How Elon killed Tesla Model 2, global EV sales surge, and Chinese EVs keep killing it
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We are live for a new episode of The Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host. And as usual, I'm joined by Seth Winchell. How are you doing good today, Seth? I'm good. All right. We have a smaller show this week. There wasn't that many news. You know, it's kind of a 4D week, if not for us, though. We're always there on Friday. But yeah, it was a bit slower on the news side. There was no big tariff changes. I mean...

Some tariff changes, but nothing that affects the auto world too much, for better or worse. Because, I mean, we're kind of expecting some good news too on the tariff side. Yeah.

I would assume that he's going to back down at some point. That's going to be good news at some point. But for now, I don't think it's going to get much worse than 145% tariffs on China and 10% or so on the rest of the world, 25% on steel. That affects the auto business too, obviously.

But we still have a few interesting to discuss. So yeah, the biggest story of the week probably was an interesting new report that kind of gave us more details on Elon's decision making to kill the, let's call it the Model 2, the $25,000 Tesla. So we're going to have a little bit more details about that we're going to get into. I think it was a big event at Tesla that kind of changed the course of the company and kind of solidified Elon's thinking around Tesla's future product lineup.

We're going to talk about used car prices about Tesla too. We have the odometer gate that it's been happening that kind of demystified a little bit this morning in a report. We're going to talk about global EV sales. We have some new stats coming in. They are surging. It's good news. We're going to talk about the Z car's new 7GT, 007GT.

And Chinese EV automakers keep killing it. It's impressive stuff. And we're going to announce that we're going to China too in the coming weeks. Seth first and then me later on. So we're going to have a lot more to report about the Chinese EV world. That's getting a lot interesting. All right. Let's start with this report.

It came from Steve Levine from The Information. Steve has some good sources at Tesla every now and again as interesting reports. And this week, he came out with a new report that basically gave a little bit more color, a little bit more details around the decision-making that we already reported on. It happened early in 2024 when Elon killed the Model 2, the $25,000 Tesla. It's not really an official name, the Model 2. The official name was the

NV9 so

There was the NV9 1, 2, and 3. I think the NV9 3 is the Robotaxi. It's all the new vehicle based on the new vehicle platform, the unboxed vehicle platform. So at first, Tesla was planning to do two cheaper 25 or so thousand models, dollar models on the platform and the Robotaxi, which is a steering wheel-less vehicle. So that was the original plan for this. And in early 2024, Elon decided to kill

the cheaper affordable EVs that you could drive and just focus on the robotaxi. And still, there was still a plan for more affordable EVs, but those based on Model 3 Model Y, just basically stripped down versions of those vehicles, fewer features, a little bit cheaper, not $25,000 cheap, but $30,000 to $35,000 range is expected. All right. So the decision-making around this

It's very interesting that the report, because it builds on things that were reported before, including our reporting on this. And if you remember, Seth, the first time that it came out that the $25,000 model was canceled was Rotter's. It came out with a report early in 2024 about it. And Elon denied it. He said it was fake news and whatnot. Right.

And I think that even back then, we were skeptical about saying that. I think that the angle that he was taking is like he hasn't canceled more affordable EVs. He canceled this specific NV91 and 2 and then greenlit the stripped down Model Y vehicles. So I think that was like, yeah, we're still planning to do affordable EVs so I can call this fake news even though this is very different.

So in the information report this week, it highlights a specific meeting that happened in the last week of February. So I'm quoting Steve here. In the last week of February 2024, after a couple of years of back and forth debate on the Model 2, again, unofficial name, Musk called a meeting on a wide range of executives at Tesla's office in Palo Alto, California. The proposed $25,000 cars was on the agenda. A final chance to hear the vehicle's pros and cons, the people said.

Most senior lieutenants argued intensely for the economic logic of producing both the Model 2 and the robot taxi. So what he described basically is that at the meeting, most execs were pushing for, let's do both. Let's do the Model 2 and the robot taxi.

And, you know, the model 2, the $25,000 model was announced by Elon in 2020. It was at the original battery day when Tesla unveiled all its new battery cell technology and structural battery pack. He said like, this is what's going to enable us to make a $25,000 car. So that's when this idea of a $25,000 car first appeared.

So that was Elon's own idea. But that changed. So by late 2024, Elon, after much speculation, because we've been saying for a while that the $25,000 is not happening. It's been canceled. Elon denied it at first, but we just discussed the denial was weird. And then the focus was on the RoboTax C-test. Sort of...

confirm our own reporting on this when they said that only the Robotexy is going to be built on the Unbox platform. Everything else is going to be just on existing production line. But a lot of Tesla fans didn't even believe that until Elon finally said it. I think having a regular 25,000 model is pointless. Yeah, it would be silly. It would be completely at odds with what we believe. So he finally said it in late 2024.

But now the information report specified that Daniel Ho, the head of vehicle program at Tesla, Drew Baglino, SVP of engineering, and Rohan Patel, head of business development, were all at this meeting and they're since gone from Tesla and were pushing for the Model 2 to be made. Lars Morhavi and Frans Van Halen

VP of vehicle engineering and chief designer were still at Tesla, also reportedly at the meeting push for the Model 2, but Elon was very reticent for it. One person

back to iran and that's homed ashfar uh who's known as a big musk loyalist and for a good reason because he was his chief of staff for a few years and now he has a very wide-ranging high-level role at tesla uh by by musk elevated by musk i should say and based on the reports like the report is pretty detailed like you know steve has some good sources then and uh they even like

Patel is quoted in the article. So that's, that's on the record. Yeah. That's a pretty, pretty good sign. Uh, but he said that, uh, so I'm not saying that's Patel that leaked that information, but he has, I think three sources that were mentioned in the article, uh,

They said that Omed said that there, is there a mutiny? How do you say that in English? Mutiny. Mutiny. So is there a mutiny here when people were like pushing against Elon on this? And then Elon finally went, let's kill it and focus on the, the robot taxi. But the thing that was happening in the meeting is like the executive here, like, like Lino and Ho and Patel were not coming in. He ended saying that, like, obviously I think,

makes a ton of sense to do the $25,000 Tesla and the Robotaxi because the Robotaxi is such a high risk because it's a no steering wheel vehicle. So you have to solve FSD to make it work. Otherwise, it's useless or, you know, unless you do what Tesla is going to do in Austin with the geofence, the little paraded stuff, but still. So I

Apparently, these executives had an analyst report that Baguino's team had put together that painted quite a dire picture of the RoboTaxi program, saying that it would probably reduce Tesla's business in the U.S., wouldn't be profitable for years, and maybe even forever because it would be very difficult to expand it outside of the U.S. and Europe and China due to regulatory issues. Things that made a ton of sense.

