Electrek car of the year, NIO Day, what's coming for EVs in 2025, and more
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Welcome to a new episode of The Electric Podcast. I'm Fred Lebert, your host. And as usual, I'm joined by Seth Winchell. How are you doing, Seth, for this last podcast of the year, 2024? I'm good. All right. So it's going to be a short one, unless you guys have a ton of questions or topics you want our takes on, because we're going to have plenty of time for that, because obviously...

The last week of the year slash Christmas time and all the holidays and all that, there's not a ton of news that comes out. We still have a few interesting news items I want to discuss. We also just released the electric car of the year announcement. So we're going to get into that.

Then a couple of Tesla news, the NIO Day 2024, what happened just earlier this week. So there was a few interesting announcements in that. A little bit more detail or the Honda-Nissan partnership merger being official?

So we're going to discuss that and then if you guys have any questions, I know probably going to be fewer people live today because it's the holidays and people have other things to do. But still, we're going to have plenty of time. You can put in the comment section right now any question about any of these topics. We're going to discuss our expectation for the EV world in 2025. Maybe your hope, though I think our hope and expectation might be quite different. There's going to be a gap between those two.

I thought 2025, for the longest time after 2025, would be like the year where EVs just break out and take over. And I think it's still going to be the case in some market. But unfortunately, I think in North America, it has been delayed quite a bit.

All right, so let's start out with the Electrek EV of 2024 set. So that was your choice. I mean, I agree with it, but when we were discussing it, you came up with it and I was like, oh yeah, that's a good choice. The Volvo EX30.

Yes. So all the way back at the end of 2023, we went to Spain to check out the EX30 and it was quite impressive. And we thought, oh, wow, this is coming to the US. It's going to kind of replace the Bolt as that small little quick EV that's going to be out there.

And we were very excited about it. I certainly was. And, you know, there's some varieties. There's an off-road version. There was like the all-wheel drive version is incredibly quick, zero to 60 in 3.4 seconds, which is,

you know, it makes it Volvo's fastest car ever. I mean, you know, they had the sports cars, but it's the fastest car in their lineup. It's also one of the cheapest cars and the cheapest EV they offer. So that's kind of a dichotomy there. Of course, Volvo is now owned by Geely, a Chinese brand, but Volvo's are still, some are made in Europe. This one and a lot of others are designed mostly in Sweden still. They have that Gothenburg logo

headquarters. So it's kind of a world car. And that's one of the reasons we like this vehicle, because it's going to be in China. It's going to be in Europe. It's going to be in the U.S. Eventually, some dealerships have just gotten their first allocation of them after that year where Volvo was intent on bringing the Chinese version to the U.S. And then, you know, Biden dropped the I think part of the IRA thing was, oh, by the way, Chinese made vehicles now the world.

price you know 100 percent tariff yeah 100 percent oh okay well maybe we'll make them in belgium now and ship them to the us which is kind of ironic because you know they're still importing them from china to europe and then they're going to be importing them from belgium to the us like why not build them in south carolina you would say one would say anyway uh

A lot of geopolitics and, you know, for better or worse, that's kind of representative of the, you know, EV space going forward. Right. There's Chinese EVs, BYD, other ones that are so inexpensive and, you know, pretty high quality that are, you know, knocking on the door. We haven't let them into the U.S. yet without the 100 percent tariffs.

Nothing has been very successful. I mean, I guess Polestar 2 is one of them. In Europe, it's a big deal. But beyond that, the EX30 is actually a pretty impressive vehicle. I was blown away by how impressive it was as a low-end car. The stereo sounds amazing.

It's it handles really well. There's an all wheel drivers and, you know, as I said, zero to 60 in 3.4 seconds. Even the rear wheel version was super impressive, both speed wise and agility wise. We took the road a little bit. I mean, not off road, like on dirt roads.

um handled really well they have seven inches of clearance so that micro suv um moniker that they use is a little bit more apt on this you know and it looks a little bit yeah it looks more like an suv than the bolt tv like you compare it a lot to the size of it and i think i think like you said it's like between the ev and euv but i i even think it looks more like an suv than the euv i would think yeah

But yeah, I understand your point, though, that it's like the format is a big part why we think it should be car of the year.

there's just not it's an underserved format in the ev world right now and like you said it's like everything is going bigger and we need we need something that pulls the trend down a little bit uh but also the fact that it's it's you know there's something about a car that's available worldwide and i understand that some markets have different needs and other markets and it does make sense sometimes to have a car just for a specific market and then something else for another

But also if a car like Model Y is the best example, obviously, if a car is successful globally, there's probably a reason why. It hits the mark in a lot of different things. And yeah, I think this could be it too. Obviously, it's a little bit too early to tell right now in the vehicle program's life. I mean, the Model 3 took three years to become the best-selling car in the world. Absolutely impressive.

I don't know if that's going to be the case here, but I think in the next few years, it could turn out to be a very successful vehicle program. Yeah, I mean, we can look at Norway. We can look at a couple other places. It's only second to the Model Y in terms of sales. It's blowing up.

Um, which is interesting because, you know, Europe's obviously they have smaller roads. They're more okay with small cars, although it does seem like even in Europe, cars are getting bigger and bigger, but you know, you have those old, you know, medieval, uh, towns that have the very narrow roads, something like this is going to be much better for that. And, you know, there's also a lot of other smaller things. I talked about the safety, it's a Volvo, so it's safe. It gets a five star, um, and then CAP ratings, um,

One other thing about small cars is you don't need as much electricity to go as far, obviously. So even charging at 150 kilowatts, which is like the standard charging, I would say probably the most common, you're going to get 25 minutes, you're going to get from 10% to 80%, which is what you typically want. So you don't need to go out and find those 350 kilowatt chargers to get a super fast charge.

