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Welcome back, everyone, to a new episode of the Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host. And as usual, I'm joined by Seth Wintraub. How are you going, Seth? I'm good.
All right. Let's jump right in. We have plenty of stuff to talk about this week. Big news. It's not news. It's not new information. It's the build milestone that is worth talking about. It's the official opening of the Supercharger Network to the first –
non-Tesla EV automaker. And obviously a lot of them will follow suit very shortly. But the first one is Ford. Rightly so, because Ford did get the ball rolling, if you remember last year when they announced that they're going to adapt NACS as the official charge connector for all the electric vehicle in North America starting in 2025. We're not 2025 just yet, but
They did plan for an adapter to be available before that so that all the 4DV owners would have access to the supercharger network, even though their vehicle don't have the right connector for it. And that's what happened this week is the launch of the NAX connector, CCS2 NAX.
And Tesla is onboarding, it looks like, automakers one at a time, starting with Ford. Ford is making it free. You can go straight on the website. We have our own Chance Miller from, you might know him better from 9to5Mac, but he works with us every now and again. And he's a Mackey owner. And Ford sent him one of the adapters.
which has a retail price of $230, but you can go, if you're a Mackey owner or a Ford F-150 owner, you can go to Ford's website and enter your VIN. It says eligible owners, but I don't see like, what are the criteria for eligibility? I'm pretty sure everyone can get one, right?
Yeah, I don't know if you're a Ford pro, you can get one, but I think because they're doing fleets differently. But I'm pretty sure that most Ford owners can get them. And like, why wouldn't you? I mean, it's free. Yeah. Like, they kind of should just send one out to everybody, I think.
It was weird the way they announced it. They said everyone eligible, but it does sound like everyone. Like you said, maybe the pros, that's a good point. But other than that, I think everyone can get one.
And, yeah, that's really cool from Ford because that's, I mean, it's a small gesture, about $200, the cost of this thing. But it has such a big impact. Not for everyone. Obviously, some people don't even charge DC fast charging. They don't do long distance driving and all that. But for those who do,
the supercharger network is just far beyond anything else in North America, at least. In other parts of the world, there is more competitive network, but I would still probably argue that Tesla is the best, but in Europe, things are better than the other options that we have here in North America. Though it's also getting better, but...
Uh, not anywhere near the pace of this is going. So what we learned in the details era of this, uh, opening of the charging network for 4db owners is that it's not all supercharger. First of all, the adapter only works with V3, uh, station. So you can forget about V, uh, sorry, V3 and up. I should say, I'm sure V4 works obviously. Um,
But so not V2, not V1. V1, there's only a very few stations that are V1. Most of them are V2 and V3. And nowadays, there are way more V3 and V4 than there are V2. So that's good news. It's still over 15,000 superchargers, stalls.
And it's not all V3 and V4, though. Tesla has reserved a few of them, not eligible for Ford drivers just yet. We assume that those are related to traffic. So those that are already barely able or not able to support Tesla's vehicles, it doesn't make any sense to onboard another automaker in them. But
Knowing Tesla, knowing how quickly the supercharger network grows, we assume that Tesla is going to build the capacity at those stations. Sometimes Tesla had stalls to existing station or builds another station like right next to an existing one. That's also pretty common now to address that issue. And those stations will likely be open to 40 of the owners.
Now, it's not all smooth, to be honest. So in the app, Tesla actually shows out. The app experience is pretty smooth. Actually, you don't even need the Tesla app. That's what Chance explained. Plug and charge works with Tesla vehicle on the Ford app. So all you need is the Blue Oval app, they call it.
And Ford mixes the supercharger network into its existing charging station that I plug in charge to that support that. So now basically it just has more option for the navigation for navigation system to route to your destination with different charging station, including Tesla vehicles. And when you arrive at a Tesla charging station, you plug in, you charge just like the normal Tesla experience.
Now, if you don't have a Blue Oval or Plug-in Charge, you can go through the Tesla app with a Tesla account too, and that will work. But most likely than not, you're going to be set up with the Blue Oval app anyway. If you're already using your car for long distance travel, you're probably already familiar with it. Now, the problem, the main one is, and you can see it here in this video. I don't know where the shot is exactly.
but so here we have the adapter on the the charge connector on the supercharger here but this is using the F-150 Lightning which is driver's side front of the vehicle and what does that do is that you need to park forward to get to the supercharger stall and when you do that
you're going to have to be on the wrong side of the parking spot for the stall. So you're going to block the next stall next to it, the one that you're using. And that's both the case for the Mach-E, I think, and the F-150 Lightning. Yeah, a lot of vehicles, actually.
Yeah, both of Ford's current EVs have the port there. So actually in the Tesla app, they tell you to straddle the line on the parking spot so you're not completely blocking the next one. I've not seen that in real life, see how it looks like. I've seen it on the app and it's...
looks possible that you can still use the second station. Probably not with the Lightning, though. The Lightning, I would doubt that. I don't know if we have a good look here at it. I mean, I don't understand why you would do that. That's certainly taking up two spots. If you park in the next lane over, theoretically, another Ford vehicle could park next to you and use the one to the right. So I don't know the logic in that. I guess if you straddle it, you're getting a little bit more slack from the cable.
