the why tesla model y podcast episode 11. if you are a prospective model y buyer a model y owner or just can't get enough on tests on the model y in general then you are in the right spot
Here at the Why Tesla Model Y Podcast, we primarily follow the weekly happenings and news on the r/TeslamodelY subreddit. Back when I was in the market for a Tesla, I was actually searching endlessly for a podcast solely focused on the Model Y which did not exist, so I ended up on Reddit and other forums to learn more about the vehicle.
Welcome to the Y Tesla Model Y Podcast Episode 11.
a heck of a week for Tesla. This is old news at this point, but firing 10% of the workforce, cuts to the Model Y pricing, they lost a couple key executives at Tesla, there's a filing to get Elon Musk's voided $55 billion pay package reinstated, and by the way, the upcoming
potentially model to the price point of 25k if they're shooting for for a new Tesla model that that has been temporarily put on hold seemingly but anyway we'll get to all that here in a bit first things first I want to say typically I release these episodes Monday evenings next Monday evening I will be out of town I've got a wedding to attend to so do not fear next Monday evening that'll be the end of April
That episode will still come out next week, it'll just be a day late. So let's jump into what we got for this week. A little bit different of a setup in terms of what caught my attention over the past week. I will get into a few posts from the Tesla Model Y subreddit, but first I wanted to get into that news that made headlines across the country. It seemed like everything hit at once.
The first thing that I think caught probably most of our attention by this point, as I mentioned, I think it's old news at this point, is that Tesla laid off roughly 10% of its global workforce. And so where I want to start is with
electric.co. They did a really good write-up on really all these items I just mentioned. The first article that caught my attention was just that it reads, Tesla cuts prices by 2K in the U.S., Model Y back to its lowest price ever. So naturally, that caught my attention. I clicked in. Shout out to Jameson Dow, who wrote this back on April 19th. So I just want to read the article itself. Again, this is from Jameson Dow from The Electric.com.
It reads, Tesla's dropped the price of the Model Y, Model S, and Model X by $2,000 each in the U.S. Model 3 prices remain the same as do prices, of course, of the Cybertruck. It also goes into, as I just said, Tesla's had quite the week.
between firing 10% of its workforce, losing two key executives, filing to get Elon Musk's voided $55 billion pay package reinstated, and putting its upcoming $25,000 car on hold.
All of this comes after news of disappointing quarterly delivery results with inventory rising to high levels. So to pause there, as I think we all expected and saw with significant price cuts and concessions Tesla made towards the end of Q1 in mid to late March, that was I think the expectation even before the Q1 quarterly earnings call with Tesla.
I think everybody was expecting, okay, sales must be way down. They must be pushing to clear out some existing long sitting inventory. And this, you know, the Q1 earnings call along with this article here points to exactly that. The inventory is pretty dang high and Q1 delivery results were lower than expected. So hence the price cuts that follow.
To continue reading through the article, it says, perhaps in anticipation of these poor delivery results last quarter, Tesla put a temporary discount on the Model Y and its most popular vehicle.
lowering prices by $1,000 for just a few weeks. After that discount lapsed, it warned buyers, which I remember this was circling the Reddit thread for about a week, it warned buyers ahead of time that prices would increase again by $1,000, basically saying, hey, no more discounts once we roll into April 1st.
And this article goes on to say, which actually happened, those prices did indeed increase on April 1, but now, less than three weeks later, after that initial shock and scare, the price is back down again. As of today, Tesla has dropped prices on all trims of its Model Y, along with the Model S and Model X as well. The Model Y rear-wheel drive now starts at $42.9K, down from $44.9K,
The Model Y long range is $47.9K and might I add this is before the tax rebate should you qualify for it, so $7,500 bucks off. And then the Model Y performance is now $51.5K when it was previously $53.5K. It says this is equivalent to the price of the Model Y during Tesla's temporary discount in February, which only lasted a couple weeks.
