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Juan, we are live for a new episode of The Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host. And as per usual, I'm joined by Seth Winchardt, this time coming live from Los Angeles. How are you doing, Seth? I'm good.
All right. I hope so because we have plenty to talk about this week, first week of the new quarter. So it's going to be a good show for people that love numbers because we're going to discuss a lot of delivery results, a lot of production results. Something we love to do because when there's high volumes in those quarterly reports, that means more electric vehicles on the road and less gas mileage, which is what we all want. Cleaner hair for everybody. And we're going to start out with that, starting with...
who else is going to deliver more electric vehicles than Tesla?
As for our expectation, the consensus was about 420,000. Well, there's been a lot of debate on the consensus and I took a lot of crap from my article on this thing that Tesla beat expectation because apparently this quarter, like a lot of people were using two different set of supposedly consensus, one at 420,000 and one at 430,000, which at the end of the day is like it's not...
that big of a difference 10 000 units on almost half a million but um it's the difference between meaning expectation or actually missing expectation and beating expectations so tesla actually delivered 422 875 vehicles a quarter so in my view the i thought anything over 420 this quarter would be good so i i see it as beating expectation and uh bloomberg
Wall Street consensus of 20 analysts was 420,000 units to 421,000 maybe. It's still a beat. But there were other people like the Wall Street Journal using a 430,000 consensus. So it was like, it was an awful quarter.
Obviously, Model 3, Model Y leading the charge of 421,000 production, 412,000 units delivered. Model S and X is the one that we need to keep a look at right now. And that will lead into our next story too about the price cuts that were announced overnight. But 19,000 units produced, which is good for a higher-end vehicle like that this quarter, but only 10,000... This is production, production. This would be delivery here. A little mistake.
10 000 delivered so only almost half of the vehicle that were produced this quarter were delivered tesla did kind of uh warn why why is that about they said in the like those quarterly release that they have normally has very little words in them it's just the numbers of cars delivered but this time they said we continue to transition towards a more even regional mix of vehicle builds
including MLS and X vehicles in transit to MEA and APAC. So in short, they are saying that, yeah, they are trying to smoothen those delivery waves, quarterly delivery waves at the end of the quarters. And that resulted in a lot of MLS and X in transit to Europe and Asia.
Okay, maybe. Maybe that's true. Or maybe Tesla also had incentives at the end of the quarter with 10,000 free supercharging miles to try to sell those vehicles and then just drop them by $5,000 each. So that's actually our next story here. Overnight, Tesla put some significant price drops across every single model that it sells. So we're going to get through it pretty quickly here.
but everything's on the website if you want to check it out. So Model 3, the base one, Model 3 standard range, the cheapest version, the cheapest test vehicle you can buy new right now. Only $1,000 price drop here, so nothing crazy.
went from $43,000 to $42,000. But it's important to note that this is probably the only model from Tesla that's going to lose the full tax credit coming April 18. So it's going to go from $7,500 credit to $3,750. So this price drop has a little bit more of an impact because even though it's only $1,000, you actually lose $3,000. So
something to keep in mind even though a tax credit is not exactly a discount on the price uh multi performance also getting a thousand dollar price drop to 53 000 and still no custom orders on model 3 long range this one is starting to get weird a little bit right it's been quick like a year now that you cannot order it yeah that's a year is a long time yeah and we we've been speculating that it might be because of the new version coming but at this point like uh
It's starting to get weird. Especially if it's not coming until Q3, that's going to be like another full quarter of normal three-long range available to order as a new vehicle. That seems a bit excessive in my opinion. Yeah, I agree. Here's what I found. Sorry, my Siri is starting to get involved in the podcast right now. I just shut her up. Do not disturb Siri.
All right. The Model Y is getting a little bit more interesting, though. As the Model 3 lineup is getting more restrictive, the Model Y lineup, which is becoming the most important one from Tesla in terms of volume, we now have the Model 3...
sorry, Model Y all-wheel drive. They're not using the standard range kind of name on it like they do for the Model 3 because it's not like as big of a range drop from the long range version, I guess. So we're just going to call it the Model Y all-wheel drive.
Or if you want to be more precise, it's a Model Y with 4680 battery cells. So the Model Y built in Gigafactory Texas right now amongst the Model Y with 2170 cells also built in Gigafactory Texas.
But yeah, so this version has been available for a year now, but it was kind of a half the menu item where you couldn't really order it. You would just have to buy it off of inventory at times when it was available. And Tesla would offer it to some Model Y reservation holders at time and originally to employees only. So it's the very same vehicle, the same 279 miles of range. It's 0.2 seconds slower than the Model Y long range. So in terms of actual specs, it's
The same as a long range, but with about 50 fewer miles of full range. But it also was reduced in price. Like when it was launched last year, it was $60,000. Now it's $50,000 before tax credit because that vehicle with the American-made cells is going to get the full tax credit. So this is going to be like in California, it's going to be like a $40,000 car if you qualify for all the incentives.