And, you know, it's really nice to have like the towing capability. It just hits all those little little things. And, you know, I don't know if they're going to I can't remember if they're doing towing in the US, but it obviously is mostly the same vehicle. So it should be able to tow. And, you know, like if you if you look at it, it's a pretty good like I think it's a really good looking car.

yeah you know the design is uh universally liked I think it's uh not many people are it's it's not a polarizing design like it's it's sharp it's clean the interior too not much on the interior but the interior is also very Volvo like just clean interior uh some people don't like the lack of an instrument cluster uh but uh but it is becoming more and more popular in vehicles these days

Yeah, that was my one big – that was probably my biggest gripe is they have a center console kind of like a Tesla. But it's a small display. And if you're using Google Maps, for instance, it's a very – But yeah, we had a comment from someone on your post already. We just posted the article. So it's not ever – we had someone from a Volvo dealership that just got the first few, assuming the U.S. Yeah, because he was talking about U.S. prices. Yeah.

And he himself, like someone who's relatively biased, is not impressed with the price of it. Of course, I think they are getting the... He says both the demo that they receive is over $46,000. So normally the demos are often the fully loaded version. So this is obviously the all-wheel drive version. But they are comparing it to the Equinox EV, which I assume it's because of the price range. It's very much the same price range. And it is smaller, yes, but it's also...

Like GM and Volvo, and I'm not trying to throw shade at GM, but Volvo is considered a little bit more premium than GM to start with. And also, I haven't driven the Equinox myself yet. Have you driven the Equinox? I have, yeah. Yeah. And so I don't remember your exact opinion on it, but I know that generally speaking in the industry, the opinion is not as well-reviewed vehicle as the EX30 is.

I would agree. That's fair. Just to be nice, let's say. Last trip that I had with other auto journalists, that was a subject of conversation. A lot of people just completely panned it. I don't know if it's worth... Well, it had bad software out of the gate. I think that and the Blazer. But also...

The one that he's talking about is an all-wheel drive premium. It has all the interior stuff. So that's going to be more expensive. The $35,000 one is coming, I think, in April or middle of 2025. So that'll be more similar to a Chevy Bolt.

Yeah, it's kind of in the same situation as the Equinox last year where the more expensive version came out first and the 35,000 version came out half of the year. Yeah. I'm starting to see a ton of them around here, the Equinox meaning.

all right we have a couple of tested news to discuss the new day on the nissan and then we're going to jump into the comments and we're going to discuss also our view of the ev world in 2025 so if you have any comments on that what do you think the world what do you think is going to be important trends in 2025 whether it's political whether it's

technology wise whether it's a you know a specific vehicle program that's coming out that you're interested in like like the x30 that we're gonna keep a close track on in 2025 because we think it could be um a significant one put them in the comment section right now and we can get to it in about 15 minutes

all right speaking of that one of the vehicle programs i'm most excited about in 2025 and moving forward is the tesla semi of all things you know since uh since the model 2 slash you know 25 000 tesla has been scrapped i think i think it's the most exciting vehicle program at tesla because i'm not you know i mean i'm interested in then two new cheaper evs based on the mobile through my wife that are coming out next year

just not that excited about it because i think they're gonna capitalize you know i think they will help tesla you know maintain its cells maybe grow a tiny little bit next year but not much more than that i don't think they're gonna move the needle that much because i think they're gonna help but then also capitalize model 3 more why so there's gonna be somewhere in between tesla samai is more interesting because even though we have other class a

all electric trucks out there like the Cascadia from Freightliner. There's a few other examples out there. Nothing that has been high volume and profitable, which is Tesla's expertise. Tesla makes electric vehicle in a high volume and they make money on it. And if they can do that with a class eight semi truck that has enough range to be usable and enough cargo capacity,

to still be profitable for the operator, then it can sell like hotcakes basically because a lot of people, they buy trucks based on a spreadsheet. Can it actually reduce my cost of operation? Yeah. Can it do the work that I require it to do? Yes. Let's do it. Let's update the fleet.

But the program hasn't been smooth to say the least. Like such a weird vehicle program to follow. Like unveiled in 2017, supposed to come out in 2020, doesn't come out until 2022. In 2022, Tesla actually announced the style to production and unveils a production version of the vehicle. But then a year later, not much happened. They just built a few that they use themselves and the PepsiCo, like a customer partner for Tesla uses.

And then they announced, oh, now we're going to actually build a factory for it in January 2023. But even then they announced that and nothing happened for basically a year after that, more than a year really, because at first they announced an expansion of Gigafactory Texas, which is something that we reported about a year prior that this actually finally planned to grow Gigafactory Texas. But now you have...

they decided why they waited a year between January 23rd and actually starting construction of that factories that move from an expansion of the factory to a different factory next to Gigafactory Texas that we see here. And what we're reporting on today is an update on the progress towards that because that is where the test SMI is going to be produced in high volume. And the structure has been finished or at least the

steel structure for it so it's not you can see that the building is not completely closed up and everything but Dan Priestley the head of the Tesla summer program announced that the structure itself the steel structure is up there's going to be a second steel structure expansion he said to it so it's not you know it's a build big thing but it's not as big as Tesla's other factories and

And it looks like it's on track for start of production in 2025, probably late 2025. So I don't expect Tesla to produce a ton of Tesla samis in 2025, but it could really well be the start of volume production of it, which should be very impactful in the future.