So maybe it goes a little farther. I remember when one of the other YouTubers was doing their Ford F-150 and they plugged it in, it was like tight, like the cable could barely reach. So I guess by straddling the line, you're getting a little bit more slack there. Yeah.
Not ideal. Obviously not the case with the V4. If you go to a V4 Tesla supercharger, the cables are like three feet longer, I think. So at least two feet longer makes all the difference. But still, Tesla released a new page on their website now.
Tesla.com slash NACS, where they reveal some information about the rollout. They did reveal four next automakers that will come after Ford. Rivian, GM, Volvo, and Polestar are going to be the four next automakers to be onboarded into the Tesla supercharger network. And are they doing it in the order that they signed, basically? Is it like whoever signed up first? So GM was the second one. And GM...
Earlier this year, Tesla did say that GM would arrive in February. So that obviously we're March 1st. So that's not the case. But yeah, it pretty much is. If you follow, it looks close to that. Rivian was also pretty early in adopting it. And Rivian did also... I would assume that since all the news came out about Ford and the supercharger network this week, all the other automakers are being bombarded by their EV owners about...
hey, when can we get access to the supercharged network? So Rivian was quick this week to like, hey, we're working on it. It looks like it's going to be in March. So Rivian is going to be one of the first. GM also I would expect soon. And then Volvo and Polestar too. That's interesting. And on that specific page, Tesla does say that they encourage other automakers now to all standardize their charge port location. And they do suggest obviously that,
driver's side in the back or passenger's side in the front. So we'll see if people actually go through with that. Fernando, our YouTuber who was there at the New Jersey event, was noting that
Um, it's mostly a psychological advantage, like just having that $200 product in your hand as an EV owner means that you can charge all over the place. And, you know, you wake up every morning with 300 miles, unless you're going on a road trip or doing some crazy, you know, going one side of the state to the other side of the state, you really don't go 300 miles unless you're on a road trip.
But having that thing in your hand, it's like it changes your whole outlook. Oh, in your car? Well, in your car, theoretically. Yeah, you'll leave it in your car somewhere. No, you just always have to have it in your hand. That makes it more real. No, it's a good point. It's a little thing that's going to affect range anxiety. That's going to curb a little bit of range anxiety.
Yeah. And it's one of the main thing we, I went, I've been doing a lot of Uber lately and I get in the car and I always get an electric Uber and every time it's not a Tesla vehicle and I ask them like, how has been your experience or anything? Because a lot of the times these people are like brand new to electric vehicles because now the Uber has a ton of great deals on getting into electric vehicles for Uber drivers. So they are, kudos to Uber, they're introducing a lot of people to electric cars.
And every time I was in a Mackie, especially just a few days ago, and they say the same thing. You say, "Ah, yeah, it's a great car. I love it." But I went to, I was in Montreal, I went to Toronto a few weeks ago and it was a nightmare to get the charging station and everything. And I was seeing all the Tesla vehicle pass me by because they were trying to the supercharger. And yeah, it's a problem. Now, the supercharger network by itself, having access to it is not an all be all solution.
Ford has some progress to do on their own charging capability because these vehicles are also limited in terms of their charge rate, 150, I think, 170 kilowatt is the top charge rate. It used to be nice to have 150. Now it's kind of like, eh, it's bottom end, low end. Yeah. So they need to up that up and everything, but it's great progress. Now on the Tesla side of things, I posted an article yesterday about this. I thought that was interesting because
I would argue that it's kind of an altruistic move from Tesla because I still think that there is more value of Tesla using the supercharger network as a moat than opening up as a business. But it's still a great business, and that's what we're going to get into right now, is that Tesla is charging more these Ford EV owners and eventually other non-Tesla EV to use a supercharger network.
They do that for the reason that I just mentioned. For example, they do take more time per session than Tesla owners, so they do take up more of the capacity of the network.
Even though at the end of the day, you pay for the electricity you get. But we know that in the charging business, it's not as simple as that. It's not like I pay this for a kilowatt hour. I deliver you a kilowatt hour. I put like a 10, 20, 15% margin or whatever. It doesn't just work like that because you have like those peak charges. It's like when you have more EVs charging at the same time, then the electric utility will jack up your price like crazy. So it's not as simple as that.
So test out what it's doing right now. I looked up a bunch of different, because now you can go in the Find Us page and or actually Find Us page doesn't always have all the pricing. In the app, you have a little bit more pricing information on your, but that's more of your local stations. Anyway.
You can see the price now of both the Tesla, what the Tesla owner is getting charged and what non-Tesla EV is getting charged at a charging station. Looking at them, it varies quite widely. I've seen like some 25% to 35% premium on the kilowatt hour pricing across the board.
Just for example, like just here, the one in Beartseville, that's not too far from me. It was like 44 cents per kilowatt hour for Tesla vehicle, which is crazy because we paid nine cents per kilowatt hour. And that's Canadian. Yeah, Canadian too. And it was 54 cents for non-Tesla EV, which is the 10 cent difference, about 22% difference. But other places like 35, 36% difference.