So again, Patel was quoted in the report, said we had lots of modeling that showed the payback around FSD and Robotexy was going to be slow. It was going to be choppy. It was going to be very, very hard outside of the U.S. given the regulatory environment and lack of or lack of regulatory environment.

All very good point, very legit point. All things that Tesla probably has a lot of data on because FSD has been around for years and of course it hasn't been solved yet, so it doesn't have that much value. But Tesla has a pretty good idea. Even based with all the marketing, all the lies, all the embellishment around full self-driving, it's not a successful product. Most Tesla owners are not buying it.

So that should already tell you a lot about that. But then the report went into much more details. So basically, based on what we learned from the report, Tesla was modeling that if they are successful with a robot taxi, so they come out with a robot taxi and it works, like the actual software, like it does what it's supposed to.

It would, going with Elon's approach, that the higher utilization rate, so since these Robotechs are going to be used like nonstop, they won't, you know, you're going to charge them. They're going to be on the road. They're going to be providing fares for people. You're going to get a much higher utilization rate that's going to shrink the need for new cars in the U.S. That's the idea. That's Elon's own idea. So based on that, they said that they would shrink the U.S. new car fleet from 15 million a year to 3 million a year.

So that's already a big thing due to a five times higher utilization rate. So with that, they subtracted the percentage of the population that wouldn't want or can or is not interested in using self-driving vehicles. So that's a real thing too. So from that, they went from 3 million to 1 million a year.

potential in the US, robo-taxi production. So that's already significant. They could deliver a million vehicles a year. But the problem with that, so as one people said, is that there's ultimately a saturation of people who want to be ferried around in somebody else's car. So you also have a tough mix of

new car so the robo taxis sold to the customers so that's that's something that uh that elon said in the past that they want to do they want to sell cars to customers settle robo taxis and tesla having its own fleet so you have both of those things so after accounting for all that in competition because obviously tesla is not going to be the uh the uh the only one doing that

They came out to about, they figured out that it's going to be hard for this, in this million potential robo-taxi cell to replace the existing cells of 600,000 cars or so a year. So their categorization of the US cells from that part to the million potential cell robo-taxi, when you account for competition, potential competition in there, you kind of,

It's a losing gambit. You're capitalizing your own profitable US sales for a low margin vehicle from that. Because in that report, they also calculated as average sale price between $20,000 and $25,000, which I think is pretty low. But they said that they would expect to get three times that in revenue from Tesla's share of the fares that those vehicles will produce over the timeline.

So still, that's still just $60,000 in potential revenue on top of that over the lifetime of the vehicle. It's not bad, but when you account for the vehicle for 600,000 vehicle sales per year that you are basically going to cannibalize through that, it's just not a great look.

And it's also a fraction of what Elon had said in 2019. He said that the value of Tesla's vehicle would rise to about $100,000 to $200,000 from the FSD package. So based on that, it's not even close. But even though Elon was presented with that analysis, he kind of dismissed it. He was like, "No, we're still going with that."

And of course, what happened after that? So three of those executives that were pushing for Tesla to keep the Model 2 on top of the Robotaxi because they were afraid of the Robotaxi not making sense financially, they were let go or left by themselves. So Daniel Holt, there was reports that he was actually let go. Drew Baglino is not as clear.

but might have been pushed out, might have left on his own accord. And Roland Patel said that he left on his own accord because he was not happy with the changes at Tesla around the time, including like let it go of thousands of people. That was in April of 2024. So yeah, I think this is basically the best example of like one of the clearest example of Elon's shift to autonomy and his strong belief that Tesla is always on the verge of solving autonomy.

And that is degrading Tesla's business, basically, because now you don't have vehicle programs that probably would have helped Tesla grow quite a bit. And now that's where we are with Tesla, basically. Yeah, Tesla's not in dire straits right now. I don't know why Elon didn't think they could do both. In fact, I wonder how much the Model 2 looked like the Robotaxi. I mean, the Robotaxi is a smaller Model Y looking vehicle.

Um, like, is it possible that they just decided, Hey, this model two thing, let's just make it the taxi and we're not going to make it with that, with a steering wheel. I think they probably had, like I said, we, we, we found three code name, like NV nine, one, two, and three. Uh, so I'm sure that like they were on the same platform and everything. So probably yet they were similar in designs and form factor and everything. Some, some differences. I, I,

It's kind of a hard sell. Even the cyber cab, real taxi right now, even if you put a steering wheel in it and everything, it's just the form factor, not ideal, I think. But some changes, backseat, and maybe a little bit tiny bigger, and it would have made sense. So I think you just figure out who's going to buy a $25,000, $30,000 car,

when you have a $20,000 to $25,000 version or no version at all that you can just buy the fare for a fraction of the cost. Let's just do that. I think that was more of his thinking. It's just that, let's be honest, it's probably not happening anytime soon at a big scale. So that's the argument that we're making in the analysis that Elon shut down too is that

You, let's say, okay, you make it work in Austin and FSD is pretty good, everything. Now you have to get a good mix of a fleet available and customer available.

I think Tesla would be probably pretty good on the customer side, or at least they would have been like last year. Brand degradation probably wouldn't help with that. Also, I would be scared right now to have a fleet of Tesla vehicles, no one in the car to stop people from vandalizing them and everything. It's just not a great timing for Tesla on that front.

But anyway, even if you don't have that, you need to create this balance of customers and fleet available so that you can get a car quickly. Because otherwise, you're going to get a Uber, you're going to get something else. You need the car to be quickly available or it's worth less. So it's a big upfront investment. And then you have in that to balance the percentage of people that actually want to put their car in the fleet, but then...

We already discussed issues with that as like the times that you're going to want to have your car on the fleet is going to be the times where the demand is going to be pretty low because when the demand is high, you probably want your car yourself. So this is really a bad product on that front already. And that will reduce the profitability of the fleet.

So between that, between then, okay, it works for Austin, but then you have to expand it to another market. You have to have regulatory approval for that. Maybe now that Elon is so close to Trump, maybe they get something done at the federal level that helps with that. But-

If they do that, then they're going to have, I think, some wider issues on terms of performance. I think it's good that Tesla right now is limited to Texas because they have to make sure this works in Texas. If Tesla was just turning the switch and making a million-euro taxi available in the US, like Elon claimed he would for years, I think it would be quite a mess very fast.

you know, a company handing mess to like, you know, you just need like a couple of headlines of fatal crashes of like actual unsupervised self-driving cars and, and you're screwed.