That's in California, but probably other markets too. Does New York still have their... They have a $2,000 tax credit. Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, at this point, it's getting a cheap vehicle in a lot of places. Relatively. Yeah. I mean, for what it is. Model Y long range also getting a price drop. Now only $53,000. So that's also very interesting here.
So for $3,000 or more, you get that 50 miles extra. Also getting the full tax rate on this one, most likely. And $57,000 for Model Y performance, also a $2,000 price drop. So Model Y lineup now, like everything is in the 50s and it's available at high volume. I would assume that we're starting to see
what Elon meant by the Model Y potentially having a million, two million run rate a year. This is starting to be like, okay, if we're talking about a $40,000 to $50,000 vehicle after tax credit, this is very doable.
We just talked about Model S and X having difficulty selling, though. And now another price drop is adding to it to try to sweeten the deal. And the Model S and X, the price has been crashing for the last three months, four months now almost. The Model S long range now starts at $85,000. That's the $5,000 price drop and a $20,000 price drop of money was selling just in December of last year. So...
significant. Even the Model S Plaid, which is basically a supercar, is selling $105,000, another $5,000 price up. It was $130,000 last year. So that's pretty crazy too. That's crazy. That's almost like a whole extra car.
Yeah, like a cheap Model 3, like the cheapest Model 3. And it's a super car. Like it's a two second, zero to 60 car. Like it's insanity. But what's even crazier, like we've discussed this last time that this will drop the price on Model S and X, but the Model X Plaid is also the same price as the Model S Plaid. And with that price drop, the price drop followed to on the Model X Plaid and it's also $105,000. So you can get a Model X Plaid right now for $105,000. But,
How often do you want to use that crazy speed, that crazy acceleration on a full-size SUV? I don't know. So you might be better off on the base Model X, which also got a $5,000 price drop today at $95,000. So still a very expensive premium vehicle, but cheaper than it has been in a long time, like a very long time.
Yeah, and Elon Musk on the, I think it was the last earnings call, said something about the price elasticity where he, you know, Tesla was finding that if they dropped the price a little bit, it would automatically spur a lot of demand. So I'm assuming that this is all demand driven. You know, they're producing more than the supply chain is producing.
The supply chain is caught up. They can make as many as they need. So they have to drop prices a little bit. Yeah, I don't know. That's probably accurate. I mean, Steve Sutton just had another take on it here. Unpopular opinion. Tesla looks at supplier costs for the next quarter or two and makes price adjustment accordingly. Does differ from any other company. So folks don't understand. I mean, yes, this could have an impact for sure.
But historically, when you look at Tesla pricing, it has been demand-driven. Tesla will charge as much as it can charge for a car. So yeah, letting Seth, your explanation is probably closer to reality right now. Just because when Tesla could charge a lot more for their car last year, they did. And that was reflected in the gross margin. Even though Tesla had pressure from suppliers for sure last quarter,
The gross margin went up with the pricing. So that makes sense too. Now you're going to see gross margin go down this quarter when DISA released earnings in a few weeks. Yeah. And investors don't really like that so much. Yeah.
No, that's going to be the big thing, obviously. Record deliveries, but record deliveries based on lower prices. So how the margin, well, not how much the margin is going to be affected. We know how it's going to be affected and in what way, I should say. And they get their way, obviously. But now this second price drop obviously is going to have a big impact this quarter.
I mean, I have to say, I like this strategy. You make as many cars as you can and you sell each one for as much as you can get for it. It makes sense. And it's not like Tesla cannot afford taking a hit on the gross margin. They have industry-leading gross margins right now. Right. And it's not like they're trying to be exclusive or low number of cars. They're
They're making as many as they possibly can. They're opening factories. They're ramping production in each of the new factories.
So good for them. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. So yeah, we already discussed the new Model Y all-wheel drive with 4680 cells being launched. And so that brings a question, though, why is it being added to the configurator right now? Why can you order a new one right now? That might work with the next story that we're going to discuss real quick, which is that
Tesla Gigafactory Texas achieved a new run rate of 4,000 units per week. Now, Tesla obviously doesn't break down the one built with structural body pack and 4680 cells and the one built with the 2170 cells. So we don't know exactly what's happening, but it could potentially mean that Tesla had a little ramp up in capacity for the 4680 cells vehicle production, which is why it's not just an inventory car now and one that you can custom order build to your liking.
So congrats on the team at Gigafactory Texas for ramping up $4,000 a week. Though they're a little bit behind their little friendly competition they have at Gigafactory Berlin now, which achieved $5,000 just a week before that. Something to keep an eye on. Yeah, but Berlin doesn't have to deal with the 4680s. So I feel like... Yeah, that's a major difference, obviously. Major difference, yeah.
All right. Big news that came out yesterday with Tesla fighting for the annual meeting that's going to be coming in May. We have some votes for shareholders coming up, and one of them was to vote for a new director because we're losing Mr.
Ero Michi Mizuno, the head of the Japan Government Pension Investment Fund, has been on the board for almost three years now. He's going to be replaced by no other than JB Straubel coming back to Tesla. That's big, big news. Very, very happy about it. I assume that you have the same feelings, Ed? Yeah, you need the applause thing on your road podcaster thing. I don't have it. Yeah.