But you can get rid of that if you want with a Tesla membership. So this thing popped up in the Tesla app a few months ago. Well, when Tesla started doing the magic dock things, it was probably a little bit early because I doubt that many people bought that with just the magic dock because there were so few stations, unless there's one station that you go all the time that has it that maybe makes sense. But Tesla is now making available supercharging membership for $13 a month, $13 U.S.,
you get the same price as the Tesla owners. Now, is it a good deal? Is it a bad deal? I think it's a reasonable deal as long as you use the supercharger network like more than once a month because it goes pretty quick. Like $13 one session if your charger is like 30%, 35% more expensive.
One session, you're probably already covering your cost of membership. Two sessions, you're already in the positive. So it really depends on how you use the network. If you think you're going to use a supercharger network more than once a month, really, twice a month or more, you probably are better off with a supercharger membership. So that's good business for Tesla.
Now, maybe not, because obviously there are 2.5 million electric vehicles in the US right now. I didn't actually look up Canada, but let's say 3 million with Canada. That's probably way too much. And most of them are already Tesla vehicles. So Tesla's not going to sell a ton of membership there because...
It's already mostly Tesla owners. But it's growing fast. It's growing fast and it's growing faster. Now Tesla is closer to 50% of the market. So there's a lot more non-Tesla EV coming to market so that the shift is happening. So it's expected that there are over 10 million EVs in North America by 2030. And at that point, with 10 million EVs on the road, I can see Tesla having like a million of them on supercharger membership. Right.
which would be like a $13 million amount of revenue, 150 plus million a year. And that's just from membership. You haven't even delivered a kilowatt hour just yet. The actual charging business is going to be way bigger than that, like an order of magnitude bigger than that. It's going to be a billion-dollar business, easy. Some analysts are even projecting that Tesla supercharger business is going to be worth between $10 and $20 billion a year by the end of the decade. Crazy.
And they're getting some subsidization from the IRA. So they're getting money to build out their big moneymaker. Yeah. Obviously, charging business is super capital intensive. Like it costs a ton of money to deploy a charging station. And then you get back that money over a long period of time if all goes well.
So, yeah, now the IRA, the federal government offers significant subsidies for deploying those stations. It's helping a lot of companies do that. And Tesla wants to be among them. And obviously, one of the requirements is that the charging station work for more than one automakers. And now that it is literally the case. All right. There was a lot of roadster talk this week. Yeah.
It made the news all over the place. It sent the Tesla Twitter
a flame for a few days really uh it's elon basically elon out of the blue but out of the blue it sounds like he had a design meeting about the roadster i said that um i said out of the blue because a lot of times he's prompt by followers to say something and like he answered a question this time it was just like a direct tweet just out there tonight we radically increase the design goals for the new roadster there will never be another car like this if you couldn't even call it a car
So a little bit cryptic, but not really any new information other than increase the design goals. So they changed the design from the original New Roadster unveiling, which dates back to 2017. So really, I would hope so. If that thing is still planned, I would hope so that it's been increased in design goals. Then he adds production design complete and unveiled by the end of the year 2024, aiming to ship next year.
So this is the only new information really that was released is that it's delayed again because the last time we talked about 2024 and now it's 2025, but maybe we get an unveiling by the end of the year.
also they just changed the design goals so they need to redo the design engineering or at least part of it by the end of the year and then production as soon as next year so call me a little bit skeptical and it's not like we've been we haven't been burned before when it comes to the new roadster anyway again 2017 it was unveiled i think at first they said 2019 it was going to come out 2020 maybe 2020. i think it was 2019.
Yeah, I think you might be right. Anyway, one or the other, and it was deleted literally every single year since. All right. Then he added also that it's going to be a collaboration between Tesla and SpaceX, but that's, again, not super new because...
he did after unveiling the first version he quickly said that there would be an optional spacex package that would include 10 cold air thrusters that would act as mini rockets and help the car accelerate create downforce and even possibly jump and hover or fly he said um also aiming for a sub one second zero to 60 miles per hour acceleration that he already said that too that would again be
be capable of that through the cold air thruster, through the mini rockets on this thing. Someone did say, like, they did say, will it fly? And then Elon responded with the two little eyes. Like, I'm not exactly sure what it means that, but, like, again, I think he's hinting that it will fly. Really, I'm trying not to get too excited about it, especially as someone who's won two of them as part of the referral program, set two, obviously.
It's hard to get too excited about it because, again, the only new information, the real new information I see here is that it's delayed another year. Yeah. At least another year. At least, yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're going to theoretically see an updated version at the end of this year. I mean, when, you know, he's saying he's at a design meeting, like that seems like they're not making production vehicles. I mean, unless it's just, you know, slightly modified design.
A design meeting kind of means, you know, we're talking about Roadster 3.0 and, you know, Roadster 2.0 never came out. They could have almost said like, hey, we canceled that Roadster and we have a new Roadster that has different design goals or whatever.
Which makes him a liar when he said last week or two weeks ago that Tesla never unveils a prototype that they don't bring to production. Right. If that car is really radically different from the car that they unveiled in 2017, that makes him a liar on that. Obviously, I'm not going to harp on this too much if they actually do bring the vehicle to production. But yeah, I mean, I'm trying not to get too excited.
Yeah, it would, you know, it's at least we know theoretically we'll see a new prototype at the end of this year, which is two months over. So in 10 months, we'll see another iteration of the Roadster prototype. And he said it's going to be the craziest demonstration you've ever seen. Wow. It's going to blow your mind. He was supposed to show the SpaceX package like in 2020 or something. He responded to one of my tweets about that, actually, but he never did.