it also adds tesla's more expensive model s and model x vehicles are now cheaper as well two thousand dollars while it's not a big chunk off of either of their prices they got the same discount as the model y did with 2k taken off of each trim so it says that this also happens to be the lowest price for the model x ever which also qualifies for the federal tax credit should you not exceed that income cap on it um
It wraps up basically by saying Tesla does not refer to this as a temporary discount, unlike it did with the last discount. It seems to be just a standard price cut. So as we've seen over the past few years, that's likely going to fluctuate, as all cars seemingly do. But Tesla, seemingly more than any and all automakers with Tesla,
Granted, there were a lot of lead-up signs to this of poor Q1 sales and delivery results, price cuts at the end of Q1, and now again very early into Q2. Tesla seems to slash raise prices sporadically, seems to be working in the benefit of buyers though at the moment as there's lots of price cuts across the board and different incentives for new buyers.
So anyway, I wanted to start there. That was the article that caught my attention. But I also want to go into those sub points. And this one is actually probably the most impactful. Surely there's listeners out there that work for Tesla that this may have impacted. So again, another article written by Jameson Dow from the electric.co site. It reads, Tesla lays off more than 10% of its global workforce.
This is I think the most popular column that made waves across large channel
media sources over the past week. So the article reads Tesla's announced layoffs of more than 10% of its global workforce and an internal company wide email. For the last few months, it's looked like they've been preparing for a round of layoffs. They paused some stock rewards, they even canceled some annual reviews and even reduced production at Gigafactory Shanghai.
Then rumors over the weekend indicated layoffs could be as high as 20%. In addition, there were rumors that Tesla would shorten Cybertruck production at Gigafactory Texas, which Elon Musk shut down those rumors.
But in a company-wide email from Musk, and I'll just read through this, it reads, "Over the years, we've grown rapidly with multiple factories scaling around the globe." Again, this is an email from Elon to its employees. It says, "With this rapid growth, there has been duplication of roles and job functions in certain areas. As we prepare the company for our next phase of growth, it is extremely important to look at every aspect of the company for cost reductions and increasing productivity."
So to pause there, while it's unfortunate, while it's the worst case scenario for companies to lay off employees that have likely been there for years and dedicated quite a bit to the company, as a shareholder,
Oftentimes it's okay to see this as long as it's not too consistent month after month after month because sometimes it is completely necessary to reset to get back in the green and reduce costs where you can to become more efficient. So I'll continue to read the email. It says,
The key phrase there is buy more than 10% globally. And to pause, the article, again, thanks to Jameson Dow for writing this up, goes on to say that more than 10% means that at least 14,000 employees will be laid off. So to put that into perspective, that's quite a few thousand employees and not a small decision there by Tesla.
Further reading through Elon's email, it says,
For those remaining, I'd like to thank you in advance for the difficult job that remains ahead. We're developing some of the most revolutionary technologies in auto, in energy, and artificial intelligence. As we prepare the company for the next phase of growth, your resolve will make a huge difference in getting us there. Thanks, Elon.
So I think that's the heaviest hit to Tesla over the past week or so. And I think the most impactful news, over 14,000 employees across the globe were laid off. So some serious cost cutting measures by Tesla. I haven't checked the stock price, but I know over the past week or so, it hit a 52 week low of I think 138, 140 bucks or so in that range.
But anyway, moving on to the next point that was mentioned in that first article.
New writer here. This is not our guy, Electric, Mr. Jameson Dow. It is still an electric article. That's E-L-E-C-T-R-E-K. This one was written by Fred Lambert back on April 15th. It says, Tesla puts the $25,000 electric car codenamed NV9 on the back burner despite what Elon Musk said.
so again i just want to read through a bit of this article just because i think it was well written pretty concise it says electric can confirm that tesla indeed put its upcoming a 25 000 electric car sometimes referred to as the model 2 on the back burner despite what elon said the
The project was codenamed NV9. Tesla has been working on its next generation vehicle platform that is expected to enable much cheaper electric vehicles. The automaker has previously talked about two upcoming vehicles on the platform,
One, a model cheaper and smaller than the Model 3, sometimes being referred to as the $25,000 Tesla or Model 2. And second, a Tesla Robo Taxi, so a new vehicle designed from the ground up for self-driving. A few weeks ago, Reuters reported that Tesla has canceled the long-promised inexpensive car. However, CEO Elon Musk quickly denied the report. Um...