All right. This was an interesting one. I think that can help us launch into a discussion of 2025 in the US too, because it's a lot about politics. I think the EV market in the US, unfortunately, is going to be a lot about politics next year rather than technology. Elon, well, Tesla, it's so hard to separate the two these days. But last time around, last round of lobbying in the US was

for the tax credit, for the EV tax credit, Tesla and Elon were in disagreement, really, because Tesla was lobbying for the tax credit and Elon was lobbying to kill the tax credit, to remove it entirely. The discussion, of course, was the reform of the tax credit from the limit of 200,000 units to no limit, so not to throw a stick in the wheels of the early adopters. Now, Elon is obviously still against it and he wants Trump to kill it.

This time, you cannot differentiate Tesla and Elon on that subject. Reports came out that Tesla has reached out to the Trump-Trump team and they agree with killing the EV tax credit in the US. So now they're on the same page.

But what's very interesting about this whole thing is Tesla elsewhere is not doing the same thing. It's not consistent in their lobbying for EV incentive in the U.S. versus other markets. And the example here that we have came from Tesla.

the uk the head of tesla in europe uh mr joe ward reached out to the new uk government after the election earlier this year and um sent a letter to the that was recently uncovered to the new minister of transportation there and in the letter he argues to increase

incentive for electric vehicles and to make it revenue neutral by increasing taxes on polluting cars, on fossil fuel powered vehicles. A very intelligent approach, I think. Something that makes a lot of sense and something that Tesla is taking an official position on in the UK. They want that, but completely different in the US.

which I think to me, and it's something that I've been reporting on for a while, it's why I sold my Tesla stock, is like, I think there's something clear here that

Tesla is not about the mission anymore to accelerate the advent of electric transport. There's things that are above the mission. There was always other things other than the mission, but I always felt that Tesla was good at putting the mission first. Now, this, I think, is a clear example of not because why would you lobby for this in the UK but not in the US?

And the only answer that I can come up with, and if you guys have a better answer, you can put it in the comment section right now, but it's Elon's politics. Elon right now cannot come out and say that he wants tax credit for electric vehicles. And he especially cannot come out and say that he wants higher taxes on gas because now all of his friends...

all of his allies are all people that think that all taxation is theft and if he come out come out saying that he's uh he's in trouble like he's gonna lose a ton of us support which you know is growing thinner in the u.s like you know it's an evilly sided on one side of the political spectrum too so he cannot do that so tesla is inconsistent on this i think because of iman's politics which take

higher priority over the mission which blows my mind do you agree said am i reading this wrong or is this does that make sense what i just said no that's that's the problem is like how do you separate the you know the head of tesla versus the mission and the problem is is that you can't right like he's still the ceo and as as much as he's going off the rails like you can't

You know, Tesla in the UK may be, you know, pro EV stance, but like they lost the plot in the US. You know, they're not, you know, there might be a different thing. Like maybe it makes sense to kill the EV incentive now because Tesla is in such a commanding lead of the, you know, and their cars are actually...

with gas cars for the price. So strategically speaking, it may be advantageous for Tesla to take over, to be the car manufacturer, but it's certainly not advancing EVs in general. No, it's about them. If you want to make the argument for Tesla, I think it's still going to hurt Tesla for the most part, I think.

And even Elon admitted that at least short term it's going to hurt Tesla. And the question is like by how much? I think it's going to be significant. I think 15% to 20% sells it would make sense to me. But yeah, the idea that you can make is like, all right, but it will hurt people more, other automakers more, and we will come out on top. I just don't like that mentality at all. I think it's ridiculous. Same.

All right. Neo Day was on the 23rd or maybe 22nd. And yeah, we already had a pretty good idea of what was coming out of that event. But now it's all official. So they have the second sub-brand from the big Chinese EV manufacturer, Firefly, which the first vehicle that you can see here is the first one from the Firefly plan. Look at those lights. And it's...

Yeah, interesting lights for sure. And it's a smaller vehicle. It's something that's going to compete with the Mini brand, with the Daimler Smart brand. And it's in the similar segment. And it's going to be international. So it is a brand that NIO wants to bring to Europe. No plan for the U.S., obviously. And it's probably not the brand that they would want to start with in the U.S. anyway. But just in terms of segment.

But it is now available in China and soon enough in Europe. And the CEO was clear about the market they're going after. It is the Mini and it is the smart car. First small available in April in China. Europe shortly after. So that's interesting. Apparently even in the first half of the year.

and they have a starting price in china of 150 000 yen which is equivalent of about 20 000 which is about the same price as the mini cooper in china so again you know against uh what market they're going after the vehicle itself is not not bad looking but yeah the headlights are an acquired taste maybe yeah right maybe uh we should make a new year's resolution to get to china in 2025 i feel like that

Might be something on the agenda. Yeah, I would love to do that. I would love to just, you know, I mean, I've been hearing great things and everything, but experiencing them in person is something different. And I would like to get some hands-on experience with some of these cars, including this one. So the other part of the NIO day, it was the Firefly launch, but also the official launch of the NIO ET9s. And this is interesting because, you know, when we talk about Chinese EVs,

We often talk about the cheaper offering because we don't have that in other markets, especially not in North America. There's nothing as cheap as it is in China. But another reason why we want to check it out is that

They have the entire spectrum there and they have things that are very impressive in the higher end of the market. And this is what they're going after. This is an SUV that starts the equivalent of $108,000 US. And it is stunning and extremely well equipped. The interior here, you have a display that goes all the way through and then you have the giant center screen.

limousine type of interior. And I don't think there's the video in there, but I've seen something. We didn't put the video, but I see the very impressive video of the suspension system that they have in there. It's like nothing I've ever seen before. They put champagne glasses in a kind of a pyramid shape on top of it. And then they ran over at full speed over a bunch of speed bumps and didn't move at all. The glasses, very impressive stuff.