The Model Y pricing is back up, unsurprisingly, because it was a temporary discount. It's a new strategy that Tesla announced last month. $1,000 discounts on Model Y, Rear-Wheel Drive and Model Y Long Range. And now they are back up after March 1st today. Now starting back again at $44,000 and $49,000 before the tax credit, which is eligible on both if you are eligible based on your income.
So, yeah, Tesla stayed true on that. Again, there's some theory on that, that Tesla was maybe trying to take advantage of the Super Bowl and the surge in electric vehicle interest after the Super Bowl, even though Tesla doesn't do ads on the Super Bowl. In the past, when other automakers have done, and again, they've done plenty of them this year, it resulted in a surge of interest on Tesla vehicles also. So maybe they were trying to take advantage of that. But...
You still can get pretty heavy discounts on the Model Y inventory vehicles. So you get your $40,000 ones, but $44,000 ones, but you have a 39. I've seen some as low as $39,000 right now in inventory. And inventory, it's still a new car. Not all of them are eligible for the tax credit. They'll look it up first because sometimes it can be like a last year model and the requirements change. It's kind of weird.
all right we have plenty more news to discuss but we're going to move on from tesla right now uh but before we do i want to say a quick thank you for everyone that's listening right now and if you're listening if you are enjoying the show if you can give us a like a subscribe or thumbs up whatever it is on your on your app you're watching because we're live everywhere basically multi-platforming and all that so if you do enjoy the show that helps a ton if you're listening on the audio only version of the podcast then if you can give us a five star review
Obviously, only if you enjoyed the show. That also helps a ton. It's free to do. It takes a second. It helps the show tremendously, and we appreciate when you do it. Also, in maybe 15, 20 minutes, when we're done with the news, we're going to jump into your comment section. So if you guys have any questions for us about any topics that we are discussing today or any other topics in the EV world that you want our take on, you can put them in the comment section right now, and we're going to get to it in just a few minutes.
But first, let's take a quick look at the updated VW ID.4. So we had our own Jamie Dow take a nice little drive in it in California last week, I think.
And he gave us our impression, and he was satisfied with the update. So the update is only for the bigger battery pack version of the vehicle, the 82-kilowatt-hour one. The base battery with the 62-kilowatt-hour pack is still the same, other than actually a little price increase, $1,500 more to get the 2024 model year. But the 82-kilowatt-hour version gets a nice little motor upgrade. So the...
Rear wheel drive motor is now more powerful, 282 horsepower. If you combine that with the all-wheel drive version, so the dual motor one, it's 235 now horsepower. And big difference. So that was one of the things that people were a bit...
not too hyped about the ID.4 is like for an EV, like if you know EVs, like you know they're peppy, like they're fun to drive, like the acceleration is very reactive. And the ID.4 was like the exception to that rule. Like it's not the most fun to drive in term of acceleration,
but this new update does help with that a ton so the river drive goes from a 7.7 second 0 to 60 to a 5.9 so decent upgrade and 5.7 to 4.9 with the all-wheel drive so the yellow drive is going to be a lot more fun to drive i think um
That bigger, more powerful motor also comes with more efficiency. So that's a good combination, more power and more efficiency. Because you have the same 82 kilowatt-hour battery pack, but it goes from 275 miles of range to 291 for the rear-wheel drive, to 55 to 263 for the all-wheel drive version, which is a little bit less efficient.
Jamie was still not happy about the originates of breaking. It's a little soft week for him. So sorry, Seth. It's soft. Yeah. I think just VW like tunes their EV stuff to be, you know, not incredible acceleration, not incredible regeneration.
I think they're trying to make a gas car kind of experience. - Yeah, they want people to be familiar with that feel, which is a bad feel. Just make the better product. - Yeah, it gets old quick. - Yeah.
uh there's a few updates the user interface has been really updated apparently um you can still use the apple carplay and all that so if you prefer that stuff you can still stick to it but volkswagen has made a real effort to improve its own user interface the screen is a little bit bigger too i think yeah it gained an inch so you know a little bit happy on that front and um
Now it has a chat GPT-based AI assistant, if you do care about that stuff. Jamie was pleasantly surprised by it. He thought it was good enough to be mentioned. But you can check out his article for some of the tests he did with it. Apparently, it's useful enough that it deserves a mention. Yeah.
So my big takeaway on Jamie's takeaway is that this is the VW ID4 that Volkswagen should have released originally. Like, yeah, it's peppy. It's got the nice upgrades, all the things that, you know, you were kind of wishy washy, like VW, whatever. Now, now that this is actually a faster car, it's more efficient. Like, that's kind of crazy that they picked a motor that was slower and less efficient somehow previously. And now they have much better on both accounts. So.
And the pricing is still really good. Yeah, it's not bad. The all-wheel drive version, I think, sorry, the 82 kilowatt hour version starts at $44,000, I think. $45,000, something like that. I've seen the pricing somewhere in there. Yeah, basically $45,000 if you want the new 2024 with the 82 kilowatt battery pack.
