Trump moves to kill $7,500 tax credit, deep Tesla discounts, Cadillac Vistiq, and more
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Welcome to a new episode of the Electric Podcast. I'm Fred Lambert, your host, and as usual, I'm joined by Seth Wintraub. How are you doing today, Seth? Good. I'm in California, specifically south of San Francisco. We're reviewing the Sierra EV Denali, which is GMC's third EV, if you count the Hummer and the Hummer SUV as two. Third EV pickup. Pickup.

Yeah, you're going to start getting a nice lineup. And this one is a luxurious one, so I'm sure you're having a cool time with it. Yep. Are you going to have a report on it next week? Is there an embargo on this thing? Yeah, there's an embargo. I think it's Tuesday. Well, I don't know if I'm supposed to say when the embargo is, but it'll be soon. Okay, so next week we should have some more to tell you about the Sierra Denali EV.

All right. Plenty to talk about this week, but before we do, I want to say a quick thanks to today's sponsor for the podcast, Leetime, a prominent brand with 15 years of experience in renewable energy storage, specifically focusing on renewable life before lithium battery. Now through December 15, Leetime is offering up to 60% off its products during its giant Black Friday sale. You can learn more in the link in the description in the show notes.

But we're also going to have a little bit more to say about them in the mid-show, so stay tuned for that. We have plenty to talk about. We're going to talk a little bit about the tax credit, which sounds like it's going away. Tesla's doing some discounts, and it's not the only one. The Cabinette V4 supercharger is finally coming and what that means for Tesla owners and for every EV owner now that Tesla opened up the charging network. We have the new Cadillac V-Stick that was unveiled.

updated or new cheaper version of the Polestar 3 available and the Riven Volkswagen joint venture has been, well, it was already announced. Now it's been fleshed out in details. We're going to give you a little bit more details about it.

But yeah, the big news this week. So last week, we talked about Trump, we talked about his impact, and we did float the idea that most likely he's going to follow through with the goal to kill the tax credit for electric vehicle that was part of the IRA, Biden's Administration Inflation Reduction Act.

Now, that has been a big part of why EV sales are still growing in the U.S., because the U.S. market is slower than the rest of the world in EV adoption. There's no doubt about it. It's sitting at around 9%, something like that. And it's also very different state by state. You remove California out of the picture, and it's basically nothing compared to...

I think most European countries are deep in the double digits. You have Norway, obviously, at like 95%. China is doing way better than the U.S. And so that is critical for U.S. automakers where, you know, other than Tesla, the other automakers are relying on this to continue their transition to BEVs.

And Trump wants to kill it. And now this week, what we learned is that the transition team is already working on that. So according to a new report from routers, the transition team, which is apparently headed by a gentleman named...

Harold Hamm, which I think I remember that name. I think he was the same guy that was also in charge last time around of the transition team. So it's an old school Trumper. It just happens, just pure coincidence. He's an oil billionaire and he has several interests in giant fossil fuel companies. And he's in charge of the energy transition team for Trump.

But the kicker here that's really interesting, so they already have discussed with the industry the idea of killing the $7,500 consumer tax credit for electric vehicles. And now we learned that Tesla is apparently supporting that. Tesla, who lobbied last time around the Biden administration to get that new tax credit passed, now this time Tesla is okay with removing it.

And we have to assume that it has to do with Trump. Oh, my God. The last month, I keep confusing Elon Musk and Trump, like nonstop. It's pretty crazy. You're turning into the same person. Yeah, I mean, in my head, actually.

um so elon elon was actually officially not for the new tax credit from the administration he was uh you know he's been on this idea that uh the the federal government needs to cut everything basically he thinks he can cut two trillion dollars out of the the federal budget that's 6.5 trillion dollar budget he thinks he can roughly cut it by 30 and he has uh you know the tesla ceo has

An official role now in the administration, in the German administration, is going to be in charge, along with Vivek, is going to be in charge of the new Department of Government Efficiency, a new department aiming at making sure the government is not creating any waste, it's spending efficiently. I feel like having two heads of that department is the best possible efficiency strategy.

Joke of all times. Yeah, not only that, there's already a department meant for efficiency in the government, the Government Accountability Office. That's exactly their role. So there's two heads of two departments that aim at making the government more efficient. It's peak irony, really.

But Elon has said he doesn't want any tax credit for EVs in the U.S., though he did say at the same time, to be fair, that he doesn't want any subsidies for fossil fuel either. And Trump doesn't have any intention of removing those. But now even, you know, now it's hard to...

separate Elon and Tesla. They are becoming the same thing. That's basically the compensation case for the CEO compensation that the judge revoked from Elon.

