Electrek's Vehicle of the Year, Cybertruck Foundation Series, GM Bolt EUV only, and more
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We are live for a new episode of The Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host. And as usual, I'm joined by Seth Winchardt. How are you doing today, Seth? I'm good.

All right, I hope you're ready because we have a big week of news this week. A lot of stuff came out, but we're going to start out with the Electrek's Vehicle of the Year that I just posted earlier today. But before that, we don't have a traditional sponsor this week. We are sponsoring our own show this week with our merch store, a new and upgraded merch store launching on Electrek. Let me share this screen right here. It's merch.com.

We have a few new products that we're launching. It's all electric branded stuff. So if you're a big fan of the website or the show or whatever, you like to show your support to us because the show is for free every week. And sometimes we have sponsors, not all the time. So you can grab yourself a little hoodie, a T-shirt. We have electric stickers that will look real nice on you.

On your laptop, we have electric water bottles, and it's all quality stuff, real nice. A little hat, a little dad's cap, they call it. A little pom-pom knit. It's the winter right now. Keep those here nice and cozy.

You can go to merch.electrek.co. This is co. Oh, we even have, we brought back, that's right, the whole Fred's, well, I mean, Fred's design. Always stay careful taking, like, the design is my idea to put the silhouette of Fred.

of the uh some of the most historic electric vehicle out there including the electric car if you didn't know electric was before it was a website it was a car which said they didn't even know about before naming the website uh a little ugly the ugliest car you've ever seen you can tell just by this silhouette here um of course we put the cyber truck which is nice because it's just launched but we put the cyber truck not because it's like an

iconic electric vehicle, but mostly because the shape is very iconic. So you can grab yourself one of the electric cars of note, history electric car t-shirt that's designed by our own Michael Bauer, but idea by Fred Lambert. You know, I will say one thing. I noticed that when I go, like if I'm getting a Tesla repair or if I'm going shopping at a

um a dealership for a chevy bolt for instance and i'm wearing electric stuff i feel like i get a little bit better service especially at that tesla so you're talking about a little trick here a little trick to get better service with electric vehicle folks uh you you made him you may even think that you work for

We'll let you go on that one. You buy some gear, you represent electric, you go into Tesla, you get better service. All right. Let's jump right in this week with the electrics vehicle of the year. We went with the Tesla Model Y, which...

Based on the comment section of the article, a bit controversial. I'm surprised. I mean, you made a good case. I think most people liked it. I mean, it's my brain, like my writer's brain. Every time I look at the comments, the one that sticks out are the negative one. But I think most of them are positive because the idea behind it, I know, first of all,

Most people that choose a vehicle of the year, most publications that go for a vehicle of the year, they go with the vehicle that launched that year, which makes sense to some degree. And there were quite a few electric vehicles that launched that year that were interesting to us that I think are important. I think the Volvo EX30 is one that...

a lot of people are excited about. But I mean, literally just launched now and I don't think they have delivered anything. Nothing in the US delivered in Europe. Yeah, that's the thing too. So we're more like a North American focused publication, even though we cover the whole world, we focus a lot on North America. So I didn't feel exactly right to launch that we haven't. Well, we want to spend more time with it too and everything. But

It does sound a little why, why we chose it this year in 2023, even though that thing launched in 2019. It's because they sold more of that car than ever before. So much so that it's now the best selling passenger vehicle in the world, surpassing the Corolla, the Toyota Corolla, surpassing the F-150 series, surpassing the

What was the other? RAV4 was the other one. So last year it was fourth in the world for best selling vehicle already within two years of being a vehicle program, like two full years. Then it had about 750,000 units sold behind the RAV4, a little bit more, a million for the F1 Series and 1.1 million for the Corolla. This year it's surpassing that with over a million units sold.

And we think that it's worth noting as vehicle of the year just for the impact it has on directly to by adding so many electric vehicles on the road, which is going to convert a lot of gas mileage into electric mileage, which we know is more efficient and can be a lot more efficient, especially if you combine them with renewable energy charging.

But also in Zerocly, because now you have the first electric vehicle being the best-selling car in the world, which sends a strong message across the industry that you want the best-selling vehicle out there, it has to be electric. You have to make a compelling electric vehicle in high volume. And I think the Model Y is the first. I mean, the Model 3 was also a high-volume and compelling vehicle, but the Model Y...

clearly surpasses it in volume and for good reason because it's it's a more compelling segment the crossover um and it's uh it's kind of a swiss army knife of a car really you have it drives like a sports car especially if you have a performance version yes so as a model model y owner early 2020 model y owner um

I'm all on board with the decision. I agree. But, you know, there's, there's some issues with the model. Why, you know, I had the panel gaps and the, and the weird stuff. Yeah.

uh it doesn't like i'd much rather drive a model 3 than a model y but like tonight we're going to vermont and we're going in the model y and we have three you know evs we have a rivian but it's just better to have superchargers and uh you know it drives pretty good uh for you know a

crossover it's it's a pretty good ride um it's quite fast the performance version's you know quite a bit faster uh but you know the numbers it's it's a mainstream vehicle now like this is the vehicle that is the most common vehicle and you know common passenger vehicle in the world and it's an ev and that's a big deal and i think to not like note that would be a big glaring omission

Yeah, exactly. Especially like the impact that it's going to have on the industry is massive. It just beat the Corolla as the best-selling car. The Corolla starts at $22,000 in the U.S. The Model Y starting price is literally exactly twice that. It starts at $44,000 in the U.S. But even that...