Yeah, $108,000 is the version with the battery pack because NIO is sticking to this idea that they sell batteries as a service. So it starts at $90,000 and the equivalent of $150 a month to rent the battery pack.

which in China is something that people are into. And the battery swapping aspect to it is, you know, I have to give credit to NIO. Like, I didn't think that battery swapping at the consumer level would ever work for EVs. And, you know, it didn't work. Europe tried it. You know, Tesla had the thing in the US, but that's purely a thing for to secure incentives and didn't last long. But in China, it is working and they are bringing the concept to Europe.

So it is a pretty big SUV. It's also a very intelligent SUV. They have all the latest 5 nanometer chips in there for autonomous driving. Steer by wire technology, 925 volt platform, 100 kilowatt hour battery pack that they say is good for over 400 miles, 650 kilometers.

which of course this is the LTC and 100 kilowatt hour with I mean it's a big SUV and it looks pretty aerodynamic so yeah I mean I wouldn't be surprised if it gets close to that dual motor power train with 180 kilowatts in the front and 340 in the back so 0 to 60 in 4.3 seconds not bad 105 liter front cargo I wish we had a picture of that um

Coming in March 2025, they already sold out the first version, the limited edition, but now they're coming out with a signature edition that's also going to come out. And then they're going to start with the regular version at $108,000. But there's a few of these things. There's that, there's the BYDs, like Tesla Roadster competitor. And I also would like to check out, like they have, it's not just about, you know, cheaper manufacturing. It's also about like just, they have great technology.

They have a technology expertise that's very impressive in China. All right, one more news item, and then we're going to do a kind of free forum discussion about the EV world in 2025 that you guys can get into. You can comment live on YouTube, X, and Facebook. So we discussed it a little bit. It was the rumor last week that Honda and Nissan would merge.

It's been confirmed through the release of a memorandum of understanding. So it's official that the discussions have started. The details are light, but it does sound like a complete full merger of the companies, which is going to take some time, obviously, including Mitsubishi is going to be involved, which Nissan is already a...

like a 24% stakeholder in Mitsubishi. So the goal is to get things moving. There's going to be... So Mitsubishi's involvement is complicating things a little bit, but it's expected by the end of next month to be included in the MOU. And then the merger should be completed by August 2026. So, you know, a lot of things can happen.

I'm sure there's regulators that need to get involved. This is two huge companies. But they're going to be a big player if this goes through. The Chinese, Japanese car industry is going to be very different. It's going to be Toyota and whatever comes out of this. I would assume that with such big brands, they will retain their brands and it's going to be some kind of...

I think it's going to be more like a Stellantis thing where they're going to merge the companies into something else and then keep the Honda brand, keep the Nissan brand and the Acura and Lexus. Not Lexus. Infiniti. What's Nissan's premium brand? Infiniti. Infiniti, right. So something to keep an eye on into 2020. And that was one of our 2024 or maybe 2023. I don't remember which one.

things to look into in the future of EVs short term is consolidation. Because we did say, we've been saying for years that the electric revolution is shaking things up to a degree that a lot of the legacy players are having a hard time to keep up. And this is Honda and Nissan, they're both of them are saying that's where we are emerging, by the way, they are saying. I think the Honda CEO said this is a one in a hundred years type of industry shake up and we need to partner up to survive it. So it's like, they're not...

They're not joking around. They know what's happening and they're trying to adjust. And I think this is probably the right thing to do because things were not going well, especially for Nissan. I think Honda was doing a little bit better maybe, but Nissan was not doing very well. And I think they just announced like 5,000 job cuts and all that. Yeah, Nissan kind of went south as soon as they fired or whatever happened to Carlos goes in. So...

It kind of felt like the things went off the rails, regardless of whether he was innocent or not. It seemed like that was an unexpected surprise. That certainly did not help. No. And man, I can't wait for that movie to come out about his escape from prison.

Japan in a music instrument container, you know, with Navy SEALs helping to jet to Lebanon. Yeah. Where is that? Yeah, they should definitely movie material in there. All right. Well, our concern about the holiday lack of people is is eminent. Now we only have a few comments, but yeah.

One is about ChemPower Charges. We have not checked out their Durham factory yet. I was actually in North Carolina checking out a charger factory recently. And I also saw Kyle O'Connor there. So it seems like a hotbed for charging stuff now.

But I did test out their station token power. My friend Sylvain has one, one of their 400 kilowatts, not the megawatts, but the 400 kilowatt station. It is very impressive. It's just seamless interface. And I mean, I'm not as knowledgeable with that stuff, but Sylvain owns a bunch of different fast chargers and chargers.