And that's before the tax credit because Volkswagen is one of the only foreign automakers getting the tax credit since they are building those in Tennessee. All right, Polestar is not dead yet. So there was a lot of talk recently about Polestar probably, not probably, but potentially being in danger because Volvo is divesting from it. But Geely said no.
They're doubling down on it and they are injecting a billion dollars into the company right now. So this nice investment is boosting the company nicely just as they need to because they are ramping up right now with the Polestar 3. So the Polestar 3, we also have a quick news on that. So the production has kicked off in China but we know that what's exciting about this is that it's actually coming to the US too, the production. Well, I
It's a big company. So the Chinese-made Polestar 3 are going to come also to the U.S., but then in mid-year, Polestar is going to switch production to the South Carolina, to the facility in South Carolina. So they're going to be U.S.-built ones.
I don't know exactly how they are making the pricing work on that, 'cause obviously they wanna take advantage of the tax credit too, and that's only gonna happen in California. But who's gonna buy those car in the meantime? - I think Polestar is giving like a $7,500. - Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. - Whatever. - They kinda have to. - It's so weird though, like going back to the Volvo thing, we always talked about how Volvo and Polestar seemed like they were actually the same company. I mean, they operate out of the same headquarters in New Jersey.
They build their stuff at the same factories. Their dealers are kind of connected. Like they're just so like intertwined. And now it seems like Volvo is like ejecting from that situation, but they still have, as far as I know, the same, you know, headquarters, they still have like this, you know, the Polestar three is basically the same thing as the Volvo EX 90 and it's built at the same place. And, you know, like,
everything's still the same under the hood but you know outwardly these two companies could like not get further away from each other like they seem like they weird yeah they they it's it is a very weird situation and you know I think Volvo if they had it to do over again may not have kind of you know wanted to IPO and they did a weird SPAC thing and all the other stuff so kind of weird but you know what
I like the Polestar 3 more than I like the EX90, visually at least. I got to disagree with you there. I love the Volvo. Yeah. I like the Polestar design language as a whole, I think. I like the Polestar 2. I think 2 looks good. Yeah, it does. I mean, the Volvo's good. I think what I like about the Volvo, it looks kind of like a Volvo, which I've always liked their style, but I also like that third row. Yeah, the third row was a big deal. Yeah.
All right. Moving on from another EV startup that has had trouble, though we don't have the solution just yet, like the billion-dollar injection that he's giving them. Although I think we found out recently that –
Who was it? Nissan was thinking about it? Yeah, Nissan. I didn't put it in the podcast post because I literally just posted the article before going live, but we're going to talk about it. So Fisker last night posted their Q4 2023, full year 2023 financial results. And it's not a great look. They are losing. They are measuring cash like crazy.
And it's not like a Rivian or even a Lucid situation, but probably closer to Lucid, but Lucid as the Saudi sugar daddy, as Elon would say. Fisker doesn't have that yet. And Fisker is just the...
they don't have a great financial structure right now and that's what i've been saying for a while i've been telling people not to invest in fisker just because they've been too desperate too early in their process uh in the they are sitting on like 1.2 billion dollars convertible notes right now and
as those get converted, like they are not going to pay that back because as we just learned today with these results. So they add $200 million in revenue in Q3, in Q4, excuse me, which is great, over $230 billion in 2023. But they lost about $400 million last year. And now they sit on $395 million in cash.
So if you do the math real quick, they have less than a year before they ran out of money. Now, they did announce that they were slashing 15% of their staff. So they're trying to get some of their costs under control. But it's not going to help them much because they're still losing money on their cars. They still have a minus 35% gross margin right now. So...
They are announcing that they are delivering more cars. They are planning in 2024 to deliver between 20,000 and 24,000 vehicles. So that's great. That's going to be a billion dollars in revenues for a company that right now is valued at $295 million. So you do a quick math, you're like, this is probably a great investment. But again, the company is sitting on $1.2 billion in convertible notes at a $300 million valuation.
So, and those are not on your recoverable notes is they have like different terms depending on the note and whatnot. But for the most part, what happened is like when the note is due, you either pay the principal plus the interest or you give the equivalent in shares with a discount on the share normally.
And right now, if you have 1.2, like right now, there's no way that they're paying it back because again, they're just losing money like crazy. They don't have any room to spare for, for convertible notes. You have a $300 million valuation company that has to distribute $1.2 billion in convertible notes.
You're diluting that by a factor of four. So it's horrific situation, horrific financial structure right now. And what does that do as a structure is like now going back to the market to raise more money is just not an option for them. There's no one that's going to want to get equity in that company knowing that those convertible notes are coming.
And that's a situation that Rivian doesn't have, for example, because first of all, they don't even need to go back to market. They're still sitting on like $7 billion cash. But also even if they would need to go back to market, they probably would be not the greatest option.
terms for them, but there would still be something available for them. It's not there for Fisker right now. So the only silver lining is that in that release, they said that they are currently in negotiation with a large automaker regarding a potential transaction that include investment in a company in a joint development or one or more EV platforms. So that's from Fisker directly saying that.
Then what we just learned an hour ago from a Reuters article,
is that Nissan is apparently that company, that large automaker they're talking to. Neither Nissan or Fisker commented on that report, to be fair, but it mentioned a potential $400 million investment in Fisker and Nissan building the Alaska pickup truck that was unveiled last year at one of their U.S. plants and at the same time using that Alaska pickup truck platform for Nissan to produce their own electric pickup truck.
which makes sense. Totally. Sorry? It totally makes sense. I think it's a good deal. I think Fisker's shares are up. Nissan shares are up.
