EV/Solar killing bill moves forward, Elon lies about Tesla's demand, cheaper EVs, and more
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We are live for a new episode of the Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, and as usual, I'm joined by Seth Winshaw. How are you, Seth? I'm good. All right. Plenty to talk about this week. It started a little bit slow this week, but information picked up. We're going to have to give you their weekly update on the U.S. budget bill. That's going to have a big impact on virtually everything, but obviously we're going to focus on the EV and renewable energy sector.

Then some Elon lying about Tesla's demand. That was really interesting. He's not even hiding it anymore. He's straight up lying these days. We have a pretty crazy FSD crash that I want to discuss. We have the launch of the Xiaomi YU7, which has been dubbed the Tesla killer and might be actually the first real Tesla killer.

We have this Silverado EV Trail Bus Off-Road version that was unveiled this week. A little bit of news on the ID.2, on the Rivian R2, and another BYD Cheap Vehicle that launched because cheap EVs are really coming now. All right. Let's start with that big, beautiful bill. And, you know, I'm going to call Elon Musk here. What I've already named the bill...

It's the contrary that it's doing. That's a quote from Elon Musk. Obviously, it was a quote when the Democrats were in power. He hasn't used it since the Republicans are in power, but the same thing applies. And yeah, this is a rough one. And Jamie has a lot of great coverage on it and more details if you want to look into that. On the right track, he posted a bunch of articles of like, especially the attack on the clean air issue.

that California started, but a bunch of other states has adopted. That's a big one in the bill that they are trying to remove that right from the states to just have their own clean air initiative, which sounds so weird when you just say it out loud. Like, all right, we're just, you're not allowed to make your air cleaner, okay? Like, only we can do it, but we won't do it, but you can do it. It's funny, you have to laugh for it. But yeah, yeah.

obviously they were fighting back on that and their most the last time he tried to did it didn't work now they're trying other approaches so i'm not saying that it won't work but it's up in bottle but there's a lot of other things here and i wrote an article on it like as it uh affect tesla is the biggest cv automaker out there so um not that much new from last week the only real news is that it passed the house so now it's going to the senate uh and uh

In the Senate, there's maybe a little bit more opposition set. I don't know if you have been following closely, but what I'm seeing is there's a couple to maybe two to four Republican senators that are a little bit more hardline on the bill. Nothing to do with these clean energy and EV initiatives, obviously. Maybe, I don't know. But the real hardline is the deficit. They just don't want to increase the deficit by the debt ceiling by $4 trillion.

And, you know, it's a Republican-led budget and an increase of deficit more than any other time in U.S. history as far as I know. But the only thing – so there's some hope that it's going to block in the Senate, I guess. But –

or at least negotiated down in some ways to get passed in the Senate. However, I do not think, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but I don't think that the clean energy and even aspects of that bill will change through those negotiations because that's not really where...

things that are happening. Unless, Seth, is there a scenario? I know you're not a political expert or anything, but you live in the US, you know a little bit about that. But is it possible that the GOP turns to Democrats and just throw them a bone on the clean energy stuff to vote for the bill? I don't see that. No. I mean, look who's paying for the... It's not the clean energy folks that are... Oil companies...

like i just don't see it yeah so as it stands we lose a 7 500 tax credit um by the end of the year except for the automakers that haven't delivered 200 000 vehicles in the us so there's a tiny little silver lining on that for for the rivians and lucid of the world

$250 annual fee for electric vehicles, $100 for hybrids. This one is rough. That applies to everyone, by the way. I don't think the existing EVs owners are grandfathered in. So even with the boost, especially in Q4, that the removal of the tax rate will give to the EV market in the U.S.,

you still have in mind that, all right, but over like 10 years of owning that car, I'm going to pay $2,500 in fees that probably I shouldn't pay. I mean, yeah, there's some...

EVs do affect roads to some degree, so they should be found for repair, but a straight flat $250 fee per year per car is ridiculous. It needs to be assigned to electricity, to road usage, or some kind of way to- Yeah. I mean, there's taxes on electricity already. I don't know why some of that doesn't go to road usage. Simple as that.

Then there's elimination of the clean energy credits. So that goes across the board for all the different types of credit, including the CARB credits, which are the big ones in the U.S. But as I previously said, this is going to be through the court probably for the remainder of Trump's administration, second administration.

Then you have the investment tax credit for clean energy, solar and batteries. That's going away also by the end of the year if that bill passes. This is one that is a little bit more surprising for a lot of people because this is one that's very good for a lot of red states. So you would think that a few Republicans would at least kind of fight back on this because they do benefit a lot of red states that are warmer climates.

great solar penetration. A lot of the solar companies are based out there. It's a lot of jobs that are going to be badly affected by the removal of the 30% tax credit. When the bill passed, all the EV automakers and solar company, all their stock crashed because

it became a lot more likely that the bill is going to get to Trump's desk. And as soon as it does, he's going to sign it. Again, there's a Senate part that we're going to have to check out in the next few weeks. But Tesla stock reacted positively to this whole thing. And this is a weird one to me because obviously, I think it's going to help Tesla this year, obviously, because of the rebalancing

rush the incentive to rush to get your order in and take advantage of those incentive. Ivers starting in 2026, it's going to be really rough in the EV market, which Tesla dominates in the US. It's going to be rough for Tesla. I know that some people are saying like, yeah, but it's going to be even rougher for automakers that have EVs and sell them at a lower gross margin through. However, if you increase the cost of a product by Ivermuch, you reduce your market by Ivermuch.

