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And we're live for a new episode of the Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host. And as usual, I'm joined by Seth Wintrom. We have a nice hat today, Seth. Thank you. Is that available in the electric store? Yeah, I believe so. Perfect.
All right. I want to thank SAE International for sponsoring this week's episode of the Electric Podcast. You can join the mobility community in Detroit from April 18th to the 20th for WCX, the largest technical mobility event in North America. You can register right now. We have a link in the show notes, but we're going to have a little bit more to say about SAE and the WCX show later on on the show. But it's going to be a great event and
Thanks to SAE for sponsoring this week's episode of The Electric Podcast. All right, we're going to jump into the news. We have a few Tesla news we want to cover first. A lot of follow-up on what happened in the last few weeks, especially when it comes to supercharger V4, where we have actual concrete information about the new charging technology rather than just the images of the first station coming up.
Then we're going to jump into just a few tiny bits of Tesla news. Then big Volkswagen news this week. I'm going to finish up with great news about Aptera 2 before jumping into your comments and your questions. So if you guys have any questions, the show is live. Nothing is edited. We're live. You can ask us questions about whatever topics in the EV community on renewable energy you want to discuss.
or specific question about any items that we discussed today on the show. Well, let's jump in with Supercharger V4 power output, rated powered output. So the first station officially launched this week in the Netherlands. You see an official picture from Tesla right here. So...
as usual for Tesla, well, not usual for Tesla supercharger, because if you remember when the V3 was launched, they actually had like a rare press release here. It's rare that you see a press release from Tesla, but they had one for that and they explained the whole thing. It was, but V3 was probably between V2 and V3 was probably a bigger jump than between V3 and V4. So now they just said, Hey, here's the first station. And they don't tell us any details on it. Although the fact that it is a longer cable, which we already knew,
And that's a big deal on its own, we already discussed, especially as Tesla moved to opening the stations to other electric vehicles than their own. Then the charge port is not always positioned in the right position. Always having a longer cable can rectify that for the most part, but it's not that much longer either. So I would assume that some EVs might have issues, but we'll see.
Now, the fact that the station was launched resulted in some people actually visiting it and poking around a little bit, including Esther. Oh, my God. Sorry for your last name. Kokelmans? Kokelmans? Sorry if I'm butchering your last name. But they saw the electrical specs on the stall, and it confirms 1,000 volts at 615 amps.
which would result in a max power output of about 600 kilowatts or more than twice the rated output of the previous generation. So a major job, but of course max rated output is not necessarily what you're going to maintain continuously.
And in case of an electric vehicle charging station, most of the time the limitation is on the vehicle side. Nowadays, it didn't used to be like that when 90% of the stations out there were 50 kilowatts.
But these days with a lot of like 300 to 50, 300 plus kilowatt station, for the most part, the limitation is on the vehicle side, especially once you get past 20, 30% state of charge. The max rated output is basically not achievable at that point anyway. But this is a good indication that this is future proofing is charging network. If 600 kilowatts is what it is right now,
It means that you're going to see vehicles gradually be able to accept higher power output, leading to potentially eventually these 600 kilowatts. What do you think, Seth? Well, it's obviously good, but not many vehicles can take advantage of that right now. And I think Tesla is probably limiting it.
as they kind of test higher and higher outputs. Also, I mean, I don't know if this is going to have anything to do with the Cybertruck and the charging output there. I feel like that might be a big deal for the Cybertruck. Yeah, they confirmed that it's going to be a thousand volt, right? Something like that. I feel like they said something very high.
No, he said it was megawatt. It was the announcement with the SMI, yeah. But they said that the Cybertruck is going to have the same capacity, if I'm not mistaken. Oh, that'd be interesting. No, definitely this is like, because right now in Tesla's current lineup, it
Probably won't change anything other than maybe for the new Model S and X. There's been rumors the new Model S and X could take up to 300 kilowatts. So having the station be over 250 would maybe enable that. But we haven't been able to confirm that yet. And like you just said, maybe Tesla is limiting that too right now. Also, what do you make of this coming out in Europe first?
I mean, they need it a lot more because there's already hundreds of stations in Europe that are open to non-Tesla electric vehicles. They need that longer cable solution more than we do. So yeah, that makes sense. Also, speaking of, did they say here where it's manufactured? Yeah, I think they do say it, right? I think I see U.S.,
Because I was thinking, like, where is it coming from? Is it coming from China or is it coming from the U.S.? Manufactured by Tesla and Buffalo. Now, those are U.S.-made. So Tesla has started Supercharger V4 in Buffalo. So, yeah, you would think that it would make more sense to deploy them in the U.S. first. But no, they make it to Europe, like I said, probably because they just need it more. Go on the cable. Yeah. Yeah.
I wonder if these will be able to charge, like the Hummer EV goes at 350 kilowatts and more. I wonder if these will be able to charge those at very high rates. Yeah. So obviously now these stations are also like CCS directly on the connector because that's CCS type 2 or CCS 2, I should say, that type 2. That type 2 is another connector. Yeah.