And it is his favorite by far. And I think it's now Sylvain is doing an expansion of a bunch of electric avenues, he calls them. It's a bunch of charger. It's a new fast charging brand that he's launching. And he's using Ken Power for those too. So definitely, apparently it's making waves in the charging industry now, Ken Power. Cool. All right. Imagine if Elon argued Tesla should come out with a hybrid or ICE car in the U.S. What would

Do you think that's a possibility at this point? I don't know.

No, because it's more like politically it might be. I don't put it past him like he could have done. It's just from a technology standpoint and a strategy standpoint, it just doesn't make sense for Tesla. It's just too different. Unless they would buy engines from other companies and things, but it would be too difficult for Tesla. As a direction for the company, with Elon Musk,

At the helm, I wouldn't even be surprised. But I think the execution of it doesn't make sense. I could see them doing something like what Scout does, where they have the wrecks, you know, like the old BMW i3s, where they basically just throw a generator in the back with a, you know, a tank. And they say, hey, this, you know, you can fill it up with gas and it'll be, you know,

generating electricity while you're driving. That's an easy fix. They don't have to change too much to do that. And when I say fix, I mean totally ruining the experience. But yeah, that would be weird. All right, Dan Oberstay, question for Luck Check. Any word on when Lucid will get access to Tesla superchargers? In 2023, they said 2025, but no timeframe updates since that I've seen.

Yeah, no, I haven't heard anything new either, but I think things should start moving a little bit faster in 2025 for the rollout of Access because

There's just a few more that need access and then things are going to start rolling pretty fast. I should mention, I haven't posted my review yet because I'm still testing out. I still have it in my garage, but I'm testing out the Lucid Air Touring right now and I'm really impressed by the car. It's the driving dynamics on these things are very...

Very impressive, I think. In a lot of ways, I think this is what the Model S should be right now if Tesla still cared about the Model S and still kept investing in the program because very impressive. The first day I got it, I needed to drive it back from Montreal to Chamonix and it was in a big snowstorm. So I was stuck in a snowstorm for two hours driving this thing. And, you know, a brand new car that you've never driven before plus a snowstorm, normally that's like, oh...

extreme caution and obviously i was being careful but the car gave me a ton of confidence driving it like it's a heavy vehicle obviously if you have good winter tire you're heavy you're gonna get some good traction in the snow so it wasn't that that helped a ton obviously but the the driving dynamics were absolutely awesome like sometimes i was looking down i'm like oh

I'm going a little bit too fast for this slow start. You don't feel it at all. And yeah, also just on Christmas Day, I drove...

from Shawinigan to Quebec City, drove in Quebec City and parked the car outside without having it plugged in, and then drove all the way back from Quebec City to Shawinigan on a single charge. Didn't charge at all. I arrived with only like 20 kilometers of range left or something, but still, the impressive thing of that is like, okay, this is a 600 kilometers, 300 mile car, whatever, 400 mile car, but

And this was like 400 or so kilometers. But it was down to minus 18C, minus one Fahrenheit temperature that day. And if you've driven EVs in that kind of temperature, you know that that's impressive because the range goes down fast in those temperature. And I didn't change my driving at all. So I drove on the highway. I drove like normally on cruise control at 119. Miles per kilometers.

And call me there's not. And I'll worry that would be fast and mad. So I did that and arrived without any problem. My girlfriend was getting crazy nervous about it. She just like kept telling me like, because the car, you know, the Tesla does that too sometimes where it's like the navigation tells you to stop at a charging station.

to get there because it's getting too nervous about your range. And I'm like, nah, I know, I know I can, I can get there. And on the way to Quebec city was super cold too. And I saw the range difference between, you know, go down faster than the actual distance I was going at. So I wasn't doing some mental calculation. I'm like, I think I'm going to be good on the way back. It was going down too fast, minus 18 C, but, uh,

I arrived without problem. And yeah, I'm really impressed with the Lucid Air so far. Very impressed. But I'm going to have more to say about that next week with a full review. All right. Will Tomakisa ask, will the US be able to launch a competitive EV battery production company? Oh, good question. Good question. I could see like an offshoot of Redwood Materials doing a battery company. I mean, Redwood Materials is doing the right things in terms of like...

Before we have the, I assume you're saying EV battery cell manufacturing company here. But before we get there, we need the entire supply chain of it in North America, which we don't have right now. We are starting to get all the pieces of the puzzle together. I mean, Tesla is doing the lithium refining right now in Texas, in Georgia.

the Canada here, we have some cam cattle production going on. We have the graphite refining going on. Like we have a bunch of these things that are getting put together. And Redwood is also doing its thing on that front, putting the annual material, the cattle material, all the refining that needs to go through there. And then eventually, yeah, we do have the battery cell manufacturing. You have Tesla, obviously, that is doing it. They have the battery cell production. They have a few other players too. You have Altium,

that they all are not seen as successful yet between Tesla and LCM just because of the volume they were getting at right now. Tesla is having some issues too with their 4680 cell, with the Cybertruck, as I mentioned earlier last week.

uh the it's not ideal and not call is in the comment right now and he says nordvolt failed yeah yeah it's not it's not an easy business uh especially when you have players like catl byd panasonic these giant company that you and it's becoming more of a commodity but nordvolt failed in europe they went bankrupt but they do say that they're still doing their giant factory in quebec because it's financed differently

AKA by the government. But yeah, it's not a good look. I'm sure people are going to rethink, the government people are going to rethink their investment in that because if it fell in Europe, why would it not fell in North America too? Especially if the North American market, EV market goes down next year, which I think is very likely.