So there's basically a screenshot of a tweet from a verified account saying Tesla scraps their low-cost car plans from Reuters.
Elon just simply directly responded to that tweet saying Reuters is lying parentheses again. So that's encouraging. You know, if you've heard me on this podcast mentioned the Rivian R2 that they recently announced that is going to be not in the $25,000 range, but it'll be in the seemingly $45,000 range to compete with the Model Y model.
But also they've released the R3, which is an even smaller model that you gotta think, maybe it's not 25K like this supposed Model 2, but perhaps 30, 35K. So lower priced, low barrier of entry EV is what Rivian seems to be creeping down into, and Tesla is as well. So it's good to see that Elon is saying, no, this is not scrapped, it's not canceled. If anything, there may just be delays.
So it goes on to say, "Electric can confirm the program which was internally called NV9 was postponed, according to sources familiar with the matter." So, it says, "Musk might take issues with claiming that it is cancelled, but the project is effectively scratched right now as Tesla is putting all resources into its self-driving effort."
According to sources familiar with the matter, Musk told Tesla's team in Austin in December 2023 that NV9, an expansion of Gigafactory Texas for the new cheaper next-gen model, was the priority for 2024. However, the project was recently completely defunded and many people involved in it were laid off as part of the round of layoffs announced today.
It says instead, Musk said that he wanted Tesla to focus on the south expansion of Gigafactory Texas, which is going to house a giant data center for the RoboTaxi project. According to people familiar with the project, it is already behind schedule. No surprise there, as most Tesla projects are. Granted, they're great when they come out.
And there's serious doubt that it can be completed by the end of August, which is the timeline Musk has been pushing for. Shortly after denying the report that the cheaper model was canceled, Musk announced that Tesla would unveil its robo-taxi on August 8th.
So, again, this is a nearly word-for-word write-up that I just read from the site electric.co, written by Fred Lambert on April 15th. So that's at least some positive news. At least one phase of that project, not the...
Model 2, as I like to call it, the cheaper Tesla model, seems like that is perhaps not canceled. It's on the back burner, but that robo taxi project is still in full development, still a priority, and seemingly they'll have a teaser to announce in August. So that's exciting. That's just a few months away.
Moving on to the next bit. I won't spend too much time here, but another piece of that article said Tesla's head of policy and business development has left Rohan Patel. He's the second executive to do so this week.
no real insight into why he left uh where he's going to uh but anyway he's the head of policy and business development so pretty dang high up at tesla but uh drew baglino is his name tesla also lost their senior vice president of engineering and did not give a reason for doing so and again this was last week the same time that all these layoffs happened so i imagine it was not a part of the layoffs
Perhaps it was, but it seemed as though both Patel, their head of policy and business development, as well as Drew Bagolino, their SVP of engineering, seemingly left on their own. Who knows what they're going to? Who knows internally what's going on at Tesla? Perhaps it's just simply, and I say just lightly, and I probably shouldn't say it that way because 14,000 folks just lost their jobs, but
But obviously that's enough to shake up a company and have people second guessing, is this the place that I want to work? And perhaps that's all it was for a couple of these key execs. But I think that's worth noting as well.