All right. And another big problem for Tesla right now is the value of their cars. This is crashing so fast. And there was some good news about that in about used car prices. So if you haven't been following the used car market, is that they actually focus more on the new car market because like that's how EVs are going to take over is like the percentage of new car sales or EVs. That's what we aim for. But with the increased sales in the last few years, we're starting to get, you know, a decent EV used car market.

But the used car market in general had a big spike in prices during COVID because limitation with the new car sales helped the value of used cars. And that propelled into 2022, I think it peaked. And then since then, it's been crashing, obviously, because it went high so fast that it had been coming down for a while. And you had some good deals on new cars too. So it helps bring down the used car prices a lot.

So the used car market has been suffering for it quite a bit because it kept going down. Until the last month or so, it finally shut up. So used car prices, according to the Car Guru Index, are up 2.17% in the last 30 days, making them up for the whole year now. That was quite a big reversal over the last...

basically the last month, late March, we started seeing the trend reverse. And that's obviously partly because of the tariffs, because of the macroeconomic situation. So there was a lot more fear, which drives people away from the new car market into the used car market and boosts prices.

So that's what we're seeing right now. The crazy thing is that it's not happening for Tesla. So you see the depth of Tesla's brand issues right now with everyone dumping their vehicles. People don't want to be associated with Tesla. They are selling their cars. And you're seeing the impact because even though the market is up 2.17% in the last 30 days, Tesla is down 1.34%.

So this is quite significant. And Tesla is down year over year 7%. Now year over year, I think the Model Y is kind of dragging that down. Sorry, the Cybertruck is dragging that down a lot because it's down like 52%. But even the Model Y is down like 1.6% in the last month or so. So that's still...

still pretty big, even though the new one launching. So new one launching at a higher price is normally that would help a little bit. But Tesla still had such a wide inventory of old Model Y that they kept discounting that no, it's just not helping.

There was a new report in the Journal de Montréal this week in Quebec. In Quebec, I think that it's even worse. So all the data that I just shared, it's in the US, but I think it's even worse in Quebec now, especially with, you know, Elon saying things like Canada is not a real country and all that. It just doesn't help quite a bit. And Elon's

influence on Trump being elected and Trump pushing steep tariffs on Canada, also not helping. But the report from the journal went to an auction, a used car auction where a bunch of used car dealers come and then they bid on cars. And there were 13 Teslas there and hundreds of used car dealers bidding on the vehicles. And they saw no demand for the Tesla vehicles.

which went for like half the price that they would go on like a year and a half ago just because they are they're scared so like Eric Puez one

One of used car dealership in Montreal says that people don't want them anymore. The Elon Musk effect is very real in Quebec. He said that basically the used car dealers are worried that it's going to take too long because of the high inventory to sell the cars. So if they hold the car for too long, then they are affected by losing value. So they are very reticent to get new Tesla inventory on because of that.

And they also say it's not a buyer's market for Tesla vehicles right now because they know that problem. They know the inventory problems. So they are lowballing their offers.

They also saw a significant increase in default on car payments for Tesla vehicles because a lot of people bought them at the peak in 2023, 2022, 2023, when those cars were like twice the price than they are today. And your car payments don't change. Your car payments stay the same. So a lot of people ended up defaulting on that, especially with the increased macroeconomics issues right now.

So yeah, this is a bit scary. Like if you're, you know, you have a thousand dollar payment a month on the car, that's not worth like $30,000. It's like walking away from an underwater house. Yeah, exactly. All right. This was a big story this week that a lot of people picked up, but I was not so sure about. So some people are already calling it the odometer gates at a diesel gate.

So it's someone that filed a class action lawsuit against Desland, California, claiming basically that they are using predictive algorithm to inflate the mileage at the odometer.

with the goal of reducing the warranty claims. So basically they are accelerating you reaching your limited warranty. So in this case, like it was a used car, so it was 50,000 miles. But in some cases, like for the most test vehicles for the battery and power train have a 200,000 miles warranty or eight years, whichever comes first, things like that. So obviously if your mileage is,

goes up faster than it actually does, it's good for Tesla because even though it doesn't look good on the actual specs of the vehicle, it does avoid some warranty claims.

But why I'm a little bit skeptical about this is it's kind of low on evidence a little bit. So the guy that filed it, Niri Hinton, is a data professional from Los Angeles. So he has some credibility with DataWise. And he had some pretty intricate data on his own vehicle and everything. So he looks like for... I have no reason to think that he's lying or anything like that. So I'm not saying he's lying. He's just...

My doubt is based on the lawsuit itself, it's very anecdotal on his own anecdote here. What he says is that he bought a Model Y, a 2020 Model Y in December of 2022. At the time, it had 36,000 or so miles on it. And then he claims that his use of the vehicle is quite limited to about 20 miles a day.

But at first, he saw the odometer going up about 53 miles a day. And later in 2023, he says that the average was 72 miles a day. So he saw it as much as three times as what he believed he was driving on average. And he said that led to him right after his...

The limited use warranty was past the 50,000 miles. He ended up having a $10,000 suspension repair he had to do to the car. So that's what prompted his lawsuit. We posted the whole lawsuit on Electric if you want to read it. But again, it's limited to his experience, his personal experience. Though they do cite similar experiences that people have posted on forums and social media. But again, that's very limited information.

We reached out to Green, a well-known Tesla hacker that has a lot of access to Tesla software and firmware. So he often finds new Tesla features by looking at the software. And so we asked him if he thinks that there is any validity to that. And he said he would be surprised that Tesla would be able to get something like that past him and past the white hat.

hacker community, though he did admit that they weren't really looking for that. So it's not like it was actually an effort to find something like that. But he did make some good points. He said that it wouldn't be surprising that Tesla actually does use predictive algorithms for its odometer, but it could be as simple as, I can think for tire wear. So Tesla does use tire rotation.

As part of it, like most automakers, they do that to calculate the mileage on the odometer level. And if you do have like more tire wear that could come, you need compensate for that to get, you know, more specific mileage.

So there's most likely that not Tesla is using some algorithms to compensate for things like that. So that might not be false, but that doesn't mean that the goal is to deceive owners.

So something to take into account. So I don't know if this lawsuit will get much legs, but if they do, we might actually learn a little bit more because they do mention some patents that this last filed for that does mention, you know, the way that they account for mileage counter, but I didn't see anything nefarious in that either. So we'll see. My understanding was maybe this is old and maybe Model S only or something, but my understanding was that the odometer was actually like hardware.