Yeah, we're going to have to rethink things. It's a lot of these investments that we saw during the IRA, during the Biden era because of the Inflation Reduction Act, they're going to cool off in 2025 because of the rollback that Trump is going to do. So it's going to be a lot about how efficient his rollback is going to be. And all those investments, all people see past

the Trump administration after that. Because let's be honest, the Trump administration is for four years. What happens after that, who knows? But those investments are for much longer than four years. So a lot of these companies are thinking past the Trump administration too. It's just that, I mean, would you bet on the Democrats winning again? If you cannot win against Trump, can you win period?

Oh, boy. Okay. All right, moving on. Way to give up mission. Lucid Air Touring is what my wife now has. She hates Elon. Yeah, it's a great car. I'm jealous of your wife.

All right. Rudy Halbright has a three-parter here. We seem poised to have more availability. So we're talking about 2025, a V2X equipment in 2025. And I'm glad we're now standardizing on V2X because there's like vehicle to grid, vehicle to home, vehicle to load, vehicle to grid. Yeah, the nomenclature was pretty confusing. V2X, whatever. Vehicle to whatever. Equipment in 2025.

And I think increased risk of climatological disaster is going to increase interest in using your vehicle to back up your home. I think that's very true, even in Texas, but hard to know how they will be tempered by likely loss of EV incentives. That said, the tax credit can't go away until the act of Congress. So we may have some time left. Well, Congress is going to vote pretty soon on that, I think. Also, as a disclaimer, I help lead our V2X efforts at PG&E.

oh interesting uh we might have to get your contact info but i do not speak for my employer just my personal opinions for what it's worth the zom vehicle to grid bus project has been a big part of my work i mean the buses make so much sense for that too like it it doesn't make not all evs make sense for that like at a consumer level like i've never been super i'm well

Again, if you use V2X, yes, I'm excited. Everything that's bi-directional charging has a lot of value. But in terms of the actual vehicle-to-home aspect of it, it can be useful, but I think it depends on...

on your situation, especially the investment size of having a bidirectional charging set up at home versus the value that you're going to get by sending energy back to the grid can be widely different in different markets. And then you have to consider, okay, as a backup power,

Yes. So if you were going to get a generator, then maybe yes, it starts to make sense because I think it's much more efficient than a generator. And in terms of cost comparison, it's very similar or even sometimes cheaper. And obviously, you don't have to buy gas anymore.

So there's a lot of value in that. But I think for the consumer level, most of the value is the vehicle to X. So vehicle to vehicle is interesting. Bidirectional chargers just for power equipment, powering a trailer, powering things like that. I think that makes a ton of sense. At the utility level, the bus makes a ton of sense, like school buses, especially things like that should all be bidirectional in my opinion. All right. We have a few more comments, but we're

Any last things? Put them in right now. That'll be the last comments of 2024. All right. Yeah. Yeah. We can put them. We can discuss a little bit more of our thoughts for 2025. So what do you think is going to be a big, important trend in the EV world in 2025? Well, I mean, just to piggyback on Rudy's stuff, I do think vehicle to grid is going to be a big deal. Vehicle to X is going to be a big deal. Yeah.

It kind of puts away, like if you have a good vehicle to grid system and a small battery, you kind of don't need power walls anymore. You don't need battery backups. You don't need generators. And that's a huge market. That's a huge thing that doesn't need to exist. In addition, all of a sudden, now you have this extra camping capability. I've been recently doing a lot of camping in the back of the Tesla Model Y.

Just, you know, long road trips and other stuff. And that's fantastic. I was reviewing this inflatable mattress back there. It's just like, oh, this is very comfortable. It's super comfortable. Like, why would you get a hotel when you can, you know, just crash in the back? You have the temperature, you have the, you know, thing. So there's a lot of nice things about electric vehicles that I don't think we've kind of scratched the surface on yet.

What about you? What's big in 2025? Well, I mean, for years I've been saying, I think 2025 is the year that EVs just take over and no one in their right mind is going to buy a gasoline vehicle past 2025 because they're going to have a new vehicle, I should say, because there's going to be a better electric option in every segment of the auto industry.

I think a lot of markets are getting there in Europe. Like in Norway, they've been there already. A bunch of European markets, I think, are going to get there in 2025 too, where the majority of new car buyers go for EVs. China also seems to be going there very fast. However, in North America, obviously not the case anymore for political reasons. I mean, literally the EVs,

President of the United States has been poo-pooing EVs throughout the campaign, like using it as a talking point. That's been very weird and it's made EVs political for some reason, even though they don't need to be. And obviously the tax credit going away, big deal. So I think a big trend for the North American EV market in 2025 is going to be how...

the politics affects the market. I think that's going to be a big deal. How, when...

the tax credit goes away i think it's more wind than hif at this point and then how is the role the the rollout of the the pull out of the tax rate is going to happen that is going to create likely if if they do have a grace period which i don't i don't even know if they will have that but normally they do there's a little bit of a grace period and that

should result in the boost of EV sales for a while. So that's going to help a little bit, but long-term, it's going to be hurtful. So it's going to be interesting how do the EV companies like... Obviously, companies like Rivian and Lucid are not going to do too bad because their vehicles are already more expensive. But

next year or at the end of the year next year once once they have their next generation vehicle especially rivian rivian was counting for the r2s what was counting on those tax credit to to to help uh deliver higher volumes and if that's going away that's going to hurt rivian more than anything i think and then i want to see how all the companies that made big investment in north america

in both electric vehicle manufacturing, but also the battery supply chain, how are they going to react to the new policies? Again, because it's going to hurt them all for sure. It's going to hurt all these investments. But I think some of them are going to see past the Trump administration and say, okay, yeah, but I still need to invest in that because EVs, I think for most people that are following the industry closely, they know everything.

