Elon’s Tesla CEO package gone, Cybertruck’s PowerShare, GM goes back to PHEVs
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All right, we're going live for a new episode of The Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host, and as usual, I'm with Seth Wintraub. How are you doing today, Seth? I'm good. All right, let me shut down my notification for a second so we can focus on this episode of The Electric Podcast because we have plenty to talk about this week.

And unsurprisingly, we're going to talk a little bit about the big story of the week that dominated Tesla News. I know not everyone wants to talk about that. I understand. I'm tired of talking about it and following you on Twitter this week. I've been commenting a lot on it. But it is a big story when it comes to Tesla because it doesn't just affect Elon. It affects the whole company. It affects all the shareholders. And it is a complicated story at many levels. Yeah.

If you want to, you can listen to just the Elon haters that just say, take his money away, he's a rich man anyway. Or you can listen to the Tesla fan that says, give Elon his money, he's due. That's going a little too simple, I think. I think it's a little bit more about this story. And we're going to try to get into it a little bit. So if you haven't been following this week,

It's been long in the making. That's the thing too that has people confused. People are saying, why is it happening now? Why is it not happening in 2018 or anytime between 2018 and now?

i don't have the exact answer on that just other than the court system is extremely slow i'm myself cut into a lawsuit now that's been going on for two years and i don't see any hand inside so like i know that the court system can be extremely slow uh so i think that's the that's the real answer but we're talking about a judge in delaware voiding rescinding the

Tesla CEO compensation package, performance-based compensation package from 2018, which ran from 2018 to 2022, 2021, when all the trenches of that, all the milestones of that package were completed. And packages worth roughly $55, $56 billion if completed, and it was completed by Elon.

And it was voted approved by shareholders. So why can it be rescinded? That's the big question. So as soon as it was put in place, voted by shareholders in 2018, that's when the lawsuit was started by a shareholder.

For context, it's a shareholder that owns only nine shares. It's a shareholder that most likely doesn't care about the situation at all. Most likely a shareholder just put in place by a law firm that saw Tesla crash.

board and Elon circumventing the laws and the rules of regulation of a public company and decided to take advantage of that, that I will not dispute. So we can argue all day whether that is good and bad, but that's not really the point. The point is the judge heard both sides of that situation and then

We are six years later, more like five, six years later now. That's when the decision came out this week. But actually, this went to trial in 2022, so over a year ago at this point. And again, for context...

During that trial, the judge heard from virtually everyone involved in making that compensation package happen. So Tesla board members, the compensation committee, especially Elon, Elon's lawyer, who happened to be also Tesla's

General Counsel at the time, Todd Marin, and everyone involved in this basically got all the information. That was all under oath too, which has consequences if you end up lying. And the judge took all that information in and decided that indeed the compensation package should be voided. Why? Now, of course, Elon, as soon as the news came out, went on a full

propane the effort to control the narrative and say that this is pure madness because the judge is taking away the rights of the shareholders to decide for themselves. The problem with that narrative, I can sympathize with that narrative. I actually voted for him to get that compensation package back in 2018 because it made sense to me like, oh, okay, yes, Elon gets 6% more of the company, but for him to get that

The company has to increase its value by $600 billion, which is going to make shareholders very rich. So it makes sense. But the problem with that is that is not really what's at stake in this case. What's at stake in this case is the fundamental foundation, really, of public companies, which is that the company, the board, the CEO cannot mislead, cannot lie to the shareholders. And

The shareholders have voted on the package, but if they have voted without having the right information about the package, then the vote doesn't make sense. For those that don't remember, the vote on this was 80% of the share that we're voting on. Of course, Elon didn't vote his shares, obviously. But 80% of the shares that were voted were voted for the package and 20% voted against. So still 20% of the Tesla shareholders didn't want that package to go through in the first place. So I think that's worth noting.

But 80% did it, which is a strong majority. But maybe, and I know this is the thing that I want the Elon's fans, like I see Brett let Elon get paid there. And that's a valid argument. Maybe you still want Elon to get paid after getting all the information. But that's the thing. You need all the information before making that decision. And maybe other people getting the old information, maybe they would think differently. Because, and here's the thing.

Everyone commenting on this should probably read the entire decision. And I know it's a long one. It's like a 200-page decision that was released by the judge here. But it is a fascinating one because it does give you like an in-depth look at how the

biggest compensation package of all time for a CEO came to be. It goes into details on what Elon did to make it happen, what the board did to make it happen and all that. And that is at the core of this litigation here is that the board misrepresented the package at being put together by independent board member. And in fact,

the board member was for far from independent from Elon and also Elon himself was basically the one crafting the entire package then his friends on the board approved it and not only that you had his personal lawyer uh was the go between Elon and um the um

the board, but Don Marin was Elon's personal lawyer, his personal divorce lawyer representing him. And he was also representing the company, the board at the same time as a general counsel. So that right there is already like a big red flag.

And then of course, we don't need to go into all the details here of the relationship between. And I know that a lot of people focus on, yeah, we all knew that it was not, the board's members were not independent. They were friends on Elon, but you can put friends on the board and everything like that. That's completely true. You're allowed to put your friends on the board.

It goes beyond that in the case of Tesla, unfortunately. It's not just his friend. And obviously, his brother is on the board, but his brother recused himself from the compensation meetings. But people like Ira, I can never pronounce his name, Ira Efrinstein, I think. I don't know if I have him in here. Yeah.

He's one of the only ones that's still on the Tesla board. I don't know if he's on the compensation committee, but Ira is his first name. Then you have Antonio Gracias, who's not on the board anymore. He's probably the biggest problem in this case here because he was an extremely close friend of Elon and he had personal financial dealings. So it's not just friend things. Ira, Antonio all have personal financial dealings with Elon outside of Tesla.