Like there was no, like, like behind the thing, there was just one of those things that was going around. I don't know. It was going around, but based on, on what, based on, uh, just tire rotation or. Yeah, I guess. Um, yeah. I mean, it's so like another thing that may be kind of screwy here is that, you know, Tesla's range estimates are always a little bit optimistic. They can get a few more miles out if they, uh, every mile is actually two miles.

No, that's true. All right. A little Cybertruck update before we move on from Tesla news. More Cybertruck discounts now. The truck is kind of in crisis. Elon said just when they launched production, he said that he sees Tesla getting 250,000 units a year by 2025. We are in 2025 now. Sorry. And based on the first quarter, at least.

It looks like Tesla would be lucky to deliver $25,000 a year. So a tenth of what Elon predicted. So obviously it's not good. We reported earlier this month on the inventory of 24,000 units. When I wrote this article two days ago, it was like 2,300 units. So they only got 100 units off the...

the inventory, but just today, the inventory shut up like 5,000 units or something. So that's pretty nuts. And I haven't confirmed everything that happened just yet, but I haven't wrote an article on it. So I'm going to have to look a little bit in more details, but that's pretty crazy.

And now Tesla also still has foundation series Cybertrucks. So those technically stopped production in October of last year. So you have like more than six months old vehicles that Tesla is not able to unload to. And those are getting, I think, $12,000 discounts. Then you have $10,000 discounts on the all-wheel drive.

And a lot of them are around $8,000 discount on inventory. So, and those are all 2024 model year too, because so they are already like three, four months old cars, trucks. And, and,

Those don't have access to the federal tax credit. So that's why Tesla has... You have no reason really to buy a 2024 Cybertruck if you have access to the tax credit. You will go with the new one because you will get basically the same price that Tesla is doing right now, but you get a car that is much more recent. So Tesla is having now to discount even further than that, like $8,000, $10,000, $12,000 for the Cybertruck, Cyber Beast, but the Cyber Beast...

Still doesn't have access to the tax rate, of course, because it's too expensive. So Business Insider also came out with a report saying that Tesla is reducing its production output for the Cybertruck. Obviously, if inventory is panning up, you just don't want to contribute more to it. So they are reducing their production output. They are moving some people from the production line too. Apparently, some of them are moving to the Model Y line and some are just being removed. So yeah, not a good look for the Cybertruck.

It's just very much a flop. Yeah, when are we going to start seeing layoffs? I feel like any more weeks and months of the downturn is going to be hard to keep staffing at full. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised, especially in Europe, for example, some of the markets where Tesla is just down like crazy, like Germany, like down 60% or something. That's probably not sustainable at the sales level. It doesn't justify sales employees and all that.

So that I wouldn't be surprised if it's already happening and we haven't just learned about it. But I also wouldn't be surprised to see Tesla do like a bigger wave of layoffs like they did last year, like a 10% layoff, something like that at the broader level that could happen. But I think you would need must. So like probably Elon's going to

if you get involved in tesla i think like next week or something with that with the earnings and whatnot so i think the earnings are going to be wild next week i think tesla is going to turn it into a show like they're going to announce

They're going to announce stuff. You know, Elon is always, their earnings is not the time for product announcements. Like now, this one's going to be the time for product announcement because their earnings are not going to be great. Look over here. Don't look at that. Don't look at the numbers. So Elon probably is going to come back a little bit more active at Tesla next week. And I wouldn't be surprised if that includes, unfortunately, layoffs.

All right. Things are not looking bright at Tesla numbers wise, but they are looking actually pretty good for EV sales globally. So we have a new report this week from RoMotion, a research firm for electric vehicles that released some numbers. Global EV sales reach 4.1 million in Q1 2025 globally.

Up 29% compared to the same period last year. China is still driving the market. 2.4 million EV sales, up 36%, which is nuts. So Tesla, for example, was up a little bit in China, but nowhere near 36%. So that's something to take into account.

Europe is nearing a million EV sales in Q1, 0.9 million, up 22%, really good too. Then you have North America, half a million sales they reach in Q1, up 16%. So decent, but not great either. Yeah, North America is clearly lagging behind the rest of the world because that's North America, but we know Canada is way higher than the US in term of EV adoption. So

higher there too probably had a pretty good quarter too i would assume though the federal rebate ended in mid-january so you know big boost but the second half of the quarter uh definitely more difficult rest of the world um 300 000 deliveries up 27 so we have some smaller markets too that are doing pretty good interesting stuff

It's surprising how big China is, 2.4 million. And then that's more than half of the global. Yeah. But they also have a lot more models there and a lot cheaper models. So that helps a ton. Some of the cheaper BYD models have incredible volume that they're not available anywhere else. So you're kind of stuck.

All right. We have three more news articles we want to discuss, and then we're going to jump into the comments section. So if you guys have questions for us, you can put them in the comments right now. I want to get to them in just a few minutes. If you do enjoy The Electric Podcast, we'd appreciate it right now if you could just give us a click, like, a quick thumbs up, whatever it is on the app you're watching. It helps the show more than you think, and it takes just a second to do, and it's free to do also.

And if you're listening on your podcast app, if you can give us a five-star rating, only if you enjoyed the show, of course, that helps a ton also. So we appreciate when you can do it.

All right. Zeker, I think you guys are going to go see them next week. The Shanghai Auto Show. They came out with their latest model, the 7GT or 007GT for the full name. So very much James Bond inspired. It's a new, you know, fully stacked, fully loaded vehicle with a lot of impressive features. And, you know, as it's often the big thing with the Chinese, they get extremely impressive pricing here.

um let's go into some of those specs while you can see them the model through here it's like it's a shooting break too so that's uh that's refreshing we don't see a lot of uh you know wagon shooting brake evs these days and it looks pretty good too uh very sporty light bar light bar everywhere for those evs like it's in china it's the standard now oh i like it

Reminds me a little bit of the Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo a little bit. Yeah, well, one of the other very rare shooting brake wagon EVs.

All right. So you get this thing in two different battery options. So very interesting battery option, 75 kilowatt hour LFP cells for the standard one. It quotes you on the CLTC 650 kilometers of range, 404 miles. I'm sure at the EP level, that will get you just over 300 miles, which is very good for the price because that thing starts, by the way, at

200,000 yen, which is $27,600. Again, it's the equivalent of because it's not actually available in the US. So that's pretty good. Like a $27,000 car gets you 300 miles of range and looks like that because it looks amazing too. Yeah.