And then I think, while I don't disagree with this plan for Elon compensation-wise, I haven't read every single detail about it. The timing of it is very interesting. With 14,000 folks just being let go, a couple days later, again, this was Fred Lambert who wrote this post on Electric. It says, Tesla asks shareholders to move to Texas and to repass Elon Musk's massive compensation plan.
uh so long story short back in 2018 there was a 55 billion dollar compensation package that tesla's board and basically elon presented this plan to shareholders asking for its approval and so
For reference, I know it sounds egregious, why are they giving $55 billion in cash to Elon? They're not. It sounds like it was primarily, if not all, made up of stock options, which is a common, obviously, compensation package for executives that on paper it looks egregious, but typically it's tied to certain performance milestones to where it makes sense.
So what's interesting here, and obviously the article caught my attention on the back of letting 14,000 people go, 10% of the workforce. Seems like a poor time for the head honcho, the CEO, to ask for a $55 billion compensation package or at least bring it back up to potentially pass it this go-around. However, this article goes on to say that
that Tesla's chairwoman, Robin Denholm, wrote the opening statement to the proxy and said about the case that had Musk's compensation package rescinded, um,
It wrote, uh,
voted to approve it in 2018. Because the Delaware court second-guessed your decision, Elon has not been paid for any of his work for Tesla for the past six years that has helped to generate significant growth in stockholder value. That strikes us and the many stockholders for whom we already have heard as fundamentally unfair and inconsistent with the will of the stockholders who voted for it. Wow.
I mean, so that's nuts. I don't know if they're referring to direct salary pay. Perhaps Elon hasn't taken a salary for any of his work over the past six years. But coming straight from the chairwoman of Tesla, Robin Denholm, saying that Elon has not been paid for any of his work at Tesla for the past six years. I think it's fair to say that, yes, a compensation package needs to be passed for this man, given that all that he dips his toe into is
All that he does for tests are good or bad. He runs a dang impressive company. So $55 billion caught my attention on paper, but seeing that it's primarily, if not all, stock options, I think that makes sense. Because again, it's tied to typically pretty far-fetched performance goals. You have to hit certain metrics. Boom, you unlock X amount of those stock options that vest at that point.
I imagine that's a similar structure for Elon, but definitely caught my attention seeing he hasn't technically been paid for any of his work over the past six years. Obviously, there's likely...
other stock chunks that he owns that have vested that he can sell at any time. I'm sure Elon's doing just fine. But it sounds like a compensation package is in order. I just thought the timing of bringing up the $55 billion compensation package for Elon was pretty terrible timing right on the back of the 10% of their global workforce being let go.
So moving on. Um, I know there's a lot to start the show different than we typically do. That was not at all. That's just the model. Why subreddit? So let me breeze through a few posts that caught my attention over the past week on the model. Why subreddit? Uh,
And one is kind of falling on the back of what I just read with those articles. This is back over on, it's actually, excuse me, not on the Tesla Model Y subreddit. It's on the Tesla Lounge subreddit, which I highly recommend you follow it. You peruse it every now and then. It's obviously not Model Y specific, but a great forum for all Tesla owners. This is from user ObjectiveUpstairs36, posted a couple days ago, so back on April 20th.
It says, what's going on with Tesla? All I hear is negativity about Tesla and electric vehicles these days. Are EVs really dying? I love my Tesla. It would never go back to ice. Um...
So I don't want to harp on this too much. I feel like we've gone through enough negativity for a podcast. But I think some of the comments back to this post are true and valid and encouraging and good perspectives to think of for the EV market. And that perhaps we have to filter through what we read in the media because there's a lot of upside and seemingly... Let me just read through it.
This one, valid point. This is the most upvoted comment, 495 upvotes. It says,
Great point there. Uh, I, I a hundred percent resonate that again. I live in Austin, Texas. Uh, they're everywhere. Model threes. I'm seeing the new model three Highlands everywhere. Uh, model Y is model X is sporadically Tesla is becoming more and more common given that they are the best priced EV, um, outside of, I don't know, perhaps Prius, which I haven't checked on the price there in a while, but, um,
Rivian, Tesla, you know, the Ford lightning, um,
a lot of these, these automakers that are long, long time gas powered vehicles, ice automakers, um, that are shifting into the EV market. They haven't found a way to get it priced as effectively as cheaply as Tesla is able to while making the profit in the margins that Tesla is. Um, so I guess that's the advantage of being one of the first to market as Tesla was. Um,
There's a reply to that comment that said exactly the same observation for me. In France, it has become commonplace to come across Teslas, whereas three years ago, it was an event every single time.