The moment's gone. It's too late. Damn. There we go. No, it's great news. We've always been fans of JB. Obviously, he started his own company. That's kind of his day job. But I thought it was interesting that the Reuters report kind of put it in the context of succession planning.
And, you know, if something should happen to Elon or, you know, he decides he wants to be a Twitter CEO, you know, in that context, well, would JB be the CEO of Tesla? That would be interesting. I think it would be the best, like the minor one pick for sure. For sure, me too.
uh now i guess like tom zoo is probably um creeping up there but um and he has more on his experience at tesla in recent years currently because jb has left in 2019 and tesla has been quite a different company over the last four years uh it's it's hard to question that but it's not like jb has been sitting on his hands for the last four years either he's built a he's built
A company that arguably is necessary for Tesla to achieve its own goals, which is a company that is building a battery material supply chain in North America, which we simply didn't have until I would say now. But we don't even have it just now. It's starting to be a significant supply chain now.
So, yeah, there's a lot of very cool things about that. Just purely JB being back on board, even if it's just as a board member rather than as an executive, he's still going to have a bigger impact than he did on Tesla over the last four years. And it could potentially imply some connection between Tesla and Redwood, even though that would
come with a bunch of red tapes as like you know since he's a board member uh they would they would have to you know disclose everything but we've seen that before just like when uh before tesla acquired sourcity for example there was a lot of uh um interaction between the two companies so we could see something happening like that with redwood which obviously would be a good partner for tesla on the recycling front for the batteries and on the battery material supply chain
So yeah, congrats on that. Well, I mean, congrats on JB. He's just being nominated right now, but I would assume it's pretty much a done deal. As far as I know, he was universally loved at Tesla and amongst Tesla shareholders. So I think he's going to come in at like a 90-95% approval rate, something like that. I wouldn't be surprised.
All right, a few more Tesla news and before we get into the non-Tesla news today, we have a lot of people commenting right now, but if you guys have any questions for us, put them in the comment section. When I get to them in about 15, 20 minutes, we're going to be able to have some time to answer your questions. It can be about things that we talked about today on the show or other topics in the EV industry that you want us to tackle real quick. Let us know in the comment section below.
All right, next one, the Cyber Vault. So that was teased by Tesla China last week, but it was fully unveiled this week. And it's a box, people. Tesla is selling a box. But even though it sounds gimmicky, I actually see some kind of value in this product here. So the Cyber Vault, it is sold by Tesla, though, as like a full product.
home charging installation so it's and it's not a bad deal too like it's it's dependent on obviously some condition that your installation site obviously that always change but the way that this does website minute sound like if you're within 30 feet of your electrical panel
It's $1,000 or at least a Chinese equivalent of $1,000, which is not a bad deal to have a home starting station installed for that price. Normally, it's more expensive than that when I'm talking about the charger included too.
And why I think the product itself is interesting is that it uses this as mobile charging station with the adapter attached into the box. So what does that mean is that it makes it like a clean installation at home for a home charger, but then you can quickly just detach the adapter right here and just keep the other adapter at home for like the...
for your regular outlet and then you can just pick that up you can cleanly pick up your mobile charger and put in your car when you go on a road trip or something or leave it there as your home station in a clean look so i think there's some value in that because
If you're someone that only has the mobile charger, which is like me, I just I don't have a home charger installation right now. I do bring it with me when I leave and I go to my other place or I go on a road trip. I like to have the option, even though I'm mostly going to use a supercharger.
I would like to have the option if I have a road trip and I have a Airbnb somewhere, well, I can use the outlet outside and just get some trickle charge overnight, things like that. Super useful. But then when you do that and you use your mobile charger also at home, you have not as clean as it's set up really in your garage normally. So I think this might not be worth it.
ton of money as a product like it's still just a box uh even though there's some electronic components to it it's uh it's pretty cool i think yeah i guess it has some security to uh you know if you're an apartment dweller and you have a you know shared parking lot you don't have to worry about somebody running off with your cable yeah it is lockable too you can lock it so there's some value in that and it looks like a cyber truck set how cool is that yeah
I have a feeling that a lot of Tesla products are going to look like Cybertruck inspired in the next few years. I don't know. It does feel like that. All right. All right. This one was weird. This is a routers report that based on nine former Tesla employees that claim that Tesla employees within Tesla are sharing private videos filmed from customer vehicles.
So this is something that has come up over the years every now and again, some concerns about the fact that basically the Sentry Mode and the Tesla Cam features that are using the autopilot cameras on the vehicle. So there's two reasons that Tesla might have access to those videos if you choose to share them. So at least you have to choose to share them with Tesla. And Tesla is supposed to use them to improve on autopilot, on self-driving, on Sentry Mode, on Tesla Cam features.
with the use of those videos. Now, what the report suggests is that employees were sharing it without that context, outside of that context, more of like, hey, look at this. So like example, for example, one of the employees says, we could see inside people's garages and their private properties. Let's say a Tesla customer had something in the garage that was distinctive. You know, people would pose those kinds of things.