And then you can have the fully equipped version with 100 kilowatt hour battery pack, which use NMC cells. So you have higher density. So the car won't be that much more heavy, even though it gets like 25 more kilometers, kilowatt hours. And in terms of range, it's 825 kilometers, 530 miles of range, which I'm pretty confident with that form factor, 100 kilowatt hour range.

I would say it's probably close to 400 miles, a little bit more than 400 mile car here on the AP equivalent. 0 to 62, 100 kilometers an hour, 2.95. So probably like 0 to 60 and like 2.8 or something like that. I don't know what's the price of the...

100 kilowatt hour pack but that you know i wouldn't be surprised if it's like 32 the equivalent of like 32 000 or something like that which is insane uh some pictures of the interior here oh very much this lens part here with like the clean look of the fan all the way through and uh center display but it looks like there's a heads-up display too that's nice and and there's a also um instrument cluster a few different options here man that looks good

can't believe that's thirty thousand dollars right now it's interesting the back seat doesn't there's not a middle oh there is in that picture but yeah there is it's just that's the center console that you can pull now and this is with the seat uh remember like you have a general it's nice with a shooting break with a hatch like that you have a giant opening

You have some full grain Napa leather. Oh, they are not on the vegan bandwagon there. Surprising. The infotainment system is powered by a Qualcomm 8295 chipset. Okay. There's a sensor suit powered by the dual NVIDIA Orin system with LiDAR and high-deficient cameras and millimeter wave radar. Jeez. So it has Zeker's G-Pilot suite of ADS features.

And again, starting at the equivalent of $27,000. That's crazy. That's just nuts. I mean, I'm kind of hoping that we go there in China and I don't think it's going to happen, honestly, but I'm kind of hoping we go there and we check out these cars and they're falling apart as we test them or something because otherwise...

We're in trouble. What hope does the rest of the market have if that's really what they're capable of doing and quality? Because I've been talking, like last week I was talking about...

And my suspicion is that one of the things that enables them to do that and have crazy range, crazy charging speed, is that they're probably a little bit more cowboy about how they approach longevity of their products. And they are willing to push them to the limits while legacy automakers and Western automakers are a little bit more cautious about that. But then China came out last week, like this week, with a new policy that pushed for...

a new regulation, new requirements for batteries with zero chances of fire, zero chances of explosion. If your battery catches on fire in your EV, you're going to be pulled from the market right away. Things like that are pretty hardcore regulations that would invalidate a lot of the other EV automakers. But at the same time, I would

I would think that a lot, I think that the vast majority of EVs right now in China use LFP cells and those are much less prone to thermal events. So that might also be a way to like squeeze out some of the market that doesn't use LFP, even though again, most of them use it. I mean, the other big concern or like the paranoia is that the Chinese government is subsidizing a lot of the costs, a lot of the ramp up, a lot of that stuff. So that's how...

They're able to get such good products for such a low price. I mean, that's blatantly what others have said. That's the justification for tariffs.

I think there's definitely some truth to that. China doesn't hide it, that they are getting involved with their manufacturing. But I think at scale, it happened first. But remember, there was kind of a cleanup of that at some point. There was a surge of Chinese EV startups. There were just a ton of them, too many of them. And then they calmed things down and reduced their incentive towards that and everything. So I think they've

Pulled that back quite a bit. That was like 2021, 2022. A bit as Tesla started having a lot of success with the effect Shanghai, it created a giant wave of EV automakers in China. And they calmed things down a bit and consolidated a lot of these automakers. All right, we're going to add some nice sports classic EVs built in the US. So the British...

EV retrofitter, AirBW EV cars announced that they started construction of a new $8 million site to produce their vehicle in North America. So they have two models, the two models that you see here. So you have like a GT and you have a Roadster, open top Roadster. I think they're based on like the British car company and then like the 50s, 60s. MG? Yeah, the original MG. Okay.

They had very similar models. So they're based on that, but they are making them electric. And they already have delivered quite a few in Europe, but now they are coming to North America. Apparently, there's a big enough market for it. So they have this facility here that they're building out in Virginia to produce these two cars. So they have some screen and everything. So it looks very classic look, but you have some technology in there too.

And it's not for everyone. I think I saw the price here. So it starts at 108,000 pounds, so about 143,000 American dollars. And you get 150 miles of range, 90 miles per hour top speed, 0 to 60 in eight seconds. So it's not like a very powerful vehicle. Don't expect a ton of range on it. But there's not that many roadsters out there, like open top vehicle EVs. So...

They feel like they have a market that they can feel like people like classic cars. And for me, I will have like, even though I like the look and everything, I will have a hard time paying $150,000 for a car that gets 150 miles of range. But I guess it's kind of a weekend, like Sunday drive vehicle for people that have like crazy money. That's right. All right. We have a quick update on the EVTOL stuff. So Archer, one of the leaders in the electric vehicle, electric vehicle takeoff and landing, the, the,

They have a deal now with United and one of their investors to bring a new network of EVTOL vehicles in New York, Seth, your corner of the world. Hello. Basically to connect with airports. So the idea, you have the map here. So you have three regional airports and then you have LaGuardia, GFK and New York.

that they could connect with downtown. There's three. Let me see the details here. Maybe you're going to be better with the geography of it. So yeah, it's going to connect JFK, LaGuardia, and New York with three different helipads, one on East 34th Street heliport, Downtown Skyport, and West 38th Street heliport, and then three regional airports, Rochester County Airport, Teterboro Airport, and Republic Airport.

So I guess the idea behind that is that they're going to use their EVTOL vehicle to offer rides, basically to cut the traffic. Because, you know, if you land at JFK and you need to be downtown,

Manhattan, sometimes you just had like a six hour flight, you're dead and you're looking at another two hours of traffic before you actually get to your destination. So that will cut that down. Obviously there's already their service that called an helicopter, but I think their idea is that that will create more competition and lower the price of those services. The Archer vehicle is good for just four passengers plus a pilot. So you're kind of limited on that.

But, you know, I'm sure there's going to be some kind of demand for it. Yeah, I mean, as you said, kind of taking over for helicopters there. I mean, helicopters service all those airports already, I think.

Yeah, but I think it's safer than a helicopter. Like the more rotors you have, like the Archer system has like eight or 10 motors or something like that. So it's a little bit safer on that front. I think they claim it's quieter a little bit than a helicopter too. That's a surprise of that, but it's possible. And it's probably going to be cheaper to operate because of fuel costs. You can just charge them at location and then... Yeah, it's just electric, right? Yep.