The whole concept of that is that Elon controls the board, controls Tesla. Normally, if you're a minority owner and an executive of the company, which is what Elon is at Tesla, you don't officially have control over that company. It's just the board and the shareholders are in charge. But in this case, you can easily make the argument, and the judge did it, that Tesla

Elon is in control of the board, is in control of the entire company. And it shows, it shows in this, it shows in Tesla's team having lobbied the Biden administration for this specific tax credit, even though Elon said he was against it. And now this time around, Tesla is lobbying against it. The logic behind this is,

From Elon's standpoint, what he said, he's admitted that it will slow down EV sales in the U.S., including Tesla's own, which is obvious. And I see a lot of people in the Tesla community now being a little bit, you know, acting like this is not happening. But Elon himself has said several times that the biggest hurdle for electric vehicle adoption is the price.

And if you're going to increase the price for a big part of the population, not everyone is eligible to get tax-traded. That's fair. Which is why I think it shouldn't hurt Rivian and Lucid that much because they are still premium vehicles. It still hurts them in the long term, obviously, because they have the R2s coming and the next-gens for Lucid that's going to be cheaper. Anyway...

And they have some existing vehicle that qualify too. But it's just they qualify, but they qualify at the very top end. And when you qualify at the very top end, then you also have the eligibility of the buyer. If they make more than $150,000 per year or $300,000 for joint filers, then they wouldn't apply anyway. Right.

Unless you lease, there's the big lease loophole. That's one thing that actually I wouldn't – if the Trump administration was like, let's just keep it but close the lease loophole, I'm like, yeah, that's kind of fair. Yeah, I get it. I couldn't get mad at that even though it will slow down EV adoption too. It's a big loophole that doesn't make that much sense. Anyway, Elon thinks that by removing that –

Even though Tesla took giant advantage of that and was more than any other automaker for years, he believes that it will hurt the other automakers more than it hurts Tesla. And long term, that will reduce EV competition for Tesla and maybe even kill some of these other automakers. And long term, Tesla will come out on top. And you know what?

He might be right because there's some evidence towards that because in the 2020-2021 supply chain crisis that came with the pandemic, Tesla was more nimble, more efficient, had bigger gross margin to erode. So they did better. So maybe in this same situation that this time he creates,

It works. However, it also looks like you took advantage of these government subsidies for years, for a decade in Tesla's case, and that you were early in it, and that's good for you. That's credits to you. But then you use that government subsidies as a ladder to get past the volume hurdles and the gross margin hurdles. And when other automakers...

are doing the same thing but are a little bit behind you because you were early again credit to you you decide to just pull that ladder up and leave everyone else behind that's exactly right and that's the ladder up that's what it's called that's what's happening it's not cool and at the very core of it it will result in less um easy adoption in the u.s

it will result in the US auto market falling behind the rest of the world, which it already has. It will fall further behind the rest of the world because their own market is not encouraging EV sales, so they will be less likely to produce EV sales, and they will focus on their profitable segments, which is the high segment, which is the fossil fuel-powered segment. And that will be most likely bad for the US. I mean, unless Tesla just can magically just take over everything,

But then you end up with some kind of monopoly in the US with Tesla, which is not ideal either. And will again slow down EV adoption still for the next few years. So yeah, it is a sad day. And I know a lot of Tesla Elon Lemmings like to laugh at me for having sold my stock earlier this year. But you know, I'm perfectly fine with it because...

That is why I sold my stock. I saw it as, and as I wrote in the post, I saw it as Tesla is moving away from its mission, and I cannot be a part of that. And if I lose money on it, fine. Literally okay with that. And that's

And you didn't really lose money. You just made less money. I made less money. And also my portfolio is at an all-time high anyway right now. Like I move my money around pretty well. And I'm like, I'm pretty fine with it. Yeah, everybody's making money right now. Yeah, the stock market's at all-time high. So whatever else you put in it, it's like it's doing pretty well. So yeah, it is sad because I think that if this goes through, the U.S. market will fall further behind and it's going to be hard for a lot of people. Really hard. And you know,

And this idea that Tesla will just take over everything in the U.S., I could have believed it, you know, further back. But now with the shift, like forgetting the Model 2, the $25,000 Tesla, shifting to self-driving and all that, I'm like, eee, this is becoming risky now. So like you kill Tesla's only moneymaker right now, which is delivering electric vehicles, right?

betting all the house on self-driving which is not going super well for tesla right now i know that this is you can argue against this but the the best data available shows that it's not going great that's it but there's one thing that can help this a lot with this removing this task at least even just the threat of removing it it's its q4 even though i don't think the tax credit is going to go away like on january 20th whenever um

whenever the inauguration is, whenever Trump takes power, this will have to go to Congress. We talked about it last week. It wasn't confirmed just yet, but now it's fully confirmed. The Republicans have Congress. They have the Senate. They have the White House. They have everything. So everything that happens in the next few years, you can blame on the Republicans. They have full control. But it doesn't mean that it passes necessarily because

Some Republicans do like the tax credit because it does help them in their states. The IRA did bring a lot of EV manufacturing to red states like the Carolinas, like Alabama, like Tennessee. A lot of jobs were created because of the IRA, because of the Biden administration in red states. So maybe there is some...