So, and one gave an example of an owner approaching his vehicle naked and they would share that video. So that's obviously inappropriate. Tesla didn't comment on the report as usual, but I kind of have a feeling, Seth, that Tesla
Tesla knew that the report was coming because just a few weeks ago, they posted like out of the blue, they posted a new web page about their privacy approach and how they take privacy. And they had a whole explanation on that. And the main focus is that, yeah, we have access to your videos, but they are anonymous in the sense that they don't.
the video file is not associated to your Tesla account, so we don't know it's you, even though if you have a video of someone naked, it's still a person naked. You can see where it is. Yeah.
But, yeah, so this is the chart that Tesla posted that basically says how your data is being processed. So the cabin camera, for example, processed directly on vehicle by default, shared with Tesla but not associated with the account if up through the data sharing system, shared to Tesla and associated with the account if beta, if FSD beta is enabled and safety critical events occurred.
So just letting you as clear as possible when Tesla gets access to your videos and when they get access to it and it's attached to your account so you know who it is. Yeah, I mean, it's not good. Obviously, if somebody is looking at videos of your car just randomly, there's obviously things that can identify you, whether it's your address or...
What's in your garage or if you're walking around naked, I guess. I don't know. But, you know, it's a problem. And, you know, I feel like owners are going to start putting tape over their cameras just like they do with the MacBooks and stuff. I mean, I already see that for the cabin camera. I've seen that several times for the cabin camera people doing that.
I mean, outside cameras, that would be more problematic because you would need to remove them every time you use autopilot. I would assume now you would need to remove it for the cabin camera when you use FSD too, because FSD needs to look at you when you're using it. Yeah. I wonder if it would make sense for Tesla to say, hey, look, you can manually just turn off all cameras, you know, when they're not being used. Like, you know, when it's just sitting in your garage, cameras are all off unless you're
Yeah, I mean, I would assume that that's already the case unless you have sentry mode activated. So I don't know what the context are of the Tesla employees getting those videos that were discussed in the report, but it is concerning for sure.
Especially like this is also concerning within the context of hacking. Like you remember, like I just got, I was talking to someone about my article on Jason Hughes, like my article on the big Tesla act. And when you got access to all Tesla vehicles. Right. Yeah.
So now that was pre that feature, but now there's a live camera feature on all the stuff. If you have sentry mode on your car, you have live cameras on your car and you can just pick up your mobile phone and see around your car at all time, just like you do from like a Nest Cam, for example.
And we know that, I don't know if Nest Cam themselves were hacked before, but I know there's plenty of these own cameras that were hacked before. There was a dark web website where you can go look at anyone's camera, basically, and things like that. So this similar concern could happen with Tesla cameras. Anyone could just look and... I think the inside camera is also on live camera now. So anyone could just hack you and look inside your car and look at you driving or something. I don't know what they would do with that, obviously, but...
It's still, you know, it's things that we don't want. Right. And there's a lot of celebrities in Teslas. That's true too. You can sell access to, you know, Jordan Peele's car or something. Yeah, there's a market for that, I'm sure. Like, I want to just look at Jordan Peele driving for hours. I saw him at a coffee shop earlier. That's why. Oh, that's why you're thinking about it.
wasn't a big fan of his movies except the last one nope i was in that into the nope thing yeah like the key and peel show on comedy central oh yeah key and peel shows the shit though that's awesome uh all right uh we're off the test of news a few more news item to discuss and then we're gonna jump into your comments so please put your question in comments i see there's a bunch of them greg is on right now hey greg grace we have a lot of people listening right now um
The Ram, so we reported on the unveiling last week or a week before that. But for some reason, like Ram, they unveiled the electric pickup truck, but they didn't give us that many details in terms of specs. So now we have the actual specs here to discuss. And as you remember, they were hyping them up like crazy. They said this vehicle is going to be revolutionary and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So what's the specs? So now let's get into it.
So the standard battery pack, so they weren't kidding in terms of like the battery capacity on this thing because the standard battery pack is 168 kilowatt hour. So it's basically like a semi-truck battery pack in there. They're literally the semi-trucks that have a battery pack of that size. Very short range one, but still. So they said that that base one will give you a range of up to 350 miles. So that's not EPA range just yet. I think that's their own estimate, but it should be close to that.
There's a longer version, longer range version, I should say, with a 229 kilowatt battery pack. So that's as big as we've known in commercial vehicles, right? It's bigger than the Hummer. Yeah, it's bigger than the Hummer. The Hummer was the biggest one. 210 or something, but bigger than the Hummer. So the new biggest battery pack yet, and they claim that that will give you a range of up to 500 miles. So that's interesting because now we're talking about something that a lot of people could use
With like a trailer, a full trailer, and still get over 200, 300 miles on range depending on the kind of load. Speaking of load, the towing capacity is up to 14,000 pounds and a payload of up to 2,700 pounds. 800 volt fast charging. That's good. They're talking about 110 miles for 10 minutes. Yeah. I would like to have like a 10% to 80%. That would be more useful a little bit, but...