So that makes them non-independent anymore. And the only one that can really be claimed to be independent in this whole thing was Robin Denholm, who is now chairman of the board. And this all happened during that time too. And this is all detailed in the lawsuit. It's very interesting where you see basically Elon chose Robin to be the chairwoman.

So, and we all know how that came to be. Elon was kicked out of the chair by the SEC for misrepresenting having secured enough funds

funding for Taste as a Pirate, which was false, obviously. But so right after that happened, he's like, okay, I'm not chair anymore. Who's going to be chair? And Kimball suggested Robin. And Elon was like, yeah, sure. And then Robin said no. And then Elon convinced Robert to say yes. And obviously, Robin was the independent member on the

compensation committee. So she was the one that could have probably made this thing. If she was the only one, she could have made this thing work. There would be no litigation here. But she sided obviously with everyone on the board, all the Elon's friends. And that makes sense because she was also getting a fat compensation package during that time that made her extremely rich, a little bit too rich because she ended up settling with the other bonds member to return $735 billion worth of cash.

And now she happens to be selling $50 million worth now, until the summer. She's allowed to sell $50 million worth of Tesla shares, which I think is pretty much what she has left. So I think- She's out. A little teary on that. She's out. As soon as the check clears, she's gone. Yeah. Yeah. And I think she might not be the only one on the board with this.

Basically, between all that, between Elon being behind, one crafting his own compensation plan and everything, this is just not how a compensation plan is supposed to come together in a public company. So that's what the judge ruled on. So it's not about taking away the right for the shareholders to decide. In fact, all this situation is doing really is going to force another vote on an updated compensation package.

And you know what? It can be like the exact same

package in term of compensation for Elon, in term of actual value. And then the shareholders just need to be presented by it in an honest way. Like, yeah, Elon basically crafted this whole thing with his lawyers. And there was a little bit of negotiation. And again, you can read the whole decision. It goes into details. And that's not like the judge saying that. That's not Electric saying that. That's Elon and his friends saying that. It's all taken from the actual testimonies of those people on their oath.

And, yeah. So, shareholders are going to be able to vote on it again. So, if you want to pass it again with those information, you're going to be able to. And you know what? I still have Tesla shares. I might vote for it because I think he might deserve that. Like, he actually delivered on the performance during that time. During that time at Tesla, he...

went from a $50 billion company to a $600 billion companies. They delivered the, the, the ramped up the model three, uh, to be a best-selling vehicles. They delivered the model Y ramped up the below wise to be the best selling car in the world. Um, the, uh,

They vastly expanded the supercharger network. Tesla became highly profitable, the first electric automakers to do so. Great things was achieved under New Zealand leadership right now. Of course, this is like a retroactive thing, obviously. This is like for that period. Now, if you tell me like now it needs a new composition plan because that plan ended last year or the year before that, actually. Yeah.

Now would be a different case because like I know we talked about this plenty of time on the podcast, but I think Elon is like very much a part time CEO now is heading six, five other companies or six companies in total. He's also a full time political influencer at this point. Like I don't I think Tesla deserve a full time CEO, really. So I agree. I think we should game plan or game this out a little bit because, you know, it it

it kind of seems to me that Elon will not be the head of Tesla in a year. Like it, it seems like it's impossible for his demands to be met. And no, he's not a quitter. But I mean, let's game it out. So in a certain amount of time, Tesla's board is probably going to put forth a similar package that,

Now, will they include that, his new package in that package? That's a big question. That's a big question. They might. But do you think the same pay package would pass now? I mean, keep in mind...

Yes, Elon did all those things, but he also kind of made FSD a joke. He went really hard right wing. He did all these things that maybe investors aren't too happy about. Also, Tesla over the last two years, three years is basically flat. So current investors who are going to be voting on this, it's not going to be past investors. Current investors are going to say to themselves,

do I want to dilute, uh, my chairs, my newly, you know, undiluted chairs, um,

do I want to do that or not? And so it was 80% before it might be, you know, less than that this time. That's going to be a big vote. Like that's going to be, you know, a six, $60 billion, $60 billion vote. Are we going to take $60 billion worth of Tesla out of Tesla and give it to Elon? Or are we just going to keep that as shareholders? And I'm like, I'm pretty much out of the, you know, the test, the Tesla game. So, um,

I really don't have skin in it. But for me, it's like I don't know that that's going to pass. I don't think it's going to pass the same. It's definitely not going to get 80%. It's definitely going to go south of 80%. I don't know if it goes south of 50% though. Yeah, it's just – it's hard to guess really because it might kind of cancel each other out. Like the fact that he actually delivered on it and a lot of people weren't sure at all. Yeah.

gave Elon a ton of credibility and everything at that time. So they're like, all right, maybe we can do it again and all that. And so that helps. And then, of course, you're right. There's a lot of people that are like screwed out and everything. But also there's a lot of people that said screwed out and everything are out of Tesla too, just like you.

So you have to take that into account. There's a lot of people that are still in Tesla or are big Elon fan. I know there's still people like me, though, that are still shareholders because they just believe in Tesla's mission and everything. And they believe that the Elon Musk situation will work itself out eventually. What's the breakdown retail versus institutional investors? Yeah, institutional, I think, is over 30%. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to see them.