So I'm curious because Archer is definitely the closer to actually making this happen. So I don't think there's an actual timeline on this, but they plan to do that pretty soon because they are going through the FAA process for their aircraft right now. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty cool if they can pull it off and then that'll be a stepping stone to other cool stuff. The flying car, they've been talking about it for so long, might actually happen. Might actually happen. All right, from before we even started, Speculor says...

Question. So is no news, good news or bad news for the quality of GM software? Uh, interesting question. Uh, I had the Sierra, uh, EV pickup that I'm still writing the review on. And then just this week I was at the, um, blazer SS, uh, event. Uh, both of them have pretty solid software. Google's been doing good stuff. I mean, obviously I don't know why they took out car play and Android auto. Like you can have both, but, um,

yeah it's fine um there was there's some stuff where it like spins but i think that's more of a google problem um yeah i don't know we'll see we'll see how it goes i know jamie when he reviewed the blazer wasn't impressed by the software but i think it's a lot better now there's a loss of seven in the gmev but uh i was looking at a silverado

Yeah, I haven't yet. They kept telling me I was about to and then it never happened. But I'm supposed to get in a bunch of... Try the new Cadillacs this summer. So I'm looking forward to that. I'll be able to review the software a little bit. Escalade? Yeah, probably the Escalade is in a very high demand. So they're like, maybe in late summer. But I want to check out the Optic. The Optic is like the new entry-level one. So the price is actually pretty attractive.

Question, any non-truck EVs coming with 240-volt AC outlets? Cheap way to do vehicle to home? I was trying to think of, I mean, obviously, plenty of trucks. Yeah, trucks, but it's not very popular these days in EVs, like the 240-volt. Yeah, the Kia has that adapter that goes on to the charge port, and I think they...

There's a 240 volt because basically it's the same car, but the Europeans used 200 volt systems. So you can get that. I'm not sure any others. Rivian should do that as well. But it's a non-truck kind of trucks. Yeah. All right. That Tesla could profitably build a $25,000 car is a real issue that no one can honestly answer because Tesla has fudged their profitability numbers for years. When you're led by a world-class liar. Okay.

I mean... I feel like they could have done it. It's true that in the last few years, Tesla's gross margin has been reduced quite a bit. But they are still making the Model Y and Model 3 profitably at a starting price that is not that far off. It's not close to $25. It wouldn't be the same car. It would be a new car. It would be a smaller car. I wouldn't be shocked that Tesla would be able to do...

a $25,000 with very low margins, but then you have a few add on and then that helps. And then the FSD, especially if Tesla would break it back down with an enhanced autopilot type of thing. And even though a little bit further and I try to focus on the level three,

which I think Tesla would be able to do, but they're very focused on level four. And you could sell that and that will increase your gross margin on the cars too. So yeah, I think there was plenty of opportunities to do it. It's like Elon is just so convinced that they're on the verge of solving FSD that it just doesn't matter. It's sad. All right. NCS is the actual of the 2016.

4680 battery creating a domino effect through Tesla, then maybe there's a better version. Question, if the actual performance realized from the 4680 now creating a domino effect through Tesla starting with the Cybertruck blunder? Well, the 4680 is still limited to the Cybertruck right now. So no, the answer is no. Like,

It was in Model Y for a while. Yeah, and then they focused just on the Model Y. I guess maybe I'm not understanding the question correctly, but I guess the idea might be like...

The only vehicle that Tesla launched in the last five years is the Cybertruck, which is very disappointing. And it has the 46 ED cells. And yes, the Cybertruck's specs are not what they were supposed to be. So maybe I guess the idea is that because the 46 ED is not doing great and Tesla introduced it in the Cybertruck and they were planning to do other models with it.

And that didn't work. So that's why it didn't work out because the 46 CD specs didn't live up to its promise. So I guess you can look at it like that, but yeah,

I don't think there's an actual problem with the form factor. I think Tesla is just, they didn't manage to bring it to the level that it was supposed to be. And yeah, it reduced your options when you thought you're going to have a battery cell that has, let's say like 10% more energy density than it has now. It's just that 10% can limit your options quite a bit. Yeah.

All right. Abnormal Wrench asks, do you think vehicle-to-home will get popular enough that manufacturers will start offering modifications for older EVs to make vehicle-to-home compliant? Probably not, right? Yeah. Retrofit is not. No. Most of the makers, they don't like retrofit. It's just they want to sell a new car. So, yeah, the new car is going to have it, but they don't. So, yeah, I wouldn't count on that.

I mean, you can put like an inverter on your 12-volt system. Yeah. And I did that with a volt. It worked out pretty well. Yeah. There's some limitations, but it works. Would you consider changing how you discuss EV capacity? Range numbers are too simple. We want battery capacity and miles per kilowatt hour that gets to the range number. I think we often talk about battery capacity and maybe a little bit less so about...

Yeah. I mean, the miles per kilowatt hour is like, it varies so much. Like even my own car, it varies all the time. Just the way I drive. Like if I'm driving with my girlfriend, if I'm not driving with my girlfriend, that makes a big difference. And it has nothing to do with my girlfriend's weight. It has all to do with the way I drive if I have someone else in the car and if I'm by myself.

So there's a lot of issues with that. We do sometimes, if I'm doing a car review, and if I'm doing part of the drive that I'm just focusing, I'm doing a road trip and I want to drive efficiently and comfortably, then I'll pull up the efficiency numbers and I'll share that in my review. But a lot of the times, for example, I posted my...

Audi GT RS review last week, last weekend. And that was just like a three hour drive in the desert and a few minutes on the racetrack.

I don't have that much time to just... I could go on the highway at 17, tell you what's the consumption there, but that would be a very limited period of time. For three hours, I have to test out the vehicle, especially it's the GT, so you kind of have to have fun with it a little bit. But the efficiency numbers are useless for that. All right. Skeptic says, FSD reminds me of the Segway. Tons of hype for a product a few people are willing to spend money on, except the Segway actually worked when it was introduced.

the owner of Segway did die testing his off-road version. Too bad Musk is unwilling to test his own junk. Okay. Yeah, that's not, let's not go there. Let's not go there. Yeah. I don't know if it's the best comparison, this Segway to FSD. Yeah. Yeah.

Because the Segway was never going to... I guess they taught that. I'm sure the CEO of Segway said that at some point that it was going to change the world because all the tech people like to say that about their product. But technically, the FSD has incredible potential. If it would actually have done what Elon claimed it would do, and you can just flip a switch and a million test vehicles can drive themselves, yeah, it's massive. It's just not what's going to happen. So it's more about a perspective of

promise versus what you can deliver. Because like you said, we actually delivered exactly what they claimed it was going to do. It's just, you know, it's a cool looking product. And then when you actually use it, you're like, well, FSD, when you use it and it works very well, you're like, yeah, this is impressive.