Dual electric drive motors, 250 kilowatts. I assume that's each. I would hope that's each.
Yeah, oh yeah, it's each because 600 and 54 horsepower total, so that makes sense. 0 to 60 in 4.4 seconds, which obviously is very good for a pickup. There's going to be some vehicle to home, vehicle to vehicle, and vehicle to grid bidirectional charging capacity on that thing. So we like to see that, especially with the
kind of battery capacity like this this this is where like i i've always been more on the tesla side of things when it comes to like the vehicle to grid vehicle to home i'm like yeah it's i like the vehicle to everything like the like powering like your camping station with the ionic five for example that's cool but for like actual like vehicle to home i'm like yeah how useful that that be but the bigger the battery pack i think the more useful it's gonna be because
like how often are you actually going to use the 500 miles out of that truck? Like most, unless you use it as like a work truck every day, like you're going to, you use that big capacity for like the times that you're going to pull your trailer and or pull your boat to the lake or something like that. But on a day-to-day basis, you're not using it. So it's a lot of capacity that can be used, I think, as home charging at the same time.
2022 inch wheels available on this thing the interior we have seen it a little bit uh last time we have a new pictures here uh looks like you know trucks these days they're like luxury vehicles inside basically and this one is no exception uh we don't have pricing just yet because this thing is not coming until 2025 so uh no rush on pricing but
For the 229 kilowatt hour battery pack version, I wouldn't expect anything less than what, like 80, 85 maybe? I don't know. Six figures for that might make sense. Six figures? You think that's possible? I mean, you're talking about a Hummer basically. Yeah, but it's a Ram. How many Ram vehicles sells for over $100,000? I'm not sure. One of my friends in New York has one and...
I think he paid like six figures for it. Oh yeah. I mean, I know they're not cheap, but $100,000. He's got like a luxury thing going on in there. Like leather seats. Yeah. I've seen the interior of those. Sometimes they get pretty wild. Like you don't expect that from a pickup truck. All right. We got some delivery numbers from GM too. Their biggest quarter yet for electric vehicles with over 20,000 EV deliveries.
And obviously the Bolt EV is dominating that with 19,000 units, if I remember correctly. Trying to find it. 19,700. Yeah, you're right. That's Bolt EV and EUV combined. Then you have only 968 units for the Lyrics. And then we were talking about the Hummer EV. I don't know what's happening with the Hummer EV. There was two Hummer EV pickup trucks delivered last quarter.
That's crazy. Yeah. But at the same time, that's 400 kilowatt-hour battery pack. You could have made eight Model 3 standard range with that. Yeah. So you can look at it like that maybe. Then we have some delivery numbers from Rivian. They produced 9,295 EVs and they delivered just short of 8,000 units.
So that's, uh, that's one of the things that are her thing. It's earning Rivian a lot is that discrepancy between the vehicle manufactured and delivered each quarter. So that hurts also their, um, their gross margin a lot. So hopefully they can, uh, they can close that gap there because, uh, that would make them look a lot better with theirs to their gross margin every quarter, which I hope is going to increase, uh, this, this quarter around because, uh,
Like we said, even though we are impressed with the production ramp at Rivian, we're still not impressed at the kind of margin they are getting on those vehicles. Yeah, the CFO came out with some words and I think they plan to be kind of neutral on margin by 2025. If I remember correctly.
I thought it was next year. I thought it was next year. Oh, yeah. Neutral next year and then profitable after. Yeah. Which, you know, if they hit that, that's what they need to do. And they get there by scaling better suppliers. I think they said the motors in the Enduro platform are a little bit more reliable from a supply chain standpoint.
So all good things, but, you know, people, I think the whisper number on Ravine was a lot higher because of that report that RJ had a conversation, you know, internally with some of the folks inside saying that, you know, we said we could make this many, but we're going to actually make a lot more than that. Yeah. And it doesn't seem like they were making more than that.
Well, also 50,000 units is still the goal this year and 10,000 units is still short of that goal in the quarterly. If you're expecting annually from the quarter, obviously we think there's going to be a ramp up in the second half of the year. They did mention a few electric vans deliveries production to this quarter, which might make sense because we heard that they're losing a ton of money on those and they've been talking to Amazon about maybe like slowing things down because they
Amazon is basically stealing those vans from Rivian right now. At the same time as the production numbers were released, we also had the news from Rivian about a new option of a performance dual motor R1T and the actual range specs on the Max battery pack, so the new biggest battery pack option. So with the Max battery pack, now the dual motor gets...
400 miles of range the performance zero motor get 400 miles of range also but you get a second faster because you get the same range on the performance okay but the quad motor all will drive you drop to 329 miles of range but you get that three seconds with 60 acceleration yeah if you if you change the tires up on those they the range drops quite a bit i think it's like down to 330 with the uh
Those big ones, 22s. So I'm a little bit confused with my own Rivian reservation, to be honest, the R1T, because I reserved it as soon as you could back in 2018 at this point, 19, I don't remember when. And I'm supposed to still have access to the original pricing, which is a big difference. For me, I think it's like a $20,000 difference. But my understanding is if I change my configuration, I'm screwed. I need to pay the new price.