So just that alone in terms of revenue of a vehicle, that's the best selling vehicle per revenue already was last year. Not this year. It's going to be like almost double the next best, if not more. And then you go, but Fred, like, all right, you're putting best vehicle of the year, but you could have put the EX30 that is much cheaper, like significantly cheaper.

and a much more affordable vehicle. I mean, the Model Y still starts before incentive at $44,000, which is $4,000 less than the average new car price in the US right now. So it's below the average new car price, starting price, and then add the incentives to that, and it's far below, depending on where you are, and if you have access to the incentive, far below the cost. So I think...

It's worth a loan making in the vehicle of the year just for how it changed the whole industry. As in, you want to have, what's the gold standard right now for a vehicle program in terms of revenue, in terms of volume, in terms of popularity, which is the three main things that automakers care about. The Model Y is that right now.

I want to go to the questions a little bit while we're waiting for Fred to come back online. Patricia Beneden said, after digesting all the videos of the Cybertruck last week, you know what, let's move on. 2020 Model Y owner here, I miss all the improvements versus the current model, better suspension, noise isolation via double pane windows, etc., but will not trade in for a new one due to Elon. Yeah.

I kind of get that. There's a lot of people that won't upgrade due to Elon. I'm not necessarily in that boat. I won't update due to having full self-driving, which I don't want to get rid of my car with. Fred, it looks like you're back. Yeah. Sorry. I had some internet issues before connecting. I thought I resolved them before the podcast, but it looks like there was a little problem. I'm going to blame Bell for that.

All right. So I was going through some of the comments here on that electric Brian for the best car of the year. I like that you picked a car that people can actually own. I don't like when people pick a car that no one owned yet, especially the year example, the X 30. I would also say, I think motor trend picked the blazer SS EV, which that's great. It's an EV, but who's driven one of those. Like the drive event was like after motor trend announced it. So that's a little bit frustrating.

Yeah, I agree with that. That was part of the idea behind our logic to pick the Model Y too. It makes sense. And Carl in San Diego has something positive to say about Tesla, which is rare. Probably the best all-arounder for them and what Tesla should have built early, had they known, could be their only model. I wouldn't go that far, but that's probably a good point that

But you have to have some experience to lead that, like to build a car like that, you have to have the Model 3. The Model Y doesn't exist without the Model 3. The Model 3 doesn't exist without the Model S and so on. Like it's just, that's how it happened. That's why I'm excited about the Cybertruck, not because necessarily of the Cybertruck itself, but I'm excited about...

The Model Y with 48-volt system architecture, I'm excited about. Model Y with steer-by-wire, I'm excited about all those things. And the Cybertruck is the testbed for that, basically, which I find really interesting. I'm not saying it's the official plan for Tesla, but it feels like that. So moving on, we're going to talk about the Cybertruck a little bit.

So last week, obviously, our podcast was right after the launch. And we had a little bit of a worried about the Cybertruck being a redo of the Tesla Semi event of last year, where Tesla announced like launch production version of the vehicle and then delivers a few and then doesn't do anything with it for a few months or at least nothing that consumers can get.

even though it's not a consumer vehicle, but we know that there were very few deliveries after that event. So we were afraid that a Cybertruck might be something similar, but we are hearing that people are taking deliveries of the Cybertruck right now, and Tesla is reaching out to actual regular customers that were early in the

in the backlog of reservation, the place of reservation right after the launch in November 2019. And they are offering them something a little bit different. So we obviously at the launch event, we learned about the rear-wheel drive version, which is not coming until 2025, the dual motor version that's coming now, and the Cyber Beast, which is a tri-motor version. Now Tesla is offering a Cybertruck Foundation Series to those early reservation holders.

And so sounds like it's going to be some kind of like limited edition without actually putting an exact limit on the version. But Tesla wrote in the email, as an early reservation holders, you're invited to order your foundation series Cybertruck, which is fully option includes limited edition laser edge badging, premium accessories, charging equipment with PowerShare home backup hardware.

all-terrain tires, full self-driving capability, and more. So what we learn from people that have received that email is that there's basically two trims that you can choose from. So you can choose a dual motor foundation series or a cyber-based foundation series. And those are priced at $100,000 for the dual motor, which is $20,000 more than the base price of the regular Cybertruck. And then...

120 000 for the cyber beast version a tri-motor version of the foundation series so you get that laser edge badging which is going to be a limited edition badging so that is what is actually like limited edition but uh they don't they don't say exactly like how limited now you get you get full self-driving in that which is a 12 000 uh option right now so it is a significant

thing to be included in there. So it covers like $20,000 more is covering that. But obviously the power share equipment, the all-terrain tires are optional too. So it looks like a bit of a discount overall that Tesla is offering with that. Now,

The way they put it is like it's all included in the vehicle's price. So obviously, one, what that does is like you can forget about the tax credit, but I think most people that are buying that truck, the foundation series, like the early version, don't really have access to that tax credit anyway. So that's not really that big of an issue. But the thing that I'm thinking that it makes me think of is like Tesla is basically hiding the price of the full self-driving in that package.

And I know that a lot of people early in the reservation process at Tesla with a Cybertruck, there was some language that make it sound like you get the full self-driving price at that time in 2019, which I don't exactly remember what it was, but I think it was like $10,000 or $8,000, something like that, which is much cheaper than the $12,000 at this time. So people are starting to lock in that price. Maybe it was even $5,000. I don't remember. But...

By adding the price of full self-driving into that bigger package, Tesla is probably getting around that language that it had back then because now people cannot go like, hey, you're charging me more for the full self-driving that you were supposed to. It's like, no, no, we're including it, full self-driving in that foundation series package. Then you could probably try to find the price of that exactly. But like, how do you price a limited edition laser edge badging?