And that's what's going to happen to Tesla because the prices are going to increase. Now, Tesla's only silver lining right now is its energy business, especially its energy storage business, that has been going great. That has been growing unlike the EV business has been in decline. And this tax credit has been the reason why in the US the energy storage, even though Tesla's solar deployment has gone to nearly zero, unless you count solar inverters, mostly through Powerwall again,

the powerwall is a super popular product and that's been because energy storage has been included into the investment tax credit you get 30 off of your power well that's a big deal yeah you're gonna see demand for that crash too so that's that's a bummer and and that's true for also other

on battery pack and the mega pack to also to convince of that electric utilities to get advantage of this uh tax incentive also so the entire market is going to go down there's a lot of um serious energy analysts right now that have evaluated the bill and they are fairly certain that it's going to create a giant energy shortage in the US because renewable energy especially solar and wind

I've benefited, I've been a big contributing factor to energy growth in the US. And now if that slows down, the entire growth of the energy sector is going to go down. And yeah, maybe prices are going to go up, which is good for some of the participants in that sector, not the consumers, obviously. But the US

needs more energy deployment and needs it fast, especially with AI. AI is so energy-worn. It just needs a ton of energy. And where is that going to come from? There's no coal plants are going to go back up. None of that's going to happen. Maybe nuclear, a lot of the open AI guy...

Altman, some Altman. Yeah. He's been big on nuclear because probably saw that coming. I think he gave a million to Trump too. So probably saw that coming and he's like, all right, now we'll need to go to nuclear instead. But that takes time. That takes a lot of time, a lot of investment also. So solar was the solution for now. And I find it funny because you see Elon in the last few days has been tweeting a lot about solar. He's been saying for years that

The entire energy needs of the earth could be supplied by solar energy because the earth itself is solar powered. But he's not even directly... That's why I lost all respect for Elon. He's like, "Come out and say it that this initiative is dumb."

And just we need to encourage solar in the US and we need it now more than ever, especially if you want to be an AI leader like the US wants to be. But China is going to take over like crazy because they are deploying new energy capacity far greater than we are in North America. All right.

Another reason why I lost respect for Elon Musk, the guy is just straight up lying now. And he went on a series of interviews this week. So that was the Bloomberg one at the Quattro Investment Conference.

Then he did a couple of them at CNBC with this one. He called her an NPC. He thought that she was a little bit too hostile on him. The CNBC guy that interviewed him was a lot more friendly to Elon. He's a big Elon fan. I forget his name. But this interview was particularly interesting because especially he considered her hostile and NPC, but just because she had like

question that weren't a little softball for him to knock out of the park. They were real question addressing real issues like Tesla's demand, for example. And that was surprising to see him just straight up lie in this interview, especially in an investment

context so that he's speaking directly to Tesla investor basically and even address Tesla stock in there so I flagged this for the SEC in my article I was like this is here's a transcript is the video evidence and here's the facts Elon is lying so we can go through it real quick

He says, well, they always ask him about the Tesla's demand issue and especially Europe. And he says, Europe is our weakest market. We're strong everywhere else. Our sales are doing very well at this point. We don't expect any meaningful sales shortfall.

Okay, so if we analyze this sentence real quick, it's true that Europe is Tesla's weakest market. But saying that Tesla is strong everywhere else would be straight up lying. I pull out this chart here that I put together real quick of Tesla's start of the quarter and the year for the first six weeks. I tried to make it as...

you know tight of an argument as possible where you cannot i can i'm not going to use like first quarter for example because that's too old at this point so you know might be saying like right now our cells are doing very well so i put the first six week of the quarter and it's the worst quarter in china that tesla has had in years it's even worse than the q1 which you know was supposed to be just terrible because of the model y uh changeover now the model y is here

And Tesla is still doing terrible at 36,000 deliveries versus almost 43,000 during this first six weeks of last quarter compared to the first six weeks of this quarter. So Tesla is doing pretty bad in China right now. And we're going to get into that later, but it's probably going to get worse because the competition is ramping up like crazy. So that's based with strong insurance registration data. It's not estimation or anything like that. It's pretty close to the actual deliveries, like percentage point close.

So it's not true that everywhere else in the US, we don't have as much data up to date. In Q1, Tesla was down, but not by that much. Right now, we just don't know. So we could confirm it, but he said everywhere else. Now, when pressed about the European side of things, Elon says...

He admitted that Europe is bad. He says, yes, that's true of all manufacturers. There is no exception. The European market is quite weak. This, I don't know if it's a lie, honestly. Well, it's not true. That's a fact. But I don't know if Elon is purposely lying, which would be quite dumb because it's so easy to confirm. I think he might really just don't know anything.

what's happening in Europe right now. He's just, he's not, he's too much on X. He doesn't know what's happening, but he's,

it's not true that there's no exception and the entire market is down. I pulled the data from the first three months of the years and also for the last few weeks where we can get it. And no exception, Volkswagen group up 5% in the first quarter, VW brand specifically up 12%, Renault and BMW are also up, SAAC is up. All of those would be exception, but there is no exception according to Elon.

That's also the broader European automotive market. If you look at the first quarter, just on battery electric vehicles, which would be a fair comparison to Tesla, it's up 24% in the first quarter, while Tesla was down 37%. So the entire market is up. Tesla is the exception.

And it's down. So again, just to be sure that he's not like the first quarter is too far ago. Let's look at what's happening right now. Tesla right now in Europe in the markets that are reporting daily. So we have the we're up to date on the to the day in the second quarter. Tesla is tracking a little bit higher than the first quarter, way down against the same period last year.

While other manufacturers are up, I look at VW and Volkswagen in the exact same market. They are way up compared to the first, the same period last year. In one case, they're even up. In the case of VW, they're even way up compared to the first quarter also. And that's also true of BMW, Ford, Honda, Kia.