But I don't know about you, Seth. You're a little bit more knowledgeable about U.S. policy than I do. I think it's going to pass. I mean, the Republicans, if they want to pass something, they can do whatever they want at this point. They have both houses and they have presidency. And it seems like they're going to push through a lot of stuff right now. Yep. Sounds like it.

But Tesla now needs a record quarter. So whenever this happens, like if it happens in February, whatever, or maybe there's going to be a grace period too for it, I don't know. But it most likely is going to create some urgencies for U.S. buyers that do qualify for the tax credit to buy an EV short term.

And Tesla needs it right now because they need a record four quarters. They need to deliver over 515,000 EVs this quarter in order not to be down for the whole year, which would be a first for Tesla ever, basically, in the decades since they delivered them all last. So they have been doing some pretty deep discounts. So today we learned that Tesla is starting people that take delivery since yesterday.

They get three months of free supercharging and full self-driving if they buy a new inventory vehicle in North America, so the U.S. and Canada, and take delivery of it by the end of the year. So that's one thing. But we also learn there's some discounts to an inventory vehicle, but not too deep of discounts right now. And that also adds to the 0% APR that was announced earlier this month that we talked about, or last month at this point, in Europe. Yep.

Big discounts in Europe, though. And Europe might be the difference maker here. I mean, I think the U.S. is going to be very important. China looks flat right now, quarter to quarter, but it had a good quarter last quarter. So the fact that it's flat, it's not too bad.

So big performance in North America for Tesla and Europe should be very important. And Tesla is down like, I think, 85,000 units so far this year in Europe. So there's some catching up to do. So at least there's some opportunities there.

But there's also stronger competition. We've seen some discounts up to 6,000 euros on Model Y inventory in Europe right now, in Germany specifically. But in Europe also, there's some heavy discounts all around. And Tesla is offering a year of free supercharging there, not three months, a year, which is not huge. Depending on how much you drive, it's a few hundred bucks to a few thousand bucks.

worth of charging but still some people it's really attractive to them to like oh i can buy a car and i drive for free too for a whole year if you're coming from an ice vehicle too it's uh there's a lot of value in that

So Tesla is going all in in Europe right now for the end of the quarter. Well, it's the end of the quarter, the end of the year, but it's still early in the quarter for an end of quarter push. Normally that happens the last month of the year, but now we are already November 15 and it's already moving hard.

The Tesla is not the only one doing big discounts. We report on Ford, too. So Ford announced this today. They announced heavy discounts throughout the lineup. So they're also offering 0% financing up to 72 months with a $5,000 cash bonus, three EV chargers, like a little two-home charging station, and they covered the costs of installation. So, like, that's pretty hardcore. Yeah.

And they have also incentive for leases on the F-150 Lightning. You have up to $7,500 of lease incentive. I'm not sure what that means. $3,500 of red carpet leases plus a $3,000 cash bonus. I'm not sure what that means. Maybe that helps with the down payment or something. I don't know. Yeah, sounds like it.

Yeah, you have the prices here for the, you know, starting at 63,000. Well, the XLT is not exactly the, you know, that attractive at 240 miles of range, but the Flash, $68,000. That's a sweet spot. Yeah, the Flash is very interesting. If you want a little bit more options, a little bit more luxury, there's the Lariat. But $68,000, you can get an electric pickup truck with over 300 miles of range and 0% financing and home charging station.

And the installation, which, you know, easily worth over $1,000 sometimes. Not a bad deal. The Mach-E, same things for the Mach-E. You have some heavy discounts there. The Mach-E starts at $40,000 and up to $60,000 if you want to rally, which is not cheap, but I reviewed it earlier this year, guys, and the rally is quite something. The suspension is insane on that thing. It's like driving on butter.

all right um big news on tesla front on the supercharger front the v4 cabinet is finally here or finally announced and coming next year the first station that could come next year but this announced it uh yesterday so for those who are not very familiar with the supercharger rollout it's the v4 supercharger rollout it's been kind of a strange one because

For the last two years, Tesla has been reporting deploying V4 supercharger station and next generation supercharger. But there hasn't been anything very new about it. Other than the stall, the stall looks different, has a longer cable, which is useful for non-Tesla EVs and the Cybertruck and all that.

but uh there's no real change in capabilities or anything like that and that's because it's only the stall that changed the v4 cabinets the the the the station that tesla calls supercharger v4s right now are all supercharger v4 stall with the old cabinet and for those who are not familiar with a supercharger station there's two main parts the stall is where you have the charging cable and

And you plug in your car. But the cabinet is where all the power electronics are, and that's what powers the charging. So the technology is in there. So Tesla has been stuck on V3, which has been around since 2016 or 17, and up until now. So not a lot of progression there.