That wanting to hand over 50 billion. Yeah. You have a lot of insiders. And then, then you have the retail. Retail is not majority. I think it's a little bit short of a majority. Right. I mean, I don't know. Like,

I know it's not going to be 80%. I think it's going to be less than 80%, but I don't know if it's going to be under 50%. So that's, that's the previous plan. Then the new plan where, you know, Elon saying, Hey, I'm starting all these, you know, AI companies and I might take this stuff with me and I might not. And you guys better give me more and more and more. That to me seems like a hard sell. Yeah. Yeah. So unless, unless it comes with a clear, like, cause by the way, that's a,

Another thing that was highlighted in the decision, which everyone that's commenting on this should read, is that when they did that decision,

historic plan of worth $55 billion. There was nothing in there that said Elon would stay at Tesla for a certain period of time and work at Tesla a certain amount of time, even though I know that back then Elon had less other ventures and everything like that, but he still had SpaceX. He still had the borrowing company. I don't exactly remember in 2018 if they had Neuralink, but he had a lot of other things going on at that time already. He just had started OpenAI and all that. So,

There were a lot of other things going on and there was no mention whatsoever. You need to spend like a certain amount of time at Tesla and all that. To be fair, like he did spend a lot of time during those 2018, 2019, 2020, like slept at the factory and all that. I give him all the credit for that. But there was none of that in Tesla.

riding on it on that so maybe if there is that in the new one that like you have to be that maybe there was nothing about the sell of those exercise option like when Elon has sold like 39 billion dollars worth of Tesla stock he did it on the open market which is completely unprecedented I know like people are like hey no one is like saying anything when Jeff Bezos sells

um billions of amazon stock well jeff business is a lot smarter the way that he sells his amazon stock and he's not like crashing it every time that he does um

And so it doesn't help either, obviously, but still he signs a plan with the company normally to do it and everything. And it's a lot cleaner than giant open market sell that Elon did. So, yeah, if there is some of that included, I think Elon can do it and like do like he's great at propaganda too and everything. So he can make like a campaign to convince people to do it. I think that's possible. Now, however...

There's other aspects to this. So Elon went more than a little proponent of the campaign. He blamed it on Delaware, which a lot of people ask me, like, why was this in Delaware in the first place? Because Tesla is incorporated in Delaware. Why was Tesla incorporated in Delaware? Then Tesla wasn't founded in Delaware. It was founded in California. Now it's based in Texas. What is it about? A lot of companies are being incorporated in Delaware for tax reasons and money.

Probably beyond tax reason, because there's a plenty of other states that are federal tax reason is the court system there. The court system is extremely pro-corporate. And Tesla had similar lawsuits in the past two that didn't go through like this. This one is specifically managed to apply for that. So like people now are blaming the judge in particular. They are.

Tesla fans are accusing her of being in Biden's pockets and all that, even though I've never seen any strong evidence of the case. The only thing I've seen people use right now to claim that and then it gets repeated. But the actual evidence is that before being a judge, she worked at the law firm and that law firm gave money to the Biden campaign.

That's the stretch there. That's why she's in Biden's pocket, which is a big stretch, especially in the U.S. where money in politics is just... Yeah, that's tenuous. I mean, that's almost like... That's conspiracy theory. You got to have the pictures and the lines drawing. Yeah, but that's exactly what they did. So they did that. They did that. And then Elon responded to that comment. And then everyone is just repeating, oh, she's just in Biden's pocket based on that, which is...

Not great. Not a great look. So yeah, so now Elon instead blamed the court system in Delaware and his strategy now is to move Tesla's incorporation. And that's the next story we're going to get to, to move Tesla's incorporation state from Delaware to Texas, which is very pro shareholders, according to Elon, even though like- I'm sure he's done the research. Yeah, I mean-

Delaware is very pro-shareholder, obviously. And this specific lawsuit, the result, the decision was technically pro-shareholders. Exactly. They decided that it's against the executive, against the CEO of the company. That's what it's against. It's cited against. It's anti-misleading shareholders. So that's very pro-shareholders, obviously.

I know that a lot of people feel that they were not misled. And I'm kind of one of them, to be honest, because when I voted for it, I was very aware of the board members not being independent. I was not as aware of how much Elon and his lawyer were involved in crafting the compensation. So I can probably say that I was misled too to that degree. But still, yeah.

The point is, if you are one of those shareholders, I don't feel misled. That's not the point. Maybe another shareholder was not as aware to you. I can say he should have done his due diligence. Yes, but there's a degree to it. You can do your due diligence up until the company is lying to you. The company is calling someone that's lending millions of dollars to Elon personally, an independent board member.

Anyone can understand that if you're lending millions of dollars to someone and then you approve, you're on the board of their company and you approve them to get paid billions of dollars, there is a little conflict of interest going on. A lot. It's problematic. For sure. Very problematic. So...

Give McCormick, the judge, a break. The Tesla fans are going crazy on her. She's a judge. She has to follow the rules of the law. And then she's presented with that information. Of course she's going to rule against it. It makes no sense. So, yeah. So, Elon, instead of... Oh, yeah. I should go back to my main point in all this before moving to the Texas thing. If anything, what the decision showed, it showed that Tesla has a governance issue.

And I know like governance is a weird word now, especially for Elon fans because Elon is super in Thai ESG. What is it? Yeah, I think it's ESG or something. And what does it stand for? Environment, sustainability and governance maybe. Yeah, and governance. Now governance is definitely one of them. But like people are saying, oh, it is this DIE crowd and ESG crowd that are pushing governance. Governance has been...

way before what's been around way before esg is it's the basis of a public company is like how it's been governed public companies especially at the scale of tesla are like mini government at this point like you they have branches and they have executive power and they have the board which is like the congress basically like you you have all these things going on and that's what that's what it's based on and you have the voters where the shareholders the stakeholders in this so

The relationship, the governance is the relationship between all of that and all it needs to be according to the rules of a public company. And Tesla is just not playing fast and loose with it, basically. So there needs to be. And again, the point is not just about this lawsuit, not just about this Elon's compensation package, is that in the decision, it highlights the governance issues first.

That led to this problem in the compensation package. But it is the same sources of the problems we're seeing now. Other problems like Elon admitting of a conflict of interest in AI related to the AI startup and Tesla. Possible even breach of fiduciary duty. And the board just sitting on their hands doing nothing. That is part of the governance issue. So it's just highlighting it in the compensation package aspect. But we're seeing other impact of that same issue.

