Kia EV Day, TSLA stock crashing, VW ID.4 surging, and more
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And we are live for a new episode of the Electric Podcast. I'm Fred Lemberg, your host. And as usual, I'm joined by Seth Wintra. How are you doing today, Seth? I'm good. All right. We have plenty of news to discuss this week. We're going to start out with the Kia EV Day 2025 that happened earlier this week.

we discussed it a little bit last week with the podcast we had some previews but now we have the full vehicle we wanted to have scooter on the podcast who was there live at the event but unfortunately couldn't make it today is uh the middle of moving right now so we wish him luck then we're gonna discuss a little bit uh about the tesla the stock took a hammering this week 15 we'll discuss a little bit about that model s and next new model y deliveries in china um

Then we have the Volkswagen ID.4 kind of making a little bit of a surge in Europe impressively. We have a little bit more detail on the Volvo ES90. Same thing for the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra, kind of a crazy vehicle. And then Lucid's earnings were out. So we're going to discuss that a little bit later on on the show.

And as usual, we're going to take you guys' questions. If you guys have questions for us, you can put them in the comment section right now or anytime on the show we are live. And we're also taking questions now. If you can leave us a five-star reviews on Apple and in the comments that we view, we're going to take questions from the crowd through that too. So we appreciate when you do that, only if you enjoy the show, of course. All right, let's jump right in into the Kia EV Day 2025. So Kia, much like Hyundai, right?

the Korean automakers are very much still focused on electric vehicle despite the little push back in North America that's happening right now that is you know worrying some automakers especially the tariff Wars and all that Kia is very much committed on continuing its full force approach to all electric vehicles and the uh EV day on Monday was uh kind of aliving the entire situation and

We so we have the obviously ev6 from Kia the ev9 But now they have the ev3 ev4 and ev5 that are coming along with a van that we Showed a little bit last week. So the ev4 now we have the all the details from it from the event here You have some pictures from the lineup here if you're watching on YouTube that I can share the back of the ev4 here and

It's kind of a narrow opening compared to the door, but I'm not the biggest fan of Kia's interior design, but I know some people appreciate it. The seats look cool. Traditional automaker type of interior. Yeah, they didn't go as minimalist as some automakers went with the EV transition. The exterior design, though, I'm a giant fan. This is the GT line, too. It looks even better, but I do like their exterior design.

it's not bad either it's like a little busy on the steering wheel i feel like like you have like just on one side you have one two three four five five button two scrolls it's like but anyway let's get into the specs here because we already had a pretty good idea of the vehicle as design battery gonna come in a 58.3 kilowatt hour standard range long range will be 81.4 that is expected to translate into

430 kilometers 267 miles of range for the standard 58 and 630 kilometers 292 miles of range for the long range version at 81 kilowatt hour but that's obviously wltp doesn't account for climate controls and all that so we expect the um

EPA range to be lower but not by that much also I should mention that uh Kia at the event finally confirmed that the ev4 will make it to North America we they were in thing in that direction but they finally confirmed it now they also unveiled the ev3 but ev3 will not be coming to North America unfortunately it's a smaller vehicle and the thing that the North American market just don't want it yeah

The long range Hatchback version will also get 590 kilometers of range, 267 miles on WLTP. They talk about a drag coefficient of 0.23, which is pretty good. The front motor is 150 kilowatt and the single motor version enables

0 to 62 miles per hour, 100 kilometers per hour, 7.4 seconds with a standard pack, 7.7 on the long range, the bigger battery. It's using the EMGP platform that we already know from Kia and Hyundai.

10 to 80 percent charge in 31 minutes uh you should save another two minutes if you have the smaller battery pack and it comes with all the vehicle to load the vehicle to grid capability that we've known on the etl4 it's going to be produced out at their evil plant in korea and they are planning for a starting capacity of 160 000 units which about half of which is going to come to north america they think so

The MSRP has only been released in Europe so far, €37,000. So it's not the cheapest car either. I guess US now is basically in parity to Euros, I think. So it should be similar. So it's not too bad. They also unveiled this EV2 concept. And it looks very concept-y, but they do say that the production version is going to be similar.

So we've been expecting the EV2 as like their $30,000, or I should say euros, because it's probably going to just be for the European market also, vehicle. You can get an idea of the size of it at least. Here you actually have the dimension, 4,000 millimeters length, 1,800 millimeters width, 1,500 height, and a wheelbase of 2,500 millimeters. Okay.

I think this is coming 2026, a monthly production. Yeah, 2026, $30,000 version. They were the PV5 too that were there. We have the specs on that too. We kind of showed it to you that we could show you some new images, but we already went to the podcast on a lot of images on that. But oh, yeah, like a new version here for accessibility for wheelchair. We didn't have any interior shot last time, so we have some interior look at it here.

you know a bit id buzz kind of reminds me of right yeah a little bit that's the cargo version right here flat back interesting uh spec wise you have two options okay let me understand choice of a 51.5 kilowatt hour

or 71.2 kWh NMC battery pack for all version plus the option of an additional 43.3 kWh LFP battery in the PV5 cargo. So I guess you can get the passenger version with a 51 or 71 battery pack and you can get the cargo version in a 51, 71 NMC battery pack if you want or a 42.3 LFP battery pack. Interesting.

curious of the range of a 43.3 kilowatt hour and well it's for cargo so i guess it's for like some short range delivery application in cities it's not too bad the largest pack the 71 to other park is going to be good for 249 miles of range 400 kilometers uh so you can expect significantly less for all the other versions they haven't released the specs for that all the the range expected range