For me, it's like 20 bucks, but for some other people, it could be a lot more. And the problem with that, with the limited edition is like, okay, then maybe the foundation series becomes some kind of a collection item. But if they don't tell you how many they're doing it, that's very risky. Like the signature series of the Model S, they made 2000 of them. So at least, okay, we know that it's about 2000 of them.

which is still a lot for becoming a collector's item. I'm not saying it's going to become one, but it might be. This, if they make like $5,000, $10,000, it's becoming hard. So I don't really know how to price that. You mentioned the FSD on there. I thought it was really important that they did not mention full self-driving once at the event. Yeah. Elon, zero times was full self-driving even brought up.

I mean, the power share also wasn't brought up. Well, that's true. There's a lot of things that weren't brought up. So many things that you didn't brought up. But he usually brings that one up. Now that I think of it, there was one thing he didn't like in the Monroe interview.

I mean, I listened to that thing in 4X, to be honest with you. But at one point, he did mention, oh, I didn't talk about that during the event. And so I was like, oh, at least he's giving us a logic behind it. But I don't remember which one it was. I don't know if it was self-driving or it was PowerShare. It was probably PowerShare or the battery, the extra battery. Oh, it was the extended battery. You're right. I think it was the extended battery.

But he didn't release any new details about it. But yeah, the best news in the whole email, I think, is that Tesla confirmed that deliveries are now happening in California and Texas. So deliveries are going through the month of December and more states are going to come in 2024. So that was what we were expecting because Tesla always focuses on California, Texas first where they're based.

Oh yeah, speaking of that Monroe interview, so the biggest, most interesting news, even though it's a tidbit of information or anything, is Elon mentioning the low-cost Tesla happening. He did give a welcome through CEO-type comment of, like, I cannot comment on things that are financially material to Tesla because it's a public company and everything.

At the same time, he's going to the Supreme Court with that SEC muzzle thing. But that's specifically about Twitter. So it's not about his other public comments. I mean, what he said on Twitter was related to Tesla. Yeah, no, it's about Tesla. It's about Tesla. But the SEC muzzle is specifically about what he says on Twitter about Tesla. I don't think he covers his other modes of communication, even though they're not that many other than X. Yeah.

By the way, before we get into that, the end of this conversation got really weird. They were talking about civil wars between woke people and non-woke people and the end of the world's coming and stuff like that.

Did you find that weird or was that just kind of par for the course with these guys? I mean, the entire interview was like it didn't feel like an interview. It felt like and I know a lot of podcasts are like that, which I like in general. But for them, it was like kind of I don't know. It didn't.

It didn't be very structured or very like, and Monroe kept going on these little tangents and he spoke like 90% of the time, even though it's, but like the, the, the title is Elon Musk and Sandy Monroe discuss the cyber truck. It's not an Elon Musk interview. Don't go into it thinking it's an Elon Musk interview. You won't, you won't see that. So I think that, yeah, the whole thing was kind of weird for sure.

But yeah, Elon said, "We are working on a low-cost electric vehicle that will be made in really high volume. We're quite far advanced in that work." So that was the far advanced is what people are latched on in that interview. "I review the production and plans for that every week. I think that the revolution in manufacturing that we represent by that car will blow people's minds." So that, I cringe every time Elon says blows people's mind now because

i mean he's to be fair he's blown my mind plenty of times like with every time he lands a rocket the booster on the ground like that blows my mind for sure but uh he's used that term too often for like describing an fsd beta update that like make my car even worse than before that i'm like all right like that's you blow my mind by thinking that that will blow my mind more than anything uh but

I mean, the old revolution in manufacturing, I mean, he already unveiled the unboxed production technique back in the investor day. And that was quite well received by people that...

That new approach, I think people really like that. I mean, the industry itself, because this is kind of things that go over our head a little bit. It's really a minutia of manufacturing. But it still made sense to me. Why are we not making cars like that? Yeah.

So that is it. And he also specified something that we started to put together in the last few months, really, like especially since the book came out, that Elon confirmed that the low-cost vehicle will first be produced at Gigafactory Texas and then later second in Gigafactory Mexico. So it sounds Texas versus Mexico. That was interesting because initially they said,

Like that was going to be a Europe car. And then at one point they said it was going to be, you know, designed in China, made in China. Yeah. Well, they never really said that that Chinese car is going to be this. We assume that. But it sounded like a safe assumption at the time.

But now it sounds like it's Texas first. And it makes sense because it's there that they're going to be designing the production line for it. Wait, has the design center actually moved from... Design center is still in LA, right? Well, they still have a design center in LA. Maybe some of the design team has moved to Texas. I don't know. I've had friends that's been being spotted in LA all of the time. Right.

I saw that he got his VIN number two Cybertruck. Yeah. I hear that on Twitter. Yeah, a lot of people are taking delivery. Well, I shouldn't say a lot of people, but enough that it's reassuring us that it's not a Tesla semi situation.

All right, we got the leak on the Tesla holiday update. Thanks to Not The Tesla app, they got the release notes. And for those not aware, the holiday update is kind of, you know, Tesla generally like does frequent software update and it can be like super small. A lot of time they're not even release notes. They're so small. If there is release notes, it's sometimes just one or two like notable features and then a bunch of fixes and whatnot.

But they try to bundle everything for bigger updates in the holiday season. And most often, there's also some more fun features rather than functional, though there's always also normally some big new functional features. Last year was not really a big one, kind of disappointing to a lot of people. And this year is also like a weak one. It's not something that's super exciting. Some stuff that is interesting, the Apple podcast now on...