that EV is the future, electric vehicle, electric powertrain is the future in the industry. People disagree just how fast it's going to take over. But if you know that, you don't want to lose your expertise. And that's what Elon is aiming at right now. He thinks that if he can hurt these other companies enough, they're going to lose their EV expertise. They're going to fall behind even further. And Tesla is going to take over everything. And that's going to be the advantage, even though it's going to slow down the market for a little bit.

I disagree with that. I think that's going to be bad for the US, going to be bad for North American market, and going to be bad for our market in general. Tom McKee says, will SoGem and solid battery states, solid state batteries debut in 2025?

i think that's a good point and i was going to mention that sodium i haven't been following as much but i've been following the solid state batteries for a long time now and yes i think 2025 is going to be a big year for a solid state i know a lot of people have been saying that for every year i've not i've not been a guy that says like hey solid state isn't it's coming next year but and i know i'm not saying it's coming next year but i think

2026 is probably when you're going to see commercial electric vehicle, consumer and commercial electric vehicle, like volume production of EVs, consumer EVs with solid-state batteries. And 2025 is going to be probably the year where you're going to start some clear announcement of – I think there was one or two vehicle programs announced this year.

with solid state for 2026 2027 but I think there's going to be a bunch more in 2025 announced for 2026 2027 so companies like solid power working with BMW Quantum Scape working with the Volkswagen group fractional working with Mercedes Hyundai as its own effort too on that front and there was a news this week that

uh let's say that they are setting up their demo line right now for volume production end of next year 2026 i think so yeah i don't think 2025 is going to be the year of where you're going to drive an electric car that's going to have a solid state batteries in there but i think 2026 is going to be that year so there's going to be a lot more solid state stock in 2025 i think

well i agree with all that um it would certainly be a benefit uh to you know like the the ev field if if the solid state batteries which offer much quicker charging um less degradation um smaller size all that stuff but also um you know we're seeing with the um

the iron phosphate batteries that we're getting some of that stuff, you know, the stability is better. The density is not like, but for, for low, you know, low mileage vehicles that seems to work out pretty well. Hopefully some of that comes to the U S we've been hearing, you know, Ford has cattle bring a battery manufacturing plant to the U S and that was kind of scuttled by the

I think it was scuttled by the federal government. I think something about cattle building here. Yeah, they didn't like the percentage of the company owned by China. They don't like that. So it would be nice to see... I mean, the iron phosphate chemistry was, I think, pioneered by...

that, uh, guy who just recently died at like 95 years old, uh, good enough. Yeah. Um, so, uh, it's, it's, it would be nice to see, you know, the U S kind of getting into that world a little bit more, maybe without, uh, cattle catalyzing it. Um, what else are we thinking, uh, in the EV space? Like what, what's kind of exciting car wise or technology wise? Um,

car wise i mean the abterra would be really cool to like if abterra could come out successful 2025 i think that would be really nice just because like i said we we

The smaller EV market is just not there in North America. There's just not that much going on. And the high efficiency side of things is also very interesting to me. And that's what the EVs are about. It's about making travel more efficient, spending less energy to travel.

And Aptera is just the ultimate version of that. So it's just there's not that much traction behind it. They're having a ton of issues raising money. So I'm not saying that there's a high probability of chance of success for them in 2025, but it's something that we're going to keep close eye on because we want them to succeed. I think that would be very cool.

I think electric pickup trucks, too, are going to be a bigger thing, too. I think they need some momentum there. You know, the market is going to be a lot more fleshed out in 2025 with now the cheaper version of the Silverado out. There is the cheaper version of the Cybertruck that's also supposed to come out next year. So with these two now, the ramp up on the side, the...

New Lightning also is supposed to come out in 2025? Yeah, the Ford T-platform is supposed to debut in 2025. And we haven't heard much about that in a while. That's right, yeah. It's been kind of dead for a while on that. But that plus Silverado Rempop, plus Silverado and all the other GM pickup trucks,

plus cheaper version of the Cybertrucks, I think we're going to see a much more robust pickup market in the US, which is obviously significant because the pickup truck market in general in the US is huge. But the thing is, all that is always compared in the background with the EV tax credit. So if you want to ask me, will the EV pickup market grow next year? I think yes, by a double-digit margin.

maybe low double digits but i think other other evs are going to be hurt a lot more than that so i think i think if we see flat ev cells next year in the us i think we'd be lucky

Yeah, all the headwinds of the Trump administration are going to be there. There's going to be a lot of stuff. There's going to be a lot of but but maybe this is the opportunity, you know, maybe that the EV space has had enough, you know, scaffolding now with the incentives and the IRA to boost the infrastructure. Maybe now is the time that they don't need incentives. Maybe they can stand on their own.

um you know some of these like hyundai kia make a lot of compelling evs um that i think without incentives uh you know like tesla um kind of compete well in the the marketplace um you know obviously gm's getting there with altium um ford making some progress i guess uh with the new um t platform um you know the german cars are

uh pretty interesting as well like mercedes with their e-class i think the e uh class or that the um the e1 like the motor trend car of the year you know i was doing some research um the bmw i uh four has been like i know some people who've gotten that car they love it um and

