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- This week on Trending in Tesla, we get a glimpse of the first independent range test of the Cybertruck and it's not looking good. - And Tesla fans discover the most clever Easter egg I've ever seen. And Tesla lowers its range numbers for nearly all of its cars on its website. - And the refreshed Model 3 is here and might be getting delivered sooner than you may think. All that and more starts right now.
All right and welcome back. It is the first week of 2024 and there is already so much good stuff to talk about especially in the world of Cybertruck. Hitting the ground running with this one. Did you see this one? This is from Dennis CW. He posted this. He's a new owner. He was playing with his screen. It had fallen asleep. He tapped it to bring it back. He tapped on the windows.
- Oh ! - Here we go! - What's up, what's up? - My favorite part about this video is that they just caught the natural reactions of it happening in real time. So he taps on it and the glass breaks, just like the glass break of the Cybertruck. And you actually hear Elon doing the, I don't know if I can actually say that. - OMFG, yeah. - Yes.
- Oh my God. - What he said on stage when the windshield cracked is what you hear him say in your speakers once you find that Easter egg. - Yes, and then Elon actually goes on X and confirms that this is an Easter egg. I'm excited to see what other ones are hidden now on the Cybertruck and I feel like I wanna get my hands on one again.
Go try some things out. I thought it was so fun. And I also love how Tesla takes these moments, these accidental moments, and they just own it. I love that like self-deprecating humor. Didn't they have the decals? They had decals of that. Yes, they're sold out. They're sold out. People love it so much that they are sold out. We actually have that on our little RC Cybertruck. It has the glass break on it. And it's one of my... Should I grab it? You should grab it.
'cause it is one of my favorite, favorite features. It's very dusty, it's been up on the top shelf. - It's been up there since 2019. - I know, and we have a nice little wrap on that. But that is by far the best Easter egg I have ever seen, I think, on any Tesla. But there's also all kinds of other things coming out about the Cybertruck. Some amazing things like this and some,
not so great. Yeah, a couple interesting finds, right? We're talking about a friend of the channel, Kyle Connor from Out of Spec Reviews. He actually showed him trying to plug in a CCS adapter and it wouldn't fit into the Cybertruck's charge port because the plastic fender, which you removed. Yes, it was a very easy removal, I will say, but he actually had to take that
piece off in order to get the CCS adapter, which I actually have right here and you can see it's this big piece. So in order for him to put this in, he had to remove that fender and then it wouldn't actually charge the high voltage. He said it probably would charge from a lower voltage, but he couldn't get it to charge.
I think that's kind of crazy. It's a little bit of an oversight from Tesla, but again, do you think it's an oversight? I don't know because they're building these things for the future, right? Just about everyone's agreed. They're going on board with NACS. So with them not allowing CCS or making it easy for CCS to work. And remember when you plug the CCS adapter into a three SX and Y, it does look like it's out of place. It just doesn't look good. But I,
still like having it as an emergency okay i like having it like there's times you know where you can use it but in 12 months when the vast majority of cyber truck owners get their trucks it's it's going to start shifting over and away from that so something to think about what do you guys think um do you think that this was an oversight from tesla or do you think that they're just building these things for the future let us know in the comments below but that is not all that they
that they discovered while they were testing the Cybertrucks. - Oh my goodness, the range test, which is something that a lot of people have been waiting for, an independent range test to see how the Cybertruck stacks up. So what his team did is put the Cybertruck on the highway, went as far as you can drive it from 100% charge to 0% charge,
drove it for hours upon hours got 254 miles out of this truck before the battery completely depleted mind you these foundation series trucks are rated for 320 miles of range now there are a lot of variables that go into account of what causes your range to to run out what was the temperature that they tested that it was 46 fahrenheit 8 celsius that's pretty
It's pretty mild. It is mild for the winter season. A lot of people watching this in the northern part of the world will tell you that it's going to get much colder. And that kind of scares me for freezing temperatures if that's all it can get. Because I would have thought maybe it would get at least 270 degrees.