Any vehicle equipped with CCS would be able to connect to it in the US. Because Hummer is not available in Europe, is it? GM doesn't even sell in Europe anymore. I don't think it would even be legal in Europe. Or very popular either. Can you imagine you're an American moving to Europe and you decide to move in with your Hummer EV just to make sure people know that you're American?
yeah yeah but so yeah in the in the us you would have the main the magic dock instead to to support that so i don't know if the magic duck is um like rated for the same amount of power that uh the 600 kilowatts that this is able to put out so that that there's like different bottlenecks when you're charging a chick vehicle there's a bottleneck at the vehicle itself upon like the connector the protocol and then the actual power station powering the
the stack. So there's a lot of failure points here. All right. Speaking of all, we're going to start charging for a bit because Tesla has an update to its mobile app and a lot of it has to do with charging. And the update is 4.19 came out yesterday. And so the biggest one here in terms of the user side of things right now, because there's a bigger update, but it's not on the consumer facing side just yet.
It's a little bit more granular information about your battery capacity and the status of your battery, especially in cold weather. Winter is over. It's a great timing, but...
When you get into your car and it's been sitting outside in the cold for a while, you get less energy capacity in your battery pack because of that. And Tesla would actually show it to you that there's less capacity, but not in a precise way. Now, apparently, Tesla says that it will display the portion of the battery that is unavailable due to the battery pack's cold temperature directly in the charging slider. So this is the example here. So the blue thing here is the actual affected capacity, not just letting you know that you have less capacity.
So that's interesting. And obviously, part of that is because your battery is actually eating up to get to the optimal performance to get there. So the battery pack is using its own capacity to balance its own temperature in order to perform best. So you need that.
Also, you have these ticks here. They're displayed for 10% interval. You used to have them if you were moving the slider. So if you were actually changing them. But now you see them without that, which is actually a good UI change, in my opinion, because you
unless you would actually look at the percentage, you didn't actually know where you set it up. You should keep track of that. Obviously, when you move it, you know, like I moved it for because I want to start at 80. I keep mine between 80 and 90 unless I know I'm going on the road on a long distance road trip. So it's optimal for your long term longevity of your batch pack.
Do you have trouble on the car or on the app moving the slider? I'm always like, maybe it's because my hands are cold or whatever. Yeah, sometimes I'm fat fingering it a little bit. It's really hard for me. Yeah, I had some issues. I haven't tried with this new update. Maybe this new update makes it a little bit easier.
Not on the car as much, but I don't move it too much on the car. The only time I do move it on the car is when you get to a supercharger station and it forces you to be at 80 and you have to manually put it back to 100. That's the only time I touch it in the car, basically. All right.
Also new charging membership that are coming. So we knew that it was coming primarily for non-Tesla vehicle charger, but Tesla writes in the release note, in addition to manage payment and history, there is now a new membership option to manage your membership for charging non-Teslas. In this menu, you'll be able to sign up, cancel or renew your charging membership. Charging membership, you lower your price per kilowatt or kilowatt hour, that should be, at superchargers for non-Tesla, although there's a five session limit per day.
so yeah so Tesla is trying to eliminate like commercial use like taxis and all that but these membership do lower your so if you're gonna be using the supercharger often as a non-Tesla user and you want to get charge prices that are closer to test which Tesla charge Tesla users you can get that and finally the last one probably the biggest one is this drive on sunshine feature that allows you to
I lost test owners that have home solar power system to charge their vehicle with excess power. So this is something that we've seen Tesla work on lately a lot, which is what we call controllable load.
So there's been a lot of talk about bi-directional charging and how Tesla is not very hyped on that. And one of the reasons why they're not so hyped on it is they think that there's way more value in controlling the load, which we call controllable load. So one big example of that is we reported last month or earlier this month is that Tesla is going to launch unlimited charging overnight for $30 a month under their Tesla electric plan. So that's simply crazy.
moving a load, in this case, a load of electric vehicle charging on the grid from the day to at night when you have excess power. But you can also have excess solar power during the day because obviously there's none at night and
No solar power, I mean. But during the day, especially in the middle of the day, when you're not actually using a lot of electricity at home, it might make sense at peak power to divert that a little bit instead of either sending it to the grid or sending it to your power wall or whatever you use your excess power with. It could make sense financially to send it to your car instead if your car can take it.
So Tesla is building... Sorry, I'm losing my voice. Tesla is building a feature specifically for that where you can plug in your vehicle add-ons during the day to charge using the excess energy generated by your solar system. So you're going to be able to match with more than one solar system. So it might actually work for like if you have solar power at work and Tesla can actually monitor that for some reason. It sounds like it would work primarily with Powerwall though because you need some kind of brain of your solar system that Tesla has access to.
And yeah, that's it. When that power comes in, instead of going back to the grid or going to a Powerwall or any kind of home batch pack, it goes to your car and you can drive on sunshine, hence the name. So why would you need this versus doing net metering? Is that for people who don't have net metering, do you think? Or do you think it's for...
Yeah, it would be either that or whatever you get paid for your electricity. There's some net metering that are not that advantageous money-wise. So if you can use it rather than send it back,
i know like here in quebec like they don't they we have electricity so cheap that they're not they're not like uh tripping over themselves to buy back your electricity which is why we don't have any solar power here so it makes more sense to like you want to use every bit of energy that you produce yourself so in those situations it would make sense to uh to do that
but yeah i get i get your point it's like if you're in california and a lot of those markets where they pay you like 30 40 a lot sometimes like decent amount it's just basically it runs your meter backwards so like you're going to use the electricity one way or the other it's nice to be appreciated that was weird uh it just runs your uh
your uh meter backwards so you know you're getting credit it's not it's not about like money in money out it's just you know you get charged less at the end of the month so unless unless you're completely powered by by your own like you're completely but not off grid but you you never you're always in excess basically like we i thought i did a report on that actually last week and this tesla owner in hawaii um as a solar roof and uh and power walls
and a giant tesla solar with 50 kilowatts of power you can imagine the house on this guy um 50 kilowatts is just insane so obviously they don't they produce more than the um than they consume and they get paid back 350 dollars a month from the electric utility
So they actually, they are the electric utility. Yeah, I was going to say, it's almost like a, you know, like a solar farm. Yeah, yeah. Actually, they do that through Powerwall too because they have like, I think, eight Powerwall or something like that. Crazy. On this installation. And yeah, that's with Swell. Swell has a huge, well, I say huge, it's getting huge virtual power plant operating in Hawaii, the big island. Okay. Okay.