Yeah, I'm already at the point where it's helpful. It used to be scary and dangerous, and now it's gone to the helpful point. Are you on the 12.6.4, the latest one? Because I've been having so much issues with that one. The latest one? Yes, that's true. Now that you mention it, I was really surprised how bad the last one was.

12.6.4 yeah so this one uh if you do you do a camera calibration uh when you can so just you know you go in the system yeah like camera calibration and you won't have access for the features for like a few miles and and then you need to uh re-accept the fsd beta or whatever they call it now you need like to go through the process of like yeah yeah if i kill myself it's my fault and everything right but

then you can use it. That helped me a lot with... I had a giant problem where I kept passing cars on the highway. And now, one of the addition to... Maybe not the last update, but the one before that is like, you actually go back into the right lane after passing someone. Like for...

a while it just wouldn't do that it was annoying the shit out of me but now it's doing it it's just that now it does it and then it it slows down like crazy it would do that get back and if like i would go at 118 on the highway pass someone get in front of them and then slow down to 112 and like

Then they would pass me if I don't realize that I'm slowing down like crazy. So stupid things like that. You're talking about kilometers. Yeah. Yeah. Kilometers. I don't go at 112 miles an hour. That's a good point. But yeah,

So the camera calibration fixed that a little bit. It still does it sometimes, but like it would do it like every time before. Now it does it maybe like one in 10 times, which is still annoying, but you know, not as annoying. And I still get some phantom breaking, but less so. But in the latest update, I don't know about you, I get a lot of ping-ponging again. Yeah, ping-pong. Yep.

yep which i never would get before that i mean back in the early days of fsd and even maybe back in the early days of autopilot maybe even i would get a bunch of ping-ponging that just fixed that a long time ago and now normally like autopilot fsd drives straight in the middle of the line unless you have like passing a truck or something then you would hug the left lane a bit too much sometimes but that's fine um but now i'm getting like

I'm like just going between the lines like that. I was like, what is that about? Why is there such a big regression? And that hasn't been fixed since my camera. I did two camera calibration actually. And the second one fixed a lot of my speed issues, but not the ping-ponging, which is weird.

Yeah, it's weird because I would get ping-ponging in some of the other autopilots, like early Super Cruise and Blue Cruise would ping-pong a lot. And actually Rivians would ping-pong. So, yeah, it's super weird that it feels like they're starting over or something. They must have done some big...

back-end swap or something this time around. Well, it's like a two-step forward, one-step back kind of process. That's why I don't know how they feel confident about claiming like, oh, it's going to be solved by the end of the year. Yeah, it's just crazy. All right. Moving on. Honestly, the CyberCab skin is horrible looking, but they could have done a better looking low-cost car on the same platform with a different skin.

I don't know about skin, what you mean exactly, but it's gold. The hubcaps are like the size of the wheels. Great point, Fred. That isn't stated enough. You can't use your own car as a taxi because you need it when it would actually be in demand. Always a crap idea and massively overhyped daily fares. Very opinionated. I mean, it's a fair point. It's like...

Elon keeps talking about that. The only thing that makes sense is Elon's idea of you're going to be a shepherd. You're going to have a fleet of Tesla vehicles that's going to take care of. That makes more sense because you're not going to use most of them. You just need one. But how many people are actually going to do it? I'm sure some people are going to do that. Actually, when he first said that,

You remember I bought the cheapest Model X ever when I was in Los Angeles? I bought it from a company that was doing like a taxi service. Yeah. Yeah. It was like 400,000 miles or so. It was crazy. I forget the name of the company that I bought it from, but they were doing a taxi. Say that again? Tesloop.

Uh, yeah, maybe something like that. It might be right. But they were doing a service between Los Angeles and San Diego and Los Angeles and Las Vegas and like just taxing people nonstop with those cars. So that's how they racked up a bunch of mileage. But I talked to the owner of that company back then. And it was a giant Elon Musk fan. I think he still is. Anyway.

His idea is like, oh, I'm going to build a fleet doing that right now. So I'm going to use drivers. And for now, it's going to create some revenue and justify buying those vehicles. But his idea is like, I'll keep building the fleet. And then when Tesla finally turns FSD on, I'm going to have a giant fleet like that that they're going to just do fares for me all the time. Obviously, that didn't pan out. The company went on there and everything. And they ended up selling all the cars for pennies on the dollars.

Listening to Elon Musk is not always a good idea. All right. I'd rather be surfing 777. Question. Remember when Elon said he would make a regular truck if the Cybertruck failed? Can we all pile on on X for a while and make that happen? We've been talking about this for a couple of weeks. And I think we didn't talk about this specific post, but there was a nice rendering of what could be kind of halfway between Cybertruck and a regular truck.

i think it was a suv suv truck though it was like not another pickup but yeah it was like a more regular looking truck using stainless steel so that might be an idea but uh i i don't think that's gonna happen anymore like i don't think like the idea of like what elon said which was like really reasonable back then he was like yeah i mean we're getting what he was like self-aware like yeah cyber truck is a big like it's a long shot it's a hell mary but

If it works, it works. And if it doesn't work, well, we're going to make it more traditional looking pickup truck because we need electric pickup trucks. Nowadays, it would require Elon to admit defeat, like admit like it didn't work. And I just don't see that happening. All right, Devian, any chance of Musk stepping down this year and who might be able to take over in that role? We talk about this probably every other episode. Seems like most possible candidates left since Elon Musk came back after missing a single quarterly meeting.

I think Fred and I are both in agreement that we'd like to see JB Straubel be the person running the show. But even then, we haven't really talked to JB in a long time. We haven't really heard from him. We don't know. Was he pushing back against some of these ideas? Because he joined back the board only less than two years ago, I think. So you cannot blame him for...

a lot of the things that happened between 2019 and now like none of the things really uh but yeah it's been back at tesla in um board capacity for like almost two years now

And I don't know, maybe behind the scene he's working hard to prevent some of that damage. But every single day that passes where we don't hear anything from the board, I lose a lot of respect for a lot of these board members because I think they are just letting Tesla brand and the company degrade to a level that will be hard to come back from. Bobby Bishop says, one year old Model Ys are selling for 20K in this area. I mean...

I haven't seen that, but I've seen pretty close to that. Yeah, I guess that's... In the high 20s, I've seen. Of course, there's the changeover too. So like, that doesn't help with the old model, but still like a one-year-old Model Y with like 20,000 miles on it is like not a bad car to have at all. Question, how much faster do you think Tesla FSD would come if Elon would give in and add LiDAR?