miles. Especially at 70 miles per hour, right? You know, often on the freeway, you're going closer to 80 miles per hour in most interstates. So yeah, 70 definitely is on the lower end. You're not towing anything as well in this scenario. It is concerning a little bit. The range extender will give you more livable range, but if it's in the bed, then it takes away from the utility of what a truck is for. So it just makes you wonder. I'm also curious how accurate like the independent range tests are. Like if you took two Cybertruck and ran the exact same test,
Do you think that you would get the exact same answer out of both of them? I think obviously battery preconditioning, your elements you're driving in, those all play a significant role. But if you put them side by side with new batteries, you should get pretty close numbers. It's like twin studies, right? But I mean, it's fascinating to kind of when he does these range tests, it's like what we all want to know. But then you also wonder...
How did the EPA get these numbers? EPA seems to get, at least Tesla seems to get great numbers out of EPA where other EV makers that we've tested and we've seen their numbers far exceed what the manufacturer is even telling you. So yeah, I don't know how Tesla is able to get such great numbers, but a lot of the owners will tell you they don't necessarily translate to great real world results.
Interestingly enough, as of this recording, the EPA has announced that it's mandating all EVs that sell in the US to test acceleration and ride height modes in both best and worst case scenarios. Averaging these modes out now renders a lower range and EPA says it's doing so to better reflect real world conditions. With that said, Tesla has immediately dropped its range numbers on its website for almost all of its vehicles. And here are the six variants that are seeing the range drop so far. Notice a lot of these models are seeing a roughly 20 mile range drop overnight,
with Model S plaid with 19-inch wheels dropping by almost 40 miles of range. So this will probably apply to the Cybertruck as well, as we've seen from Kyle's testing. So as you guys know, I like to read the comments and the top comment about this over on Electric. The comment said, what this is probably showing is that 4680 cells are not close to where Tesla wanted them, but Tesla was falling so far behind the pickup's
space that they felt they needed to push out the Cybertruck regardless. And there's so much fun Cybertruck content coming out right now. The Rosenberg Police Department in Houston metro area actually put a picture on X that kind of went viral and they tweeted Elon. They said, spotted out in the wild. What do you think, Elon Musk? Will the Cybertruck make a good police vehicle? It's hard to find vehicles to replenish our older police units. Should we make the change in 2024?
This thing got about a half a million impressions. So they quickly got everyone's attention. They got Elon's attention. He responds with a 100 emoji. Looks to me like they're going to possibly try to make this happen. That would be amazing. But Tesla owner Silicon Valley actually posted a video clip they caught at a supercharger where California Highway Patrol pulls over, comes to the supercharger and kind of admires a Cybertruck for a few seconds. They're talking to the owner. There's definitely a lot of interest and yes, kind of the design of the Cybertruck. Oh, it's
Perfect. You have that tough stainless steel exoskeleton and the armor glasses, like the perfect police vehicle. I mean, Larry Elson made some renderings of it as a police vehicle a few months ago. I agree with Elon 100%. It should be the police vehicle. You know what's hilarious to me, seeing all this stuff, Kim, is looking at the post and the comments on X versus the same post that Rosenberg PD put over on Facebook. The X1, completely positive. Everyone's saying, go for it. This looks really nice and rosy. Nope.
unintended but then you look at the facebook post the comments are almost all negative a lot of negative comments at least of people saying the police cruiser is going to run out of battery in the middle of a chase and watch it catch on fire so it's just really interesting it's interesting i mean x obviously is going to be full of people that are fans of elon so they're going to be pro cyber truck and then on facebook maybe you know it's like a different generational group you got the zuckerberg oh i mean there you go right with all that what do you guys think about it i think it would be
awesome. And if you guys want to see more Cybertruck, check out our Patreon where we have all kinds of bonus footage, never before seen footage, interviews, and exclusive content just for our Patreon members. And moving on, Tesla has just announced that they met their production goals at 1.8 million units for 2023. Yeah, a lot of people didn't think that was possible. Not between the retooling, the slowing down, and stopping the production line briefly. So how did they do it?
do it. There was a lot going on. It came out swinging. There's a lot of tried and true approaches, right? With discounts they put in place, free supercharging, $1,000 discounts, massive price drops too. That's true. There were a lot. I felt like every week we were talking about how it's the best time ever to buy, you know, Model X. Did you see the S and X had their best quarterly sales in five years? The S and X that people were kind of thought were left to die and were kind of just hanging on there for looks.