Plenty of exception. In fact, you could make the case that Tesla is the exception that it's done in Europe. So Elon is either completely misinformed about the European market right now or he's lying about it. Then the crazy part here, and that's really where he's completely disconnected from reality or you think that his audience is pretty dumb, which I think he has an argument on that. He said he used the Tesla stock price, which is doing pretty good right now. It's way up in the last few weeks.

As proof that Tesla's business is doing well, which, you know, financial markets 101 would tell you that that's ridiculous. There's no basis in reality for that. He says, obviously, the stock market recognizes that talking about the sales going well, since we're back now at over a trillion market cap, clearly the market is aware of the situation that it already turned around.

I'm going to use right away another quote here because he doubled down on this idea here. Again, you can just look at the stock price because the host was pushing back a little bit on it. And then he went back to it, but not on the stock price thing. She wasn't aware of it. She didn't see how bad the argument was. If you want the best inside information, the stock market analysts have that.

And our stock wouldn't be trading at all-time highs if things weren't in good shape. They are fine. Don't worry about it. Right there, you know how bad this situation is. Like everything is fine. Don't worry about it.

So for those who are not aware of this, yes. Is that it? It's he just like misdirecting, like, look over there. Don't worry about it. Yeah. Nothing to see here. It's like a magician's sleight of hand thing. I mean, the stock price thing is just insane because for everyone that's not aware, the stock price has very little to do with

how well a business is doing. The stock price is purely based on the demand of the stock versus the selling pressure on the stock. That's it. It's the supply and demand on the stock itself, which through, it's true that for most companies, yes, it would be related to the current performance of the company, although not exactly up to date if you're not opaque, if you're opaque on your sales performance like Tesla is, and you have then to be

better informed by following Electrek and when we track the sales on each market way more up to date than you would just following Tesla's quarterly release, for example. But even then, for a company like Tesla, which is kind of a mean stock at this point, trying to trade on vibes, it has very little to do with the actual current performance. And Elon himself used to admit that. Elon himself says that Tesla is worth nothing, that the stock would be too high if it wasn't for Tesla.

Autonomy. Yeah. And robots and all of that and full self-driving. So that's what really the stock is about. It's like the investor believe Elon Musk when he lies about autonomy and robots being worth trillions of dollars.

So Elon is very misleading here on that front by bringing up the stock price. And the other thing that more specifically I want to bring out here, because it really hicks me because I see a lot of people putting value on those stock market analysts that he referenced here. He says, if you want the best inside information, the stock market analysts have that. Let me just prove you real quick just how stupid that comment is. This chart right here, if you're listening on...

podcast only i'll describe it but i recommend coming to the video and check it out if you want to have like just just to show you how wall street analysts are stupid or i mean i shouldn't say stupid they could be corrupt also they could be a bunch of other things not just stupid but this is a chart the red line here is the uh analyst wall street analyst consensus on tesla's deliveries throughout the first quarter of 2025

The green line is last year's Q1, 2024, what was delivered. And the blue line, it was what Tesla actually, where the deliveries actually came at. So you see that it started the quarter at 464,000 estimated deliveries, way up from what Tesla delivered last year, like 70,000 units up.

And then slowly it started to come down as they revised their analysis. But for most people, everyone thought that was crazy for the longest time, especially like February 17. You're more than halfway throughout the quarter right now. And they still thought that this would deliver 418 vehicles. At Electric, we're already telling you that that was insane, that it was going to be way below 400,000. Even us, we didn't think it would be as bad as 336, but still insane.

By the end of the quarter, so the quarter is done now, they have all the data available that they can, and they still thought that Tesla would deliver 377,000 units. That's 50,000, almost 50,000 units below what this actually delivered. So they were way wrong all the way to, even though they have, according to Elon Musk, the best inside information. Honestly, like you'd be better off, you know,

Getting like Troy test likes analysts on Tesla deliveries than ever following any of the, of the wall street analysts. He's off too, but he's off like within like 3%. These guys are often off within like 15, 20%. It's crazy. Yeah.

So yeah, all of that, like clear as day, Elon is just straight up lying about Tesla's demand. And you want proof. There's no better proof than last weekend. I posted an article after the last week's podcast of Tesla pulling all the demand levers right now on discount and incentive, not just in America, but all over the world. But I'm going to focus more on America a little bit here because that's the one that's more opaque that we don't actually have the result. But if Tesla is...

putting a ton of incentive out there on top of discounts. Normally, it's going to tell you that the man is rough. So the Launch & You made it America for everyday heroes program. Previously, Tesla had $1,000 discounts for military personnel. Now they expanded that greatly to military personnel, but also students, teachers, first responders, military veterans, retirees, active duties members, their spouse, and surviving spouses.

I don't know what kind of percentage of the US population you cover with that, but that's pretty good. Student teachers. Student is a little bit weird to me because how many students can afford the Tesla or should it's a bit weird. The thing about students and faculty and teachers is that all you need is an EDU email address and many schools let you keep your EDU email address. So it works for everybody.

You think so? You think like you just order, you start your Tesla account with an EDU email and then you're good. You don't have to show that you're in school right now. But also true for like PhD students and all that, that sometimes already have a job, a research job and things like that. So there could be also that. But teachers, that's a lot of people. We're always learning. We're

We're always learning. We're all students. We're all students. Retirees. Retirees are a giant part of the population. So you get a $1,000 discount just for being a retiree. That's good.

So yeah, they expanded that. Then there is a new incentive for Lyft drivers. So Tesla already had one for Uber drivers. Now they have one for Lyft drivers where you get $1,000 credit on Tesla when taking deliveries. And then Lyft also give you $1,000 after that if you complete 100 deliveries. Deliveries?