On Tesla vehicles. So if you have a podcast that you're listening just on Apple Podcasts rather than Spotify, like most podcasts on all the different platforms, including Spotify, so like ours. So you can do that, but some of them are like exclusive. So now you can listen to them through the cards directly rather than the Bluetooth in your phone.

Some minor updates to Tesla arcades. Other than now you can play the games from the rear screen now. Tesla is calling it like a mobile LAN party. This is pretty cool. Automatic 911 calls. Whoops, my screen is shifting. So your vehicle will call 911 if an accident triggers the airbags. So it's something that Elon talked about like a long time ago. I remember him saying that. And it's

So Tesla is basically offloading that to 911 because before that, Tesla would call, Tesla detect the accident and Tesla would call you and like, hey, everything is okay. You need something from us. You need roadside assistance. You need 911, whatever. So now it's like straight 911, not going to Tesla anymore. Speed camera on your routes that...

that leak last week. So it's like kind of a Waze-like system of the navigation system now showing you speed cameras. So this is pretty cool. This is probably the one that I'm going to use the most, that I'm most excited about. It's the Trip Planner on mobile apps. So now you can, you could already do that through Google Maps by platforming.

planning your trip on Google Maps and then forwarding it to your Tesla app. It works sometimes and sometimes it didn't work. Like it was not a perfect integration with Google Maps. So now you have the Tesla trip planner that you have in your car, you have it on your phone and then you can, so you can plan your trip on your phone inside your house, which is very nice nowadays with 20 feet of snow outside and minus 20. Plan everything in your car, send it there. You get in your car, everything is in there already. You just get going. So that's pretty cool.

More cameras and live camera views on your phones. That's all right. You just get access to more of the cameras around there. Automatic blind spot camera. I can show you the video of it right here. So it's basically the same camera that you see when you put your...

Turning lights on when you change lane, it shows you the camera on the side. If there's a car there, now there's a blinking, as you can see, a blinking red light on this, not even blinking. Oh, yeah, blinking red light on the side. But yeah, I mean, this...

I don't know how useful this is. We saw the Cybertruck as a blind spot warning light on each side where you're supposed to look at your mirrors. So the idea is like, apparently we learned that this is going to allow you to remove those mirrors. They're supposed to be easily removable with the cameras replacing them, making the car more efficient. There's not that much detail about that just yet, but

Now, the blind spot, if you have the reflex of looking at your mirror, which you should have if you're a good driver, you're going to see at least the light that tells you there's a car there versus looking at the screen showing you what's on the side of your car or your truck in this case.

so this is kind of the same thing but it's since you don't have those lights it's on the car itself i mean it doesn't doesn't beat seeing an actual vehicle on that screen or in your mirrors but whatever so i don't think it's that big of a of a deal uh you have a new version of the light show that's now attuned the arrival by irving victoria don't know that one but there's a

Often has a light show in its vehicle or times to the music. So they released a new one for this holiday update. You have now shuffle play on the title app integration. You have profile images on Apple and Spotify.

The search includes, you have a search features in the owner's manual that's inside the vehicle and a charging location filter now that allows you to filter by charging speed of more or less than 70 kilowatts.

i mean those last two you can tell that this like the nose it's not a big all the update because those last three here even four yeah his last four like it's something that normally wouldn't even put in the release notes and basically at light show after light show it was yeah it's all like things that don't even need to be in the release notes it's fine it's cool that they do this uh i'm interested to see the new light show but i agree it's not one of their bigger ones i agree

All right. This one here is going to include some speculation, but I think it's still interesting because Dojo is kind of...

Not our last hope, I'm exaggerating, but it's one of the things that gave us the most hope about an acceleration of the improvements, the pace of improvements of the FSD beta situation, which doesn't feel like it's two weeks away from becoming a true full self-driving system, as Elon claims.

So we hope that the Dojo would enable the Dojo plus v12 going neural net from neural network control. So n12 neural nets, combine that with supercomputing, increasing the pace of the neural nets improvement. That was the hope. But the Dojo program seems to be a bit in shambles right now. So we know it was already late. The cluster was just put online this summer versus instead of last year.

And now we are hearing that there's a big shakeup at the leadership of the Dojo Project. So now, I'm sorry, Mr. Ganesh, I'm going to screw up your name, but the head of the Dojo Program, Ganesh Venkataramanan,

Was the autopilot, the hardware director, but most specifically was the head of the Dojo program. He was hired by Jim Keller back in the day when Tesla started to build its chip team. He's a longtime chip designer, spent 14 years at AMD, a very well-known person in the industry.

He left Tesla. So we heard last month, late last month, we heard about that from a source, but it was a new source. We tried to confirm the information with other people and I couldn't confirm it. So we decided not to report on it because just one source that is not verifiable is not something that we generally act on. But this week, Bloomberg confirmed that he left the company. So...

Now we know for sure he left the company. Bloomberg didn't have anything else other than Peter Bannon taking over the role. What we learned also from the source, which again, we cannot confirm, but gives the source a lot more credibility now that the source information was confirmed by Bloomberg. The other part of the source information is that it was actually let go by Tesla.

And it was not the only one. It was also other people in the top of the Dojo team that were let go. So it's basically a full shakeup of the leadership of Dojo. And we were told that it had to do with the second generation Dojo chip not meeting Testa's expectations. So the Dojo tip, if you remember, was announced all the way back in 2020 when Testa unveiled the Dojo computer. So you're already working on that.