Gigafactory Berlin news. We get some Berlin news here. Tesla is applying to expand the production capacity to be authorized, I should say, because they're not quite there yet. Right now, they're authorized for 500,000 vehicles per year.
And they are slowly but surely getting there. Last we heard, they were at 4,000 a week, but they could be getting close to 5,000 any day now. So they're already looking at expanding the capacity because it's probably safe to do it sooner rather than later, considering what happened the first time. Tesla has run into a lot of red tapes in Germany. They've been fighting environmental groups that have been trying to slow down their projects for a while now. We reported last week on some...
criminal allegations, like they said, getting to a criminal level now. But I don't know exactly. I'm not obviously familiar with the legal system in Germany. I've never heard of it because they said they were filing criminal charges. I don't know how a group can file a criminal charge in a group in most legal systems that I know of. Only the government can charge up criminal charges. Anyway,
So now they are already applying to get to a million units per year. And in the application, there's some silver lining in terms of how smooth things could get because one of the bigger points that environmental groups have been fighting Tesla over when it comes to Gigafactory Berlin is the water usage. So they have been worried that Tesla would use too much water in the factory because the factory is huge.
And it is not, it's a rural area, so they are afraid that they would consume all the water for all the other residents and companies around. But Tesla is claiming in this new application that they can get to a million units, so they can get authorized a million units with the same water usage that they already approved for, for the half a million units. So this is good news if it's actually accurate.
and would remove one of the big contingency point, the point of contention. Is that saying it right? Yeah, point of contention. Point of contention between Tesla and the environmental groups. A million units, that's basically what Tesla wants all its gigafactories to be at now.
soon enough so that's it that's four million per year with the current factories then yeah had mexico five million yeah maybe shanghai uh could be higher than a million yeah like uh the way it's been going i wouldn't be surprised and they're adding on and stuff fremont uh maybe no though fremont would be a little bit harder to get to uh to a million i think it's at 600 000 right now and um
It's so full. It's just incredibly full. Yeah, and they build Model S and X, which are probably a little bit more complicated. Yeah, lower volume. All right, Model S Plaid.
No official announcement from Tesla just yet, but as official as it, like, as close to be official as it gets because it's coming from Sebastian Vittel. Not Vittel. Vittel. So not the F1 driver, but still a race car driver, well-known. I've been used by Tesla officially before for test drives. So we know that he has a connection with Tesla. And in this case, he's been invited in France to...
to test drive a Model S Plaid with the new ceramic brakes upgrade, the $20,000 brake upgrades that we thought was the last piece needed for Tesla to actually deliver on its longtime promise to achieve over 200 miles per hour top speed in the Model S Plaid. It was limited at first at 163 miles per hour, which is 262 kilometers per hour when it first launched in 2021.
Then last year Tesla released a track mode update, purely software, that increased the top speed to 175 miles per hour. Still insane, by the way. We're complaining about not getting to 200 miles per hour, but let's be honest, it's pretty rare you're going to get to 175, maybe if you drive on the Autobahn a lot, but other than that. I know some Tesla owners like to bring their cars to the test track, to the racetrack and whatnot.
But anyway, we did see actually a Model S achieve 200 miles per hour. I've witnessed it myself, not too far from where I live in Trois-Rivières. We rented the airport and the team at NGINX that already are offering things that unlock features in Tesla vehicles that are software locked. Because again, the capacity on the powertrain side of things is there. It's just Tesla is not unlocking it because it thinks that
people will kill themselves if they don't have the brakes to do it. So NGINX upgraded the brakes themselves to bigger brakes. And then with their software, they were able to unlock the speed limiter. And on the tarmac at the airport, they reached 216 miles per hour, 348 kilometers an hour. It was insane. Like you guys need to go check out the video that we posted. It's been seen by millions of people already.
The sound of an electric car flying by you at that kind of speed, it's mind-blowing. Anyway...
That was not official from Tesla, obviously. That was a Tesla owner, NGINX. NGINX thought a little bit of offering it to people because they can just do it. They just need the little modules. You plug it in and that's it. But of course, they wouldn't be responsible for people actually upgrading their brakes before doing it. And it would be a big liability. So they decided not to do it. Did NGINX upgrade their brakes?
Yeah, yeah, they did. I think the mounted pass, one of the Tesla tuners sent them some brakes. And even then, you could feel the car could go higher than that, could probably hit like 230 miles per hour. But they were running out of tarmac to brake. That's crazy. So Guillaume, the owner of NGX, was driving the car, had to stop there. But you can see in the video from the inside, you can see when he started to slow down, it was still going up pretty easy.