And now Elon, instead of being a reasonable person looking at both sides of things and saying, okay, maybe we should fix that at Tesla, which is completely fixable, honestly. It's not that hard to fix if you're willing to do it. Instead, he's like, this is a politically motivated attack and it's

And then what we're going to do instead is we're going to move the corporation to Texas and Texas. All the judges are for me and everything. So are we going to be fine? And we're going to just pass the package again. And then if they bring it back to court again, it's going to go to Texas and then it's going to be shut down. Boom. That's the solution. So no,

So I had a little bit of hope that maybe this could lead to a good thing and we could get a bigger governance at Tesla. But no, instead, it's just going to be that. And of course, that was beautifully played by Elon in terms of marketing. What he did, he did a Twitter poll.

In this Twitter poll, he said, should Tesla change its state of incorporation to Texas, home of its physical headquarters? So that's it. That's the only thing. So a lot of people have no context whatsoever about this. They don't know what's going on. And of course, yeah, of course it should be incorporated in the physical headquarters. Also, only two possible answers, yes or no. So no, I don't have a strong opinion on this and I just want to see the results. None of that. So the poll is completely useless and obviously useless.

unsurprisingly, it was voted 87% yes, 13% no. So now Elon is going to move

to this vote to the shareholders, which is obviously the only thing that matters. Now it needs to be presented correctly to the shareholders. So hopefully the board had its lesson and is going to do that this time. But this is one that's a lot easier to pass, obviously, because again, it makes sense to be incorporated where the headquarters are. And so Elon is going to build the supports. And I'm pretty sure that Elon is also going to be able to vote his shares on that. I don't see why he couldn't.

You probably shouldn't, obviously. But the point, I mean, it doesn't matter where they're incorporated. This has already happened. Tesla's in Delaware currently. So this is not going to reverse the decision, though. No, but if they do it and then whenever they do. So I assume that they're going to do that. And if it pass, which probably will, they will not even appeal the decision. They will just recraft the package, get it to a vote again.

pass it if they can, and then move on from this. Right. Here's an idea. Yeah. What if they said, all right, one package from 2018 to whenever, and it's basically you have to keep growing the stock and you get more money, but if the stock drops to 100 or 150, you lose all the stuff that you gained. I feel like that would be fair.

It would certainly be more fair. It makes sense. I don't know how. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. Especially people should keep in mind Elon hasn't exercised his shares from the stock option from that package. So he had gotten that package and he sold all of his old stuff to pay the taxes on getting that package and also buying Twitter.

Well, yes and no. I mean, I think he wouldn't have bought Twitter if... Is that me that's speaking right now? I don't know why I'm... That's weird. I don't think he would have bought Twitter if he hadn't completed all the milestones for that package, knowing that he would get that 6% more stake in Tesla where it's $55 billion. That's for sure. But he actually never... There's a five-year waiting period to exercise those shares, so...

he hasn't exercised them yet he paid uh he bought twitter after exercising the shares from his previous plans

So you had two deliver spends in 2008 or 2009 and then one in 2012, if I remember correctly. And those each give him 4% more of the company. So that's part of also too, like the board asked, why was it 6% this time? Like how did that happen? It was 4% the first time, which was extremely generous.

4% of the second time was extremely generous. And now why 6%? That makes no sense. So was it negotiated and everything? Nope. Not negotiated at all. The only thing that was negotiated is one of the trenches was bumped up by $100 million.

Also, there were issues with how it was negotiated in terms of how actually ambitious the plan was. The plan was ambitious for sure. But actually, from the Tesla's perspective, internally, their own projection was, for the most part, matching this plan. So it was not like they were...

It was a new super high target. It was just, we already had very incredible growth in our projection. And now we need to execute on them just to make the difference. Obviously, I'm not saying that it was easy to execute on that. It was not like, I'm not, I'm not saying that. All right. We're a half, we're a half hour in. Let's, let's talk about a Tesla Cybertruck powering. Yeah. Good idea. Good idea. Yeah.

So, yeah, we are starting to have a little bit more info about the PowerShare. So the PowerShare is the home bidirectional charging feature of the Cybertruck. The Cybertruck obviously came with the first bidirectional charging power capability in Tesla vehicles where you can charge basically anything out of the outlet that you have in the bed of the truck. Or you can even charge another vehicle, another EV if you want.

But in terms of charging your home with it, powering your home, that's the new PowerShare feature. And we haven't had the details on it other than it needs the hardware of the gateway, which is also used for the Powerwall. It needs the new...

PowerShare connector or the universal connector, one or the other, which is a $600 product. The gateway is an $1,800 product. So you need these hardware. If you already have the Powerwall, you should be having those, but I'm going to get to that a little bit later because apparently it's not as simple as that. And then you need all of that installed.

And then if you have an outage at your home, you could just plug it in. And instead of charging your truck, it's your truck that's going to charge your home, that's going to power your home. So it replaces a power wall or it replaces a gas generator or something like that. So, yeah.

The feature, even though Tesla has been delivering trucks since last year, we haven't heard about anyone getting an installation on this. A few weeks ago, Tesla started sending out surveys to owners or buyers, even if you didn't already have the truck, just to get an idea of if you're eligible for it. So it's not clear what the criterias are to be eligible. It probably has to do with where your home is, because I assume that Tesla doesn't have

installers everywhere for this just yet. And also probably the electrical situation at your home. This is gonna probably start with the, I mean, everything, you can do everything basically like eventually, but just how hard it is to get there. So probably some, just the ones who start with the easier ones. But now we're starting to hear from Cybertruck owners who are getting installation schedules. So they have actual deals to make this happen now. So first off on the hardware side,

What Tesla is doing because of the foundation series package, Tesla is only right now delivering foundation series Cybertrucks and you have the all-wheel drive version and you have the cyber beast version. So Tesla is including the hardware for power share for both. So it's part of the deal with the foundation series.