Maybe that's my mistake. Maybe it's rides. No, trips. Yeah, trips. Okay, that's my mistake. By July 13th. It's pretty quick, but it's doable. Then Tesla also started to reach out to Cybertruck reservation holders. So Tesla has a big backlog of reservation holders that have not placed orders for, you know, we discussed that for a while, but a bunch of reasons. Even though they do have an advantage of placing an order, because if you place a reservation holder, you know,

Back in the days, like back when Tesla reserved like a million Cybertruck, you would lock in the price of the full self-driving, which was at least $1,000 off back then from the price now. So that's another $1,000 incentive that you would get to order right now. So Tesla started reaching out to try to get some people to pull the trigger on the Cybertruck with that. I don't know how successful that's going to be, but still. Then you also have zero percent financing on everything in the...

U.S. other than the Model Y, which is at 1.99% financing, which is also discounted. You're starting to have some decent inventory right now in the U.S. for the new Model Y. It's piling up. You can get them some same-day deliveries, which was confirmed actually in the open letter that employees sent to us, Elon Musk, to resign that they're having a problem right now.

And then in Europe, you also have 0% financing right now in most European market. And it's been the case in China since last quarter. So the discounts should tell you, like if Tesla tells you, oh, there's no demand problem, like, well, look at the discount they're giving right now.

All right, as I posted today and I talked to a Tesla driver yesterday that was in a weird, weird crash here on full self-driving. And so I wanted to discuss it because we've seen plenty of full self-driving crashes that involve full self-driving. And most of them, even though FSD caused the accident for sure,

The argument that Tesla has where the driver is always responsible because they should be paying attention and be ready to take control and they should have time to take control and prevent an accident is

It's true for the most part. Like the most part is like there's an obstacle in the road. Sometimes a car that's stopped and FSD or autopilot doesn't see it. And if you are paying attention, you should be able to see it easily and take control and apply the brake. But you don't for whatever reason and you crash into the car or whatever obstacle.

We've seen a ton of that. But there's also a more niche scenario where even if you're doing everything that Tesla tells you, you can still crash with FSD. And this, I think, is one of those rare scenarios. So we'll look at it together.

I thought it was really like timing was great too. Just last night, Tesla posted, big difference between constantly making micro-adjustment, watching traffic, anticipating behaviors of other drivers versus just leaning back and watching the road. FSD supervised lets you do the latter. So Tesla is really telling you here with FSD, you just have to lean back and watch the road. And that's exactly what the driver in this case here, Wally is his name, told Electric he was doing. He says...

He says, "I used FSD every chance I could get. I actually watched YouTube videos to tailor my FSD setting and experience. I was happy it could drive me to Waffle House and I could just sit back and relax while it could drive me to my morning commute to work." And that's what he was doing in Tony, Alabama. He was driving to work that morning and here's the video.

That's crazy. Yeah, that's pretty crazy. So for those that are just listening, again, I would recommend you watch the video. It's going to be hard. But what we're saying is like it's a small country road, like two lanes, one lane each way. The car is driving straight and straight road. And then there's another there's a car coming on the other way. And as soon as the Tesla passes that car.

which happens quick because they are both doing different ways, it decided to turn behind it, so cross the traffic, the left lane, and goes right off-road. And then, luckily, it hit just the base of a tree, so the car flips, which is like making the same thing an accident, but it didn't hit the tree head-on. It just made the car flip. Wally was relatively okay. He just split his chin, had seven stitches,

But it was a very traumatic experience because he told me that he was upside down in the car. He didn't lose consciousness or anything like that, but he had blood. He saw the blood flowing from his face, from his cut on his chin. But you don't look at your chin. You don't know where the blood is coming from. So you're ending upside down and you're seeing blood pour out of you. That's stressful as hell.

But a local neighbor that saw the accident came and helped him and the firefighters came, got him out of the car and he was okay, just got the stitches. But the thing here from the video that you can see is that it's... And again, he claimed he was paying attention and I kind of believe him because I don't know how much time you have to react here because right away the car just...

There's no reaction time. Like maybe he could have pressed the brakes. But the problem is like I think the car, since there was the side of the road was not the same height as the road, was much lower. Pressing the brake doesn't do much because probably his front wheels were already off the ground. And then he hit the tree right away and flipped. So I don't think there was much he could do.

even if he had time to react and try to go back on the road, that could have been even worse because he could have then, if he couldn't have corrected enough, he would probably would have hit the tree head on instead and had an even more severe crash. So this is one of the rare example of what makes FSD really scary is that Tesla says,

just lean back and watch the road and that's what he was doing but I don't even like that that saying here because the it says like it is one of the other either you lean back and watch the road which is super nice because you can do that with FSD and then you don't have to do micro adjustment watching traffic anticipating behaviors of other drivers I would argue it's true that you don't have to do the micro adjustments that's nice and that does remove uh

a workload on the driver, but you should be watching traffic and anticipating other drivers behavior. I do that when I'm on FSD. I don't know about you, Seth, but yeah, watching the road is watching traffic. Yeah. I mean, you know, he didn't, it didn't look like he reacted at all to getting pulled across the road. I don't know how out of it he was. He says he was paying attention and I look, look at this. It's like right away. Now you have to react.

But why, I mean, I wonder what it saw there to move over to the other side. Yeah, so that also looked into and it's really, you know, it's speculation. We have no idea, but I put the picture. This is the right before it starts going left. And the only thing I can think of is those shadows of the pole. And that's something that a lot of people have mentioned that FSD sometimes has issue when there's a shadow. They would confuse it for an obstacle.