Anyway, now Sebastian Vittel on the circuit, the circuit de Brest in France, he did a new record lap with a model that was also software limited, top speed unlocked, and with...
uh there's these new ceramic brakes and he reached a new record of 1 minute 33 seconds for uh which is the new fastest lap for a street legal vehicle because that model s cloud is still street legal uh does not have like semi-slick tires or anything like that just street legal tires with the
brake upgrade and now the removal of the speed limiter. And he did say, though we didn't see it in the video, he did say that he achieved 350 kilometers an hour, 217 miles per hour. So he just beat the record from NGINX by one mile. You think that was accidental? I would doubt that. But...
Then he also claimed there's other videos out there, other people that claim that they actually reached 233 miles per hour, but I haven't seen any proof of that yet. Dovital did say that there's going to be soon some videos coming out of Nuremberg. That's interesting because Porsche owns that record right now. Yeah, so Tesla and Porsche have been trading records on there for electric vehicles, I should say. And
like production electric vehicles, I think is the specific category that they're doing.
Yeah, so I would assume that Tesla has broken the record again and is going to unveil it too. That's what Sebastian seems to be hinting at. So it wasn't exactly forthcoming with that information. But he did release his own video of this new track record at the Circuit de Brest. And of course, Porsche has a tri-motor thing coming. Lusit's got a tri-motor thing. So it'll just be going back and forth for a while. Yep.
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We're going to have a few more news items to discuss right now, but then we're going to jump into your comments and your questions, which I already see a bunch of comments right there. But we're going to have time for a few more. So if you guys have any questions for us, you can put them in the comment section right now, whether you're on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn. No, we don't get the comments from LinkedIn, do we? No. No, okay. So that's it. Facebook and YouTube, we get the comments, but we're also live on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Moving on to Volkswagen. So Volkswagen has been teasing us with this cheaper entry-level electric vehicle that they're planning to launch. If you've been following it, there's been the ID.Life concept that was unveiled that was in IAA last year.
Or was it the year before that? I think it was last year. Yeah, last year? Yeah. So the ID.Life was supposed to be the basis for this cheaper electric vehicle. It still looked pretty cool. It still looked like a little bit retro, really square, but still reminiscent of the ID.3, which is currently the...
entry-level electric vehicle from VW. But this, now, this new concept that was unveiled today, and it's still a concept, it's not a, it looks to be like an iteration of that ID.Live, closer to a production version, and it's not called the ID.2, so being the ID.2,
Is it called the ID2 All? Yeah. Oh, okay. I missed that. Yeah, that's weird. ID2 All. Yeah, that's weird. Don't do that, Volkswagen. Well, they had mentioned last time we talked to Volkswagen, they were like, you know what? We're kind of tired of going to these, you know, ID1, ID2, ID3. We want to inject some more life into these names. So why don't they call it like the ID Golf or just the Golf or, you know, back to the e-Golf or something? Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I think it would make a lot more sense. But at the same time, the...
it's not as easy as that either because uh volkswagen is one of them that uh they also have like the same model in different markets with different names too so they're really complicating the like we have here here a popular suv that they have it's called a tiguan like it's just an horrible name like that and do you have it in the u.s yeah there in english you call it like what what was it called i think it's called
Tiguan. Tiguan, it's such a weird name. All right. But now we have the ID to all, and it's going to be the straight up announced the price that they are aiming to have it at 25,000 euros. They're only talking about euros. So that might mean that it's not aimed at the American, North American market. 25,000 euros is about $27,000 USD. So that's something that we...
we're still keeping a close eye on because obviously the id3 uh launched in europe and never launched in north america so we're concerned that we have but at the same time if they want to hit that price point they need to hit some incredible volume and crumble economies of scales and to achieve that i would assume that they are going to want to have a supply chain that goes far and deep and hopefully that includes the north american market
A nice range, 250 kilometers, that's 279 miles of range. Obviously, that would be WLTP for European market. But still, you can rest assured that even on the EPA, it would be over 200 miles, which is what you want normally to hit, at least for an entry-level vehicle like that. I mean, at $27,000, especially if you still had the 7,500 miles.
federal tax credit that's that's a less than 20 000 vehicle you cannot complain very much about anything uh a bit bland on the side i mean this this picture i'd be concerned a little bit it's not uh it's not a super good looking car in my opinion i know you guys liked it on the mara set you you didn't mind it this is not too bad though this is not too bad on this side view
Yeah, so what really got me was the, like, hey, we're not going to mention that the Chevy Bolt is the same price and the same, you know, better range, and it's available now. I mean, obviously, GM isn't making a ton of money, if not losing money on every Bolt sold. It's not making a lot of them, too. Yeah, it's not, you know, they could. They could try to sell more, but...
It's like, you know, Volkswagen's out here saying, hey, we're going to make this vehicle for $26,000 or $27,000. And it's going to go 200 some miles. And it's a hatchback form factor. And I'm like, well, we've had the Chevy Bolt since like 2017. Pretty much the same idea. You know, first of all, like what the heck is GM doing not selling those in Europe? Because they would go like hotcakes, right?
But also, like, why not, you know, up the ante a little bit? And I guess that's kind of what the next story is. So, you know, even more affordable one. But I don't know. It seems fine. I guess the Equinox will be similarly priced in the U.S. as well. Much bigger car, though. Yeah. We don't have that many specs here. Okay. Drive unit, drive motors.
Over 200 horsepower, 166 kilowatts. For that size, it's perfectly adequate. That's under seven seconds. I would say it's more than adequate. Yeah. Surprisingly high. Zero to 80% in less than 20 minutes. Wow. That's also very good.