And apparently it's behind in terms of expectations. So I know obviously earlier this year, Nvidia shaked up the hardware AI world a lot with their own AI hardware. So maybe Elon is not happy where Tesla is at on the hardware side of things.

and requires a shake up, I don't know. But letting go of Mr. Van Cataramanan is definitely like a big move for Tesla. Like he's, again, he's been at Tesla for five years. So like if you're at Tesla for five years, like it's not an issue of like, can you work with Elon or not? Or like, can you sustain like the insane pace at Tesla? Like the guy was...

was able to do the work, obviously, if he lasted that long in the Tesla pace. And obviously, someone really respected in the industry, 14 years at AMD, was hired by Jim Keller. So Tesla is like shaking something. By the way, speaking of Jim Keller, weren't we speculating he might go to Jim Keller's...

Yeah, I mean, that was just speculation from my part. I mean, I've seen that Jim Killers knew it's 10th store, was it?

Yeah, it's a new, well, he just started two new companies, basically like a software and a firmware company and a hardware company in the AI space. And he's hired several people from Tesla, from his whole team at Tesla. Obviously, there was like a gap between Tesla and that company for Keller. He's been out of Tesla for a while now.

But I'm not surprised that he's going to pick up Ganesh and probably other people that Tesla let go from the Dojo program. I wouldn't be surprised since it's a team that he built himself. But yeah, I mean, it is a little bit worrying on the FSD beta front because I was really hoping that the Dojo... I'm not saying that it's not going to happen now, but obviously there's something abroo in the Dojo program. Seems like it.

Oh, yeah, this is really cool from Tesla here. Tesla apparently shared its 48-volt architecture documentation with other automakers, and it was confirmed by Jim Farley, so...

And Jim Farley said it was very welcome. So they said that they received the documents and they did December 5th. And he said it's great for the industry. And he thanked Elon Musk. He also added that the next generation team at Ford were already looking into that. And that was the direction they were looking for. So basically confirming that the next generation EVs from Ford

Ford are going to be 48 volts. I would hope so. I wonder if that includes the new pickups. Yeah, but when I think next generation Ford, I mostly think the next gen F-150 coming in 2025. I think that's the main thing. I think that a lot of other vehicles are going to be based on that technology.

So, yeah, I mean, obviously, it's not just it's not completely unrealistic from Tesla. Tesla has made the first move with 48-volt, but it would be helpful if the rest of the industry start moving that way, just purely on a supply chain basis. Also, on a third-party accessory basis to work on 48-volt is going to be very useful. So, yeah, I mean, I think Tesla is like kind of making a NAX kind of move here.

Yeah, and it would reduce Tesla's costs if, you know, like lights or, you know, little things that were just commodities were made in huge numbers at 48 volts rather than just for Tesla. Yeah, because now they go like, yeah, we need this part for 250,000 Cybertrucks. And then the only making this part for 250,000 Cybertrucks rather than making millions of them for the Cybertruck by F-152 and whatnot. Mm-hmm.

A little bit of an update on the strike that's happening right now in Sweden for Tesla. So those not aware, I'm going to quick recap, real quick recap, because we've talked about it a lot. This has been an evolving situation for a month now. Tesla service employees in Sweden, about 100 of them go on strike to try to negotiate a collective agreement with Tesla.

Then Tesla says, nope. And then since they don't have that much power, it's just 100 people or so, a bunch of other people

unions in Sweden try to help them by putting pressure on Tesla in any way they can, whether it's janitorial work not being done by a janitor union at Tesla location. Then the port workers stopped moving Tesla vehicles to the port. Electrician installing charging station there stopped working for Tesla and so forth. But now the crazy thing is like now it's not just Sweden, it's spreading through Europe because

The big thing that happened is like we learned that from the union, obviously, IF Metal, that is the union that is working with the Tesla employees. They were apparently told by Tesla Sweden, the people negotiating on Tesla's behalf in Sweden, that they were told themselves by Elon Musk that they are not allowed to sign any kind of bargaining agreement because it's a bargaining agreement with anyone, with any union.

So they're basically told the union where it's not even worth negotiating with you guys because we're told that there's no way we can sign anything. So...

So what happened is like now the other unions are trying to put more pressure on Tesla by taking action. So we learned this week that a port worker in Denmark, so Tesla tried to reroute, I mean, Tesla was already using Danish port, but tried to reroute vehicles to Danish port.

to avoid the problem in Sweden, that now the port worker in Denmark are also boycotting Tesla. Then we learned the same thing is happening for transport services in Norway.

So the biggest union in Norway, I'm not even going to try to name it, but is announced that they are supporting by, it's not, right now, at least for Tesla, it's not affecting Norwegian operation. If it does, that could be putting a lot of pressure on Tesla because Norway is a big market for them, but they are not going to move

cars from Norway to Sweden. So Tesla cannot use Norway as a way to get around the problem in Sweden. So that's interesting. And obviously the fact that they are in the fight themselves, this union could cause a lot of problems for Tesla in Norway, which again, big market. So now that they say, hey, we're in the fight, it sends a message for Tesla.

And today we learned also Finland is also now getting on board. So a union in Finland is doing the same thing. So very strong support for unions in Scandinavian countries. They back each other very well. So it's going to be interesting to see if Tesla is going to finally flinch to a union because right now they are basically the stalemate in Sweden. And if they're not bending at all,

So you could be seeing the union ramping up effort in those countries that we just mentioned to put even more pressure on Tesla. So something to keep an eye on for sure. Yeah, and it's a big deal because the union and the United Auto Workers is ramping up to kind of take on Tesla and Toyota and some others. But if Tesla flinches or gives in here, it's going to give the unions here some leverage.