I mean, it would complicate things for sure. Yeah, that's the thing. Like the fact that they didn't incorporate it since the beginning and I've been pushing against it, like it would require a sensor fusion system that, you know, Tesla has given up on sensor fusion. They removed the radar too. So, yeah.

I'm sure that there are some plugins to that and there's a ways to help. You could maybe buy a company or something like that.

I think it would add work also. So I don't know how much quicker it would. I'm sure it would help with a lot. It depends on how you think about Tesla FSD. If you think about Tesla FSD as what Elon has been promised, I don't think it will help that much. I think it will add a lot of complexity and will probably add time to the situation.

With the pivot, with the Austin thing, so for the geofence stuff and everything, it could probably add a quick way of having like higher level of safety that could, you know, help a lot with like lower speed stuff and, you know, more like a backstop for safety that could help for these regional deployment geofence and till operation assisted. So for that, I think, yes, it could probably help. All right. Point.

Fleet reductions with robo taxi is a fallacy. There will still be a rush hours daily and holiday weekends where all Americans will want to use their car. Yeah. Yeah, probably true. Odometer gate equals range gate. Yeah, I guess that's. It was already kind of a range gate that Tesla, you know, remember like back then, like the PR, Tesla PR employee, like called me crying when I posted that report. It was like, it was crazy.

I seem to be noticing fewer Teslas on the road these days. Anyone else notice this? Are people leaving them at home and driving their other vehicles? I haven't quite noticed that yet. Yeah. I still see quite a few. I'm sure there's more on the lots though, because a lot of people are selling them and then the time to sell it after that is getting longer and longer. I've been noticing a huge number of older Teslas with paper plates. People are dumping their Teslas and other people are buying them up at deep discounts. That's true.

I mean, that's good for the EV thing. Yeah, because a lot of these people that are selling their Teslas, they're buying another EV. They're not going back to gas. So it helps the sales of non-Tesla EVs. And then for those that want to get into Tesla for cheap, well, I mean, go for it. Bullshit will be flying at their earnings call or Elon will be strung out on ketamine. Could be both. And do the same carbon copy of half-assed all-hands employee meeting.

The eVTOL push is great because long-range flights are probably not going to be feasible for a long time. Obviously, the batteries. Yeah, right now the idea is more like short-range stuff, for sure. Short flights will at least give the aviation community into the electrification train. That's a good point. eVTOL in New York City area, many travel websites will form an itinerary which will require you to change airports in New York or through flights. They expect you to do your own way from JFK to Newark.

some layovers less than two hours. Oh, so you're saying that there's going to be maybe used for like to do different route thing for the airlines. I mean, United, uh, which is part of, you know, the ownership and their whatever they could now buy somebody into LaGuardia and out of JFK. Yeah. That makes sense. All right. Uh,

I hope your girlfriend doesn't see this video. Pretty sure. Don't worry. She doesn't watch. And she knows that she knows. She's the one who tells me to call now when I drive and everything. And she's starting to drive now, which is going to be crazy. Starting to drive? She just got her temporary permit. Dude, how old is she? She's 31 or something, but she's a city girl. She's never driven. And now she's starting. So this week we might go to a...

to a parking lot and have her drive for the first time. So I can imagine my stress levels are doing great. Yeah, payback. Yeah. All right. Skeptic says, you forgot the HyperRoute Segway. It was built as transportation revolution. Yeah. Kind of remember that a little bit now. Exclusive Tesla to delay US launch of affordable EV, a lower cost Model Y. Did they just report that now? Because Reuters had a report. Reuters is reporting lower cost.

Model Y is delayed. Is that new? Well, they had a report on that in China like a few weeks ago that we did share that. Like there was a few reports coming from China about that, about this trip down the last month. Oh, no, they're right. There's a new report on that. I'm going to look into that right after we finish that. All right. I'm working in Europe to expand the charging infrastructure on an engineering level. Here we speak a lot about vehicle-to-grid as a way to balance the periods above 60%.

renewable energy. Do you think Tesla will turn on vehicle to grid? And if so, when? I think it would be crazy for Tesla not to. There's just so many batteries and so much financial upside.

We've been talking about that a long time. And they have the thing with the Cybertruck already. They have it with Cybertruck. Drew Baglino was now out that Tesla said, I think in 2023, that all Tesla vehicles going forward are going to have the vehicle to grid. Then the Powerwall 3 came out with a new bi-directional charger that seems to be the same as in the new Model Y, Model 3.

based on the specs. So that would open up the idea that the inverter is bidirectional in the car. So it's just they haven't just turned on the capacity. Again, unconfirmed, but very likely.

So we don't know what the holdup is on that. I know that Elon and GB2 at some point, they talked about that a little bit and they don't like the value proposition of it, especially, you know, they kind of want to sell the Powerwall to at the same time. So they push people more towards the Powerwall and using that.

But if you want that feature and the hardware is already there, it would make sense to just turn it on and it becomes the responsibility of the owner. I don't like the BBing of the owner so much. You bought the car, it's your car, you should be able to do what you want with it. So if you are okay with faster degradation over time by using it as a vehicle to grid system, then go for it, I guess. Makes sense.

All right, we have a couple last ones. Is there anybody else than Hyundai Kia, which has enabled vehicle to load or grid? You know, Chevy actually has...

or GM actually has a pretty good system for vehicle to grid. Yeah. Ford, Ford 2 and the F-150. Polestar, I know is working on it. The other one when I tested their lineup in Sweden earlier this year, it's not enabled in the vehicle just yet, but they are working on it. So there's that. Yeah. And then,

One last dig at Tesla, vehicle to grid on on Tesla's is vaporware, like the range extender was. Tesla can't stop slinging lies. Yeah, I mean, Carl is the most optimistic when it comes to Tesla. All right. Well, thanks, everyone, for listening to the podcast this week. We appreciate you. If you did enjoy the show, please give us a like, a thumbs up, all those things, they help a ton. And then I'm going to start writing on that new report about the Malawi, strip down Malawi. Let's see.

Yeah, next week's going to be a little weird because I'm going to be in China. So we'll figure out on that one. Yeah, we're going to figure out if it makes sense to do the podcast at a different time. So stay tuned for that. Because it's like what, your 12 hours ahead of me or something like that? Something like that, yeah. Yeah, so maybe it's still going to make sense. It's going to be like morning for one of us and night for the other. Saturday morning, yeah. All right. All right. Thanks a lot, guys. See you next time. Bye-bye.

Thank you.