I never had that myself, but last year I did. We discussed on the podcast too. I have a very similar situation on the highway where the car swerved left out of nowhere and almost drew me off the highway and almost hit a car trying to correct it because I overcorrected and got into the right lane. That's happened to me before, but not for like years. Yeah. So that was just over a year ago for me. And yeah,

But then I found out what was the reason for, what was the reason, I think was the reason, and it was a weird one anyway, is one of those emergency exit for emergency vehicles on this, between highways. And there was that. And then a few minutes later, there was another one and it tried to do the same thing. So it tried to take an exit that you're not supposed to take. And it's wait, I'm going 115 kilometers an hour on a highway. You cannot do that.

You cannot take an emergency exit at that speed. It makes no sense. You're going to crash. So that was my experience with that. But the maneuver was very similar to what the maneuver did there. It's just, again, it was for an emergency exit. Scary stuff. Yeah.

All right, we have a couple more news items we want to discuss, and then we're going to jump into the comments section. So I know I see a lot of people already discussing it, but if you have questions for us, you can put them in the comments right now. It can be about any of the topics that we're discussing today or any other topics in the EV world that you want our take on. We're live on Facebook, YouTube, X, and everywhere. All right, the Xiaomi YU7 Tesla killer is here. And we used to laugh at the term Tesla killer, but...

This one has kind of a little bit of credibility because of the SU7 from Xiaomi that came out of nowhere and within six months was outselling the Model 3 in China. And Tesla is now having a lot of difficulties with its Model 3 sales because of how closely the Xiaomi SU7 compares to it favorably for the Chinese vehicle.

And it's a little bit cheaper and just has a little more in it of everything. So a lot of people go to that. And also a lot of people very like the design of it compared to the Model 3. And we've seen that happen before. Like people thought that the Porsche Taycan was going to be a Model S killer, for example. I mean, the Model S is not doing well, but it's not like Taycan, I think it's not the most responsible for that. And...

And the Taycan has like a decent volume for its, maybe not anymore, but for its market. But a lot of the supposedly Tesla killer that people would talk about, we laughed at them because of the planned capacity, the volume. Those automakers just wouldn't even make enough of them for it to have a real impact on Tesla. Xiaomi...

ramp things up so quickly with the su7 volume production now making them at a rate over a hundred thousand a year just in china alone to compete with the model 3 that's what's impressive and now they are planning to do the same thing with the yu7 against the model y and um

They are themselves comparing it to it. So that's why we were doing a comparison here too. But I put this chart together here that I thought was interesting. So you have the Model Y rear-wheel drive and long-range all-wheel drive in China that were launched in January 2025. And now the YU7 is coming in July 2025 in standard rear-wheel drive, pro all-wheel drive, and max all-wheel drive.

We don't have all the prices yet, but it's expected to start at around 250,000 yen. So the vehicle was unveiled this week. Everything, all the specs were unveiled, I think, but not the price. But again, expected to go 250,000 yen, which is about $35,000, which is about a thousand or so dollars cheaper than the base Model Y, which is basically what Xiaomi has done with the Model 3, with the SU7 and the Model 3.

um dimensions are very very similar again the i'm sure that the benchmark did against the mull why that's the goal here it's just a little bit uh longer a little bit wider and a little bit shorter but basically the same size it's a lot heavier though it's about 500 kilograms heavier so that's a lot and the reason why is that they are just packing a ton of batteries in that thing so

So the base battery pack is 96.3 kilowatt hour in LFP cells compared to 60 expected. Tesla doesn't disclose their battery pack size, but we believe it's around 62.5 for the Tesla Model Y standard range and around 80 for the all-wheel drive long range.

That's 96.3 LFP. That's for the standard rear-wheel drive version and the pro all-wheel drive. If you want the max, you get a bigger batch pack, 101.7, which is impressive that they're even fitting that in there. That's cool. And that one gives you 760 kilometers. With the pro one, the base all-wheel drive one, if you will, it's 750 kilometers.

And the standard one that's expected to start at $35,000, equivalent to $35,000 or so, it's 835 kilometers. What's that for American listeners? Probably like 580 or something. Maybe not that much, but yeah, 520. 520 miles on the base version of this thing.

Well, let's compare against Tesla in kilometers because it's a CLTC too. Tesla starts at 593 kilometers. So it's 240 kilometers more for the base version and 240 kilometers difference, that's 150 miles difference.

So it's significant to see the least. It's also faster top speed, faster 0 to 60, 5.8 versus 4.9 for the standard one. And it's the same thing for the pro all-wheel drive and Tesla's all-wheel drive, though it's 4.3 boat. But they are talking about a higher top speed, the 253 kilometers versus 201 for Tesla.

not really worth comparing the Max one because the Max one is going to compare to the Model Y performance, which Tesla hasn't launched yet. So then it's on an 800 volt system versus a 400 volt system for Tesla. I mean, that doesn't change much for the consumer, but we don't have all the charging speed just yet. You're going to have soon a seven seat option for the Model Y. You don't have that for the Xiaomi though. And yeah,

We also have a little bit more features inside. You have a panoramic odds display. I don't know if I would say it's an odd display, but it's a display that goes all around the front of the vehicle here, and it's all customizable. So you can use the part that's in front of the driver as a heads-up display with just an instrument cluster, like speed and all that. You can use the middle one for...

for traffic information, for navigation. And then you can use the passenger side one. You can put like some entertainment stuff, music, whatever on it. But the design here, I think is that like the range is massive, big difference. If the price is really what we think it's going to be and the range is that, Tesla is in trouble, obviously. But the design also, I think is a big deal because I'm not mad at the new Model Y design. It's just, it's a little bit,

especially in china it's nothing special uh even we talked about uh expeng is saying that hey tesla kind of stole our design for it kind of true that the front end looks very similar to expeng's current lineup the light bar is something very popular now a bunch of other vehicles like the chevy knox has it too and everything but also in china it was very popular for a while so this is kind of just catching up with its design

to the rest of the Chinese market with the new Model Y. While Xiaomi is a lot more different, a lot more luxury, more aggressive with their design, I would assume. But I think this looks great. I always thought that the Model 3 design aesthetic transferred very well to the midsize SUV in the Model Y. But I think the SU7 for Xiaomi also does the same with the YU7 SUV version. What did you think, Seth?