And if I mean, I guess if I'm Tesla, I'm learning from from this kind of deal with unions. And if I'm the unions, I'm how to deal with Tesla. So it'll be interesting to see how this affects what happens in the U.S. as well. Yeah, there's a lot of implication beyond Sweden. Going back to the U.S., though, Tesla has officially said right now that it's going to lose half of the $7,500 tax credit on the two lower Model 3 trims starting in January 1st.

So it already warned that that might be the case, but it wasn't sure. But now Tesla has updated its website saying that customer would take delivery of a qualified new Tesla and meet all federal requirements are eligible for a tax credit up to $7,500. Tax credit will be reduced to $3,750 for Model 3 rear-wheel drive and Model 3 long range, which we weren't sure about.

on January 1st, 2024. So you need to take delivery before the 31st to be eligible if you are for the other personal requirements. So this is kind of a... Well, I mean, we appreciate the clarity for sure. We already didn't even know how Tesla was getting the full tax credit on the Model 3 rear-wheel drive because it's LFP cells. So it was very confusing. But...

And the new version of the long range Model 3 was also confusing. But now we know it's at least going to get half of it. So even that, I'm not sure how they're doing it, but they are. But at the same time, this is a little bit helpful for Tesla this quarter because Tesla

There was the point of sale transition in 2024, which was attractive to other buyers too. So if you were eligible for the tax credit, you might have wanted to wait until next month to buy the car in order to get the point of sale and get that money back a lot faster than with your tax return. So now...

you were much more willing to wait a few months to get your tax return if you're getting $3,750 more out of it. So this is incentivizing people for these two trims to really buy now and take the well and take especially take delivery now by the end of the month. And Ford also signaled the same thing with the Mackie. They expect the Mackie to lose the tax credit on January 1st. So

I don't know. That's the Tesla. It's the full one, I think, for the Mach-E they're expecting. Or no? No, it's the half of it. Qualified customer. It's going to be half of it, too. Right, and that's because the Mach-E gets the LFP batteries. As soon as next year?

Oh, no. Well, yeah. I mean, I know it's going to happen next year, but I don't know if it's right away next year. Well, they're talking about January 1st, too. So the change in the requirements that's coming with January 1st is the thing that's changing here. Obviously, the LFP batteries. But no, I think anyway, no, isn't Ford wants to get the LFP batteries? Want it to be American made LFP batteries?

They were going to have an American-made one, but during the strike, they stopped the building of that thing. You're right. What a mess. Yeah, bummer. Speaking of bummer, another bummer right there.

So apparently, GM officials have confirmed that when we get the next generation Bolt EV, we're expecting a new generation Bolt EV, Bolt EUV in 2025 after the one year Yaris on the Bolt program after they killed the current version this month.

though there's going to be still some inventory for the next few months probably, so it's not like a full year dead. But when it's coming back in 2025, those people are saying that it's only going to come back as an EUV. So there was already a hint of that last month, but now apparently it was confirmed to InsideEV in a new comment that both EUVs in here is going to be the only one making a comeback on the LCM platform and not the EUV.

Yeah, apparently one of the engineers at the Blazer event told everybody. They were like, yeah, the next Bolt is only going to be EUV. And apparently some people thought that was a Margo. The writer over inside EVs didn't think it was in Margo, so...

We actually knew that. We just didn't write it until it was already let out in the open. Bummer, because that's pretty much the only hatchback EV that's around. Obviously, the Volvo EX30 is going to be coming, and that's kind of hatchback-y, but...

You know, I'm a big Bolt EV fan and I'm bummed that they're not going to make a new one. Although, like, they're going to change it so much anyway with the LFP batteries and the no CarPlay Android Auto and all the other stuff that it might be unrecognizable anyway. But we'll see. But the form factor itself, it seems like the Bolt EV had a bigger place in the lineup before.

And the new GM electric lineup than the EUV. The EUV is closer to other things. Really close to the Equinox, yeah. I mean, it has the exact same cargo space. The Equinox is like a little bit longer and a little bit shorter. Actually, it's quite a bit longer. It's like 20 inches longer. But, you know, it's still the same kind of vehicle. So it's weird that they're doing that. The EUV is even shorter than that and smaller than that. And there's nothing smaller than that in the lineup. Yeah.

No, but yeah, it's funny. You see the lineup. It's like something for everyone. And it's just SUV, SUV, SUV, SUV, SUV, SUV, SUV, SUV, SUV, SUV. And those are not all EVs, obviously, the Trax and the Trailblazer. The EV, is that based on pricing? Not size, right? Yeah.

Yeah, because the Traverse is bigger than all those. Yeah, and also the sizes of those bars are weird. That's a really bad graph. Yeah, for sure. All right, we get a big update on the Lucid lineup this week. Well, the Air lineup, it's still just the Air, but the trims on those have been updated. Okay, so those are different. For the Air Pure, which is the base version of the vehicle, gets a price cut of...

From 82,400 to 77,400, but it gets a reduction in power output from 480 to 430 horsepower, making it a little bit slower for your 2024 version, 4.5 versus 3.8. But you get a little bit more range out of it. So 419 miles of range versus 410. So a little bit less power, a little bit more range and a significant price cut.

So these are new options. So if you upgrade for the Touring version, you get a steering wheel, heated seats, soft closed doors, four zone climate control, power rear window, sunshade. Oh, that's very luxurious. You don't get that everywhere.

And the power stays the same for the air touring. It loses a little bit of range. 425 to 411. It's all the same neighborhood. When you get over 400 miles, you can't complain too much. And it gets a $9,000 price cut. So that's sweet. It starts at $85,900. So a significant update to the lineup. I thought the Sapphire didn't change in pricing. No.