Well, maybe that's what the price that the Model S and X should be. Although as a Model X owner, I'm like, oh.
oh, you know, you see your resale value plummet. But- - That's how it works. - I know, it is how it works. But at the same time, I'm happy for Tesla. I think it's awesome. And it kind of proves a lot of people wrong. And then there's a lot of predictions now coming out for 2024. - 'Cause we've seen this doubling take place for a couple of years now. So we're at 1.8. Are we gonna go up to 3.6 million next year? Seems like a long shot. I think with Cybertruck ramping, you'll get closer to that. - Well, we also have the refreshed Model 3 coming to the US
Possible refresh of the Model Y. - Yes. - As well, there's a lot in the works. Ramp up of Cybertruck. So what are your predictions for 2024? So some of the analysts have already chipped in with what their predictions are. Ross Gerber actually said that he thinks some people will buy inferior cars just because they dislike Elon. - Controversy of smoking weed on Joe Rogan to making
severely anti-spec remarks. These are different levels of telling everybody to F off. So I think if Musk's behavior continues to get more and more extreme, that is a risk to Tesla sales. But the bottom line, as George pointed out,
It's the best vehicle on the road. It's the best value on the road. Consumers literally have to buy a lesser car because they don't like Elon. And so I don't know if consumers are gonna do that or not. I know certain consumers are for sure. - He's been a little more skeptical as of late. He used to be a major Tesla bull, maybe still is, but he's definitely slowed his roll a little bit thinking that Elon Musk's kind of approach
to how extreme he might be on some topics online could kind of create a barrier between owners. I actually agree with that. I can see this happening. I know that outside of the Tesla bubble that we're in, if you talk to other people, they have these extreme views. Just because Elon says things or Elon's wrong, there are a lot of people that...
do not like him because of certain things he's now said on X. And so there's people that are not going to want to support him for those reasons. And Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas actually said that he thinks the true indication of Tesla's dominance will be felt outside of China, where they don't have that lead in the domestic marketplace. And they think Tesla is going to begin to focus more on the United States and over in Europe versus trying to win China over China.
Is that because of like BYD in China? BYD is definitely flexing. Absolutely. Interesting. They're pretty strong over there and have a pretty good foothold. There's also another car company. I think it's pronounced Xiaomi. It has that X on it. But they have a new SUV coming and they directly are saying they're going to be competitors with Tesla. So lots of...
you know, new, exciting EVs coming out of China. So I think a lot of these investors are feeling like, you know, Tesla can't maybe compete with China. Maybe can't maintain what they have going. Yeah. Right. That's because they've been crushing it for so long. And a lot of the bears have been saying, you know, at some point this is going to go away and it hasn't.
yeah so maybe this is the new year on the calendar and it's exactly but Elon always is like that's part of their like master plan right is to have that yeah so we'll see what happens what do you guys think once again let us know in the comments below
And kind of on this note of what to expect from 2024, Model 3, the new refreshed Model 3 is going to be here way before I expected. Yeah, so former Microsoft strategist Robert Scoble actually spoke to a Tesla employee on January 1st and says that he thinks the announcement will be coming later this month.
of the refreshed Model 3's arrival. Deliveries will begin at the end of Q1, around the corner here. That's March. That's March, at the end of March. My birthday's in March, FYI. You and always trying to get new EVs for your birthday. You can always ask. Yes. So the Q4 earnings call was also announced that it will be January 24th, and a lot of people...
think that Elon or Tesla will make a big announcement about having the new refreshed Model 3 and when we're actually going to see this and make it official. Yeah, but if they did that, would there be an Osborne effect, meaning it's going to stop or slow the sales of the current Model 3s to be able to get this new Model 3? That's the concern, right? It definitely could be that, but I'm thinking if they do have an official announcement, it should only be after 90% of the old Model 3 inventory is cleared out. Yeah,
Except if they take an approach where they're going to tell you, hey, this is the current pricing is as good as you're going to get and kind of push more sales of the current Model 3s ahead of bringing the new one. And they're going to say if the prices are going to be more expensive, which we think they're going to be more expensive on these Refresh 3s. So they could have them potentially for sale at the same time and just have two models.