I don't know. These cars look a little bit like Porsches to me. So, I don't know. I think they're going to sell quite well, but I don't know if they compete on the same. I mean, for the price, you get much more car. You don't get, obviously, the third row of a Model Y, but it's a pretty good package, I think.

And the demand is there for it too because we're seeing a lot that the reservation for it is reportedly blowing up while Tesla is also having issues in China selling them a lot right now with the 0% incentive on it.

I think it's the best of both worlds when it comes to design because, yes, you're right. The exterior looks a lot like Porsche, but I love Porsche's design. Yeah, it's not like this. It's a compliment. Yeah, it's a compliment. And the interior is a lot more minimalist, a lot more design than what Porsche delivers and a lot more like Tesla, really. And I do like that personally. I like the clean interior. And you do get that with the Xiaomi SU7 and now the YU7.

So we expect to have the pricing in the next few weeks and the deliveries are going to start in July. So just a few months away. So it's going to be big in China. All right. Chevy unveiled the Cerrado EV Trail Bus. So it's the new off-road version of the Cerrado EV. It's getting popular SUV, electric pickup truck, I mean.

And what do you get for it? So you get two extra inches of lift capacity and only 25% higher ground clearance than the base model. Speaking of the base model, like this is actually like the starting price on this version is not. So some automakers like the off-road package is like towards the higher end of the version of the vehicle and all the trims. This one is like towards the lower end, I think the price is.

I mean, not the work truck, like forget about the work truck. This is a 55,000, but the trail bus starts at 72,000, which is cheaper than the work truck at the max level. And it's basically...

So it used the same, it used the extended range battery and the work truck with extended range battery, it's $68,000. It's $4,000 more. You get a little bit less range, do it 410 miles of range. But if you look at the LT, it's basically the same price. It's $1,000 more than the LT with extended range. That's a pretty good deal. Pretty good. And you can get with the max range, that's basically $89,000 and that's 478 miles of range.

You have Super Cruise on it, and you can use Super Cruise on this with the towing, which is pretty cool. 12,000 pounds of towing, by the way, 2,100 pounds of payload capacity, up to 775 horsepower, 35 inches all-terrain tires. I think this is a big deal for electric truck owners because I think this is the first lifted electric vehicle

that i know about uh rivian and the their off-road package it's pretty similar no it i mean it's got air suspension yeah it'll go up but not doesn't look quite as high as this this looks pretty big lift yeah i have some issues with the front end of the uh this is a ride though like it looks like the bubbly here it's uh yeah i i know what you're saying it's an interesting

looking red. Maybe it's just the red. I don't know. Yeah. Sometimes I see it sometimes, like even on the Sierra GMC EV. Yeah. Sometimes I see it too. Maybe you're right. Like in black, you see it less. But here in this picture here, it doesn't look like there's something wrong with the front end. It's like a bubble that's bursting or something. It's probably aerodynamic. Yes, that's true.

All right. Volkswagen had a little update this week on the ID.2. It's the new cheapest SUV vehicle they plan to launch based on the MEB Plus platform. So it's one of the first next-gen vehicle that the new entry-level EV, next-gen EV from the Volkswagen VW brand.

And they achieved series production of their factory. They upgraded the factory where they're going to produce the vehicle and they started series production of the first parts, including the powertrain. So they have the MEB powertrain ready, MEB plus, I should say, for this vehicle. And so they are still aiming for production to begin in 2026 next year. So we're about a year away from production from this vehicle that has been delayed quite a bit, to be honest. But now it's starting to look like it's happening.

and for those who don't remember the id2 is expected to have up to 450 kilometers of range 280 miles and start at around 25 000 euros which is about 27 000 obviously we don't expect this to come to north america right now but we never know in the future maybe if anything's possible yeah maybe if some automakers are courageous enough to try to develop uh

you know a smaller core market in north america i think i think there's a way to do it like i know it's rough i know americans and canadians love their suvs in their pickup but it's doable

but in europe in europe there is a big market happening with that and yeah so you have the 25 000 euros about 27 000 id2 coming you have the id1 that's going to come a little bit later too but now you have byd also competing in that sector so they are now coming into europe so we announced earlier this week that uh byd actually outsold tesla for the first time in q1 in europe uh no not in q1 in last month in april uh which is still quite a feat because

Tesla has been in Europe quite a bit longer than BYD. And BYD doesn't have its whole lineup in Europe yet. And now they just launched their best-selling EV, the Dolphin Surf. I don't think it's called the Dolphin everywhere, though. It's the best-selling model, but they changed the name recently.

in different market, but in Europe, it's going to be a dolphin surf and it starts at 23,000 euros. So the, it's about the similar size as the ID two. So it's, it's coming before the ID two and it's a little bit cheaper than the ID two. It's the equivalent of $26,000. And, um,

Though that's for the standard range version, which has only 220 kilometers of range, WLTP, 137 miles. But also the ID.2, I was talking about 280, 400 kilometers, but that's up to. So I think the base version at $25,000 is going to be lower range. But we'll see if there's a market for it at this price range here. Yeah.