Further comments to this post: "Most, if not all, of the anti-EV articles I read seem to be written by somebody who has never driven one. They seem to be written from the perspective that everyone in the world lives in an apartment and needs to drive 300+ miles each day for work." Great point there. Another comment: "It's ridiculous how many parts are in an ICE engine EV is here to stay."
Another fair perspective here. This is from user Hail to the Thing. It says, Oil and gas has a ton of money to influence media. Combine that with poor people who don't want to see change in the world because they already own gas cars, you have a tsunami of misinformation. How stupid is that? I won't continue reading this post. But I thought that was a fair perspective. Another comment that...
feeds into that same perspective. Deep legacy auto and right wing oil interests are seizing on the effect of high interest rates to claim people don't want EVs as opposed to EV market share grows, albeit a bit slower because EVs are still relatively expensive. For media, headlines like EVs are dying draws more clicks.
And then finally, the oil industry has a lot of money. Money buys ads and misinformation and or paid bias. Additionally, most comments you will see now just parrot the same thing. Not cleaner than gas. Where does your electricity come from? Gas. EVs are not clean vehicles, etc. Again, just parroting what the gas industry points out.
No one actually used their head and considers all the factors that go into using each type of vehicle. If they did, they would see there's a huge delta in gas usage that comes from using an ICE car over an EV. And they go in a long description of illustrating that. So anyway, I think that was some fair perspective and
devil's advocate to all the nationwide media you see out there that the second there's a quote-unquote recall that turns out to just be a software update for teslas boom everybody jumps on it or uh-oh two superchargers are down in chicago due to weather oh my gosh charger teslas are dying superchargers vehicles can't charge um massive charging crisis in chicago whereas it was
a single supercharger. There were plenty of other charging options around. It's the same sentiment, I think, for even those new owners, prospective buyers, current owners in the Model Y subreddit. Typically, all you see posted is the minority of folks that may have an issue. They may have some chips in their paint. I probably shouldn't say that's the minority of people. That's probably most of us at this point.
But little things, right? As in panel gaps or cracking a windshield or I hear this sound coming from the front right of my vehicle. What the heck is it? We tend to post when there's abnormalities rather than when things are running smooth and working normal. So for every post you see, there's probably 90 to 100 other people that are driving with no issues. So wanted to read that one. Next post, and I have...
let's see i've got this one and one more so we'll wrap up here shortly but this this post um this is from user ho 20. that's h-o-h-h 20. uh posted today april 22nd it just says road trip battery concerns for those of you that have road trips in tesla it's basically got a screenshot of
kind of what that navigation looks like when you plan a drive in your app from your location to your destination. It shows you all the different charging stops in between. So the first charging stop, it says you'll arrive with 16%, charge 32 minutes. Next charging stop, you also arrive with 16%, charge 17 minutes. Next one, you'll arrive with 15%, charge 14 minutes, and then so on.
And so the post reads, going on my first road trip with a 24 Model Y long range. I know the map doesn't plan to have you charge back up to 80% battery because it wants you to keep moving and not sit too long at a charger. I don't want to go below 20% battery and leave that as an emergency in case I get stuck in traffic. For those that have gone on trips, how well can I trust the system to not get me stuck when it has me draining the battery to 15 or even 10%.
There may be times on the trip when I am more than 50 miles between superchargers. So, when I first saw this, I clicked in because I do think it's a little odd in that the Tesla trip planner, as much as I do trust it now, it does want you to...