But now the V4s are here for the cabinet. So they call it V4 cabinet. And Tesla says it's going to enable up to 500 kilowatt charging for their cars and 1.2 megawatt charging for Subai, which is...

Nuts. So here are the main features of eForest. It has a faster charging, so it supports 400 to 1,000-volt vehicle architectures, including 30% faster charging for Cybertrucks, sexy vehicles, so S, X, 3, and Y. Enjoy 250-kilowatt charge rate that they already experience in the V3 supercharger, charging up to 200 miles in 15 minutes.

Okay, yeah, so the Cybertruck is going to charge faster on the V4, but no change for the other lineup. It's still going to be 250. That's what I'm understanding from this because they already support the max voltage of those vehicles roughly. Okay.

Faster deployment, so V4 cabinet powers eight posts, eight stalls, two times more stalls per cabinet than the V3. Lower footprint and complexity, so more sites coming online faster, so it's going to deploy faster over time. Next-generation hardware, cutting-edge power electronics designed to be most reliable on the planet with three times power density, enabling higher throughput with lower costs.

So that's what's coming. Tesla says that right now they are in the permitting phase of the first V4 cabinets charging station. And the first one is going to come online next year. So you can expect things like the Oasis project that we talked about a few weeks ago with microgrid and solar and all that. I would expect that those are going to be all equipped with V4 because it just makes sense at this point.

And theoretically, cars like the GMC Sierra EV that charge at like 360 kilowatts will be able to get high-speed charging out of these as well because they're 800 volt and everything. Do you know the adapters that are offered right now, can they be a bottleneck for that though? Oh, I wonder what is the bottleneck and what is the kilowatt bottleneck.

Because they don't have the same cooling system as the actual endos and all that. Yeah, that makes sense. That could be something. Yeah, and Elon is finally delivering on the promise from 2016. If you remember 2016, there was a couple… That's when you guys used to talk to each other. Yeah, we used to tweet.

So he was talking about the supercharger V2 or V3s, and I was asking what's going to be the output on this. And I asked him, is it going to be 350 kilowatts? Because at that time, other charging station manufacturers were coming up with 250 kilowatt station. And he responded, is this a child's toys, 250 kilowatts, thinking that like,

anything at tesla delivering much more than that which never came like like we talked about the v3s were 250 so it made no sense i don't know what he was talking about i still what do you think happened there did he just not know what he was talking about or did something happen or maybe they were early working on like tesla samay's megawatt charging or something like that and that's what he was referencing but like you know tesla samay was his tesla's most delayed vehicle program other than the roadster

But then a follow-up to that was also, like I was asking him, is there any update on Tesla installing solar arrays at Supercharger Station, which he said that at one point he said that most, well, there he said that there would be microgrids. Most stations are going to be able to work off grids with solar and batteries, but that didn't happen. But then...

When Supercharger V3 was coming, he said that there are some already installed. That's fair, but it was very few. But the full rollout will need Supercharger V3, Powerpack V2, plus SolarCity. SolarCity is gone. It was integrated and then phased out, basically. Supercharger V3 is now Supercharger V4. Powerpack V2 is now MegaPack. But it's now with the Project Oasis and Supercharger V4. It sounds like it's finally happening. Eight years later, but still.

Elon is always right. Just sometimes a decade late. It's a little decade late. Let's read our sponsor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's talk a little bit about our friends at Leetime. All right. Today's episode is sponsored by Leetime, a leader in developing sustainable energy products and solutions. Over the past 15 years, Leetime has remained committed to developing renewable lithium batteries informed by feedback from over 300,000 users.

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All right, we have a few more news items to discuss, and then we're going to have plenty of time to talk to you guys. So if you guys have questions about any of the topics we're talking about today or any other EV topics or renewable energy topics, you can put them in the comments section right now on whatever apps you're watching because we're live everywhere. And if you do enjoy the show, we would have – sorry about that. If you do enjoy the show, please give us a like, a thumbs up, a subscribe, whatever it is on your app. And it's free to do, and it takes a second, and we appreciate when you do it.

All right, moving on. There was a little bit of a recall in the Cybertruck, and we do love a Cybertruck recall for a specific reason. It helps us track how many Cybertrucks Tesla has made because Tesla doesn't want to release that information for whatever reason. However, this one, there's a good news and bad news. The bad news is like, the good news is it's not a full recall of all Tesla Cybertruck. So that's good for Tesla. It's good for Tesla owners. It's only about 2,000, just over 2,000.