But then you can also just get the longer range version of the Dolphin Surf, which is 25,000 euros. So the same range at the same price that we were talking about the ID.2. And that has 507 kilometers of range, 250 miles. So you're good on that front there. The design is okay, like nothing too crazy. It's what you would expect for a vehicle of that range, I would assume, that price range. You get CarPlay, Android Auto on a 10.1 touchscreen display.

You get over 20 clever storage areas. You get the voice assist system of high BYD. You get BYD's advanced driver assist system, standard like they do in China, which includes cruise control, automatic emergency braking, and line departure assist. BYD will introduce a four-seater variant in June.

So right now it's what? It's a five-seater? It's not a two-seater. So it's going to be a five-seater and then a four-seater, right? Okay. With the price expected to be also €25,000. Okay. Yeah. I'm curious to see how many people get on board on that because I'm sure that Volkswagen knew that there was a market with the ID.2 coming in that range and now BYD is coming and just ahead of them with...

with the Dolphin Surf, very similar vehicle in the Tamar price range. And also... Yeah, we've been looking at that vehicle for a couple of years. It's been kind of scaring Western automakers. I think they were selling it for like 12,000 or something in China. Yeah, it's half the price in China. And then, of course, they have to bring it to Europe. And there is up to 25% tariffs on them in Europe. I don't know exactly where BYD landed on that, but there's tariffs.

All right, one more quick article and then we jump into your guys' comment. It won't be too long. Quick update on the Rivian R2. They have the first real-world validation vehicles hitting the road. How do we know that? Because they told us and they sent a bunch of pictures out there of the wraps, of the camouflage. We like to camouflage these vehicles even though the R2, we already knew pretty much what it's going to look like when they unveiled it last year, but...

the unveiled it and obviously when the production version comes it's a little bit different although i would i would think riven is going to probably stick close to what the unveil and but they're still camouflaging them a little bit but they're mostly having fun with the the camouflage it's it's really cool uh it's like one of them is like a desert kind of uh background with uh you have the the guard what was it what's the name of the the guard uh the little mascot that they have

Oh, I don't know. It's this guy here. Chewy. Yeah, Chewbacca-looking guy. Chewbacca, yeah. But it's the Guard something. I forget the name of it. But you might actually see those on the road now in California and Michigan and Illinois being tested on the road. So keep an eye out for the R2s. All right, let's jump into the comment section. All right. Greetings from the Bronx.

Regarding the crazy Tesla crash news, I had my own crazy Tesla crash. My girlfriend was driving my 2018 Model 3. Sounds like you, Fred. While I was a passenger and the car accelerated when taking the highway exit, she tried braking with no success. Car ended up just as in the picture you posted, obviously totaled of note, sentry mode only recorded from leaving our home to just before the car lost control. I went to Tesla inquiring for the logs.

And let's see. It said not possible. Maybe you guys know who to talk to about this. Or did not have FSD. I'm not going to lie, Antonio. This could be a driver error, too.

I know your girlfriend, she thinks she did something. She tried to do something, but you never know when a crash happens. I'm not blaming anyone here. I'm just saying that it's tough to say what happened when a crash. In the case of Wally, he did

uh request the the logs from tesla too but hasn't received them yet i haven't had any response yet i should say uh so it might it might be a problem but you don't you don't uh get it he doesn't get it either um yeah it's it's uh it's annoying that's for sure

Question, did Elon say anything about the $250 EV tax? I don't think we heard anything, right? Yeah. No, that's, like I said, that's the thing that's annoying for me. Like he knows like these things are bad and everything, but he doesn't say anything because you have to be loyal to Trump or your school, even though he's kind of apparently like taking a real backseat now in the Trump administration. Yeah, he's on the outs for sure. Yeah.

I ordered my Kama AI 3X that I plan on installing on my Model 3 2021. Any comments? Thanks. I do want to install Kama on my Chevy Bolt. I just haven't got the time or the wherewithal right now to do it, but I would love to get some sort of autopilot on my Chevy Bolt. What about you? Have you had any experience with Kama?

Yeah, I tested it on the Model S way back in the day when they first started. I was really impressed. They were kind of head-to-head with Tesla when they autopilot for a while. And now, obviously, they don't have all the same features as FSD, for example, where the intersection stuff, sorry, the traffic light stuff and everything. But for driving on the road or the highway...

It's not just highway driving, though. You can also be on the road. It's pretty much as good as Tesla. It's very, very good. So, yeah, it's an alternative to using FSD. I mean, I don't know how... On a Tesla, like a 2021 Model 3, you have autopilot and...

which has auto steer and traffic or workhorse control. So I don't know how big of an upgrade that is. So I'd be curious, Patricio, do you let us know once you're, once you get the installation, just if, if it's really worth it, because, um, does it, does it close a little bit of the gap between autopilot and FSD? Like what, what, what feature does it really had right now? I haven't looked into coma and, and quite a bit, but I I've seen some of the performance of it and I've been impressed. All right, moving on. Um,

Let's see. There was something about a Fisker Karma. Yeah, Antonio here. Yeah, question for Seth. Is this my imagination or am I seeing more Fisker Karmas on the road? I actually just saw one on the road the other day. It was crazy. It was driving? Yeah. It was not on the side of the road? No. Because I've heard of more and more of them are just becoming bricks now. Yeah, it's really weird. All right. Well, I was going to pull it up on my phone, but I can't find it.

I took a picture of it because it's such a, you know. It's quite a sight. Right. All right. Tim Oner is buying more Tesla stock. And if they were not in Tesla showrooms, they certainly will stage an accident. All right. Well, I've heard some story of lane events. That's scary. All right. We're talking about the thing again. Nothing to see, folks. Austin, here we come. Yeah. I mean, that was the main thing with my article this morning. It was like, all right, this is happening right now still. People having these issues again.