I don't think that's right. Yeah. I mean, we changed the color of ours. Because they keep trying to get me to change it. Like, I keep getting emails like, hey, you change your configuration, you might get it sooner. Really? But when I play with the configurator, I see the new prices and I'm like, eh, that's not what I was supposed to pay. Oh, interesting. Because I think right now I'm like $91,000 Canadian.
uh for for my configuration and if i change it it's like 115 000 oh wow it's like i'm not paying that for for that truck i'm sorry yeah anyway i'm i'm the same boat uh just waiting for my supposed to be october now yeah yeah and also they just there's no service center in quebec yet so i don't i'm not on a rush to about to go ahead with my order just yet either way but still yeah all right let's jump into the the comment section you guys um
We're going to answer your questions. We talked about Steve Sutton's unpopular opinion a little bit already, but he continues, Tesla said this in multiple plans and statements. Do they make other decisions?
Change is sometimes driven by demand, sure, but that isn't the norm and won't be going forward. This is an important point. What Tesla says is not always the number one reason. That obviously makes better PR. It's not good PR to say, hey, we're going to get as much money as we can out of each car from each of our customers. That just doesn't go over well. So don't believe everything you hear from a company.
I would be my, I don't know how you feel about that, Fred. No, I agree. Like you have to take it for, but at the same time, like maybe they say that, but also Elon said it, that they're going to adjust pricing to cater to the demand. And so you like, you can say a lot of things. You have to, you have to use your logic to, to kind of find the truth and read between the lines. And it's clear right now that Tesla needs those price drop to create the demand that they're
that they can produce for, which is a lot to be fair. Like it's not a bad thing necessarily. Like, yeah, I mean, the stock might take a hit this quarter when we learn about the gross margin or maybe not. Maybe the gross margin on that either, but they're going to take a hit in the gross margin for sure. But they're going to, they're delivering and producing more electric vehicles than anyone else right now and in a better spot than any other automaker in the market to bring us to the electric future that we're all looking forward to.
Yep. All right. Roll a 20. Do you think they'll make a bottle Y with LFP? I'd rather be able to charge to 100%. Your thoughts? Yeah, I would love that. I would like, I assume they're waiting for that because they do have that in other markets. Obviously in China, there's a standing range one, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah.
And I assume it's using LFP cells. I would assume that would make sense. We don't have those details, obviously. In the US, probably Tesla is waiting to have LFP cells production here, whether themselves with the 4680 or through the
rumored partnership with CTL that's supposed to be mirroring Ford's partnership with CTL. So once that comes into play, it would make a ton of sense to have a standard range Model Y for like $45,000 and then with the incentives and all that, it would be a killer car in this market. That would sell quite well, yeah. Tesla prices a year ago were raised only to reduce demand, to reduce wait time. It had nothing to do with needing to increase margins.
All right. Another. I mean, that's a weird way to look at it. Well, we don't want more money, but we got to take it just so that less people place orders for us. Like that's stretching. That's a weird way to approach this thought process, really. Yeah. I don't know what you can do with that. Yeah.
All right. Moving on. Yes, they'll make LFP, but with the new cattle battery factory that hasn't been built yet. So, yeah, that's the same answer as we said. Yeah, this would be years away. I think the 4680 cells from Tesla with an LFP chemistry could be more potentially closer to production. All right. Ron King, price changes are wonderful. I pay the same price as my neighbor and I don't have to spend four hours negotiating. Car price always changes. Just look at dealer discounts.
Yeah, that's a fair point. The dealer pricing is not as transparent as Tesla's. Tesla has this transparency issue, transparency advantage. But at the same time, now...
where Tesla's pricing model is not fun for customer is like for the Model S and X, for example. It's a better example because the way the pricing is more clear, the way the pricing has changed. Like Tesla didn't have the Model S and X in production for Model S for like a year, I think, almost a year, and then Model X for even longer than that when they did the refresh. And during that time, they collected a big backlog of orders
that created this artificial demand of being hired. And it should have been because they were just not producing them. So there was this scarcity aspect was due to Tesla just
to bring the vehicle to production, the refreshed version of the vehicle. And then they charge crazy prices on those when the production started because they could, because there was a big backlog of people trying to get it. And then as soon as they worked through part of that backlog or most of that backlog, now they drop the prices, $30,000 in one case, $20,000 in another case. So that's a little bit...
that's the part that I get why the owners would be upset about it because they were charged a big premium for just being the first to order it rather than like waiting not that much longer because now the production is higher and you can get it pretty fast and get it much cheaper too, which affects your resale price on
your $100,000 vehicle. Obviously, we're talking about people that can afford a $100,000 vehicle, so we're not as upset about them, but still. Yeah.
Redwood needs more press. That's all. Electric, we gave them press. We report on basically everything they do. We're really excited about it. It doesn't get that much press from the mainstream because it's nerdy stuff. People don't care that much about, oh, all right, we're going to make anode material? What is anode? It's going to be an
And sort of like 99% of people. So those kinds of news, they more get like local news of where the production capacity is going to be, because that's big local news because of the jobs that it's going to create and the economic impact. But on a bigger stage, only nerds like us, like this stuff. Speaking of nerdy, which car manufacturer is forecasting a sales reduction for 2025?