2,431 to be exact. But the bad news is that that doesn't tell us how many Tesla Cybertruck Tesla's produced in the last few months. Last time was about 40,000. That was a month ago. So I expect only 10,000 more or something like that. But the issue is something that we anticipated with the motor. There was some issues with the motor that we know that Tesla has been, not recalling, but it has been...

telling owners to that they are part of like a research program and they will replace their motor with a new one and so that they can investigate the old one and so a few a few people got their motor changed because of that uh and now we see that it leads to a specific recall though it's not the actual motor that's being recalled it's the inverted is the drive inverter so this says on affected vehicle a fault in the driving inverter may cause it to stop producing torque

If the inverter stops producing torque, the driver loses the ability to apply torque to the vehicle using the accelerator pedal, resulting in a loss of propulsion, which may increase the risk of collision, which is why they have to do a recall. So test-tests first learn about this issue in August, August 5th.

but the investigation took them all the way through October when they finally were able to see a high failure rate of MOSFET, a metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor component, and a week later they started the voluntary recall process.

they identify five warranty claim related to this issue but they haven't they're not aware of any accident any uh injury or anything like that related to it uh it's gonna take a while because before they can do the um the fix so after uh december 9 they're gonna start telling customers to uh to to come have their drive inverter replaced with one that has a functioning mosfet component so if you're a cyber truck owner

And it can be any time too. It can be like if you bought it early or recently. It's not clear how they figured out the specific 2,000 or so affected vehicle. But even those affected, I think they were trying to be safe because they think it's only like less than 5% of those that actually has the issue, but they have to replace it because they can't figure out exactly which one it's going to be.

Oh, yeah, this one was an interesting one. It threw me into a loop for a little bit. So Tesla this week announced that they produced for the first time a record number of 1,000 Powerwalls in a single day at Gigafactory Nevada.

So at first I was like, "I'm going to post this article. It's going to be cool. I'm a big fan of the Powerwall. I have two of them right there." I'm like, "Yeah." But then I remember real quick, just a few months ago, I wrote this other article here that says Tesla is now producing 700,000 Powerwalls per year. And that was based on the video that Tesla released saying that they are now producing Powerwalls at a rate now at that time, which was in August, I think.

Tesla was producing Powerwalls at a rate of 25 per second and 700,000 per year. That was what they were producing then. They were capable of producing then. And then now, four months later, they say they produced the record production of 1,000 in a single day, which would give them a rate of 365,000 per year if they produce every day, which is not the case because they are on vacation and whatnot. So I'm a little confused by that. Some people tried to...

justify it by saying that, oh, it's because this is the production capacity installed, but it's not the production rate. But then why would you celebrate having a production rate, a recurring production rate that's half of your production capacity, even though in August you said that you were producing right now 25 seconds, 25

uh for all every 25 seconds 700 000 per year makes no sense to me i think this like kind of jumped the gun on this and uh and it makes a lot more sense too to be honest because we when they reported that 700 000 per year we didn't know this like this is kind of surprising because this had reported just a little bit before that that the had installed 500 000 power walls

in their first eight year of production. So they produce 500,000 in eight years and now they can produce 700,000 per year. That's insane. Even 365,000 per year right now, it's kind of insane, but it makes a lot more sense that they just now reach that production rate. If you extrapolate that annually at the thousand per day, now it's a little bit more realistic.

But it's another thing, I think I'm very hyped about the Powerwall. It has like a 40 or 50% market share in the residential energy storage market.

Great product. Happy with mine. Yeah, and it's a sign of a good product is being copied at the GM event here. They basically have Powerwalls, like GM is doing the whole thing. And they're pretty much the same, like same idea, same stuff. But the one thing that I noticed that's different is that the switch over time is like a couple seconds rather than...

instantaneous because like sometimes the power goes out i don't even notice like sometimes i'll see the lights flashing so they got some catching up to do but um it's you know lg has power walls now um samsung panasonic even has some stuff so the idea is a lot more competitions but last time i checked i think they were still at like 40 or closer to 50 percent market share in the u.s which is impressive yep

And also, like, some people also claim, like, oh, this is the production capacity, but they treadle down the production rate, which makes no sense because you wouldn't be celebrating a new production record if you're treadling down the capacity. And not only that, as far as I know, Powerwall has always been behind on production. Like, demand has always surpassed production. Maybe less so now, probably. All right, moving on from Tesla, we have the new Cadillac Vistac.

Not sure I'm a big fan of the naming scheme of the Cadillac electric vehicle, but I'm a big fan of the vehicles themselves. The Lyric, apparently great car. There's this Escalade IQ. And now this is something that's going to sit in between. I don't know if you can call that a mid-size SUV, though. It's still a large SUV because it has a third row. But it is between the Lyric and the Escalade in terms of actual total size. So...

Design-wise, you see it looks like a mini Escalade. Basically, it looks very similar. You have a massive 33-inch LED infotainment system in there. 23 speakers. Come with all the driver assist tech that GM is known for, including Super Cruise. Well, you have a 102-kilowatt-hour battery pack, which is going to be good for over 300 miles of range. But this thing is not coming until early next year. So that's when we're going to get the actual EP range on this thing.