It's a new entry in the van sector, which is starting to get populated quite a bit. I have a starting price of €35,000. Okay, so that's not too bad. So that's going to be for the cargo at 43 kmh with the LFP, I would assume.

uh production is expected to be to begin in between 2025 and 2026 so relatively soon should hit the markets in europe in korea in july uh this year okay and then the conversion models will come to it by the start of the show was definitely the uh ev4 i think that's going to be the most impactful vehicle on villa this week though the ev3 is also going to be likely uh

popular in the other markets in Europe and Asia, I would think. Yeah, I mean, Kia's got a solid lineup of EVs now. I mean, I would almost say next to Tesla, maybe they've got the fullest lineup. And even Tesla, it doesn't have quite as many steps up and down. And then if you combine Kia with Hyundai together, you know, they're sister companies, then it's even larger lineup, even though they are quite similar in the

in their segments, but they're still different. Yeah. All right. This law had a big week on the stock market this week. And, you know, we've been tracking that stock because it's kind of our hope that this, you know, that if the stock price catches up to the fundamentals of the stocks, that the shareholder will get motivated

to recognize that Elon Musk has deviated the company from the mission to accelerate the advent of electric transport, which is our mission to electric. And we've recognized Tesla as being the biggest force in the world for that for the longest time. But now that they deviated from that, we see it as a major contributor to the slowdown in growth of electric vehicle and slowdown in Tesla's own deliveries due to Elon Musk's mistake and

and social media addiction and, uh, you know, and a lot of other things that's happening right now, getting weirder and weirder by the day. But, uh, one thing that I want to highlight is like, what's happening right now with this, a stock. So I know it's up today by 4%, whatever. I haven't checked it, uh, uh, since we went live, but, um,

It's down even with being up today, I think it's down like 15% today, went back under a trillion dollar, you know, for a trillion dollar company to be down 15% in a week, it is obviously significant. So I want to highlight that Elon is actually predicting what's happening right now with the Tesla stock. Back in 2021, if you remember, Elon,

late 2020, early 2021, Tesla stock was hitting like new record price to earning ratios over 500. I think it hit like a thousand for a little bit. And at that time, Elon, we obtained an email that Elon sent to its Tesla employees in which he was warning them that if Tesla doesn't show

profit growth, earnings growth, the stock will get in this world smashed like a souffle by a sledgehammer. And that's quite simple. You cannot be, I know you don't like when you refer to Tesla as an automaker, but it's still very much an automaker, even though it's also a technology company. You cannot maintain over 100 of price to earning ratio for long if you don't actually show

earnings growth because they go together. Crazy price-earning ratio means expected crazy earning growth, which I know Elon is putting a little bit further down the line with the robots and the self-driving and all that, but we've been very skeptical about some of those programs. Short-term, Tesla was in the recent past showing earnings growth quite rapidly, but that has stopped over the last year. So

the situation that happened in 2020 2021 it's kind of happened again but now the difference is that this is not showing those earning growth with you know earnings being down last quarter earnings expected to be down this quarter too so that's why we're seeing now the start coming down it's like people are like realizing okay maybe this needs to catch up the fundamentals here but the truth the crazy truth about this here is even at this level now trading at around 300 dollars

I can like, let me share this down and say, so it did go up now to, let me see if it's up to date. 293. So basically 4% today, but way down from the all time high of December. I think, I think what's clear here is like this, this was the anomaly here. This, this crazy increase following the,

following the elections. I think there was no significant news from Tesla during that time, no significant positive news at least. So I think what this was was an anticipation of the Trump administration being good for Tesla either through policies, which nothing points to that right now, or, and that's the weirdest part, collusion between

Trump and Elon, which that there is evidence of like, yes, probably it has at very least the Trump administration has de-risk Tesla's federal legal issues, which were, they were planning on. So that's a positive, but like it's, it's a, it's the removal of a negative. It's not, doesn't change anything about the fundamentals. So I think people are like realizing now, okay, maybe Tesla needs to come down closer to the fundamentals here because the price to earning ratio is still crazy.

But the craziest part is that at this level, Tesla is still trading at 140 plus price to earning ratio. And I expect and most people do expect this quarter to be quite bad with lower deliveries, the changeover to the new model Y. Earnings should be a lot worse. Tesla not having accumulated profits.

credit zev credit like they did for last quarter all these things not the crazy bump in uh bitcoin actually bitcoins are way down i don't know how that works by the way i need to ask an accountant about that like since they still recognize a 600 million dollar benefit from bitcoin last quarter do they um do they recognize a loss with the bitcoins being like down like 30 percent to 20 percent in the last few weeks i don't know

But anyway, without all of that, the earnings will be quite bad. And now Tesla's, if Tesla doesn't come down another, you know, 30 to 40% until the earnings, the price to earning real show should back up to like 300. And that's nuts. So I think people should be very careful around the Tesla stocks, I think, for the next quarter. And hopeful, like I've never thought I would be, you know, rooting for Tesla stock to go down. But I think this is what Tesla needs right now.

for shareholders to wake up. And you've seen, I've been on X a little bit, like trying to gauge the shareholder sentiment. And a lot of them now are getting unhappy and are already like, especially with Elon's email to government employee, like what are the five things you did in the last week to justify your job? A lot of people are like, yeah, how about Elon? You do that for Tesla. What have you done for Tesla in the last week? Like, it's a good point because the guy is like living in DC right now.