We say EVs are increasing. Well, somebody has to decrease. I think we're already seeing big decreases across the board. Yeah, but that's the interesting part. The run is right. It's a good question. But the pandemic fixed that problem for a lot of people where sales crashed.
So you see sales bounce back a little bit in some cases. Gasoline car sales, I'm talking about. But EVs, obviously, they maintain and they kept growing during that time. So it's sort of...
It sort of gave them a reason for why gasoline cars still crash and they're not necessarily focusing on them picking up. They're like, oh, we're switching to electric now because it's the future and whatever, but not because everything else has crashed. All right. Important question. Fred, why do you have a red light shining in your camera?
It doesn't do it. It's not strong enough to have any impact on my camera right now. This is just like an ambience light, basically. I have a camera streaming light on top of me that compensates for it. It's just some ambience. Steve Sutton, while privacy is concerning in the article they used for business, this is also from an ex-employee, so we don't know if people are stirring up trouble. Fair enough, especially Reuters.
They have a very bad track record when it comes to Tesla and those exclusive that they have. A lot of things are just like straight up false. Now, nine former employees and specific examples and all that. Like this is where I give a little bit more credibility to the report because like if they are making things up, it's...
very specific things to make up that could be easier to disprove, especially with Tesla supposedly having now their hardcore litigative
large team of lawyers and going after people now and everything. So I would be more careful if that was them in that case. But I doubt that the report is false. But in terms of like using them for business, like why would you share the picture of a naked owner next to his car? Like I don't think there's a business reason for that. Yeah. Or like these interesting things in the garage. I don't know what you mean by interesting things, but I would assume it's not business related too. It's funny stuff.
Yeah, and a little bit more on that. There are non-scandalous reasons for Tesla employees to share footage, but as humans will do, there are stupid reasons also. Like at your doctor's office, some HIPAA stuff will get spread among nurses. I can see that happening for sure. Yeah. Not enough depleted batteries for Redwood. They're lasting way longer than thought. So I guess that would be a problem.
a good problem for, you know, if that is really the case. I think Redwood is actually getting plenty of batteries. Yeah, I mean, not a ton for sure right now. I would assume especially like they're dealing mostly with Volkswagen, Audi and people like that, which didn't deliver that much volume a few years ago. So it doesn't make sense that they are getting any volume back at this point.
But it's still important to have all the processes in place for when the volume comes because the volume is going to come. There's no doubt about it. So whenever we get hundreds of thousands of vehicle battery pack getting depleted every year, you need to have a robust recycling industry ready to take full advantage of that capacity.
Greg Poland question. So Tesla can view my videos even if I don't have sensory mode turned on while it's in my garage. I guess I need to be careful where I walk around naked, joking. Yeah, well, that's kind of the point. But I'm not sure that the sensory mode thing, I'm not sure Tesla gets video if it's not turned on. I would hope not. Yeah, I mean, it just seems like a lot of data that you're streaming. Yeah, time. Yeah.
And congratulations, Greg is also getting his Austin built Model Y with white interior and tow hitch tomorrow. Nice. And you're getting it cheaper, I assume now, since you're getting the delivery tomorrow, you're going to get the new price. Yeah, that's true. A little bonus, like a couple thousand bucks.
All right, moving on. Will Friedman, question. Have you guys tried FSD 11.3.4? My experience is that it's significantly improved. Most notable improvement in a long time and still a very long way to go to actual self-driving. We did talk about that a little last week. Fred, I think you got it. Yeah, I got it. And I put maybe 100 more miles on it over the last week since I come back from B.C.,
And, yeah, it's good. But like I said, my main focus is at least I'm not concerned anymore about it screwing up my IOA experience with Autopilot now that the stack is merged. So that's the big one. I've used it a little bit on non-IOAs, and it's still not...
impressive to me it's still it's not i should say impressive it is impressive that what he can do it's just not useful it's still not useful you're still you're the one working when you're using this on city street you're the one training it using the system as you're basically coaching it how to drive it's not i know it's a beta and all that i'm just saying like i'm trying to see the path from that to benefit to the driver and it's hard to see right now
yeah even with the v11 that's something but at least don't be scared about if you i don't want to get the v11 because i love my autopilot right now and i don't want to screw it with the full self-driving i think you're gonna love it especially like things like we were talking this is just pure coincidence you were talking about uh ford's blue cruise that moves around when you're a truck you hug the left lane when you pass the trucks and things like that there's that in v11 when you're passing a truck so that's nice
The lane change can be more assertive too, which is good. I just need to find a way to get it back into the right lane. It keeps, when I pass a truck, pass the truck automatically or pass any kind of vehicle automatically, it doesn't, I need to tell it to go back to the right lane after. That's bad driving behavior. Yeah.