I mean, it's a good deal. I just don't know how it's going to work financially, though. I think the only way it works financially, it's a takeover. That's what I posted this morning when I saw the Fisker's result. I was like, I think the only outcome here is a takeover because, I mean, the company is valued at $300 million right now. They were talking about a $400 million investment. How does that work? Yeah. I think. You basically just bought the company.
Yeah, yes and no. It's like it's not that simple because, again, there's $1.2 billion in convertible notes coming to those note holders. Now, Fisker said that they are in discussion with those note holders. I don't know what that means exactly. So I would assume that Nissan has the pockets to do that. They could technically pay back those loans automatically.
for Fisker and then just take over the company. But yeah, it would be a takeover. So I don't know how that looks like because I don't know on the Nissan side, what are they gaining here exactly? Because they don't need a contract to... They're not Magna. They're not going to just build the...
Alaska for fun. They're doing it now because it would be part of this joint development platform and everything. And that, I think, Fisker could be useful for Nissan there because Nissan is a little bit behind on that. They could use it to pick up truck in the North American market. But
Is it really worth keeping the Fisker brand alive? Is it worth keeping the Alaska program alive? Or is it worth just absorbing the whole company and delivering with the Nissan brand, which is obviously way more powerful than the Fisker brand?
So I don't know. I don't know how it looks like. I'm not even sure it's going to go through. The Rotors report did say that it might happen as soon as this month, though. And I think they would need to. Fisker cannot wait six months and have less than $100 million in their pockets at this point. They're already in a weak position. They cannot get a lot weaker or it's game over for them. Yeah.
Yeah, it's going to be a very interesting situation to follow. It might be like one of the first like big EV startup to actually completely fall. Obviously, there was others that fell before, but they were like, they never had a multi-billion dollar valuation like Fisker had not too long ago. All right, we have one more piece of news and it's another matchup in the EV world. Volkswagen and Xpeng matching up together. That's kind of interesting.
So for those that don't remember, Xpeng is a Chinese-based company, a company that actually the founder admitted that he started after the fact that Elon opened up all the patents at Tesla. And he said that inspired him to actually build an EV automaker in China. And obviously, there's been a lot of problems between Xpeng and Tesla since, primarily because of the autopilot problem.
So Tesla accused Xpeng or at least accused former employees of Tesla that joined Xpeng of stealing the source code of Autopilot. And we reported before like Xpeng didn't hide the fact that they were copying Tesla for a while. I mean, they literally copied the whole website at one point. They copied the Autopilot UI. They copied like a lot of things that they copied. But
They are producing some cool things in China at the same time. Now they've distanced a little bit themselves from Tesla. They stopped copying too much. And they are a real player in the Chinese EV market, which is huge. And now Volkswagen is apparently partnering with them for two midsize BEVs coming in 2026. Again, coming to China. The first one is going to be an SUV. So I'm interested to see what that's going to look like.
I have to say, I don't understand why auto companies feel like they need to pair up. I mean, we, we talked about a few of them, but there's so many pair ups and I just like adding that, like a car is already a very complex vehicle to, or a complex product to make. And you add another whole, like, you know, assembly line group of people, like management, like all the other stuff. Like it seems like the best cars come out of very small groups and very like focused and,
And this like tendency to, you know, create the alliance like the Mitsubishi Nissan Renault alliance like that just never came out with any. I don't know. It just seems like the wrong strategy.
Don't know why they do it. Well, in China, I think it's a bit different because they do have to partner with local manufacturers. So that makes a big difference. Tesla is, I think, to this day, the only one that managed to bypass that whole process with a deal with the...
free trade zone. To be honest, I'm not following the Chinese market too closely, so maybe some others have managed to do it too. But for the most part, until Tesla, everyone had to partner with an existing automaker.
But I wouldn't be surprised if it's more than that too from Volkswagen because they had issues, not just Volkswagens, like other German automakers, other global automakers too. They had issues just penetrating the Chinese EV market or auto market in general. So Xpeng has had some success in that. They know the market very well. So maybe it makes sense on that front. But in terms of actual development and everything, I agree with you that...
I don't see that much value in that. Same with the Nissan and the Fisker thing. I think Nissan should have its own pickup truck by now anyway, electric pickup truck, but that's just my two cents on it. All right, let's jump into the comment section and see what the rest have to say. We got some nice comments here. Best EV show of the week. And another one from Twitter said, one of my favorite podcasts. So thank you, guys. Make sure you tell your friends. All right, guys.
So we were talking about the chargers. I'd rather be surfing 777 says that's why they limit sharing to V4 chargers, which have longer cables. Well, they also do V3 cables. There's another comment a little further down that I really like. Let me see if I can find it. It was about putting a cable, an extension cable on the adapter.
Oh, that's not a bad idea. Yeah, I don't know why they didn't come up with that. Yeah, it's Pixel Electric. Yeah, I got it. Okay. Ford or third-party design and NACS extension cable a few feet to address parking spaces issue for EVs having their charging port on the front left. Yeah. Yeah? Yeah, I mean, like a five-foot cable would go a long way. Yeah. Obviously, it's another failure point, potential failure point. Yeah.