All right, moving on from the Tesla stock, we have Lars Marovi, the Senior VP of Engineering at Tesla that went on the Ride the Lightning podcast last weekend.

Wasn't that much news that came out of it. The biggest one really was that he said to expect a Model S and X refresh later this year, which is kind of surprising. I mean, it's not surprising that Tesla would do a refresh. Last one was 2021. Times flies. It's been four years already. So...

The timing is actually good for that, but it's weird that he would announce it like that. Maybe it was a slip up or something because the Sturgeon really don't like to talk about refreshes because the Osborne effect, they would affect cells normally. But in this case, the more SNX cells are already like kind of in the dumpster. So I don't think he cares that much about that.

Competition on the top of the market is pretty hard. You have the Lucid, you have the Rivian, Rivian mostly for the Model X though because they don't have a sedan to compete. But Audi, like the Audi A6 now coming out, that's also a big competitor of the Model S, I think.

uh bmw mercedes also have plenty of um competition top market in the sedans and in the bigger suv so i'm not surprised that tessa wouldn't need a refresh there no details of course about it but set i don't know what you expect but i would be surprised to see a light bar and you know a little bit more minimalist interior maybe bringing back the shifter the turn signal not the shifter but yeah i mean anything anything at this point

Maybe some efficiency improvement, longer range to compete with Lucid. Something like that would be nice. Yeah, I guess Lucid would be what I'd be looking at if you're looking for where things are going next. As a benchmark, benchmarking the air, basically. Yeah.

Model Y deliveries have started. The new Model Y have started in China this week. First few deliveries of the launch editions. But we are trying to gauge demand right now, and it's not looking too good, to be honest with you, because I just checked the design studio today, and the rear-wheel drive version, the cheapest version of the new Model Y, you can place a new order right now and get a delivery in two weeks, two to four weeks, depending on where you are. So,

uh that's with new deliveries new new orders i mean the place so something to keep an eye on and um it's six to ten weeks if you uh if you order the long range all-wheel drive version so this this one is looking to have like pretty decent demand but the rear-wheel drive the cheapest version is the most popular one and this one is actually a quick turnaround

Looking at the insurance data, Tesla in China, it looks like Tesla is about 7,000 units behind the same period last year. It will need to deliver over 50,000 cars in March to catch up and to get similar levels of delivery as last year. And hopefully more than that for Tesla because Tesla is going to be down quite significantly in Europe, probably North America also. So, yeah.

China is kind of the game changer for them. It's the market that's the most stable, that has the most volume also, obviously. But I don't know. We'll track the deliveries closely in March because any kind of slip up for the new Model Y will be extremely impactful this quarter. Yeah, and I think Model Y has probably the most competition anywhere in the world with all of China's low cost products.

like very very capable cars from byd and others neo etc yeah the the the thing that's really saving them i think right now is like xiaomi has only only has their sedan because because the mobile three cells are not doing well in china and i think a lot of them went to xiaomi instead but they haven't launched their suv yet they're already launching it soon but when they do i think the model wise now have like real competition because people are loving this car so far

yeah this was news that a lot of people picked up this week that this does apply for the ride ailing service permit in California but it's only for ride ailing service so like a uber lyft and whatnot it's not for self-driving so Tesla is not applied for a self-driving permit yet which it needs in California unlike in Texas so

Tesla has always managed to get around that by just saying that they're using their level two system that is not truly self-driving, but with a driver being responsible. So people are expecting maybe Tesla is going to launch the service like that. Because if you remember last year, Elon announced that Tesla will launch unsupervised self-driving in Texas and California in Q2 2025. We threw a little bit of cold water on that announcement because we are expecting that Tesla was going to not when it's,

When Elon has talked about unsupervised self-driving in the past, he's talked about Tesla customer vehicles finally being unsupervised self-driving, robo-taxi level and all that, and the responsibility shifting from the driver to Tesla. This is not what's happening. When he said California and Texas, we thought, all right, he's going to launch some kind of geofence internal fleet that's teleoperated or at least teleoperation supported in a very specific area.

Sure enough, last month at the earnings or before the earnings, I think that was originally announced at the Rural Taxi event and then at the earnings, he clarified it, that this service will launch in Austin in June. And the comments that he had it that confirmed that, yes, indeed, this is what we talked about. It's not the unsupervised self-driving for customer vehicles.

But then he stopped talking about California because originally there was that Texas and California Q2. But he did say that he expects most markets to get on supervised self-driving sometime later this year or next year.

But, you know, this is very close to what he's been saying every year for the last decade. So it's not, we don't put a lot of weight on that. But now Bloomberg has identified that Tesla applied late last year for, with the California Public Utility Commission for a permit of a charter party carrier. So this is like Uber and Lyft, but only for an internal fleet. So, you know, Uber and Lyft kind

kind of anyone can apply to use their car on their service. This is for a company-owned fleet, which not too surprising. We know that was Tesla's plan. But Tesla has not applied for any Rebel Taxi driverless service. However, I think there's a path for them to use that specific permit, just having a driver on the driver's seat and saying that it's level two and saying that the driver is responsible even though the car is driving, whatever.

I think that is the plan right now. That's what it looks like. But this is just an application, by the way. It hasn't been approved yet. Oh, yeah, a little update. We've been kind of giving like a weekly update on the Tesla protest. We said that they looked like they were gaining momentum.