But the installation is not included for the all wheel drive. It is included for the cyber base, but now we learned that it's included with a $4,000 installation credit or rebate, whatever you want. So if it goes over $4,000, you're going to pay for it. If it's under, you're fine. So I assume that that means that Tesla estimate that the installation cost is going to average around $4,000 for an installation, which is not cheap.

but still a lot cheaper than a Powerwall, obviously, or even like a good gas generator, especially if you account for the gas. So now people are starting to schedule those installation, but apparently a lot of people are, even if you have Powerwall, you do need some additional hardware apparently. So that's something to keep in mind. And oh yeah, and then we also learned that the,

Off-grid feature is the only one that's active. So the only way to use PowerShare right now is for backup power when you are off-grid. So there is no peak shaving capability with the Cybertruck's PowerShare feature right now. So you can forget about that.

It's not clear if Tesla is going to do it and when is they going to do it. Because we know that Elon was always a little bit reticent in deploying that feature. He's always like bad modding, like throwing cold water on bidirectional charging. He doesn't really want the vehicles to have that capacity, but Tesla is actually like doing it anyway. And we assume that pig shaving was part of it because that would...

charge and discharge the Cybertruck's battery a little bit more, a lot more, obviously. And that would affect the battery pack and that might look bad for Tesla in terms of battery degradation and all that. So they want to focus just on power outages off-grid, which I think makes sense for that product, honestly.

But it's going to be interesting now to see the actual installations happening. And we already have a few. I talked to two different Cybertruck owners and one of them, both of them actually were not Cyber Beast buyers. They were all the drive buyers. And both of them at the installation cost was over $4,000. So something to keep in mind.

So all in, let's say it's $5,000 installation and you're not a Foundation Series owner and you need to buy the hardware. You need to expect something probably in the range of the $6,000, $7,000 all in to get access to that feature. Now, do you think they'll let just regular old electricians do the installation or do you have to have like Tesla come out and do it? That's a good point. I should add that people that are being quoted right now,

It's like Tesla is not sending you the package. It is sending it to a certified Tesla installer and doesn't seem to have any option. It doesn't look like you can negotiate pricing or anything. So Tesla is like, this is the guy that's going to do the installation for you because he's certified with us. He's going to give you a price and you take it or leave it. So...

I'm sure the take rate is going to be very good for the foundation series, even with the installation having to be paid because people are going to feel like they're going to leave the hardware on the table if they don't do it. So they're probably going to pay for the installation. And it's pretty compelling. I mean, you've got basically like 10 power walls in that truck worth of electricity. For $4,000, that doesn't seem like a bad deal. Yeah.

No, it's not. Like you could with some power consumption management, you could easily power your house for a few days. Yeah, a week even. Yeah.

All right. Next one is the wheel covers. So we talked about before the wheels covers that are a little bit problematic for the Cybertruck. We've seen them like fly off of the truck before. And it seems like it's not just a one-time issue, an anecdotal issue. It seems like a bunch of people took pictures of Cybertrucks as superchargers. And often you can see like one wheel cover missing. So...

Jamie posted an article here. We learned from a few owners that Tesla is not delivering Cybertrucks with the covers on anymore. They were rearing out too quickly and they are pushing on the tire basically and they are falling off. So they are redesigning them to fix that issue. So if you're taking delivery of Cybertruck in the next few weeks,

Don't expect to have the wheel covers, which are very good for efficiency, obviously. Talking about probably a 10% gain in aerodynamic performance. So for now, you're up. Terribly aerodynamic. I mean, obviously better than, but, you know, they have those big fan things. So what happens is the tire smushes down and it like hits that side of the... Yeah, it sounds like. And then it erodes pretty quickly and then it just falls off if you get some air in there.

It's funny, I'm surprised it wasn't spun as like, "Hey, the wheel covers come off as a weapon. If somebody's rolling coal on you, you can get them back." No. Okay. It's like the James Bond thing where you activate something and the nails comes out of the truck. Exactly.

All right. We had an interesting report here coming from Bloomberg this week about a new LFP, a small LFP battery cell factory coming to Nevada by Tesla.

Taking a little bit grain of salt on the report because there's not many details and it's not clear. They said it's coming to Sparks. So Sparks is like the city east of Reno. Sometimes people say that Gigafactory Nevada is in Sparks. So I don't know if they're saying it's going to be because they don't say that the factory is going to be on Gigafactory Nevada, which is getting a new battery factory for 4680 cells.

So it might be in actual Spark Sparks and not Gateway, Nevada. So it's not clear on that. But they say that Tesla is building a new small facility to build LFP cells using machinery from CATL. So CATL is apparently not involved other than selling them the machinery to build them. And that's important for context because some automakers are under fire by the government here right now, especially the Republicans regarding this.

involvement of Chinese battery manufacturers like Ford, for example, partnering with CATL for their LFP factory in the US. I've raised some red flags because I guess some people are seeing it as CATL getting around the protectionist approach that the government is taking to encourage battery manufacturing in the US.

I guess that's your argument, even though at the end of the day, it's going to be a US job. So I'm not sure I get the point. Anyway, they just don't want it to be owned by Chinese. It seems like cattle is pretty far ahead in the LFP world. So far ahead. But UID is also doing good, but that's also Chinese. Right. But it's weird because I think LFP was invented in the US and I think...

We kind of just sat on our hands there and China was like, oh, this seems like a good technology. Let's develop it. Let's spend 10, 20 years working on this. And here we are. Yeah, I think CATL produced most of them. So that makes sense that they have developed the best machinery for it. So Tesla is going to take that machinery and then operate its own small facility. They're not talking about any output. And they specifically said, too, that it sells for the mega pack. So interesting to you.