And Austin is like weeks away, the launch in Austin. And it's going to use, for the most part, the same technology, but there's going to be teleoperation. So that brings me to my question with the Austin launch. It's like, how much teleoperation is it going to be? Is it going to be one-to-one teleoperator to car? Because if it's not that, it's scary as hell. Yeah, that's a Fisker. Yeah.

Saw it on the road in the wild. Still working a year after bankruptcy. Yeah, so now that's the scary part. And I hope that it's going to be one-to-one. But even then, Tidoporation is not as good as a safety driver.

All right. This is a good time to remind everyone that Fred once wrote FSD tried to kill me twice. Yeah. Well, that's what I was referencing. One of the accidents was the one I was referencing to earlier. And the other one was in North Carolina. And that was the early days of FSD, to be fair. So it was one of the early versions. And it was a tough road. There's even a name to that road. It's Dragon's Tale or something. And I was this close. It was just like driving me off a cliff.

All right. Skeptic says autopilot is great. FSD is just a way to inflate the stock price for people like Tim.

All right. Bike Angelus, do you know if solar tax credits will be killed by the pending bill in the Senate? Yeah, we discussed that earlier in the podcast, Bike Angelus. He says, want to go solar with batteries? Do I still have time? You might want to do that sooner than later. But do it now because it takes a while with the quote process and then the permitting process. And start yesterday. Okay.

And you know that the demand is going to be crazy too in the next few months before they kill it. All right, Colin Cronin says, just got solar install scheduled for November. If you want to do it by this year, time is short. Colin, I'd be careful about that because the solar installs are notorious for running long. And you just got it now and it's for November? Jeez. Yikes.

All right. I think we were talking about the Xiaomi. Looks like a Ferrari Purosang. Oh, Purosang. I don't even know that. 800 volts. Where will the new Bolt be built? I think we have the answer right here. The 2026 Bolt will be built at GM's Fairfax assembly plant in Kansas. That's via AutoNews. The old Bolt was made at the Orion plant in Detroit. Okay.

Waymo admitted this week that even with 10 million rides under their belt, they are not profitable. Yet another reason Tesla Death Watch is in order. Tesla has no viable plan for survival because Elon, I don't know if that's...

we can draw a conclusion from that yeah but waymo has made it clear that they are not even looking at profitability right now it's just they want to make it as safe as possible and then look at probability from there but i'm sure there is a path to profitability for waymo is like it it's just like this is only the real advantage this long cost is the fact that they already produce the vehicle

and high volume for consumers. It's not even that much the sensor suite and the hardware and all that. Yes, I'm sure there's a difference there too, but for the most part, that's why Tesla is able to do it so cheap. I think that once Waymo is like chipping at it, like a little bit, a little bit, as they make their system safer and safer and safer. So I'm sure that once Waymo actually hits

significant volume, which I mean, 250,000 rides per week is significant already. But, you know, once they are operating in a bunch of different cities, when they lower the number of teleoperator per car, once all of that is happening, I'm sure there's a path to profitability. All right. Underwater, my 2021 Tesla Model 3 looking to trade in for a new electric SUV, a Hyundai Ikea. Would dealerships likely help absorb the negative equity?

So I can't imagine that they're going to do much, although they do have incentives going around specifically geared toward people who want to sell their Teslas. Yeah, you can look at it. They call it a conquest incentive. So you can look for that. Hyundai had them at one point. I don't know if they have them right now. So if you go to a dealer. But yeah, I mean, the used Tesla prices right now are pretty, pretty bad.

The only used car prices that are bad right now, the last few months, they've been rising except for Tesla. So, yeah, it's going to be rough, no doubt. All right. I would appreciate your thoughts on the 2025 VinFast. They're offering some terrific lease deals now, doesn't your dad? My dad has the VF8 and he's happy with it. So...

there's that uh it's not the 2025 though it's the 2024 or 2023 for him it's a habit for for a while now he's a happy customer so i again i don't know about the 2025 version but there's the there's a way to to make it work within fast i don't know if they're having some financial issues i know they raised money recently but i think they're still good for at least a while so

without without even raising yeah they're kind of backed by the government in vietnam uh electric brian says rivian gear guard is the name you're trying to think of nickname gary that's that's the uh-huh yeah gary yeah gary the gear guard all right skeptic says you're seeing more fiskers because the owners are driving them to rivian service centers to trade them in that's probably right

It's not entirely untrue. Yeah. I mean, some people like to have a dead car too, like a car that doesn't exist anymore. Yeah. That's classic. Yeah. So it might become a classic. It's not a bad looking vehicle. It's just, yeah. I mean, it's not my thing still. It's like having a DeLorean.

I think the Villarion is way cooler than the Fisker Ocean. I mean, the Fisker Karma is way cooler than the Fisker Ocean, too, even though it was a terrible car. But yeah, I'm pretty sure the Ocean is a way better car. I mean, it's 10 years older, too. 10 years more recent, I should say.

Yeah. All right. Well, that's it for the Electric Podcast this week. Next week, I'm going to talk to you live from Korea where I'm going to try out the Kia EV4. So that's a little bit of a smaller like EV. It's more of a sedan than an SUV. It's a smaller version of the EV6 in a sedan format that's coming to the US soon. I'm going to get to try that out. And then I'm going to be

I was trying to get to China, but no one wants to invite me to China. It's hard to get. I know like Electrek is like a U.S.,

publication and everything so people in China are a little bit like not really worth it but I would love to go to China and check out the EVs so unless this I'm still going to be in Asia for until June 14 so I'm going to be traveling around trying some things but maybe I can get to China at some point during those two weeks alright see you same place same time next week I'm just going to be in Korea bye bye