's not effective the way the previous camper vans were. So, yeah, I guess you need to be able to walk around in it or to be legit. Well, I see a lot of like van life people having vans configured as camper that doesn't have a raised roof. Yeah. All right, Spikes43. Glenn, usually swapping battery with Tesla or even third-party shop like Jason Hughes means you give them your old one. Yeah. I don't know what you said.
I found FSD a huge improvement from City Streets beta, and I will use it, if not a lot of people around, and I'm generally pretty happy with it.
Yeah, but that makes no sense to me. You just said it's pretty good, but I won't use it if there's people around. So that's pretty contrary to me. If you don't feel comfortable using it when there's other drivers on the road or pedestrian or whatever, that tells you a lot about the system right there. And I'm right there with you, by the way. I see a cyclist. I see pedestrians. I get super nervous around those.
When I'm on FSD beta, obviously. Yeah. Daniel DeYoung, I see a lot of zero engagement drives on YouTube with FSD, which are cherry picked, I have to say, because we've seen... A lot of them are, yeah. Yeah. So it's improving, but it's still driving like a teenager on drugs. So you're really just chaperoning it.
Yeah. You can get some good drives. You do enough, you'll get some pretty good drives, I'm sure. And especially also look where it is. If it's in California, that's where it has the most data. It's where it's the smoothest. Then the further you get from California, and obviously Seth and I are pretty far from there, and we feel it. Yeah. All right. With the highway performance improvements, I find the package worth $7,000, but probably not $16,000.
I didn't even know there was highway improvement performance. I mean, he means the stack merging. But honestly, like I said, it was not that much of a downgrade at the very least. So you cannot make the argument that it's a big downgrade or anything like that. But I've seen last week, I've seen someone getting into an accident on the highway. And the accident is 100% because...
of the change to the stack on the highway from it to the FSD stack. Because now, and that's funny because Seth, you mentioned it that too, that you didn't like that autopilot doesn't move away for trucks to the left of the lane. And now it does that with FSD beta. But this crash, you can see clearly that what happened is that the car passes a truck on the left lane
Right as the road, you know, these big concrete barrier that you shorten the road. So the, what do you call that in French? I cut on the side, like between like the line, you have a line, your lane on the road that you have a line and then you have some space before it's like, whatever, you have some space of asphalt.
the curb or whatever yeah it's not a curb though it's still it's still the road but that disappear and those concrete barrier like comes in like right there and so the car does this this maneuver as the same time as this thing come and boom it runs right into it so that's a situation that i keep trying to put myself in it and like could i've prevented that with my hands on the wheels and watching forward
Because that's really much FSD ramming into, I say ramming, it bumped into it. So it didn't do that much. It did some damage, obviously, but it wasn't a crash, I should say. So would I have been able to prevent that? And I'm not so sure I would have been able to. So it's interesting you bring that up because my neighbor last week was riding on a local parkway here.
And something very similar happened where it just went over into the curb and she's got the videos of it. And it just ran into the curb and it's kind of totaled like the insurance company wants to.
To total it, really? Total it. I think there's a lot of weirdness there. But she was like, look, I was in full self-driving. I had my hand on the wheel and it just went into the curb. I mean, she was on a busy street and I actually have the videos. And I wonder if it's because of that, because she was passing a car or a truck and it decided to move over a little bit. Yeah. Move over, but normally you should still remain within...
The lane. And I think, I think that, so I think the logic of the FSD is that when it does that move, it only does it. If like you have a requirement that is the lane large enough to do that. And then where the car was at the moment, it was large enough, but for the few seconds that it takes to pass that truck, it's when the lane got a little bit shorter with the, with,
concrete barrier and normally like you if you're center lane you would have been no problem passing through even if you have a truck next to you but because of that it ran right into it and the reaction time to to right correct uh because it feels natural when you're about to pass the truck and it moves a
I don't know. You're starting to slowly creep into the territory of Tesla needing to be responsible for these things, I feel like. And that's a big step. That's the step. That's the step of like change everything. What needs to happen? Do these people need to sue Tesla? The NHTSA or whatever needs to get involved? Well, I think if you had your hands on the steering wheel and you were paying attention looking forward...