Up to 615 horsepower, 650 foot-pound of torque, 0-60 in 3.7 seconds with Velocity Max. I'm not sure what that is, though. All-wheel drive is standard. They also have some road noise-canceling tech, so that's good. I'm a big fan of, like, if you want to get a luxury vehicle, a big thing about luxury for me is, like, how quiet is the cabin, right?

Kevin. That's a great point. Something that I'm hearing a lot at this event here. You know, if you want a luxury pickup truck, which some people want, you got to have an EV. Quiet, smooth, low vibration, all that good stuff. Yeah, and the EV thing, like especially with a pickup truck with a giant engine.

Sometimes the engine will mask how quiet the cabin is too. So now if you have an electric one, every other sound you do, you hear it a lot more, which can be annoying. So you have to even focus more on that, which Tesla learned a long time ago. It was like in the first, in 2018, I get into my 2018 Model 3, it's pretty bad, the sound. But I get into a newer one, it was like night and day. Speaking of getting into a newer one,

Speaking of getting into a newer one, are you thinking about upgrading anytime soon before the end of the year? I've been looking at inventory and playing with a configurator in the last few days. In the US, you have Trump now threatening to kill the tax credit. But in Quebec, we actually have our own incentive and it is being reduced at the end of the year. So we have our own incentive to order right now.

So I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking, I'm actually like, I was looking at a model Y and everything, but I'm really liking the model, like because of the Juniper coming up and everything, I feel like maybe I could, I should still stick with my model three and getting a new model three instead. Yeah. I really want to find out what Juniper is going to have. Like if it has vehicle to grid, that might be the thing that pushes me over. But it's, it's going to be hard to wait that long. Yeah.

And also, I have to put the bumper sticker on saying something about I don't support the politics of the CEO necessarily. Yeah. In terms of how big it is, the Vistek is slightly longer than the R1S from Rivian, but slightly shorter than the R1S at a 77-inch height.

Yeah, it's coming. It's going to be in production in early 2025 in Tennessee, and it's going to come to the U.S. and Canada. It's going to start for the three-row version at $80,000, $79,000. Okay. Yeah. I need to get into the Cadillacs. I've never driven a Cadillac electric since the EQR, whatever that Volt, when they did the Volt version. All right. We also have some news about the Polestar. So the Polestar 3.

We have the new base version of it. So we talked a lot about Polestar. They are starting production now at their plant in South Carolina. So they can take advantage of the tax credit. But the tax credit, you have to hit the right price for it, which is already the case for the dual motor and the long range version of it.

with the pilot pack and the plus pack but now they have a longer range version so this is both the cheapest um pole starter 3 and the longest range for star 3 so the new long range single motor version gets you 250 miles of range uh for 67 500 which is you know significantly cheaper than the 73 000 for the dual motor version you just you know you lose some power you lose some traction but you gain

a good 35 miles of range. Well, depending on the version, if you go to the performance version, it's even more than that. But I don't think someone is thinking between the long-range single motor and the dual motor performance version. It's more like, do you really need dual motors? Do you really need all-wheel drive or not? Which, you know, most people don't really...

All right. We have one last piece of news that we're going to discuss before we jump into the comment section. So if you guys have questions for us, you can put them in the comments right now. We're going to get to it in about a few minutes. First, we want to talk a little bit more about the Rivian Volkswagen joint venture partnership. It was announced a few weeks ago, if not a few months ago, but it was kind of light on details. Now we have...

The only details like there was going to be like some kind of joint venture that's going to be worth $5 billion. Now we have a little bit more details to it. It's going to focus on software. So basically Volkswagen has had this issue with software all the way back to the ID4. And then there was this Carriot. Is that the name of it? They started a new company, Carriot, to focus just on software for their vehicles and

And that hasn't worked out quite well either. So now they're going to rely on Rivian, which has a great expertise in software. So this new company called the Rivian and VW Group Technology LLC is going to create software and

power and electronics platform for both Rivian and Volkswagen vehicles. It's going to be led by Waseem Bensaid, the Rivian's head of software, and Volkswagen's Carsten Helbing. They're going to start with a location in Palo Alto where Rivian has an engineering center already, probably Volkswagen too, I would assume. And then they're going to have three other sites that are going to come in North America and Europe.

Yeah, it's going to be the same software stack that's going to power Rivian's next generation R2 vehicles coming next year in 2026. Going to be using this in terms of money-wise. So it's going to be $5.8 billion in the joint venture by 2027. A billion dollars in the form of a condo bill has already been issued.