All right, we have a few more news items to discuss, and then we're going to jump into the comments section. So if you guys have any questions for us, put them in the comments section right now, and I'll get to them in a few minutes. It can be about any subject that we discussed today or any other subject in the EV space or clean energy space that you want us to comment on.

All right, big news. So this is for Canadians. So we have a lot of Canadian listeners on the show. So this is a big news for you. The slur last night dropped the price of the Model Y in Canada.

on the two base version of the vehicle. So the rear wheel drive, $4,000 cheaper at $54,000 Canadian. And maybe more importantly, the dual motor all-wheel drive long range is also down $4,000. It's now $64,000. And the fact that it's $64,000 is very important, not just for Canada itself, but specifically for people in Quebec because that brings the price down below the $64,000

$65,000 threshold to be eligible for the $7,000 rebate for electric vehicles. So now finally the dual motor version is going to have access to both. So now the real drive version already had access to both and now it's $4,000 cheaper. So it's going to be popular across Canada, which has the $5,000 federal rebate.

So now basically the Model Y is a $49,000 car, Canadian. Well, Canadian pesos for our American friends, I think it's like 70 cents a dollar. Really? I thought it was closer. Yeah, maybe it's a little bit closer now. Maybe like 75, I'm not so sure. I should know because I got paid in the U.S. But the...

I would have to assume, and I don't have the figures in front of me, that the rear-wheel drive is more popular in Canada because it's obviously cheaper. But the all-wheel drive long range is also extremely popular in Canada for a few reasons, just because of the climate here being a lot rougher. So in the winter, the longer range is a lot useful because you lose more range. But the all-wheel drive is also very light to people because driving in the snow, it can be very...

very useful. So I know personally some people, I think my parents are in that market too, were interested to get the Model Y, but they wanted a dual motor one. And they felt like they were just short of getting that $7,000 for the government. So they felt like they were just leaving money at the table if they went with the Model Y instead of going with a competitor that has dual motor, all-wheel drive, but get access to the

rebate in Quebec. So now the Model Y, well, it's not on the eligible list just yet, or at least not this morning when I checked, but it should be like any time now be added because I don't see why it wouldn't. So now it brings the price down $12,000 on this thing. So it's basically a $52,000 car that you get for all-wheel drive and long range. So probably going to be a big boost for sales for Tesla in Quebec in the coming weeks.

Are you getting one? I'm tempted, but I'm going to wait at the end of the quarter, see if they have another incentive like FSD transfer or unlimited supercharging transfer, something like that. Because otherwise it's not worth it because they're not giving me enough money for my Model 3, basically. Yeah, and I saw MKBHD review the Model 3 quite nicely. I feel like he's usually a little bit more...

And he was very pro Model 3. Yeah. Yeah, he liked it a lot. All right. This is an interesting one. We have this. So the Norwegian Automobile Federation always posts a very interesting yearly range test in the winter for electric vehicles. And it's always a very interesting process because it's like a convoy of vehicles, basically. And we all perform in the exact same way.

conditions. So you get a very good idea. And then they compare the range in the winter to the WLTP, which is obviously expected to be lower than WLTP because it's real world and it is winter. But it's a good way to get an idea of how well vehicles perform in the cold and how close they are to the advertised range.

And very, very interesting performance here this year. I think out of the... So this is not in order though. Is there the link to the test itself? Because the test itself has a very interesting charge where you see the performance compared to the WLTP. No, there's no...

all right anyway i remember it by heart basically but out of the five out of the top five i think four of them are chinese automakers that's yep that's that should tell you something and and by that i mean the longest range and the closest to their wltp announced range so more realistic range and longer performance in winter driving and the top one was one that uh i mean we saw it uh you remember last year we saw it in uh

Where was it? In Germany. Yeah, IFA. Is that how you pronounce that? Wait, no, sorry. Sorry. That's a different show in Germany. Hi-fi? I don't know. I was going to say hi-fi, personally, but... Wow, my brain is fried. Why can't I remember?

You heard it? You heard someone say it? I don't think I've ever heard anyone say it. But it's H-I-P-H-I for people. Figure it out yourself, basically. It's the first one that you see here. It's a very aggressive looking vehicle, like kind of a sedan crossover. Reminds me of the BMW i8 a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. A little bit of that. It's very aggressive looking and it had the best performance. So the advertised, right? And let's stick to kilometers here because they do kilometers there. 555 kilometers actually did 520. So 555, that's the WLTP. It did 522. So only lost 6% range overall.

over the advertised range. So that's truly beautiful. BYD did the minus 20%. Let me see. The Lotus did very good at minus. So I counted the Lotus as a Chinese automaker because they're a Chinese-owned, right? And I think they're built in China too. Are they? Yes. Okay. So that makes sense. NIO did very well at the EL6, did the minus 14. ET5 also.

Uh, who else did great? Uh, Xpeng did 30 minus 13 to 520, um, WLTP 452, basically, uh, actual range. So one that was very disappointing. So Tesla always did very well in that range test. However, the big difference this year, and it's, it might have been a difference. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. Okay. So they only did the model three and they only did the new model three.

Now, the numeral tree is actually supposed to be more efficient, but maybe it's the winter thing that happened. But it didn't be awful because there's some of them that did worse, but it didn't score very high. Minus 30%. So it lost 30%. 621 kilometers at Vertise range.

and 441 kilometers. But the big difference here is like, it's probably, again, Tesla being a little bit more optimistic and pushing the advertised range, WLTP range, APA in the US, a little bit too much. Because you can see, for example, like the Polestar also got minus 30, but the advertising 614 got 430. Even the Hi-Fi or whatever you want to call it was,

coming in at 555. So the HiFi had a lower advertised range than the Model 3, but a higher actual range when tested. Yeah, I mean, to me, it's almost more impressive to have a lower kilowatt hours per 1,000 kilometers rating than being close to your stated out, not EPA, but WLTP rating.