You were using FSD beta properly and you literally didn't have time to react. I think you have a good case. You used the feature as intended in the feature. So that has been the argument for Tesla for a long time. All the crashes related to autopilot and everything is user misuses. They didn't have their hand on the steering wheel. They weren't paying attention and all that.
And for the most part, well, not for the most part, for everything that I have seen personally, it has been true. There has been like a ton of reaction time that points to the driver not paying attention, leading to the crash and everything. But these ones, like the one that you just mentioned and the one that I saw last week, I'm starting to think that maybe we have something here. Interesting. I should do an article about this. I should go pick up the video. I've been thinking about that video a lot.
I should do an article about it. All right. I'm putting in your Slack the video of my neighbor. All right. Seattle, Vienna. Rivian, Lucid, Faraday, Future, Fisker. Which of these will be around in 2023?
Is that the order? Yeah, I mean, it's basically, I think it would be my order of chances. Maybe Faraday and Fisker are equal or interchangeable. You can change them one way or the other. And Lucid just got another $3 billion from the Saudis today. Yeah, yeah. So as long as that Saudi money is still...
Yeah, Rivian and Lucid are in this position that financially it doesn't look good on either company, but they are backed by deep pockets on each side, including Rivian itself having still deep pockets. So I think in terms of survival for the next seven years, Rivian has the most chance, Lucid after that. And I think Lucid can survive at least in the next seven years. It can turn things around. Faraday Future, I give...
I give less than 10% chance of surviving the next seven years. And that's not hammering on them, by the way. It's so hard what they're trying to do. And the fact that they got there is amazing. And giving them a 10% chance to keep doing like that for seven years is a lot. Fisker, I would probably 10% chance of survival in the next seven years too. Similar reasons. Yeah.
I mean, Fisker, I don't know. I feel like if they had their act together a little bit, they have a good design. They have Magna on board. I feel like that's... Yeah, but they're going to need a ton of money to deploy all those service centers, partnerships, and all that. And then one thing happens, and like, what just happened to Jaguar, for example? If that happens to Fisker, I'm not saying that...
eyepace is made by magna yeah obviously there's a battery pack the problem so it's not magna but um yeah i'm not saying that it is happening on the other hand but if it does happen the fisker cannot survive that jaguar is gonna have issues with that it's not it's not the main it's a much bigger company but not that big of an auto maker yeah
All right. Carl in San Diego says, no pride in owning a Faraday. It's a washout of a company. It was always the worst example of tech bro hype over substance. That's not fair to me. Like they had some decent tech. They had some like very solid, like the inverter engineers that work on there are like famous from like the EV1 days and everything. Like they had a lot of good people over the years building good tech there. So I wouldn't go as far. But in terms of like...
Would I buy a $300,000 car from them? I don't see myself doing that. All right. Spikes43 says, Kwame, the Chatham Airport makes it almost impossible to road trip and the lack of battery cooling has led to brutal battery degradation over the years. That's one thing we forgot to say about the Nissan Leaf. It has air cooling instead of liquid cooling and that's caused battery degradation.
Luke Miller question. Any news on Tesla superchargers in Canada with the Magic Dock? Yeah, I mean, Magic Dock is in a weird position right now. It looks like Tesla might just do the adapters for... The announcement that they did with Ford, other than the adoption of the NAX, that can be any other automaker that CCS, basically. So that can be...
Like I would be... Maybe they have like a deal that we don't know about with Ford that, all right, the first 10,000 CCS to NAX adapter we have goes to your owners, your EV owners. Maybe they have something like that. But I don't see Tesla like preventing like a GM Silverado EV owner from buying that adapter too. Like it makes no sense to me. So I would...
I would think that that's going to be Tesla's approach over MagicDock. It seems like it. Unless we start seeing more MagicDock popping up, but we haven't seen since the launch that much. Yeah. I wonder if MagicDock is going to be like the battery swap. Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. I agree. And if they can make the adapter, you know, like a $50 part or something, then I think
Even as it is now, I think even Ford had some Tesla adapters. Something I forgot about. They were selling Tesla adapters with the Ford F1E so that they could charge Teslas with that thing. Yeah, that was more like a marketing thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I feel like...
for 50 bucks, you could charge at all the Tesla stations. Like that's, that's like a no brainer. I think it's going to be closer to a hundred, but yeah, this is even a hundred. It's, I think it's still, I mean, there's no smarts to it. It's just basically like a, an, you know, electric adapter. I don't think there's any like chips in there or anything.