So Volkswagen will invest roughly $1.3 billion in the background IP licenses and a 50% stake in the GV. Okay. I'm not sure what Riven is contributing. So Riven is just contributing the IP and then Volkswagen is paying, basically? There's going to be another $3.5 billion in the form of equity, convertible notes, and debt of future dates based on performance target. Okay.

yeah it could be interesting because volkswagen is having some issues as of late you know china was a big market for them and it's not going so well in china because the uh the cheap chinese evs are taking over that market so now they have to rely more on like other other markets we're not doing as well or another singing growth there and uh they're being bit they're they've been betting big on evs for a while it just hasn't paid out quite yet they are hoping that riven is going to be able to help with their software

Yeah, I think Volkswagen's strategy is good, but a little bit flawed. Like, for instance, the ID Buzz, I think, could be a huge hit, but they, instead of making it in the U.S., are making it in Germany, so it's going to cost more. They've got to import it. I mean, the tax credits are probably going away, but

I feel like if they really mass-produced, mass-marketed that thing, they would sell tons of them. And they don't seem to... And the ID.4, frankly, is, compared to a Model Y, not terribly compelling. Not as fast, not as many places to charge. Software not being as good. Software sucks. And then their other EVs are not terribly exciting. So...

Hopefully this helps, but then you've got to think about, all right, well, what about Scout? You're making Rivian clones and partnering with Rivian. That's not going to go well, right? It does sound like at least Scout is going to use the same software. It is going to benefit from that also.

Right. But they're going to be competing against the company that's giving them their software. That seems. Yeah. But also the extended range thing is different. So I don't know. Maybe it goes after a different market a little bit. Maybe bridge the gap. I'm not especially worried about that. And it sounds like Riven is not either. Yeah. Yeah.

All right, let's go to the comments. Carl's back. Musk 2012, we want all EV makers to thrive. 2022, we aren't a car company. And then trans boxers are the most important threat. Sounds like a good summary. Yeah, I mean, he's made it clear that he thinks now that climate change is not the biggest threat to humanity. The woke mind virus is, which...

And he thinks that for very personal reasons that are sad, that are really, really sad. Maybe the irony of the whole thing is that the woke mind virus is what's affecting him. Yeah. And then he created his own Elon mind virus that is affecting other people. All right. Let's see. Let's move on here. If the idiot gets rid of the EV tax credit, he should make it a cash for clunkers program.

you get a hundred dollars for every mpg mpge improvement from your old car to your new car that's not a bad idea i mean it will help too but like good luck good luck selling that to the the idiot like you said i mean the other the the the vice idiot uh gd vance

had this own proposal to remove the tax credit that failed during the Biden administration, but his own proposal was to kill the tax credit and replace it with a gasoline gas credit, an American-made gasoline car credit.

That was, I think, was as big as the EV tax credit. So they're disconnected from reality where they don't even begin to understand why there's a tax credit for electric vehicles. If you don't believe that in climate change, if you don't believe that human-made emissions are contributing to accelerating climate change, then...

you you will never we won't progress from there because you cannot i agree with you like if if you're you you i don't agree with with the basis for your argument but if you do don't believe in climate change and you don't believe that burning gas contributes climate change then why would you think it would be smart to get a tax rate for an ev so like we we're going back to to

first base like we were going all the way back now we need we need to go back to like climate activism really yeah all right let's move on um he staffed my basic warranty for 2021 model 3 will expire end of 2024 i received an offer from tesla to extend it for another two years for 25 2400 canadian is this worth it would it be transferable if i sell i hadn't heard of this

Yeah, I've never personally used any extended warranty on vehicles. I wonder if it was actually Tesla or it was one of those phone scam things. So $2,400 for two years. You know, personally, I don't think I spent $2,400 on my car the first two years after my warranty went away. I just spent...

uh 800 or so nine hundred dollars eight eight or an eight hundred dollars but that's more than two years after that so yeah i don't i don't know i don't know if it's worth it personally from my own experience i would tell you no and i would assume also your your 2021 model 3 is probably more reliable than my 2020 my 2018 model 3 so my my guess would be don't do it yeah

Thank you for the referral code on the Powerwall. Oh, you got some referral stuff. What are you going to get with all that referral money? I'm not even sure that I still get, unless it's a very old one, that I still get Powerwall referrals. I haven't seen it. I haven't seen it go through. You just got the installation. If you just got the installation, I should have seen it go through. Yeah, I mean, you're happy with it. I assume so. Powerwall is a great product. I'm happy with mine.

All right. Well, while you're looking for that, it's inevitable that at least one OEM goes bankrupt in response to Tesla's autonomous fleet. Who cares about the quality of a car if I don't have to own it? I mean, I don't know if this is the thing that kills an OEM, but it does seem like there's going to be some reckoning here with EVs and also autonomy and also fleet stuff. Yeah.

A lot of people are not on board with the idea of not owning a car, though, if it becomes autonomous. Yeah, I mean, why not just rent a car? People could do that already, kind of. All right, CARB should eliminate emissions credits that bailed out Tesla for more than a decade and revise subsidies to apply only to companies who have a small percentage of the EV market. Call it the incubator incentive. That's an idea. I don't know that I would pass, but...