Last weekend, I looked at a bunch of videos from the protests all around, especially the U.S., but there's some in other countries too. And they were bigger than the week before that. So it's not like a one weekend type of thing. It's something that's building up. And we can even like, let's look at the plan one if there's some this weekend. So you can look at Tesla takedown on the Action Network. And yeah, it looks like there's plenty of them.

some of them in europe but plenty of them like let's look uh so you add one set you send me an image from from one in your uh in your neighborhood in new york let's see if you're just go um so there's one that's march 16 that's in connecticut um the one the store in blooklyn has one uh march 1st so that's that's tomorrow

The one in the meatpacking district, also March. So there's plenty of them planned for this weekend. Next weekend in New Jersey. Let's look at California. Plenty of, oh, a ton of them planned for California. Let's see, in San Francisco. Yeah, March 1st. March 5th in Palo Alto. You have one here in Seaside, California. Also tomorrow. Ton of protests. And from what, like I said, from California,

From the images I got from last weekend, they were getting bigger. The one in Seattle apparently even shut down the store. It was so big, so many people turned up that it shut down the store. So it's actually like working and trying to affect Tesla's operation, which is surprising. We did report, though, that it's unfortunate that like this is nice. Like this is like people exercising their free speech rights.

But we see also a lot of vandalism like this here. That was in Utah, a supercharger station that was graffitied. So that's actual vandalism, and it's not far from ideal. And also, we have seen a lot of cars being vandalized, including Tesla's own, but some that are owner's car.

And I want to be careful here because like I understand the frustration, you know, depending on your view on Elon Musk and what he's doing in the U.S. government, it can be like scary to a degree for some people.

But this is not going to work. First of all, if you see a woman burn down Tesla vehicles at a dealership, for example, you know there's a thing called insurance. So this is good for Tesla. It's cars that they weren't able to sell. Now they can just claim the insurance money from their insurance. So that's not going to hurt Tesla. And then if you're vandalizing owner's cars,

Like, you don't know what this person is going through right now. You don't know. Maybe they are not in a position to sell their cars. A lot of people are and a lot of people are doing it. And that also result in the price of use of this vehicle crashing right now. And some people, maybe they cannot afford to sell their car and take a loss and then having to buy a more expensive cars or whatever. So,

Be reasonable and try to express your discontent with Tesla. Try to convince people not to buy one, to sell their stock, whatever, if you think that this is a good way to affect Elon because Elon used Tesla as his piggy bank. But other than that, let's be reasonable, folks. That was our little update on the weekly Tesla protests. Now, the Volkswagen ID.4 just overtook for January 2021.

The Model Y is the best-selling car in Europe. So that's kind of surprising here. They can't buy a lot, too. It's up 195% to 7,177 units in January, beating Tesla at 6,000. Obviously, one of the big reasons it beat Tesla is because it's down 46%.

But the ID.7 also up 657. I'm sure that last year was just peanuts that they delivered, but still almost 6,000 units for the ID.7. That's pretty impressive for Europe that the ID.7 is doing that well. It's a bigger car, but ID.4 is also a small, small car. The Kia EV3 already doing 6,000 units. That's really good too. ID.3 is still doing very well too at 5,000 units.

the x30 it's out there 4 000 units the european market is so different it's like tesla is really taking a meaning there now you see the uber yourselves too but congrats to vw all right we have a few more news item to discuss and then we'll jump into the comment section i see we already have quite a few but if you have a question for us it could be about any of the topics that we're discussing today or any other topics in the ev world that you want to take on you can put it in the comments in right now and when they get to it in just a few minutes

So I've been following the ES90 that much on Volvo. Like, I thought the unveiling was this week, but we don't have a full unveiling. We just have a few teaser images, but we do have specs. And the teaser images look pretty good. Like, I have to say, they look very aerodynamic. I think I've seen a few with, like, the bump in the front with the LiDAR. Obviously, it's a Volvo. It's going to be super safe. But it also looks pretty smooth, like a nice round top, probably very aerodynamic. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's going to have the latest NVIDIA driving computer in there. So spec, the specs that were announced, again, not all the specs were announced because they're still like dropping, like feet dropping us the information. 435 miles, 700 kilometers of WLTP range. That's very good. So EPA will be most likely well over 350.

The three row, that's the EX90 here. Fast charging. So this is going to be using the new 800 volt system from Volvo. And it's expected to give you over 185 miles, 200 kilometers in just 10 minutes of charging. Solid. Yeah, very impressive. Of course, we want to see a full charging curve because that's... But we should expect something similar to like the Hyundai. Hyundai is like one of the leaders in charging because of that. Yep.

You should expect that. So that's the only like 10 bits of information. When is the full unveiling on this? They're doing a slow drop. Like every week they drop out like a little, another teaser image, another spec. No, I remember. Volvo is very much like that. Yeah, I remember. Like it's not the first time they've done that. But March 5th is the full unveiling. So next week, by next week's podcast, we should be able to give you all the details on the ES90.

but the set is right i think i like the teaser images i hope that it holds up for the production yeah it's a solid vehicle and i'm so far anyway speaking of solid vehicle like this this looks like uh porsche taiken from the side later a little bit not the front end the front end is a little different but

The Xiaomi SU7 Ultra. Am I pronouncing that right? Xiaomi? Xiaomi, yeah. Xiaomi, okay. So the SU7 is the sedan that's taken over the Chinese market now. Strong competition to the Model 3. But the Ultra was teased a little bit earlier this year.

But now it's been launched, and it's the top-of-the-line version with everything in there, over 1,500 horsepower, that thing. It's not cheap, though. It's $7,500, the equivalent, because it's only in China. But it's the equivalent of $7,500. $7,500.