Again, not too many details, but enough to get us a little bit excited. And then right after this news came out, this concept on wheeling, there was... Am I okay with that? Then there was this that came out from Volkswagen. Well, Volkswagen and this now, this is auto car. So...
What happens when there's these unveilings like that? Normally, there's some kind of media roundtable and then some journalists try to get a little bit more information out of it. And Autocar managed to get some more information that
logically if you have an ID 2 then you have also an ID 3 and ID 4 and where's the ID 1 and Volkswagen apparently confirmed to AutoCard that there's going to be an ID 1 so an even smaller even cheaper entry-level vehicle from Volkswagen that's going to start at around 17 000 euros that's
just about 20,000 USD. So that's starting to be extremely low price. Even gasoline cars, you don't get a lot of new gasoline cars around that price. Yeah. And if there's still a $7,500 tax credit in the US, that would be interesting to sell a $10,000 car. Obviously, that's unlikely to make it over here. But similarly, there's rebates.
all over the world although you know this car might the id1 idea might be something for more like um brick countries brazil uh india exactly a lot of developing markets that have been left behind when it comes to electrification right so this is an opportunity to bring those market into uh
into the electric world. No timing really on that. Speaking of, I should say timing on the production version of the VW ID2 or 2ALL or whatever it's going to be is in 2026. Not sure if that's model year or is actually the year that's going to come out. So 2025, 2026 is what you should expect.
All right, a few more news items to discuss, and then we are into your comments, into your questions. So be ready for that. But we're going to move on from Volkswagen to Kia. And Kia has been really trickling, slowly releasing bit by bit new information, new images, new specs about the EV9, which is an EV9, excuse me.
EV9, Kia EV9, which is going to be one of the most anticipated full-size SUVs to come to market.
north american market very hungry for four-star suv yeah so electric uh fully electric isn't just not that much options out there there's some smaller suv options but on the bigger side there's not that many so especially something for kia that would be probably not crazy expensive like the model x or the r1s from rivian
It's something that people are very excited about. So what is this? Swivel seat is the one that I think that caught people's attention. But it's basically the new images to start with here. I think it looks great. It's very sleek looking. Like, look at that. We discussed it last week or the week before that. But it is impressive. Like, it's looking a lot closer to the prototype than we thought it was. I don't know about those wheels. What do you think about those wheels? Yeah. Yeah.
Probably an option. But we're going to see a full version of this thing at the New York Auto Show in next month. So it should be interesting. And I think the interior pictures are scrolled down a little bit more. Yeah. And that's where that swivel seat comes in. That's sweet. That's nice. Three rows. People love that.
Oh, okay. Okay. Got the little limousine thing going on in there. Yeah, I don't hate it. You keep the kids back there. Yeah. So this is, I assume, a picture as you turn it around. I don't think that's a position you want to be in once the car is going. You see a flat, completely flat, almost completely flat image.
Once you have both rows down, it's a nice looking car. And it's big. Americans love huge honking vehicles. So I think this will be sold out for quite a while. And I think it's also going to probably take some of...
uh rivians thunder with the r1s we don't have actual pricing on this just yet you know they had mentioned uh when they unveiled it that they were hoping to start it out at fifty thousand dollars i imagine that's gonna be like a two row version with you know rear wheel drive 210 miles of range that kind of thing super neutered
And, you know, the one we're looking at right now is probably going to be 80 or something. Yeah, that's the full jacked up version, no doubt about it.
yeah i'm excited for this one this uh i'm excited for those like that even though like i'm not just a biggest uv guy anything like that i'm excited for things that can move the needle and can yeah because you you have a lot of people right now like yeah yeah i mean you guys convinced me and uh for an electric vehicle but i i have like three four kids and uh like we have like gym bags for when they uh have their football practice or whatever like when we need a full-size suv like all right it's coming they're coming
Yeah, and wasn't Hyundai going to have like a Hyundai Ioniq 7 that's going to be similar to that, I feel like? Yeah, probably. That would make sense. Well, Hyundai and Kia, like, we don't like to talk about it too much there. Right. As close as it gets to be the same company. Right. Not exactly. Not exactly. I don't want to get an email from a PR representative either. We love them both. We love the Koreans. We love the South Koreans. Yeah.
They make great products. All right. Very excited about this, too. We don't go into just straight-up financial news too often on the podcast. But when it comes to Aptera closing the deal on a $21 million grant, a grant here from the California Energy Commission specifically for manufacturing electric solar vehicles,
in the state of California. So this is a big deal because obviously Aptera was trying to raise money. It is raising money. They've been doing it through this accelerator program that they call it, where they've been doing a lot of crowdfunding. But they opened up the crowdfunding where the more you invest, the higher your chance is going to be to get one of the solar cars sooner.
And they've managed to raise over $8 million to that over the last month or so. So that's great. But it's bringing a vehicle to market. Even though I'm excited about one of the main reasons I'm excited about Amterra is that it is not an actual car. Even though we call it a solar car, it is classified as a trike, as a three-wheel vehicle. And it's closer to a motorcycle really in terms of regulation than it is to a car.