A lot of power is going through that. So it would need to be something official, I think. I don't think they would trust. Tesla and Ford both in their notes regarding this, they both recommend not to use third-party adapters because there are already third-party adapters that exist before the official launch this week. And they say not to use that. It's too risky, they say. Yep. All right. Let's move on.
Have you guys driven a VinFast VF8? Well, that's a great question. VF9 yet? Designed by Pinafarina? I didn't know that was the case. The software is still buggy, but the hardware is legit. So talk to us about the VinFast VF8.
Well, I haven't driven one just yet, but I think I'm going to very soon. I don't know when because actually I'm leaving next week for Europe, but my parents just got one. OSET's Chrome browser just crashed again. I think we had some issues with that last week. But yeah, my parents, against my own advice, bought a VinFast VF8 and
And they got it. They took delivery this week, actually. So I haven't talked to them about it just yet. I'm really curious what's their first impression. So I'm at least going to have the first impression next week. I don't know if I'm going to have the chance to drive it, but I should probably do a full review of it anyway. So in the coming weeks, we're going to have a lot more content on the VinFast and we're going to...
unveil this mysterious Vietnamese company that came out of nowhere and is delivering cars. I think just in Quebec, there's a few hundreds of them already and thousands of them in Canada and the US. So it's coming. Yeah, you got to give it to them. I mean, sorry, I jumped off there. There's a problem with Chrome and this version of the streaming software. So it crashes like once per episode. But VinFast actually made it to like...
like deliveries, which that's pretty hard. And not a lot of companies do that. So props for that. Um, let's go back to Pix Electric. I'm sure future EVs assessing Tesla's network would consider designing their ports on the left or front, right? Um, in fact, I think, uh, Rivians, uh, we saw a picture, we talked about it last week, um, of the, uh,
Well, theoretically, it's going to be called the R2S. Has the charger on the passenger rear. Actually, that won't be beneficial, will it? No. Yeah, but it's actually on the corner, so maybe it's beneficial. I don't know. Anyway, so whoops. I guess they did it the wrong area. But they did move it from the front left.
which was also not helpful. But at the same time, the R2 is going to be unveiled next week, but it's not coming until 2026, 2025? Right. I mean, I guess theoretically, between now and then, they could change the spot or whatever. A lot of options there. All right. Pixel, Tesla themselves made such a thing to charge the Semi. Obviously not for sale, unfortunately.
What is... Oh, he's talking about the extension cable. Oh, that's right. That's a good point. That's true. Yeah, so it definitely is possible. It's just...
I guess it could have like one that's, we've seen some charging station operator, like having a box locked in that you can unlock and you have the adapters in there. So maybe you can have extension cable in there. Yeah. It's possible. I mean, the longer the cable, like the bigger you have to make it because there's more resistance. That's why like the Electrify America cables are like, you know, huge fire hoses. Beefy. Yeah. So it's not as easy as you think.
All right. Question. Did VW say anything about the ID buzz getting the upgraded equipment that the ID for unveiled had and also when the US sales will commence? VW said later this year on the when they're commencing and they haven't mentioned the improved motors. And that's actually problematic because I think, you know, the VW bus as it.
It has always been is incredibly underpowered. So this will be the same thing, I guess.
When I drove it, though, it's less of a downer than in the ID.4, for example. Because the ID.4, it's a smaller SUV. You would expect it more to have some pippiness than you do in the minibus. It's a minibus, so you don't expect to just smoke someone at a red light or something. Yeah, actually, you don't want to really be going that fast in that thing.
All right, Mr. Turkey Neck has a great question. Any idea if why the refreshed Model 3 does not have the 48-volt system that the Cybertruck has? It doesn't.
probably because it would have been a bigger upgrade. Exactly. It's just too big of an upgrade. There's so much Model 3 manufacturing capacity right now around the world, Fremont and Shanghai, that it probably was too much of an upgrade for them to do it. It's probably only going to happen once you have a new production line from A to Z completely being deployed.
All right. RGACT56 says Rivian got a horrible review in the recent Consumer Reports auto issue. Any comment? I mean, we did go back and forth. Rivian had a really bad review from, you know, what we called boomer reviewers. But then it came back as like the customer satisfaction was the highest on there. So I don't know which review of, you know, in Consumer Reports you're going to believe. I'll have to check which one. I don't know if you saw that, Fred.
Yeah, but Consumer Report also dings a lot on like if they take a delivery of a car and there's any problem on it and they have to go back to service and everything. They ding it so much on the review process with that, which is you could argue if it's fair or not. Like I don't know. But for a new automaker, you would expect that anyway. Same thing happened with Tesla in early days. So I wouldn't be too scared about that.
All right. Three questions for Rivian. Will the R2 move the charge port location to match Tesla's? We talked about that a little bit. We did see that it wasn't to match Tesla's, but we don't know what it'll end up being. Will Rivian announce support for vehicle-to-grid, vehicle-to-home capability? They've only hinted at it. And will they have a 240-volt outlet? Those are both great questions. I don't want to
release anything that we're not supposed to talk about, but I think we're going to talk to a high-ranking, the highest-ranking Rivian person, and we're going to ask questions like that at the event or after the event. We're hopefully going to have a live watch party like we did with the Cybertruck.