$75,000, excuse me. So it's more expensive than the Model 3 Performance, for example, but it is much more powerful at 1,500 horsepower. The 0-60 was a release... Well, excuse me, they're using kilometers an hour, so it's 100 kilometers an hour, so 62 miles per hour in 1.98 seconds. So it's probably going to be a solid 1.9 seconds on the 0-60. And...

and that that's incredible like for for a vehicle like it's similar to like model s plaid level but in a twenty thousand dollar cheaper vehicle yeah we were talking earlier we were talking earlier about uh where the uh new model s and x have to be and uh this is also something that they have to think about yep definitely uh they apparently got uh three thousand six hundred dollars in the first ten minutes but i think they released a new number for that uh

I would also say, though, in terms of 0 to 60 time, we're getting to the point where it's the tires are the problem. Or it's just like you just don't want to go any faster. You can't safely. Yeah, I agree. I cannot zoom on these pictures for some reason. That's weird. It's actually similar in size to the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT, so that's not too surprising.

I mean, I imagine they probably just got a Porsche Taycan GT in the lab and they were like, make this, you know, but faster. It comes with a 93.7 kilowatt hour battery pack, which get only 385 miles of range, 620 kilometers. I would expect more on that back, but again, it's because of the performance. Like you can lose some efficiency on there too.

Yeah, they now have 6,900 orders for this. So deliveries are expected to begin in April. So this is the new top-of-the-line performance electric car to beat in China. That's not a supercar. That's not like a six-figure, low-production volume vehicle. They're going to make 10,000 of those. And they're probably going to make them this year. They've been so good at ramping up production, the Xiaomi. I wouldn't be surprised if they deliver those this year.

Fred, we got to go to China, man. I really want to, man. I think it would be exciting. Maybe we should reach out to Xiaomi, see if they can show us around in China. That would be cool. Yeah, we have some contacts from the Google group because they make phones too. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We should hook us up. All right. Lastly, let's talk a little bit about Lucid before we jump into the comments section. So Lucid had their earnings this week and the earnings were not too bad. Honestly, they were pretty good. It's not too surprising, but the stock was

plummeted and that's because Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson announced that he's stepping down. There's no too much details about it. They are looking for a new CEO and the CEO is taking over in the interim. But there's a shakeup of leadership right now and it's affecting the company.

But they're going in the right direction. And the biggest takeaway from the earnings was the guidance for 2025. So, you know, they had about like what, 9,000 deliveries, I think, for the full year.

10,200 deliveries in 2024 and now they are aiming for 20,000 so they're aiming to double their deliveries in 2025 and that's obviously because of the gravity so they started deliveries of the gravity and they are slowly ramping things up and obviously the SUV in the North American market is expected to sell a lot more they reduced their losses still quite a bit and they are still sitting on a lot of money so they're probably good for the next three years I think they said

So they are losing money fast, but with this year, you know, delivery volumes coming, economies of scale, they should be able to reduce their losses and try to survive a little bit longer. But it looks like the Saudis are kind of taking a step back a little bit. They sold not a big part of their stake, but they sold a little bit.

uh so they might be uh their um their piggy bank might be closing not that they absolutely need it because like i said they're still sitting on a lot of cash but still something to keep an eye on good to have the piggy bank yes it is all right let's jump into the comment section all right skeptic says i'm hoping there's some non-political ev news this week there was there were plenty

Question. Will it ever update their urban superchargers above the current 72 kilowatts? It's getting pretty overrun here in Brooklyn. I mean, I think that depends kind of on infrastructure, right? Like they're only 72 kilowatts because I think it's hard to get that kind of electric infrastructure in those garages and stuff.

I think they also meant maybe more for like not necessarily overnight charging, but longer period of time charging. So it's not really made for that. You know, the New York situation was very affected by...

By, you know, firing the entire charging team last year. So I know that they had a bunch of project plan that they kind of give up on right away. And now they had to change their strategy. I think there's still a few of them planned right now, but it's not looking good. And maybe maybe in the second half of the year. Sorry, when the supercharger V4 coming out at 500 kilowatts.

then you'd get your wish here. It's going to be a lot faster, but at the same time, 500 right now is just for the cyber trucks. Yeah. All right. Peter Robinson leaving Lucid is the biggest news this week. They were already not showing strong prospects of surviving. Saudi Arabia can't make a failing company succeed with cash. Don't necessarily subscribe to all that. Yeah. But, you know, obviously the head, the founder and head of a company leaving is a big deal. I don't know if Lucid's,

I mean, you said still Peter delivered a lot of great technology at Lucid. You know, Lucid is the efficiency leader now. I think they're well set up with the gravity. I'm sure that Peter already did a ton of work on the next generation, you know, mass market vehicles too. So now it's on the team to deliver on the gravity and then move on to the higher volume vehicle. And obviously also Lucid has kind of...

hinted that they want to shift over to a little bit as a supplier, a powertrain supplier kind of business model. So we'll see about that also. They already have, I think, the Austin Martin contract and a few others. So we'll see. But I don't think that's too early to see the default, I think. Yeah, maybe that's part of the reason the shifted strategy might be part of the reason that he's leaving. Somebody can do that. Yeah.

all right skeptic says the kia pv5 could open up the ev market to wheelchair-bound drivers kia is advertising the pv5 with a wheelchair accessible version well that's great news i mean i hadn't thought about that and i i would have thought the you know the e-transit or the nv200 nissan or i mean even the volkswagen buzz could do something like that but

I think a lot of them can be modified for it. I think any car basically can be modified for it, but maybe not any, but depending on the format. But I think Kia might be just putting this, advertising it, and maybe they have their own version exactly that you don't need any retrofit for. So that's cool. We're all for that. Martin Hughes, great podcast as usual on Bias Reporting. Thanks, Martin.