I don't know. We'll see. All right. Fisker having Magna manufacture the cars and partnering with Cox Automotive for service seems prudent. I wonder if Fisker would ever put a Naxx charger in. Yeah, why not? Or do Fisker and Musk not get along? Oh, yeah, that's right. They don't get along at all. Yeah. I mean, even if we don't get along, though, I think Musk wouldn't stop the test, though. I don't know if you can even stop.
I don't think with the opening of the standard, Tesla cannot stop anyone from adopting the standard. Now, my problem is I would be happy to see Fisker adopt NAX. I just think for that domino effect to continue or happen, however you want to look at it, you need a bigger one, I think. You need a GM to get on board. VW. VW. Yeah.
I don't know if Howdy would be independent of BW to do that or if like one of the other like big names to do it and then boom, I think it happens.
Because Charnin sent out the press release today about the reaction to the Ford thing. And it's pretty funny. It's crazy. I should do an article on it. You should do an article because it was really messed up. It's pretty funny. They go, obviously, they're not happy about it. You're like, oh, you're starting a standard war or something. But the funny part is they go,
We're also not on board with the adapter thing because the adapter makes the experience clunkier, harder to handle. And it's like, that's, you're describing your connector here. Like if, like, let's say a Tesla to Tesla adapter wouldn't be clunky because it would be the shape of the Tesla connector, which is so much more easier to handle and less clunky than the CCS. So they are kind of shooting themselves in the foot on this one.
All right. Moving on. Is Freewire NAC's announcement interesting, important? I think Scooter covered that. Yeah, we covered it, but it's not a big one. You need the big names on both sides, on the automaker side and on the charging station side. And the Freewire is on the charging station side. And on the charging station side, also, it just doesn't...
It should already be. Especially now that Ford is on board too, the vast majority already of electric vehicles in North America are NACs or Teslas. And in the future, that was going not to be true. But now with NACs opening up and Ford adopting it, it might still be true for a long, long time. So if you are in the market of charging EVs, why not?
have the connector that has the most cars out there just makes sense all right luke miller question have you looked into reports of ionic 5 battery pack coolant replacement three-year replacement and initial replacements are not successful batteries full of crystals have heard that first time i hear that i mean it's already the ionic 5 is already three years old
Sounds, yeah, maybe two and a half, three years old. Remember we were in Germany? Yeah, it just came out. That was, when were we in Germany? 2021? That was for IAA. Yeah, IAA is every two years and it's coming up this year. Right, so it was two years ago. So it was 2021. Are we going back, by the way? Yeah. Yeah? I think, I don't know. It's September. We should go. We should go. It's really a lot of fun. I'm talking to the local...
german you know whatever thing and yeah um nissan leaf battery can be used as a power wall pretty easily just look at dala from finland they have a video on that yeah nissan made their stuff really easy to really i mean weird that people say pretty easy i'm like i really i mean chattimo is pretty open like you can build your own chattimo stuff so
Carl Sandio, if people in FSD are totaling cars like Seth just described, the next logical step is for all traditional insurance companies to drop Tesla drivers. Then we'll see others involved in accidents. It's a good point. Yeah, I mean, that was the idea of Tesla launching their own insurances. Like they saw that coming. They know that the other insurers, they would not look at FSD as optimistically as Tesla. And that's true.
So it can be a problem if you're in a market where Tesla doesn't have its own insurance. You can expect some hikes because of it. All right. Jim Castaneda says FSD can do some sketch stuff, but you've got to be ready for it. I don't imagine if someone is paying attention, anything should reasonably happen. It's actually pretty predictable. Worst thing is to go into AP without any skepticism. But that's not the point. That's the point. Yeah.
Yeah, I completely agree with you for the most part, except what we just talked about is those exceptions where even if you're doing everything right, things can go wrong. And in this case that I was talking about, about the car moving too, the problem with that is that it was a new behavior from autopilot, really, essentially.