Interesting. I have it waiting for me when I get back to New York. So we'll see it over here soon. Roller20 asked a question that was kind of big news this week in both Apple land and EV land. Will the Bolt EV keep CarPlay? GM has made the dumb decision to only provide Android Automotive and not screen projection, which is CarPlay and Android Auto.
I agree that I don't think this was a good decision on GM's part, especially pre-announcing it. I think, I mean, Polestar right now has Android Automotive and you can use CarPlay or Android Auto on top of that. So I don't quite understand GM's move there. You know, Rivian, Tesla, they build their own internally. It's quite controversial that Rivian doesn't have CarPlay.
I think people have kind of moved on from Tesla having CarPlay, although...
From my standpoint, I'm currently driving a Mercedes EQE that has CarPlay and its own system. And you can kind of choose between the two. I kind of feel like that's the way to go. So you put your system up against CarPlay. And if your system is better than CarPlay, people will use your system. But CarPlay has things like reading your text messages to you and a bunch of apps that you
aren't necessarily making its way to Android automotive. So it's a debate for sure. What do you think, Fred? No, I agree with the premise that, oh yeah, more choices is better. So you, you wouldn't need it. But, uh,
I also understand from an automotive manufacturer point of view where you don't want to give up that experience, that user experience to another company. You want to own the entire ecosystem. That makes sense. And I think for Tesla, at least Tesla has put a lot of effort into the user interface.
So it's easier to forgive them not to offer an alternative. And Rivian also, I think, understand the issue and everything. They might not be up on par with Tesla yet, but I see some hope of them getting there. In terms of GM, though, like,
Especially if you're already giving up and going with Android Auto, why would you not offer the Apple alternative? Do you think there's licensing issues on that? Like they get some kind of exclusivity or whatever? Maybe. I mean, Polestar and Volvo right now use Android Automotive and they have a CarPlay interface as well. No, so it doesn't make sense, right? Yeah, I mean, maybe...
Google squeezing the turning the thing a little bit and making the new customers do that. I mean Ford also is planning to use Android Automotive but they also have CarPlay so especially GM and Ford are so big in the US and Apple is so big in the US like everyone has an iPhone right
Yeah, back to the original question. I don't think that they're going to take it off the Bolt, the Chevy Bolt. I really hope they don't. I'm a Bolt owner, and I use CarPlay quite a bit. Spike43 question, will we get another $69,420 Model S? So Tesla, after Lucid launched, I think offered a sub $70,000 Model S for a short while.
And with the prices coming down, do you think that Tesla will hit that price point again? I mean, you're at $80, $85 right now. So we're still a long way. I mean, it depends. I mean, it depends if they cannot sell it. If they cannot sell them at that price, yeah, they could go down. I think there's room also maybe for like a smaller range of Model S.
Maybe they bring back that software lock. That software lock didn't work for a while. I know it was a bit complicated and I know a lot of people, I know maybe Tesla used it more at a time where they had some issues selling cars too. So it was kind of a last resort thing. I don't know if they want to go back to that. But it makes sense. They could sell the car for like $10,000 cheaper with, I don't know, 15 kilowatt hour locked and
and sell the Unlock as a software upgrade over time. We could see that again, maybe. What's the price point for cars on the $7,500? Well, yeah, no. I mean, for the Model S, that would be hard. They would need to hit $55,000 because it's technically a sedan. For the Model X, it would be a little bit more feasible because it's $80,000. So you could maybe see Tesla do it like...
I mean, it's still a $15,000 difference. Yeah, but if they software lock like, you know, 25 kilowatt hours of battery and then you can buy that later. Yeah, and it still probably can get like a normal X at like 200 miles of range maybe with that. Yeah. All right. Thoughts on the Mercedes EQXX? Build it. Build it. That's our thought. Exactly.
It is a little bit rough around the edges. The wheels were very thin. It's a prototype, but we would love to see them build it. It's got solar, crazy 1,000-kilometer range. Nice active aerodynamic features. Yep.
Right now, it's really just a test build for a test bed for all those features that we just discussed and tried to introduce some of them into production vehicles rather than one vehicle with all of it together. I think they could make a production car out of it. It would be a very luxury vehicle, but I think there's something to do with it. Yeah, and they're certainly learning things for their other cars, certainly in aerodynamics alone.
Roller 20, I think GM will be making money off the data harvesting that happens with Android Automotive. That's an interesting thing. I know GM is trying to kind of squeeze some more money out of its services business. I don't like that they push their OnStar on you pretty hard, which, you know, you don't really need. But if they could get some services that were beneficial, that would be interesting. I don't know, you know, like...
Are they going to sell your data to Google for advertising purposes for Android Auto Mode? That would be unfortunate, I think. All right. Regarding the Model S 69K price, probably after Gen 3 is out and battery prices continue to fall. Maybe, I guess. Yeah, that would require a new Model S production line altogether. So we need to be ready to do that, which I don't think we are right now.
All right. And finally, Greg kind of clarifying his Model Y price went up after he purchased it and now came back down to the same price that he purchased that. You've been on order for a while then. Yeah. All right. Well, that's it for us this week, everyone. I appreciate every single one of you listening right now. Thanks for watching.
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