I think that's where the real impressive work is, is getting your mileage down. Because I think that winning car had like 120 kilowatt hour battery. It was huge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I'm not familiar enough with the WLTP, but I would assume that there's similarities to the EPA in terms of like there's room. Otherwise, it doesn't make too much sense. Yeah.

in terms of the battery capacity and the actual rated range like you just said. All right, we got more news from the dealership side of things. So we've been tracking the dealers in the US as a potential obstacle basically for EV adoptions.

And they keep proving us right that we were right to be afraid of that. Obviously, like a few months ago, we reported on the 4,000 of them in the U.S. lobbying for lower standards, for emission standards, so that forces EV adoptions. And now we get a survey from AutoNews that surveyed the 208 dealers and dealership managers in the U.S. to get an idea of how they see EV adoption.

And it basically confirmed that the majority of them see EVs as a bad thing rather than a good thing. 83% of the dealers surveyed said that they believe the federal government is pushing them into EVs too fast. 55% believe that the EVs aren't generating customer interest or sell at their store with some or a lack of inventory. Which is interesting because if lack of inventory...

letter to the White House a few months ago saying that they had too many ZV inventory and that was their concern. So like, slow us down. We cannot sell them. And the others are like, we cannot sell them because we don't have them. Makes

Makes no sense. And if you're one of the ones that makes no sense, look at this one here. I couldn't stop laughing when I was reading the report from Auto News and they didn't highlight that. Like they missed that one completely. They just posted that Michael Luckey, general manager of a car dealership in New York. He said that, he quoted him saying that electric vehicles are exciting. They're definitely overall good impact for customers and for the environment.

our customers keep that in mind but it's moving too fast it should be driven by consumer demand and the consumer demand is not there now guess for whom mr lucky works he works for riverhead mazda of new york

Mazda doesn't even have an electric vehicle for sale. So I'm not surprised that he doesn't believe there's consumer demand for it because there's probably no one showing up at his dealership asking for electric vehicles because they wouldn't find any. All electric vehicles, they do have now the X30, the X90, something 90, the PHEV thing, but it's not an electric vehicle. The 30 is gone in the U.S.,

A weird one, only 35% of dealers believe that the new point of sales tracks created for the cheap vehicle was going to help their business. Now, to be fair, most of them said that it would be

I cannot reconcile that. How does that work? I may be unsure, but no impact. It's going to help you sell EVs. There's no doubt about it. That measure probably told me more. That particular survey told me more about the

about the dealership than all the others. 35% of dealership is probably the ones that are good with EVs. 35% have a good idea about EVs. The rest is just clueless. Because I always like to say, when we trash the dealers, it's not all the dealers that are bad. There's plenty of good dealers. And it sounds like about 35% of them, which is a lot, really. I think there's 18,000 dealers in the US. All right.

GM, known to be all in on electric vehicles, goes back to plug-in hybrid in the US. So we haven't seen a GM plug-in hybrid in the US since the Volt was discontinued in 2019. It was a great car, very foreign car. Yep. Helped transition.

GM into electric vehicles with the Bolt EV after that and now the Alcyon platform. But now the Alcyon platform is not where it needs to be in terms of volume and all that. It's just not quite there yet. So GM, instead of making things work with BEVs, they decided to go back to PHEVs. So that's something that Mary Barra said when announcing the

earnings this week. She said, our forward plans include bringing our plug-in hybrid technology to select vehicles, without mentioning them, in North America. Let me be clear. She said, like, this is not an actual setback on their plans, which is obviously nonsense. And they said that...

So that is going to be easy to do because they have PHEVs in other markets, which is true specifically in China. They do still sell PHEVs. So I'm assuming a lot of Buicks that they sell in China have PHEVs. So I would assume that they're going to use the same platform there and bring that to the U.S.,

But obviously, there's a step back. We know that GM kind of missed the mark on their EV plans. They are doing a little bit better in the last few months. Not overall, obviously, since the Bolt is going to be dead for a year or two as they transition to the Altium Bolt. But...

On the pure Ultium side, they are starting to do a little bit better, just nowhere near the level they need to be, especially they need the Equinox EV on the high volume because that's probably going to be their biggest seller and everything else. The Silverado also needs to be ramped up. It's now still a little bit, not much volume. So all of that needs to happen.

Now, the real question, you can believe Maribara and say that it won't change anything and they're still going all in on that. But I would assume that it's not a great look for those plans if they decide to bring the PHEVs in order to meet the standards in the US. No. And, you know, as much as I like the Volt, like I kind of feel like that

type of vehicles time is kind of winding down like uh made sense at the time makes sense even right now but like to announce that you're going to start doing that for cars coming out you know in years that's that's that's a bad look and you know like you can't really say anything good about altium at this point like it's it's an unmitigated failure like they've

they're late, their software's not great, they're making bad plans. One thing I am impressed about is Mary Barra has somehow kept her job. All these things, there's all these really obvious bad missteps. They're profitable, so I guess that keeps the shareholders happy. Mad Fientist: Yeah, it's their parts business that's profitable. Selling parts on their

shitty other cars that's like come on like this just the strategy is just awful and like the companies they choose to invest in are awful like cruise was not a great uh success so far like come on guys like just so bad and like the the lack of due diligence and the lack of like

not hindsight, but foresight. They know kind of where the stuff is going. Why not put more

effort in, you know, fixing Altium. And like, is it just like broken? Are you going to bring out a new technology? I don't know. It just, it's so frustrating because, you know, GM engineers actually build good vehicles. Like the Bolt was a great vehicle. The Volt was a great vehicle. And, you know, for intents and purposes, like the new EVs that are coming out seem to be pretty good. You know, their software decisions may not be, but like,

It's frustrating because it feels like the management team is really holding GM back. All right. Let's jump into the comments. All right. Let Eon get paid. FFS. FFS.