Thank you. I'm impressed with just the Kia range of choices now. It looks a bit like an experiment exploring what people may want. I mean, I don't know. Kia is pretty far along in there. I don't think they're... But I think what he might meant is like Kia is big and Hyundai too on, you know, the...

rear-wheel drive all-wheel drive front-wheel drive uh standard pack big pack you can have one two motors for both version the standard long range a lot of automakers they limit a lot of that you know kia and hyundai have been pretty open about that so you can i i do like the options personally i do like that you can like just get exactly what you want all over car so

Alright, delving into politics a little bit. What's happening with Trump, Vance Musk and Ukraine. I thought Europe wouldn't hate leaders more. I was wrong, dead wrong. I mean, I guess it's sort of related to... Have you seen the video today? The video is crazy. It was hard to watch. I couldn't believe what was happening. I'm so sorry to our European watchers. Watching the video, I could almost see the strings attached to Vance and Trump and Putin just...

It was so obvious. I couldn't believe it. Anyway, I wrote in a couple of Waymos this week. Incredible. Anyone tried Waymo? Yeah, they're so cool. And they're just there. It's here now. To be fair, it's not cheap.

yet at least like i've checked in in la for example like i've used them in la and i i looked at like on uber you see like you see the ubers like x uber comfort uber whatever and you see the waymo and waymo in my experience was always a little bit more expensive so it's it's not you know it's not at the level that's super it makes sense that much yet but

you can see them getting there soon. Like I think the next generation that they're talking about, they want to slash the cost of their hardware, like by half almost or something like that. So it's, uh, yeah, it's, it's going to get there fast and maybe it's going to get there before Tesla. Yep. Uh, at Scrum Fingo, that's a four different channel. They're probably, I didn't put your comment on the create what discussion you want. All right. Uh,

All right. Sorry. That's political discussion, I think. All right. Question. Can you do a rundown of vehicle-to-home setups from install to use similar to the solar roof articles?

Yeah, there's not a lot of vehicle-to-home setups now. One product we really like is the, what is that, the Quasar 2 that more than a few companies can use. I mean, Ford and GM all have their kind of proprietary stuff. Tesla too. Tesla obviously is in the vehicle-to-home space, but there's like a brand, what is that?

Quasar is Wallbox. Yeah, Wallbox. I know a friend of mine tried to get one installed in Quebec and he couldn't even get it installed. There's a lot of places it's not approved yet. There's still a lot of issues. Spikes, I agree. I'll look into it, but right now it's still so limited that it's hard to make sense. I think the installations right now,

like those that are getting some volume is probably like ford

with the Ford Power set up with the Lightning and Tesla with the Cybertruck. There's actually real installations of that going on. But there's no like... I think there should be like a standardization of that so that you can just buy a system, have it and shake with the vehicle and that's it. But we're still not quite there yet. It's going to come though. I'm sure it's going to come. Yeah.

All right. I wish Lucid could already fill the gap that Tesla is leaving with their upcoming midsize models. Yeah, I don't know. But there's other, you know, like Lucid, like maybe if you're, I'm sure Lucid is doing great right now with like Model S owners that like want to get rid of their car for political reason and they go for the air. But for the Model 3, Model Y, there's already plenty of other options, I think, down market than Lucid, I think. Yeah.

And then Alptronic and ChemPower could build wide and working charging network to US as they have in Europe. Yeah, Alptronic, we went to the opening of their US thing. They have big ambitions with a couple of new networks as well. Unfortunately, the IRA has kind of been gutted. Yeah, they froze the funds.

So I don't know how their businesses are going to hold up on that. I keep trying to remind people that most Tesla owners bought the car before Musk showed up his fascist colors, except for Cybertruck owners. They already, they all knew exactly where they were supporting Tesla.

Yeah, we talk about that a lot because the sticker that says, I bought this before Elon went nuts, isn't compatible with the Cybertruck and also not the new Model Y either. So if you want to use that sticker that says, you bought this before Elon went crazy, you need to buy one of the old Model Ys before they...

At the same time, it depends when you consider him going crazy because the Cybertruck has been delivered still since like for more than a year now. So there's that. Also, there's people like that, you know, Cybertruck reservation have been going on since 2019. So there's a lot of people that have been like waiting a long time to get the Cybertruck and they're like, I don't care how much Nazi salutes, how many Nazi salutes Elon will do. I still want that truck.

Some of them have been disappointed by that, but still. I've seen on X today, I've seen they are trying to get popularized a new sticker that says, I bought this truck before I knew that Elon was awesome. I don't know how many buyers they're going to get out of that one. Yeah, I don't think that's going to be a bestseller. That's interesting. I mean, I guess everybody has their different...

moment of when they have their realization about Elon, right? Like some were like the scuba or the submarine thing, the pedo thing. Other people never were on board. It was the gamers recently. A lot of gamers got their realization moment. And last week was a lot of the astronauts, a lot of the space nerds when you went after the astronauts. Yeah, now a lot of government employees. Yeah.

Yeah. Yesterday he called CNN's legal advisor. He said he had, it was a crime family just because, you know, you know that whole outage that like, don't believe everything you read online.