And it's a problem specifically for people like me, for example, who has FSD beta but doesn't use it that much. I use autopilot a lot. And now my autopilot is powered by the FSD stack and starts doing this behavior. And I noticed it right away and everything. And I'm like, all right, this is interesting and whatnot. But if you don't notice it and everything, and this is...
Petroclastic situation happened. I need to do a whole article on this and just break it down specifically so people understand because without the video, without all the details, I'll see if I can reach out to the owner. I tried to last time, but it didn't work. That's why the article didn't come up. And check out my videos. Yeah, I'll probably add that if we're allowed to. Yeah. All right. Luke Miller says this Ioniq 5 has a special battery coolant. Not even the EV6 had it. And all the crystals. Yeah.
Turned into crystals. Yeah, it sounds like one of those girls that I dated in Venice Beach. They're all over crystals and things like that. This wasn't making me think about that memory. Oliver Garino, is there a possibility for more streamlined connector reaching the European market? Would have a hard time imagining the bulky CCS2 to be the standard for decades to come.
That's what Sharnan is trying to do. Yeah, standards bodies. Yeah, that was another argument that they had in their response to we are the global standards. I'm like, meh. You don't need a global standard. It's not...
How often you take a car from North America and bring it to Europe? So rarely. Do you really need to have a whole standard different for that? Then that's not a good reason enough not to have a more efficient solution in North America.
Also like CCS, this, the communication standard is actually what's being used. Like, so they won that battle, like the communication between the car and the charging station, that's CCS. The actual like connector is a physical thing is up in the air. And,
We're here right now at the beginning of the electric revolution. Why not make it a little bit easier and smaller and cheaper and, you know, easier for smaller people or women to use it? It's just like, come on, let's just let's just get it over with.
Yeah, that's a good point, just because we're at the beginning. Like we don't feel it, especially us, because we've been in it so much. But in terms of overall volume, it's peanuts right now compared to what's going to happen in 2026, 2027 in terms of like production. So if you have all of those NCCS still with the Konky connector, it's not good. A million of those, like if you save like,
A few seconds every time you handle it, just that adds up to years and years of efficiency, basically. And it's like we have the USB-C and we have an old USB, and we're like, hmm, it's not working. You guess what I've learned from that? Now everything is going USB-C. There was something actually here in Quebec that they're going to pass a law that they're going to force everything USB-C on smartphones too. Yeah, next iPhone is going to be USB-C.
So get with the program guys. Does Tesla insure non-Tesla? I don't think they do. Usually you get household insurance discount or more than one car. But I think they do. I think they do because of that. Oh, interesting. Maybe not in every market, but I knew when they launched in California, they did. Okay. Yeah. AP getting worse is bad. Too much change from previous behavior. And then I cannot say personally that it got worse. Yeah.
It's just, if it did get better, it's barely noticeable. And then he says that old cars and trucks are being exported from the U.S. to Africa now, which is unprecedented. I guess that's, you know, a recycling thing. You're going to move cars over continents. They should all have the same thing. And then Abdoumein Al-Sofi says, I think in 2026, we will have MCS. Is that a new charging standard? Yeah. Oh, the mega charging system. Yeah.
We get comments from LinkedIn now? I thought that was impossible. It happens every couple episodes. Yeah, 2026. Megawatt charging is not needed really for anything other than trucks and
I think it's going to happen. You're going to see on the higher end of it, maybe some cars have it. But for the most part, I think 2026 might be a little bit early for that. I think it's going to be more cars, sorry, trucks. And I know definitely the semi-trucks, electric semi-trucks, but also like a cyber truck apparently is going to get megawatt charging. Yeah, I wonder what that's going to look like, if there's going to be two slots or... Yeah, I mean the...
The TESTA-SMI connector looks a lot like the CCS connector, really. Yeah. It's maybe a little bit bigger, not that much.
Anyway, that was it. Thanks, Carl, for a great show. Appreciate it. Thanks, everyone, for listening. Thanks for watching. If you do enjoy your show, please give us a like, a thumbs up, whatever it is on your app. It helps the show more than you can think. It's all about this engagement. That's how we share this podcast. We share the EV enthusiasm with the community. And we're hopefully going to see you same time, same place next week. Have a good one. Stay safe out there.