So that removes a ton of red tape in order to bring it to market. A lot less expensive to do. So that's why I'm a little bit more hyped about Aptera than I am about Atlas or name whatever crowdfunded EV projects. So I'm a little more excited about that. It's kind of the only three-wheeled vehicle still like...
well i don't know i mean saunders got rid of their three-wheeler uh electromechanica is not doing too hot right now yeah um same for the other one in oregon what was the f of yeah fuv uh that's uh having some troubles i mean apptator is not doesn't have a straight shot into you know profitability but they just have so many fans that are pumping money into the company that i feel like
they you know they have something here they have and now they have 21 million dollar grant like it's not money that they owe anything like that right so that that's going to be helpful here uh i think i i think it's still closer to like 50 100 million dollars that you need overall to bring a vehicle like that to market but they already raised i think over 40 40 or 50 million dollars at this point other than this 21 million so yeah they they have a real shot right now bringing this thing to market
And if they do, it's going to be fun. It's not going to be like a super big difference maker in terms of electrification. But it is like we just talked about Tesla Drive on Sunshine and everything. This is the best representation. The real Drive on Sunshine. Yeah, it's the best representation of Drive on Sunshine because...
you literally have up to 15 30 miles of range per day just from the solar cells on that vehicle itself it's it's more romantic than anything else because obviously
If you want to drive on sunshine, you're more efficient. If your solar cell is on a rooftop or something like that than it is on an actual car. So I'm a little bit conflicted about it because I love efficiency. I want to have the most efficient solution always. But there is something romantic about the idea of this car is autonomous, basically. It's produced its own electricity on which it rides. For the most part, obviously, you want...
you can charge it too and probably for the for most people charging is going to be a big part of the powering this vehicle but i i said i like efficiency and and that also is an efficient car itself if you remove the solar on it if you just talked about aerodynamic performance weight and all that like that's that it is one of the most it's gonna probably gonna be
Again, we cannot say a car because it's not a car, so we cannot say it's the most efficient car out there, but it's the closest thing to a car that is much more efficient than anything else, even like a Model 3. Yeah, even like that Mercedes EQXX or the Lightyear, the other solar thing. It's way more efficient. I think they were telling us that the whole vehicle has better aerodynamics, less wind than a F-150 engine.
side mirror, one side mirror. I mean, F-150 can have a pretty big side mirror too. Yes, but it's still impressive. It's really impressive, yeah. All right. That's it for all the news this week. So it was a pretty quick one. We can jump into you guys' comments and questions right now. All right. Speaking of startups, any thoughts on Canoo and if you think they can actually make it to market? That's really just thinking there.
I haven't been following them that closely, to be honest with you. I know that I've been having a lot of fleet order more than anything else. I don't see a big consumer attractiveness on that. I know some people love it, like their van pickup style thing. But honestly, I'm not too hyped about it.
I'm just going to say it like that. Yeah, they got some NASA sponsorship things happening. It seems like they got some good hype. But I don't think they have a mass market vehicle. I don't think they have a lot of hype around them. So I don't know. It doesn't seem very likely that they'll make it to the other side. But we're rooting for all the EV companies. Yeah, hoping for the best. Hoping for the best.
All right. David Pern is Tesla of the opinion that hidden improvements will bring buyers to showrooms and thus substantially new looks aren't necessary. So I think he's David's kind of talking about how the Model S and X look very similar to what they looked like for years. They haven't really been upgraded much. Same with Model 3 and Y. What do you think?
If Tesla's opinion of the hidden improvement will bring buyers to the showroom and that's substantially new look, aren't they? I mean, why would you want to go to the showroom right now for those if they're hidden? I'm a bit confused about the question, to be honest. Yeah, but for sure that the big, no, it's not a big or great them all as an X right now.
I mean, the glass roof, are you going to really see a big difference of the new glass roof that lets more light in? Yeah, I just don't see it. It's a nice little incremental improvement, but I don't think... I think the Model S and X is going to do great in 2023, but that's because of the price cuts, not because of the slight hardware improvements. Yeah.
All right, Greg Poland question. My Model Y has an estimated delivery on March 31st. Of course.
Good luck. Have you heard of anybody getting postponed any further? I mean, they're going to try. Like if they're on March 31st, that's the last day of the quarter. They're going to try, Greg, to deliver your car. They're going to probably come to your house and knock the door down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're going to want... They're going to deliver it to you because they want that signature so that they can claim that revenue. They can get that check. They can cash that check. So yeah, I wouldn't be too worried about that. I'd be more worried about the...
I mean, to be fair, Tesla has made some improvement to not pushing too hard for these and a quarter delivery push. So if, for example, if they are really tight on trailers, on the car trailers to bring cars out and people start charging them like excessive amount of money to do it, they might decide to postpone it. I don't know.
All right, moving on. EV edition. What are your thoughts on EV stocks? What companies do you think will do the best? I don't think we've talked about general EV stocks in a while. And I know you have that Zalkon substack that you do. Yeah, but I haven't been posting a lot on that just because of the markets right now. I wouldn't encourage anyone to invest that much in the market just because of how scary things are right now. IT bills.
What did you say? Buy T-bills. Yeah. The things that I'm more excited about when you come to, like the companies themselves, if you're talking about companies selling electric vehicles,
There's not that many I'm super excited about other than Tesla. I think Tesla is still going to do well. It's just a John going to, but I'm more excited about material suppliers like nickel stock and lithium stock. I think there's a, there's a lot of growth there that can happen a little bit safer than,
especially companies like Fisker or Canoo that we just talked about. These are a lot more fickle, in my opinion, and they can go away pretty quickly. Rivian and Lucid are a little bit more exciting, maybe, because they are delivering vehicles, and the products are good. The products are good. It's the financials that don't look good right now. But the stock prices are very low, so...
they can't go much lower. Yeah, exactly. And so that's the only upside to it. People don't see them going much lower. But at the same time, no one is completely invincible to bankruptcy. The thing with Vivian and Lucid, because their products are so good, you would think that they could be a savior waiting in the wings for both of them.