Two variants for at least some period, yeah. Now I know somebody who would probably want those older Model 3s. I don't know if you guys saw this story, but over in Norway, some of the driving schools have actually banned the refreshed Model 3s. Apparently there's a rule in Norway where when you're inside a roundabout, you have to
indicate your exit within that roundabout before you come out of it. And with the refreshed Model 3s, the turn signal is actually on the steering wheel. So when you're turning, you have to be able to push at the exact same time. Yeah, we've kind of encountered that a couple times in our Model X where the turn signals are on the steering wheel. And yes, if you're turning, it's up there. It's hard to catch it at the same time. But we also don't typically do that when we're going around a roundabout. But if it was the law, I could see how that could be difficult. Now,
with steer by wire, I've had a chance to drive it, this would be a non-issue because you never have to turn all the way. So, you know, if they could bring steer by wire to the refresh, then problem solved, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.
So we've seen some photos come out of the refreshed Model 3 in the U.S. and they had the Chinese Tesla badge on the trunk. So everyone just assumed that Tesla had brought those over to the U.S. But now somebody got a picture of the VIN on one of these Model 3s and it looks like it was built in Fremont.
Yeah, the lettering within the VIN that indicates which factory it's built in showed that it was a Fremont build, even though it had the same Chinese letters on the back of it there. So Tesla's definitely retooling them, but it looks like they're also building some early vehicles for testing in the United States. Yes, it said 5YJ, which I guess means that it was built in Fremont.
They're being sneaky. They're putting the Chinese badge on there just to throw you off a little bit. At least they've gotten rid of that awful camouflage cover that they used to put on them when they're driving them around. They're not doing that anymore. We all know what it looks like. So it's a little bit better, but definitely they're not quite ready. Again, probably worried about the Osborne effect.
And over on Reddit, actually, there is a photo where you see about a dozen of these refreshed Model 3s inside the lot at Fremont. So there's quite a few of them now out there. You can see the badging on a couple of them. Some of them have the Chinese lettering. Some of them do not. But the engineering vehicle decal is on the side of these Model 3s. So they're definitely starting to crank some of these out and getting ready for that end of March release. I think at this point...
they have to know that people are talking about it, that they're gonna have to say something on January 24th, what's going on and kind of give us something in terms of the Refresh Model 3 in the US. But again, let us know what you guys think in the comments below.
So we've been talking about the tax credits changing for 2024 and now it's 2024. So the Biden administration has announced new IRA guidelines is going to basically everything needs to be made in the U.S. And it's going to be a point of sale as opposed to waiting till the end of the year when you do your taxes. But there are some vehicles that this is
Yeah, there are a few of them. And the ones that fully qualify for the federal tax incentive of $7,500 are the Model X. That's the dual motor all-wheel drive version. And then you've got the Model 3 Performance. That'll get the tax credit. And also all Model Ys will get the tax credit moving into this year. So those ones still get the tax credit. They get them. $7,500 and it's a point of sale. Yes. Two Model 3 variants do not. We're talking about the rear wheel drive and also the all-wheel drive.
And Tesla didn't provide an official reason of why they're not getting the credits. It's pretty clear. It's the IRA's Inflation Reduction Act foreign entities of concern list, which include the nations of Russia, China, North Korea, when parts or any sources are coming from those nations specifically, that knocks you out of the tax credits. So that's why these specific models do not get them. And some makes and models of different car companies
get no tax credit at all. I think a lot of what people want to know is Cybertruck because Cybertruck has been able to, let's say we have the all-wheel drive variant that is just
Just barely under $80,000. So technically it qualifies. It's not available yet. The truck isn't available yet. So we don't know 100% sure if this is going to qualify. It looks like it should. Of course, when you're talking about Foundation Series, you're talking about the Cyber Beast. These do not qualify for it. But you also, with the all-wheel drive, you got to keep in mind, you put any additional features into it, you're going to push yourself over that price threshold. So you got to take the bare bones. You have to do those for the aftermarket. Yes.