That's been one of the recurring comments that I don't like. It's like, let's just give him his money. His money is due. There's some people for sure, but mostly the crazies are like, you shouldn't get any money at all. I think most people agree that you should be compensated for his work between 2018 and 2021. That's not the point.

Yeah, and he did get a lot of money. His 20% share of the company went way up, so it's not like he's going to be in the poorhouse. All right. Holding long-term for my grandchildren, 245 shares. Elon has cost me every cent of my potential profit to this point. There's that argument. Not sure if that's 100% true, but Jonathan Root says Elon already got paid his stock options, went up by over $150 billion. Yeah.

not including the comp package. That's true. There's a lot of money he already made outside of the comp package. So something to consider. I think we take a chance on the new package because this time we have the past success as a foundational example. Set more performance triggers if they are met than 2,000 stock like ARK predicts. Okay. Jeez. Okay. If it's someone like me.

Yeah, as soon as you're like, all right, let's just use the ARC model, I'm like, you lost me. All right, can Tesla the company be saved from the cult of Elon Musk? Can the Republican Party be saved from Trump? Rhetorical. The gross, childish behavior of Elon Musk isn't funny, Fred. It kind of is sometimes. It's definitely amusing. I disagree on that. What are we going to do? Are we going to cry about this? Yeah, come on. What are you talking about?

It's not like I'm not criticizing him and I'm just laughing in the corner. I'm criticizing it and laughing at the same time. All right. We need to distance ourselves from the cult of Tesla for its own credibility. Oh, David, I think you have not been following us closely at all. As the cult of Tesla, if you are in the cult and believe in it, you'll learn that we've been – what's the word? Excommunicated? Excommunicated from the cult a long time ago. Yeah.

All right. The wheel covers must not have been on in Baja. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I don't think you use wheel covers for off-roading. All right. Eric Han asks, any news on the EX30 software issues? That's Volvo. I did hear something about it, but I don't know that it's being resolved. Obviously, it's a new vehicle program for Volvo, and they're trying to get that stuff out the door. The Canadian exchange rate is 74.3 cents. That's amazing. That's pretty close.

All right, question. 80% plus shareholder vote must deliver as promised 10x value. Is it reasonable for the vote to be put again because some SHs didn't do similar due diligence? Shareholders. Oh, shareholders. I thought it was going to be another thing. Due diligence to what Fred did. I don't know what you mean by to what Fred did, but yeah, I mean, that's the point, like,

Yes. Shareholders should do their due diligence, but that's not what really the judge needed to look at. The judge needed to look at as Tesla and the board presented the information to the shareholder in the appropriate way. And they did not like claiming that the package was put together by independent board members and Elon's involvement in Elon and his representative, like his lawyer being involved in the making of the package was not put together. Again, Gart, if like I,

I understand where you're coming from and everything.

If it's something that you really care about, I would suggest taking the time and reading the judge decision because the judge decision includes a very detailed chronological look at how the package came together. You can even skip the decision if you want. Skip the first part of the decision where the judge goes into all the legalese and why she has to go this way and all that because I know a lot of people are freaking out. They say she's like jealous of his wealth or whatever. This is nonsense.

You can go into all the chronological part of it and get an actual idea of what happened and then compare that to the proxy statement. And you can read my article on this because I do put the proxy statement and the decision together. And you have to compare how this happened. And then the board is like, shareholders, this is what happened. It's not the same. So that's what you needed to look at. All right.

"Will the US ever get those cool Model Y colors from Giga Berlin? Texas has a new paint shop. Shouldn't really be a problem." I think the red's coming, right? Yeah, the red and the silver. Yeah, they call it silver. Quicksilver. Maybe it's not Quicksilver that happened, but the red is definitely available now. Yeah. Sadly, I think Tesla's, if you want some exotic colors, they're pointing you to the wrap section. Yeah, the wrap section.

All right, question. What do you think is the root problem with Altium production delay, and is there an engineering problem that needs addressing? Don't know. Yeah, probably a mixture of everything, really. It's new. It's a new business for them. Not exactly new like the Bolt, but the Bolt was kind of...

I think the Bolt was run as a very specific program with the people around it and everything. And then I don't know if everyone is still on board. Probably not. I'm sure there's always some turnover and everything. But then after the Bolt, GM kind of went a lot wider with the Altium. And it didn't go smoothly, basically. So I think it's as simple as that. And a lot of problems can happen to that. Yeah.

All right. So then they better have better batteries than the current ones. Current meaning the ones used in 2019. I think he means the Bolt probably here. The Bolt battery wasn't bad. I mean, it's 66 kilowatt hours. Does well in the winter. Yeah.

But the old CM is different and also bigger. Everything is bigger with old CM. That's true. Also, they don't charge very fast. Oh, the Volt, he's saying. Okay, he means the Volt. Oh, yeah. Yeah, maybe. That's fair.

All right. That was it for today's episode of The Electric Podcast. I appreciate every single one of you that listened. If you did enjoy the show, you can give us a like, a thumbs up, subscribe, notification button, whatever it is on your app you're watching because we are live everywhere every Friday at 4 p.m. if you want to look us up because when we're live, you can ask questions like everybody that just did just now. And we'll see you next time.

If you're listening on your podcast app, you can give us a five-star review. Only if you enjoy the show, obviously, but it's free to do. It takes a second and helps the show a ton to get it to more automotive fans that can learn about electric vehicles. So thanks a lot, everyone. We're going to see you same place next time.