Charge a little bit here and there. So it essentially wants you to make more frequent stops, but quicker. So it doesn't want you running your battery down to 5%, spending 40 minutes at a charger to charge it up to 100%, and then blast off for 250, 300 miles before you charge again.
it wants you to seemingly to charge every 150, 200 miles or so for 15 to 20 minutes at a time. So in short bursts, so you're spending overall, I've seen posts on it, I don't remember exactly how they calculated it, but overall it results in a quicker trip doing it this way, whereas logic tends to say if I can stop less, even if it happens to be longer, that's preferred, right?
My overall sentiment for this question of should I run it down below 20%, can I trust the system? The short answer is absolutely yes. I noticed that when you're driving in a Tesla with navigation pulled up, of course it gives you the estimated state of charge or battery percentage that you will arrive with. If I leave my location here in Austin, I want to cruise up to
I don't know, Dallas, Texas, and it says, hey, you're going to arrive with 15% battery remaining. That is pretty dang accurate. And so my one piece of advice, and I think the simplest way to monitor this would be just as you're driving,
check out not necessarily the battery percentage that you're at, but that number down on the bottom center of your screen that shows the estimated arrival state of charge. So if that number starts to drop, as in if you start your trip, it says you're going to arrive with 15%, but 20 miles in, you notice that's dropped to 14%, then it drops to 13%, and then it continues to drop,
Short answer is you're probably going too fast. Slow down, that'll boost that back up. But if you notice that trend and that the arrival state of charge estimate continues to drop,
click on that consumption app within the Tesla. It is super, super accurate and helpful in that it factors in everything, the climate control in the car, the wind direction, and if there's wind resistance, or if you have the wind at your back, which is, I've noticed on road trips, given me an extra 10 to 20 miles or taken away an extra 10 to 20 miles just based on the wind direction and strength of it, which I think is really neat. I geek out on that stuff, but
Typically, it's speed. Speed is the one that you can control the most that has the biggest impact. Typically, if you notice that estimated arrival state of charge continuing to drop throughout your road trip, just slow down. And it will say that. When you click on the consumption app, it'll say that driving at this speed has caused you to battery estimate upon arrival to reduce
drop by 3% or something along those lines. And then it'll give a suggestion of drop down to 70 miles per hour to have this much of an effect. And so it gives you very brief kind of bullet points of here's what's going on with this drive, here's what's impacting it positively or negatively.
and all you have to do is really do the inverse i'm not saying you've got to crank your your ac off or crank it up to you know 78 degrees um you can be comfortable but perhaps turn the fan down perhaps slow the speed down bump over to the center lane of the right lane rather than the far left cruising at 80 miles per hour but long story short the battery uh
estimates I think on on trips in terms of the battery percentage that it estimates you'll arrive with is very very accurate and so you you really don't have to worry even if it says you'll arrive with five percent as long as you monitor that estimated you know arrival state of charge you'll be in good shape if you notice it continues to drop slow down and you'll be good
So let me read through a couple comments. One says, "Getting stuck in traffic will not reduce your battery percentage. If you get stuck in traffic, you'll arrive with actually more percentage than estimated. Generally, you can trust the car and the system." The in-car system, I should say. "Arriving with 20% battery will most likely result in getting slower charging speeds. It's generally recommended to arrive with 10% or less to see max charging speeds.
I can agree with that. The lower percent of charge you arrive to a supercharger with, the quicker that baby charges back up. Another comment, I would trust the system. If you want, you can add 2% to 3% at each stop, but I don't think you'll need it. As someone else said, traffic will increase, not decrease your range. Let's see...
There's a lot of long comments I don't think I need to read. Another one says, "Trust the system. I never had a problem coming up short." I think that's the short of it. And the final one I'll read, "Go watch an out-of-spec road trip video on YouTube. Your concerns will be long gone. They target 0% arrivals, but ideally, you want to find a percentage you're comfortable with. Mine is 4%, but if you want 20, make it 20. Lower equals faster trip."