I think... Yeah, yeah, we should have some pretty good coverage of that. Yeah, I think Rivian knows that that's a highly requested item.
Obviously, they play in the same world as the Cybertruck and the Ford F-150 Lightning that has a 240-volt outlet. I would imagine that they are working very diligently on that already. They know that that's what their customers want. And they already have a 120-volt outlet, so it's not rocket science to upgrade that to 240. So I would say yes, it's coming.
And I don't know if it's going to be something that can be upgraded in current Rivians. What do you think? Is it something that they have to do or should do or what? Yeah, I don't think it's going to be ritual feeded either. But yeah, it was a big misstep, especially for the R1T not to have that in the back. It's such a great feature of the F-150 Lightning and the Cybertruck that it makes no sense.
Now the R12, I think, might not be a pickup truck. It might just be like an SUV from what we're seeing so far. So I don't know if it's going to work that way. It's useful too, just not as useful as in a pickup truck probably. I would really like to see a pickup truck. Like I think a Maverick-sized pickup truck electric would be amazing. They've been hiding it pretty good if that's the case. But still, stay tuned, guys, for our coverage of the R12 unveiling. It's March 7th.
Yeah, and I actually, we've been following Rivian's electric bike efforts. They've been kind of hinting at that and hiring people. And after the last round of layoffs, I kind of peeked at all the Rivian bike people and they're still there. So that's a good sign if you're looking forward to Rivian bike. Slivilian says VinFast is a big ass company, cars, trucks, bikes, scooters, city bus. I believe they also make noodles. So they could not be bigger.
No, they are big. Ian Smith says if the chargers are on the passenger side, they can be charged while cars are parked on city streets. Ah, good point. Yeah. No, passenger side. Yeah, passenger side. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, I guess. Yeah. So if you put the charger on the passenger front, you could charge it. You pull in front ways. You could charge at superchargers, right? Is that right?
the correct front uh it's front passenger side yeah so that i mean front passenger side or rear and whatever do what you need to do all right passenger or rear driver but that is a good point uh i hadn't thought of that i i mean i guess you know you only need a cable as wide as the car and that's not crazy for yeah
Street parking. EB1888 says, what do you think about the Indian company doing battery and charging product that includes faster charging with battery cooling through the charging cable? Saw and fully charged. Well, that's not new. We've got a lot of Tesla V3 and V4 charging cables are also liquid cooled. I was thinking the same thing you just said, but they said battery cooling through
Charging cable. What's the – Oh, so it actually cools the battery? Yeah. So there's like liquid cooling from the cable that goes through the battery? Am I understanding this correctly? I would need to check that out because that makes no sense to me whatsoever. It's an Indian company. We'll look that up because I missed that one. Oh, Ibn Ali responded. He says yes.
Yes to what I just said or yes to Seth's original explanation, which was my first thought too. But then I reread your comment and it made the – it would be – I guess it's possible. So you would have like liquid cooling system. That the liquid would go through the – That creates a loop with the car. But the car needs to be –
designed by the same people who designed the charger. Yeah, and the charger would have to be watertight. Yeah. It's already a problem. Alright, we have a... EB says yes. It's what I just described. That's interesting. We have a VinFast driver. Yeah, that's my dad.
there have been 500 vf8 deliveries in quebec so far and we have one very happy customer yeah i had it for like four days people let's wait a bit uh but you said so far so it is so far uh we'll have to look that up soon though all right uh meddy wadi says liquid cooling is just for the cable only
I don't know if he's talking about the same company, though. He just made the same assumption that we did at first. RX race cars have cooling through the cable? I guess it's a thing that happens. Oh, yeah. Well, that makes sense for rally cross. Okay. I mean, it's not a bad idea. It's just I don't like too many failure points in charging because...
Like we still need to see some data about like charging station over time and hopefully the last long periods of times because it's been expensive to deploy the charging infrastructure. Obviously, I think even if the charging stalls, for example, fail, I think it's a lot easier to replace. And if you already have the infrastructure at the utility level deployed to those charging stations. So I think it makes sense right now to invest a ton in EV infrastructure. But I think...
I think the charging industry is going to settle into like the biggest winner are going to be the ones that have the most reliable station that last a long lasting or long lasting. So, yeah,
I don't know how that could play into that exactly. But I'm open to different solutions. It's also at the same time, I don't think we need that much faster charging than we are right now. I think like 250, probably 350 kilowatt for commercial, for consumer charging and not like trucks and things like that. I think that's perfectly acceptable. The one megawatt charging that companies like...
And Nexu, whatever, the guys that were supposed to build the truck, but then they built the battery and now they're building a charger. I forget the name. They talk about like, oh, we need absolutely one megawatt charging. I don't see that as a necessity. Necessity.
All right. But that's us for this week, everyone. I hope you enjoyed the show. We enjoyed doing it. It's our highlight of the week. At the end of the week, we enjoyed that. So if you do enjoy it, please give us a like, a thumbs up. All those things are free to do. It takes a second. It helps the show a ton. We're going to see you same time, same place next week. I'm going to be in Europe, though. We're going to be checking out the...