A kind of Apple, maybe? I don't know. Apple for Lucid, Amazon for Rivian. Those are the saviors. There was something this week about Amazon talking to Rivian about... Well, actually, I think this is Amazon thinking, protecting Rivian, honestly, where they said that they could...
Right now, all the delivery vans that Rivian is making, they're delivering them to Amazon and they're losing a ton of money on them. So what came out this week is that apparently Rivian and Amazon talk and Amazon was like, okay with Rivian not just delivering the vans to them because Amazon has a stake in Rivian and they know that if the contract that they have is very advantageous to Amazon,
And if Rivian could deliver a part of those vans to other companies at a newly negotiated price that they don't lose money on,
That would be a big deal. And now, again, are companies going to want those vans for twice or three times that price? I don't know. But they are, again, the product is nice. So you can maybe charge more for that. And it's getting some electric vans in your fleet if you're a fleet manager, it's a big deal. It does lower your cost greatly. All right.
uh green for st patrick's day tesla should offer a green colored car for one day well that would be quite expensive to retrofit their paint shop but we are seeing some new colors coming out of tesla the the red i kind of missed the brown and the green though didn't they used to have a green right you used to have a green you used to have a brown they used to have different silvers
Yeah, St. Patrick, you want a green? The green that Tesla had was not really a St. Patrick green. Happy St. Patrick to everyone out there and especially the Irish friends out there. All right. Jonathan Root, EV9 is the best looking third row EV, period. Hoping pricing isn't insane. Yeah, we talked about that a little bit.
Obviously, best looking is subjective, but I think a lot of readers have said, hey, they actually made a really good looking vehicle. It's not one of those things where they do a really good looking prototype and then a super bland final product. We're going to actually get a look at it at the New York Auto Show in about two weeks, I think.
um so and and i'll be honest with you uh you know right now i'm waiting on r1s uh we put some money down on a volvo ex90 that's right but i'm also now i'm thinking this might be the way to go for our our big one if you know rivian doesn't come through like obviously rivian is going to be much better off-roading it's probably going to be how often do you go off-roading set
Well, when I'm reviewing scooters, I go opera. Anyway. Oh, that's right. I saw you like that. That was a silly trip. So I don't know. You basically have, you know, in the US market, you have the X90, you have the RS, R1S Rivian, and now you have this. And it's pretty much it. And I feel like there's a lot of people in that marketplace. So it'll be interesting to see what happens.
Enjoying the show in Melbourne, Australia. Well, that's great. While waiting for a charger, keep up the good work, gents. Thank you, Chris. A great article on CNBC about GM losing in China. Great article on Electric on Xpeng losing in China. GM, Xpeng, everybody's losing in China. Yeah, I know that Xpeng didn't have the best quarter last quarter. It's not surprising. I mean, the Tesla price cuts in January has had an impact on the rest of the market. There's just no way around it. Yeah.
All right, VW ID2 start production when? I think they said 2025. No hint at all how they will make such a low-priced car. Tesla shows how they will make a $25,000 car, but it does not show it. What a difference will Tesla paint? I don't know what he's saying about the paint, but I do get the point about questioning how does VW get to that price point.
Yeah, I mean, I think they are assuming some of the supply chain's improvement. Yeah. And, yeah, they're going to have to have some manufacturing efficiency improvements, too. And I guess that's the difference that Ron is mentioning it, like Tesla with their event earlier this month, they did show improvement.
what they plan to do on the manufacturing side to do those improvements and achieve that. Now, it wasn't as clear as like the 4680 demonstration where they were like, all right, we get this percentage improvement in price there, this percentage improvement, da-da-da-da. It wasn't as precise as that. So it led us to assume that Tesla has some guesswork doing it. And it's always guesswork. It's always guesswork anyway.
Now Volkswagen hasn't been as forthcoming when it comes to that. But at the same time, Volkswagen has experience building cars on high volume at that price point. They're not electric. Right.
Now the rest of the electric supply chain is going to come down at the same time, try to meet them at a certain point there. And to Volkswagen's credit, they are making the investment throughout the supply chains to help it get there. So they are not just like crossing their fingers and like, hopefully the battery cost will come down to $90 a kilowatt hour by the time this car gets to market. No, they are making the investments.
to get it closer to there at least to help out. So yeah, I'm all for that front. All right. Question about what cell type is VW using, Hyundai? I mean, I feel like a lot of companies now are diversifying their battery supply just so that one company doesn't kind of screw them over. But VW last, were they using L? No, they're using SK? No. In the US, they're using...
I mean, they have a partnership with CTL, I think, in Europe now. Okay. And a few others. They have a bunch...
But anyway, what cell type? I assume chemistry they're asking probably. I would assume that this VWID2 would be LFP. At those price points, you're going to have to use a higher-end phosphate-based battery. Although it does charge pretty fast. I mean, you can get there too, I think, with higher-end phosphate and LFP. Yeah.
All right, Greg Poland, FYI, I was getting service down in Cypress, Texas, which is the Houston area. And there was at least over 100 Model Ys and 3s queued to be delivered. Yeah, I'm not surprised. Around this time of the quarter, that's when all the supply from Fremont and Texas gets to those delivery centers. It's that timing for the U.S. market.