It's an idea. The House is very close still, and they lost or will lose three members for Trump appointments. I don't doubt that there will be Republicans reelected, but I think it went Republican. Yeah, I don't think three Republicans will make a difference, especially if they will get reelected anyway. I mean, the next one's going to be Republican at this point.

all right rich tier with elon actively campaigning against the ev incentives which is detrimental to tesla's mission is he neglecting his judiciary i think he means judiciary duty to tesla shareholders

I mean, there's plenty of other examples. Yeah, I was going to say. You don't need – What about poaching AI engineers for his own company? This one is too – I get your point, Rich, but this one is too easy to argue against versus the other ones are a lot clearer, so I wouldn't even go there. If that was a thing, it would have happened already. And also, you could even argue that it's actually –

financially it's probably beneficial to Tesla to eliminate competition long term like so and you won't we won't know until we know so it's like there's there's this idea that it could be good for the stock long term uh or bad short term so then in that case you cannot make an argument for that so I it's too it's too difficult if you want to go to

breach of fiduciary duties to shareholders, you have to go XAI, you have to go moving the Nvidia H100 computers.

And this one is crazy. Like I see Elon, like he keeps retreating people that praise him for XAI having built the center in like 18 days and whatnot. But I feel like he's hurting himself with the case against that, that the Tesla shareholders are fighting against him regarding resource tunneling because his whole argument with that is like, yeah, it was not worth Tesla taking deliveries of those H100 because we couldn't have built them.

We couldn't have built the facilities fast enough. But XAI was able to do it in 18 days. Why was Tesla not able to do it in 18 days if it's led by the same people, by him? It makes no sense. And I mean, even if it wasn't the case...

I think it's an open and shut case with just moving the resources around like that. But there's that. There's the Twitter engineers volunteering from Tesla to Twitter. And then after that, making a contract with Twitter. After the fact, there's that. There's moving employees directly from Tesla, firing them at Tesla, and then hiring them right away at XAI. There's a lot of things that just don't look good.

All right, we have one last one from Carl. All right. When is Jaguar showing us all these EV-only cars? JLR said we're coming in 2025. JLR is Jaguar Land Rover. Do you know? Because to be honest with you, I haven't been following Jaguar too closely lately. Yeah, it's weird because they were so early with the I-Pace and then Crickets. Yeah, I mean, I-Pace handed pretty badly the I-Pace.

It wasn't a bad car. I mean, it was a Magna car. It wasn't a bad car. It's software, typical OEM legacy stuff.

All right. We have one more coming from LinkedIn. We don't have a lot of LinkedIn questions, so we're going to take it before we go. All right. Seeing the significant financial and societal impacts from the climate change to significant hurricanes this year, how do you balance keeping out Chinese EVs for the benefit of domestic automakers against the benefit of a more rapid transition to sustainable transportation? That's a great question. Yeah. And I think we've shared our thoughts on that before. We're not –

we're not against Chinese EVs coming to North America. Like, I'm not a pro-tariff guy. I'm like...

If you can prove like direct government subsidies and like the Chinese government subsidizing these specific automakers, then yeah, I understand. But I'm more for the European approach. So the European approach does – they do give not a crazy 100%, first of all, tariffs. And then you can apply to have reduced tariffs if you can prove you're not being subsidized by the government whatsoever.

x y reason which is why tesla as an exemption with lower tariffs for the chinese evs coming from the u.s because coming from china to europe because tesla is not getting the same support from the chinese government as other chinese automakers even though it's still getting some support uh you know there's they have good loans there that they have from the chinese government whatnot chinese banks which is the same thing um how about this

What if any Chinese vehicle under $15,000 could go through and everything over gets double tariff or whatever we're doing? Yeah, there's no competition at that price range anyway, so that's a good point. Yeah, as long as they can pass the U.S. regulation, that's the other thing too. I think the Chinese manufacturer would like to come in at a higher price point because that's where they can actually...

compete. They can pass regulation and be very competitive against the current vehicle lineup in North America. But yeah, the cheaper one, like the

the one in partnership with gm like the wooling i think w yeah w-u-l-i-n-g uh i don't know i don't think sure that that passes regulation in north america yeah i don't think so uh so yeah it would be interesting that could be a compromise

All right. Well, that's it for this week's episode of The Electric Podcast. If you're still listening, I appreciate you. If you do enjoy the show, if you can give us a like, a thumbs up, whatever it is on the app you're watching, I appreciate it. If you can also hit subscribe because we are there every week and we're going to be back next week, same time probably, but I'm going to be in Europe next week. I'm going out to check out the

Audi A6, the second vehicle on the PPE platform, which is going to be cool. So I'm going to be on EU time for the next week, but I'm still going to be on the podcast for you guys. So have a good time. Be safe and we'll see you soon.