Like now, Elon cannot say that because he keeps saying that X is like the number one source of truth in the world. So but he should really internalize that saying because he's just believing anything he says. He retweeted just a random guy that found out that someone with the same name as the legal advisor, I forget his name now, was I'd received millions of dollars from USAID.

And so that person claimed that it was his daughter, even though it was not. It's just someone with the same last name. So Elon said that it was a crime family because that guy from CNN is leading a few lawsuits against Doge. So it's like, okay, the reason he leads this lawsuit is because his daughter is getting millions from USAID, which is not true. So he called him a crime family for that. He's one of the most misinformed person in the world right now. It's insane.

That's a good question from from Brian. You skipped it. Is the new solid state battery in the EQS anything to get excited about or strictly a concept? I believe it's this 620 miles of range.

We saw this. I think if they can scale it, it's going to be great. But yeah, we have no, it is by definition. So you're right, Brian, but they're working with fractional, I think Mercedes and fractional is getting, is getting pretty close to commercial production. Like I think there are just a few years away. So it's, it's a concept for now, but,

We've been talking about solid-state batteries for 10 years or so now, and it's not hydrogen. It's not fuel cell, the technology of the future. It is actually happening. Between fractional, between quantum scape, solid power, they're all solving the last few issues one by one. And I do think that by the end of the decade, so 2029,

2030, I know that Hyundai and Kia just pushed their own ambition for solid state to 2030. So probably around that time does make sense. You're going to see the first commercial, the first vehicle that you can buy with solid state batteries. They're going to be most likely in the upper end of the market, which EQS would make sense.

And yeah, you're going to see actual cars getting extremely long longevity and 500 plus mile range quite easily. That's going to be exciting. But I think it's too much though. 620 miles a range. It's a bit much. And the EQS too. It's a big sedan. Yeah. Make it like 400 miles a range. Cheaper. Lighter. Yeah. Come on. I would buy that in a second. Yeah.

Skrankfinkle, has the charging network grown in the US like it has in Europe? Is it still mostly EA and Tesla? It's growing, but not like Europe. No, that's the right answer. It is growing, but like Europe? No.

It's not just EA and Tesla. I mean, Tesla, yes. Tesla is the biggest one, the most extensive, the most useful. But it's not just EA. You have plenty of VBGO. You have plenty of ChargePoint stations. What are the others in the US? I know them a little bit less. There's a few others. Yeah, I mean, there's the GreenLot stuff that moved over and the Ionity. Not Ionity. It's Iona. Iona, yeah.

There's a bunch of new ones. All right. Which EVs would you recommend to those people who like their Teslas but are trading them in because of Elon? Which EVs might check the same or similar boxes, the Model 3 or Model Y do? Interesting you're asking that because Fred and I are both in the market. Yeah, so...

I'm personally thinking about going to a Volvo EX30. I like small cars. I don't mind the range hit, slow charging. It's more of a value car than I probably will end up with, but that's kind of where I've been eyeballing lately. You know, I love Kia stuff. I love...

you know like on the high end uh mercedes eq e eqs both look pretty solid um but i don't know if i want to spend that kind of money and of course every time i drive a porsche tycan i'm pretty tempted yeah i mean well yeah porsche tycan would be uh would be my go-to for sure if it was within my means but like in canada it's insane the prices of these things in the us too it's not cheap but um

Yeah, I mean, a lot of those make sense. Personally, for me, like, I'm even, I'm thinking, like, if I can hold on for, like, an R2 and even an R3, that would be, I'm really looking forward to these cars. And, you know, the main thing that's, because I think for everything other than ADAS,

that people have caught up to tesla like everything so first of all if you're if you're not big on adas like if you're like i know some people that don't even use cruise control but they're like yeah but yeah if you're not big on the adas system

and there's some other good system especially if you go with gm or the super cruise with uh even uh ford also like as a decent system on the highway they're not the none of them i think compared to tesla but they they are getting pretty good you have plenty of options basically now if you're a giant fan of autopilot and all that and you're using a lot it's gonna all of these gonna be a john grade what i'm interesting to to look into honestly and i've seen um our friend uh

Snazzy Lab doing that in Utah is using, he did it with his Rivian. He's installed, so maybe you should try that set, especially since you have a first gen. The open pilot. Karma? Karma, yeah. Yeah, I saw that. It could be interesting. So I'm open to upgrading sooner.

Maybe with OpenPilot from Kama in there, because they are doing pretty good on the highway. And I just, I don't care about FSD in the city street. Like it's more stressful than anything else. Yeah, I wish I had known about the Kama's requirements before I purchased my Bolt, because apparently with the

the higher end Chevy bolts, the Kamei works really well. And it's just a little computer you put on your dashboard, like a dash cam. It's a phone basically. It's like, I know it's not officially a phone now, but at first it was, now they modified it a little bit, but it's based on the phone. All right, moving on. Has anyone been in the Afila by Sony and Honda? I think I saw it at CES. I don't know, like what, two years ago or something.

I don't know. I touched it. I've never been inside. I saw it in Tokyo. It doesn't really matter. But they opened the first store this week, too. So I think you can actually go see an impression. I'm still not sold on that thing. Like, I don't know, like, how, where it's going to fit. But at the same time, like, it's kind of like Xiaomi making their thing. So it's like they show that electronics company can definitely get into the space. Yeah.