Paul Panzer says 25,000 euros with 19% VAT is more like 20,000 euros. Yeah, that's a good point. I don't know if they did account for that in there. Normally in Europe, you do have to put the pricing on there. But when you're not actually selling the car, I don't know. We'll see. Makes sense, though.
All right. To compete with the VinFast VF9. Okay, so that's another, I think, three wheels. Yes, somebody is hyped about the VinFast. I'm not as hyped as him about, like... We took a drive in one in Los Angeles. They weren't super impressive, but whatever. The Greens are great at technology. Kia, Hyundai, Genesis, which is all the same company, and Samsung, they are great. Yep.
Did I trim my beard? I was trying to figure out why you look different. Yes, I did. Okay. Moving on. Great question.
Lion and Tiger. Yeah, those, if you want to talk about low stocks, those are low stocks. I cannot recommend them though, again, because of the market right now, the way it is, I cannot, like, I'm not going to tell anyone to go buy them, but they are excessively cheap, especially like Lion right now is in a situation where they could get a big chunk of that
bill money for, because they do have a factory in the U S now producing electric school buses. Indiana, I think. Yeah. And I think so. Yeah. The school buses thing, man, everybody wants an electric school bus now. Yeah. So there's not that many companies right now that are, can be competing for, for, for those grants. So if they do get a big chunk of that, uh, it could, it could, it could be a big difference maker. Cause I think right now they're trading at like $400 million or something. Uh,
for a company that is actually delivering hundreds of school buses and trucks, electric school buses and trucks right now. So that's good. Tyga, I'm also very excited about them, but it's such a new technology that they're doing. They are doing it the best, though, for sure. When it comes to electric snowmobiles, there's a few options out there. When it comes to electric jet skis, watercrafts, there's a few options out there.
But they are all mostly subpar to what you would get from gasoline ones, except for Tiger. Tiger, I think, is the already are a notch over. But it's super hard for her startup to run things up. And they are still at very low volume production. They have this big factory they're supposed to build here in Shawinigan, but they're waiting until they get to the end.
a few thousand units in Montreal first before they expand to a bigger factory. So until they can do that, it will remain a fairly small company. And the cash position keeps going down in the meantime. So it is something to watch out for. But I'm still pretty hyped about both of them. And they are both from Quebec too, which is exciting.
Tyga, could you see them being purchased by Polaris or Kawasaki or something? Yeah, BRP also based in Quebec. Yeah, I mean, it wouldn't make sense because they have great technology. They are the leader by far when it comes to these specific small niche. They're a billion-dollar industry still, but smaller companies.
segments of transportation or recreational transportation in this case. And why do you think Hawaiian is so cheap right now if they have all these possible things? Is it just part of the industry downturn or?
Yeah, I mean, like Rivian, they're still not making money on those trucks and those cool buses, but they're getting a lot closer than Rivian, to be fair, a lot closer than Rivian. And they also, like the ramp up is difficult, but they just started production at the factory in the US. So I would assume that the ramp up is going to be in the later half of this year. And then next year is going to be their big years in terms of actual deployment of new trucks.
But I've been following the performance of their trucks closely, and they're doing great so far. And obviously, that's going to be a huge market, the trucks on top of the school buses. All right, Ryan Wiebe, have we heard what Tesla's plan is for 2020?
pull through charging with V4 for towing purposes. So you know how they have those chargers on the side? I would imagine they're still going to put V4s on the side or what do you think? Yeah, that and also just probably like they want to do those chargers in the middle of a parking lot instead of like at the end of them so that you can pull through even more than the ones on the side. That would make a ton of sense.
But again, that depends on the parking lot. You need a huge parking lot on that because you don't want... But those exist. Those are out there. You go to Walmart. You're going to have to have different setup for those stations. You're going to have to have a Walmart-type situation or one of those big truck stops and things like that. You're not going to see that at the average charging station. But we're going to need more of them. I know this is working on that. We've seen some of the early...
plans for the bigger station, like the ones between Los Angeles and San Francisco, two of Tesla's biggest market or the Bay Area, I should say. There's a huge supercharger station, like 50, 100 stall stations being planned there. And now you're starting to see a certain percentage of the stalls that are being aimed at pull through for trailers and trucks. Yeah. And that's going to be an even bigger thing when the Cybertruck is at full production.
speaking of cyber truck this is a cryptic question uh oh no no that's a follow-up to the other question when you ask about the paint on the lower price vehicle so you said like the cyber truck there's no paint just wrap
I don't know about that. I would assume that it's partly based on if that works out for the Cybertruck. We don't know yet if that's going to work out just great with the Cybertruck. If it does, maybe, yeah, maybe they do end up with some kind of, we're going to see some kind of like small hatchback, stainless steel hatchback from Tesla. That would be nice. Yeah.
All right. And then just to follow up, Nick Seeder, what type of cell type, i.e. form factor? I think that's just a verification of what we're talking about. Yeah. Well, I mean, most of the automakers still use the pouch. Pouch is still the main one being used. But there's more automakers that are talking about following Tesla with the 4680. So you might start seeing some of that soon.
All right. I think that's all for the questions. That's all for us this week. I appreciate every single one of you. If you're still watching, thank you. We appreciate you. I'm going to see you same time, same place next week. If you do like the show, please give us a thumbs up, a like, whatever you do on your app. And we're going to see you in a week. Bye-bye. Stay safe out there.