I don't see anything about the Sapphire. Okay. All right. We have two more news items to discuss, and then we're going to jump into the comment section. So if you guys have any questions for us today, you can put it in the comment section right now, whether you're on Facebook, YouTube, or LinkedIn. Do I only see comments from YouTube right now? Yeah, so Facebook should be working too.

Not sure what's happening. All right. So it can be things that we discussed today, or it can be any other subject in the EV world that you want our take on. You can put them in the comment section right now. We're going to get to that in about five to 10 minutes max. You have a new Toyota electric SUV that has been unveiled. A concept has been unveiled, but they confirm that there's going to be a production version coming in 2020.

or 2026. I just want to be sure because I read this article earlier this week. 2026. So this is the concept version for an electric SUV coming 2026. And if you look at it,

I might remind you a little bit of the Volvo EX30. A little bit more out there, obviously. This is a concept, but it's a similar size. And the design is also, again, just a concept. The design is somewhat similar, too. It's actually a little bit longer than the... Yeah, the EX30 is a little bit longer. But other than that, basically the same size. Yeah, this one's a little higher off the ground. The EX30 next year is going to have an off-road version.

So maybe that's kind of what this is hoping to be. It also kind of looks like a mini RAV4 a little bit. I don't know. Yeah, I can see that. It does look closer to the EX30 than the RAV4 to me, which is weird. Right. No, for sure. I said the RAV4 looks good. I saw on my way, I just drove from Montreal to Chez Winnegan earlier this afternoon. And I saw a truckload full of BZ4X and RAV4s.

And I think they're good looking cars. Fisker this week announced a dial back of its 2023 production targets. Obviously, we're very much at the end of the year, but they're saying that they want to focus on profitability. So they are sliding back their production output from... So now it's 10,000 units and it was... What was it before?

Maybe they didn't even have it. No, no. The other one, I think it was because they reduced it two times. I think it was like 15,000 to 12,000 and now it's 10,000. It's something like that. Yeah. I mean, it's not a great look for the company, obviously.

They are losing a lot of money per quarter still. They are making money, gross profit margins on the truck technically. That's thanks to Magna producing it. So it's already like a candidate to a price, but still they need to ramp up production in order to make money for like just the deliveries of these, the servicing of these and all that. Like you need the fleet to grow in order to make that happen. And now with them losing in 90...

$1 million a quarter. It's not sustainable when they have... Fisker has made a strategic decision to reduce December production to prioritize liquidity to unlock over 300 millions of working capital, which create additional business flexibility. You were right about the numbers. It was originally 17,000, then reduced to 13,000, and then 10,000. Yeah, so it's about that. Yeah, so...

Yesterday, Enric Fisker posted on his Instagram a long post saying there's a lot of people like, that's not a good look. Normally, after you start production, you ramp up production. You don't slow down production. Obviously, we know that

Fisker has been doing a lot of ads for the ocean, even though they claim to have like 70,000 reservation or something for it. So how do you have 70,000 reservation? You're producing just 300 ocean a day. Why do you need more order, more reservation? You can just go through the reservation backlog. So it does sound like obviously the...

The 70,000 reservation was worldwide and right now they are delivering in... He said that they were delivering in 11 countries. So they do have access to significant numbers of the reservation holders, I would assume. And they're not able to make that happen. Obviously, this is a problem that a lot of companies are experiencing right now, which you have a big backlog of...

of orders, but our reservation, I should say, but converting them in orders right now is more difficult, especially if people that place the reservation like a while back before the interest rates adds like up to $100 a month on your

on your monthly payments for a new car if you're taking a loan, which most people have to do in order to buy a new car. So it is a lot more difficult to make that move, to make people pull the trigger on an order even if they have a reservation. But Fisker is making it sound like everything is okay. It's about unlocking some working capital, but there is room for doubt about that and about Fisker having some demand issues. There's room for the doubt, I should say.

All right. Should we jump into the comment section? We have a few comments today. Yep. Uh, Patricia Beneden after digesting all the videos of the cyber truck last week, I wonder what will be the implemented for the next gen low cost model too. Any thoughts? Uh, we, we did cover that a little bit, but, um, do you think the model two will have like a 48 volt system? Do you think it'll have like 800 volt? I don't think 800 volt makes sense there, uh, for the main thing, but what do you think?

Yeah, I mean, the overall battery system, like the Cybertruck is using like a parallel battery system because it can, like Sylvain just mentioned, has 123 kWh batteries in there. But the Model 2 is going to have what we're calling it Model 2. The low-cost Tesla is going to have a much smaller battery, so it makes a little sense on that front. So yeah, you're right, probably not a 800-volt system. But a wire could make it. Most likely it's going to make it there because that you can make at lower cost, especially if you have some experience making it

the cyber truck by now uh same thing for the 40 48 volt system that has a lot of potential to improve uh weight and efficiency and all that so all things that can help with the cost um again maybe at first it's not that much an improvement in cost if you don't have experience making it if you don't have an existing supply chain to supply it but if you already have that on an expensive 100 000 truck then uh it kind of helps you do it at lower cost on a low-cost vehicle

So yeah, those things I think are going to make it. Stainless steel body and all that, I don't know about that. But yeah, there's still a lot of things you can get from the Cybertruck, I think.