The car will calculate your arrival percentage while driving. If it's estimated below your comfortable percentage, slow down. If it's above, speed up. So thank you, Tiggles4, was that comment, for basically summarizing the five-minute monologue I just went on addressing this point.
That's basically it. Keep an eye on that estimated arrival percentage. Find what you're comfortable with. If you notice that it's dropping as you're driving, slow down. If you notice that it's steady or it's climbing, you can probably speed up a little bit.
But that's awesome. Hearing multiple folks say, trust the system, I've never had a problem come up. There's folks that target 0% arrivals. Your concerns will be long gone. 100% agree. The system is spot on with estimating the consumption as you go about your drive and your driving habits. And so just keep an eye on that estimated arrival percentage and you'll be all set. Finally, in this...
It's just a great post. It's a dream situation, but also I think could apply to my why of the week candidate. This is user Nickknock Sayer, posted 11 hours ago, so on April 22nd. It just says, EV bros. I feel like I've provided enough Rivian talk for a Tesla podcast, but...
Beautiful photo of a Rivian R1S, I believe is the name of it, right? The large SUV that they currently have. At least I think the only SUV that Rivian currently offers.
It says, the post says, "Full EV for our family. The Tesla universal wall connector works perfectly." So pretty cool. Yeah, they got that Tesla universal wall connector, which it looks like has a Tesla plug that you can, of course, counterfeit. I shouldn't say counterfeit. I don't think that's the right word. But you can configure to obviously the Rivian with an adapter or just plug straight into your Tesla.
So really a great setup. I think something about me likes at the moment, my wife drives a gas-powered vehicle, I drive the Model Y, the EV. I like that setup for whatever reason. If, I don't know, the power grid totally fails, granted, you probably wouldn't be able to pump gas either, but I like knowing that I can fall back on a gas-powered car for some reason along with an EV. But I think...
long down the road when we eventually buy a new car, uh, we will like Nick knock Sayer and this post, we will go full Evie. Uh, and I think the Rivian and Tesla combo is pretty dang neat. Uh, but at that point, who knows what Tesla will have? I'll probably be all in on Tesla and why not get a
My initial question when I saw this post was, which one do you like more? What are the pros and cons? So let me try to read through a few of the items that I think could apply to that. One of these comments just kind of read my mind. It says, okay, which one do you like more? Be honest. We're eyeballing a Rivian when we decide to need a second car.
Response is interesting but fair. It says, like more would definitely be the Rivian. That's my daily driver and leaving the Y to my wife. Kids are loving the extra space too in the Rivian. It has a better build quality, but it came with the price, I'm assuming. No major panel gaps compared to our 2021 Model Y. It's still a bit behind on software, e.g. entertainment, but they do release updates every month, so hopefully you can catch up.
Not having access to the supercharger network was previously one of the cons of Rivian, but obviously that's not the case now. It goes on to say Driver Plus, so essentially the version of Autopilot on Rivian, is a bit behind. I love how it spaces itself and it doesn't do sudden breaks. It's good where it works, but there are roads that it doesn't recognize yet. There was a live Q&A recently. They said they'll push more updates to it sometime this year. Let's see what else we get.
Nothing else too notable other than short answer was the OP, Nick Knox-Sayer, no idea if I'm saying that name right, prefers the Rivian. Obviously, it's about double the price, at least for what you can get a rear-wheel drive for. So you're paying for it with the Rivian SUV, but when that R2 comes out in a couple years, when the R3 comes out, I think then we have a fair conversation.
But great picture. That one's my why of the week. Just the fact that you have a great looking Model Y long range, black induction wheels, great looking vehicle right next to that Rivian SUV. That's a dream duo right there. So folks, that's it. That's episode 11. A little bit longer one today. I think there was obviously a lot of Tesla news to go around over the past week or so that I felt the need to cover.
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