And they're like, I would never buy a gas car again. So, you know, I think there's enough compelling EVs that, you know, even at a more expensive price are going to be bought over the gas counterparts at this point. They're better products. So, yeah, for sure. It will continue. It's just, you know, price is a huge factor in buying a car because it is a huge purchase. Yeah.

it's going to hurt no matter what to just increase the average price. But yeah, I think, like I said, I think we can still see a flat year for EVs in North America despite this huge price increase just because of the EV momentum. And like you said, the scaffolding is there. It's just that in the US, we have not seen...

the result on the penetration of EVs. Like 9% is, you know, for a country as rich as the U.S., it's bad. Ronaldo, in the comments here, has a good point. He asked, any idea about EV use car market in 2025? So that's a good point. Well, I would add to that, like now that the first, the early model Tesla Model 3s, 2018 to 2020,

Model 3s are popping up on the market at like $15,000 for all-wheel drive, solid builds. So now all of a sudden you've got a pretty compelling EV for $15,000 a couple years old. There's a lot of Chevy Bolts that are out there, maybe even cheaper than that. That'll still get you 250 miles of range and are pretty solid cars. So I think the used car market for EVs is really awesome.

Yeah, and you're going to get a lot of, you know, it lags relatively like three years behind the new car market. So you have to go back like in 2021, 2022. How big was the EV market? It was starting to get bigger.

Yeah, that's right. That's when the volumes started really coming in. So the used car market is going to feel that like three years later. So yeah, 2024, 2025, 2025, 2026 are going to be huge years for used car market. In North America, a lot of that is going to be Tesla pricing, obviously, because that's where the volume was two, three years ago.

And I think there's a lot of things that could make things interesting for used car prices for Tesla vehicles. Obviously, now the lease buyback program in place. Tesla...

not having the lease buyback before that now taking those vehicles thinking that they were going to be self-driving but them not being self-driving which means they're not going to use them in their fleet like elon originally said he would when he said that so what they're going to do with them they're going to sell them uh so there's big that i think tesla is going to continue trying to upgrade um hardware 3 owners to a new vehicles because they are a liability for them

Having sold them the vehicle, telling them that they're going to be full self-driving in the future, that's a liability for Tesla. And I don't think that they want to retrofit all those cars. I just don't see that happening. So I think we're going to see a lot more Hardware 3 vehicles coming back to the used market and Tesla just selling them.

as non-full self-driving vehicles and that's going to be also a huge market so yeah I think there's a lot of that coming plus you know non-Tesla EVs but obviously two or three years ago Tesla had you know 80% market share in North America so a lot of the used market is Tesla right now

But I've seen – there's good deals too like for people that just like great cars but don't want to pay the full price on it. Like you can buy now like a Porsche Taycan or like an Audi GT. I was just going to say the Audi GT. Yeah, Audi GT. And it's a great car. It's a very great car for that price. Basically a Taycan.

Yeah. So there's a lot of that going on too that's going to be a lot more fun. I think we should probably do like some kind of electric series, like one post of the week that's like a great used car EV deal that's good. It's going to start to make sense to do that probably next year. So I think that's a good idea.

I still like looking for like weird EVs that are for sale, like a Chevy Spark EV or a Fiat 500E, like an early one with a bad battery, you know, that's got like 40 miles of range, but you can get them for like $5,000 or something silly. And they're kind of like go-karts at that point. Yeah, there's fun things to do with that. All right. Do we have a couple more posts and then we're going to leave? All right. We got talking about Iona.

the top three charge point operator is that european iona no no that's a new one in the us um the uh they're going to start using the albatronic uh hardware i saw the ceo there um so we'll see we'll see if that happens uh zeb credits have gone from 300 million to 800 million for tesla in q3 of 2024

Yeah, I mean the ZEV credits is something else and Elon is not talking about them too much. Yeah, that's weird. I'm not mentioning that at all. Let's get rid of that thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So even the other automakers are not against – are not lobbying Trump to kill that too because – just because it's getting just too complicated to just like bring them back, changing them. Like the program is just getting crazy. It's like leave it as it is and we'll figure it out from that.

But yeah, I mean, there's no doubt that Tesla is making a lot of money on ZEV credit because they are the only cell electric vehicles. Yeah, and I hope the CEOs of, you know, like GM's Maribara, for instance, are

don't like flip-flop again you know based on who's in the in the white house because they've done that and then every time they're late on the you know they're late on that and they're late on the next one because they're always like trying to gauge what you know the political scene is going to be like instead of just like building really compelling vehicles which yeah should be their focus so should be yeah the the uh uncertainty and the constant changes hurt just as much as as just the the removal of the

the incentives. Yeah. All right. Well, that's pretty much it for us this week. And for the year 2024, we appreciate every single one of you that joined the program this year. If you do enjoy the Electric Podcast, you can give us a like, a thumbs up, whatever it is on your app. It's free to do. It helps us show more than you think. You can also subscribe, hit the notification button to know when we go live.

And you can leave us a review on your podcast app, whether it's Apple Podcasts, Spotify. If you give us a five-star review, it helps the show a ton, and we appreciate when you do. And we're going to see you in 2025. Have a fun holiday, a fun New Year's, and see you later.