Wait till later if you want to get that $7,500 tax credit up front and then put that money towards your accessories, right? There you go. There you go. Exactly. Now, keep in mind that the trucks are heavy enough. So if you own a business, you should be able to write off Section 179. Yes, that is getting you over 6,000 pounds. You get a bonus depreciation of 100%, which I believe...
is going to be reduced down to 80%, but still a big incentive there for business owners utilizing the truck as a business vehicle. Now, GM actually has a really interesting thing that they're doing. They're giving a $7,500 incentive for any EV that lost the tax credit.
When you look at some of these EVs, you know, we're talking about the ID.4, the Nissan Leaf, the Mustang Mach-E, those have all lost all of their credits. But when it comes to GM, they're saying they're temporarily going to lose some credits here on the Lyric and also on the Blazer. With that in mind, they're saying these are two minor components. By later in the year, we'll be able to source those from nations that will allow us to bring these credits back. But right now, they're kind of taking on kind of the
They're bearing the load of that and giving you their own $7,500 discount. - They definitely want to stay competitive. So I think it's a good tactic for them. I think I like it. I like to see what they're doing. I thought it'd be fun to end this video with a wishlist for Tesla. So one of the things that I would love to see happen in 2024 would be onboard wifi. So I don't know if we can get Starlink in our vehicles
You would think it would be easy, right? With having access to Starlink and being able to get that in there without needing a giant receiver that takes away from the aesthetics. But obviously you've got Wi-Fi in the Rivian trucks and that all works really well. It seems like that's not that uncommon of a feature. So it's kind of weird that Tesla doesn't have that. That's one thing I'd like. And I was actually talking to my sister this morning and we both agreed that the Model X and S
should both have massaging seats. She's a Model X owner as well. Yes. Massaging seats, especially for Tesla to try to separate the desirability of these higher-end vehicles. Yeah. The question is, are they going to value these high-end vehicles as much as they are with the lower-end ones? But if they were, massaging seats should be on that list. And you had an awesome idea for Cybertruck.
I was thinking with wade mode, you know, we've talked about the potential for it to float. I thought it would be really interesting if an aftermarket wheel cover could be made where you'd have kind of like louvers or some sort of blade-like... Like a paddle? A paddle. So if you are able to go into kind of a shallow water, these can allow you to wade forward. So instead of putting on your aero covers, you put on your paddle covers...
And then you can, yes. But obviously this would take a long shot of being able to make sure this thing can float for an extended enough period to get over a shallow body of water. But how do you propel forward? I think having some sort of a paddle. So your Cybertruck is like a paddle boat. Let us know if you have any wishes or things that you would like to see from Tesla. Put them in the comments below.
comments below. You never know who's out there reading the comments. And I definitely want to thank our patron members for supporting us on this channel. Big thanks to Antony Jackson, Greg, Jens and Claus Nielsen, Pierre Roberg, Colin Gray, William Carvlin, Joshua Fairchild, and our top tier members. Thanks to Espen Rostrum, Chris Leonard, Michael Lynn, Gilbert Ma, Logan Hardy, and a huge shout out to our new members. We have Henry
Williams, Marvin Van Horn, Jim Whitehead, and Kenneth Haley. All right. Thank you guys so much. That concludes the podcast, but make sure you guys check out our Patreon because we have all kinds of goodies on there. Yeah, lots of exclusive content, never-before-seen footage, behind-the-scenes footage, early release footage as well, and also one-on-one Q&As with you and I as well. Yeah, and it really goes back to just giving you guys the best content out there, so we appreciate it so much. And thank you guys for watching or listening to our podcasts.