All right. We were having internet issues earlier. Had you considered Starlink instead of Bell Canada? I do have Starlink. I bought them when they were super cheap. Like they were doing like a super discount of like $200 for the hardware. But it's $200 a month after that to get the service. So what I did is I bought the hardware and I didn't order the service. So I can use it only when I want to or when I go like somewhere because you can –

activate that thing anywhere. So I thought that was a very good product to have around. And it has been useful in the past when I've had problem with my cable and

I do put the Starlink out there, pay for a month and have it. And then I can sell after a month and that's it. So I've been doing that and I was about to do it today. But I was on the phone with Bell trying to get this thing resolved because it made no sense. My internet was working, but it was working at like one megabits per second. But they said they had it resolved by the time I was on the podcast. I just had an issue for like a minute or so.

All right. You mentioned Infiniti built steer-by-wire, but theirs has a dead man's clutch and a real steering column. Yeah, it's not like they didn't go all in with it. When will the current car of the year lose its stocks? Some people are worried about that. Yeah, I mean, it looks like it is the wave for Tesla. After they did it on the Model 3, I mean, I would be shocked if it's not coming to the Model Y at some point. I've heard a lot of people complaining about it.

uh i mean i feel like uh we hear people complaining about when it's coming but like when it happens and they use it you the complainers aren't as quite as loud i think i think maybe people get used to it or they just oh i'm sure i'm sure like it's not it's not that big like the the turn signal i could see like it does take some time to to change like it's kind of a habit to use a stock for that but if you use fsd you don't need it yeah

All right. Regarding full self-driving, I think there will be a lawsuit for hardware 3.0 owners, which is a lot of people, for a refund or transfer to a new vehicle. In my humble opinion, hardware 4 will be required for level 4 or 5. They will downplay deny for as long as possible. That is a scenario that is not impossible, Mr. Jingunz. I could see that happening and I hope not.

I hope Tesla can figure it out. And if they don't figure it out, I hope they do the right thing and reimburse everyone. And even the whole car, if you need to, because that's the thing. It's not even just the FSD. A lot of people bought the car because of that. They believe that promise. So it could be a very weird situation for a while. So we'll see. It would be nice if they just made an offer, said, hey, look, if you want out, you can get out.

You had some Solar Roof customer contacts. I would be interested to see features of some installs that are doing auto bidder, sellback, or vehicle-to-grid installs with Tesla or Ford. I don't know if you know anything about that. You mean like seeing what kind of money you can get out of a vehicle-to-grid? Yeah, I mean, this is still early for that, obviously. Yeah.

We don't know anyone with a Cybertruck yet that have that installed. And even for Ford, I don't know anyone that has a Lightning that has that installed. I could ask around. I know a few people that have the Lightning thing. It's very bespoke, very like people come out for days at a time. And it's very early days on that stuff. I mean, it's good that Ford did it. They probably should have brought more of it in-house, not outsourced it to three different companies.

All right. We talked about the Model 2 assembly line in Shanghai. There's ambiguity on the Chinese car, if that's going to be actual the Model 2 or if it's going to be another Chinese. I was surprised they didn't mention Shanghai on this. Like he said, Texas first. And then Sandy mentioned Mexico. He said, I thought it was going to be Mexico. He said, that's going to be second.

So even that Mexico, I don't even know because I wouldn't be surprised that Shanghai would be second. And then next because Shanghai at least is built out right now and not a lot of space, obviously. But yeah, I mean, Mexico is not even ground broken so far. All right. S would also would recommend you get a hold of Matt Rooning if you want to learn all about Nordic unions and sympathy strikes. Tesla has 0% chance of defeating this given their labor laws.

It does look like that right now. I mean, there was a temporary like win on the post office side of things, but then there was turnaround today. So it looks like no progress at all. So, yeah, I mean, I'm curious. They cannot get around it at all. They cannot just like have some strike breakers and just fire everyone and do like that's too hardcore. You don't allow that in Nordic countries. That's interesting. Yeah.

All right. Are you hearing of more people leaving Tesla and LinkedIn feed? I see many jobs posted. Are they growing or replacing? I mean, there's always a lot of job posting at Tesla. I don't, I'm not hearing of people leaving that much. No, not more than usual. I mean, there's a turnover like any big companies, especially in the tech industry. All right. What battery is used in the cyber truck? It's a 46 80s. It's 122.4. I think kilowatt hours. Yeah.

Not sure of the chemistry though. Tesla haven't confirmed the chemistry, but it should be close to whatever they announced at the battery day. It should be as close as it gets to that. All right. Model 2 is supposed to be 100% Tesla parts. I would be surprised by that. It's like 10,000 parts in the car. Really a few supplier parts.

One big advantage of steer-by-wire is that it's easy to make both left-hand drive and right-hand drive. The other benefit is that if FSD is actually realized, they can lock out user input. Yeah, I mean, obviously, steer-by-wires and self-driving have been linked together for a long time, so none of the possible. Also, I believe it's easier to play the video games with steer-by-wire. Yeah.

Rex Talks, is there any way you could turn those color flashing light in the background off? I like those lights. Yeah, I mean, it's a bit distracting. It's going to be like, I just haven't been here all week. I installed them last week and then left to my condom on Shaw. So,

So I need to configure them so they're going to be static and they're going to be the electric color. I'm going to figure that out this weekend. So, yeah, they're going to stop flashing around. I'm sorry about that. I can see that being distracting. But that's it for this week's episode of The Electric Podcast. Thank you to our sponsor, Electric's Merch Store. You can go to merch.com.

electric.co to cop some merch. We don't even like it's so new. We don't even have our merch. Maybe next week we're going to have some to show you. No, that's a Cybertruck hat. That's Tesla merch. Yeah, it's a Cybertruck hat. Yeah, I wasn't sure. All right. So thanks everyone for listening. If you do enjoy the show, you can put a like, a subscribe.

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