Okay. How is it looking for Carb State staying the course to 100% ZEV sales by 2025? Pretty good. Pretty good because the last time Trump tried to kill Carb and it didn't work, he lost in court. So I would assume the same thing would happen this time. But at the same time, he's like...

He doesn't seem to care about the courts anymore. And Ilan has made it clear now that... Courts are traitors. Yeah. So he wants to impeach a bunch of judges. So you never know. Maybe the U.S. indeed becomes a complete authoritarian regime and they can take away state power, which is also like a very conservative thing. Like the conservative were always like, yeah, more power to the state.

Smaller federal government now is like, you're the states. You don't get to decide. We get to decide. It's the upside-down world and stranger thing. All right. Ian Smith from Facebook says, the Volvo sedan looks sweet, but they are Volvo. Give us a station wagon version. Not in the U.S. Never. We went through that. Don't blame the media on that. The same thing happened with Audi.

Like every auto journalist from the US, from North America out there are like begging how do you just bring the A6 Avant wagon version in the US? And like, no, no, no, there's no market for it. And they have a point. It generally doesn't sell. So it's not like...

i don't know why auto journalists are enthusiasts we have particular tastes yeah uh is tesla vehicle to grid available for anything other than cyber truck ridiculous they've released this feature and failed to make it work with their other models i agree like it's kind of weird that they haven't i mean especially with the um you know ability to make some money um that was you know once kind of a thing

uh it would be nice to be able to make some money from your car during uh super peaks um and we've heard that like the cars are hardware capable they just well yeah rumor it's rumored since the powerwall 3 because it's rumored that they use the same inverter in their cars because the bump the inverter capacity around the same time and all that but yeah so there's a possible that's you know

like the self-driving, the hardware is capable when the software hasn't been updated just yet. But we don't know for sure. Tesla is dropping the ball on that though. If it is like, if it is capable, you know, all the other automakers are doing it now and people see some value in it. So,

All right, Dan Orstea, I waited a long time for Cybertruck, but I canceled it because reasons. Yeah, I think a lot of people are in that boat. A lot of reasons beyond Musk, too, because, you know, the price, the range and all that was not what's promised. I think a lot more people canceled the Cybertruck reservation for that than they did for Musk.

uh busk also showed his crazy what he went to war with governor and uh california over covid that was for a lot of people that was the realization point yeah that was the beginning for a lot of people uh twitter may be the number one source of truth in the world but unfortunately it's also the number one source of lies uh yep i mean it depends on who's reading i don't i don't know that that many people i don't know it's the number one source of anything anymore yeah

All right, let's move down a little bit. Tesla, good buying opportunity right now. Do you agree? I do not agree. I think, like I said, I think Tesla needs to come down another 30 to 50% this quarter. Otherwise, based on my prediction on the earnings, the P&E ratio will shoot back up to 300. And Tesla cannot sustain a price to earning ratio in that level.

If it doesn't show near-term profit growth and there's very little opportunity for near-term profit growth, maybe a little bit in the second half of the year with, you know, the new cheaper vehicles. But, you know, don't expect any like self-driving revenue or at least no significant one like this year or probably even next year. Significant one, not for the next like three or four years probably. So if you don't have that,

And you don't have significant vehicle growth to show earning growth. Or robots or any other. Even though I'm kind of, you know, relatively bullish on the robots, it's still also like several years away, I think, for any significant contribution to earnings. So how can you justify a 300 plus price to earning ratio? You can't. I just don't think you can.

All right, so we're in Blazer EV now, waiting for the new Bolt as a second car to replace the Spark EV. You still on the Spark EV? You know, I'm going to see the Blazer SS in April. So I hope to have a good, you know, they had some software issues. Jamie reviewed that early, but I think that should all be ironed out besides no CarPlay. But otherwise, it should be good.

Solid state going from next year to now, protracting the 10 years of that talk. Does it make sense to assume five more years to solve all the problems? Not a real engineering solution story. Continue. Yeah, go ahead. That's different. That's a comma. I mean, I don't, I mean, I'm not, I'm not an engineer and then a scientist. I cannot go into the details, obviously, but in the last two years, we've seen four companies, uh,

test full battery pack made with solid-state battery cells and which we haven't seen before that. So,

So I think it's very much going in the right direction. And, you know, QuantumScape has made great progress in the longevity of their cells. Solid power on the electrolyte front also made some great progress. So I see things happening for, like I said, I would expect 2029, 2030 to have the first vehicle in production that have solid-state battery cells. I think that's a reasonable assumption.

all right causing an accident while using comma ai is a great way for your car insurance to default on you and use everything to bankruptcy yeah i probably keep an eye on comma ai for the moment uh what new small ev suvs will be coming in the next couple years i got to sit in the alfila it's in a mall here in los angeles oh yeah that's what i was talking about yeah like a little pop-up store but i feel like it's not i mean it's kind of a small sedan i guess um

Small EV SUVs. I mean, the new Bolt is a lot of people are excited about. I'm excited about it. Volvo EX30 is now hitting the American market. People are excited about that too. What else? I mean, the Kia, what, EV4? Yeah, the EV4 is a smaller SUV. Yeah, that makes sense. Smaller hatchback.

I wish they'd bring the soul to the US. It's kind of crazy they don't. Well, now it's like the V3, I guess. Yeah, so the V3 already selling 5,000 units a month in Europe. It's pretty good. Yeah, they should bring that. I think they would if they weren't for the US current situation in the US, even though they are building them in Korea so they can get around the tariffs, but

I think for these smaller vehicles like that, yes, the U.S. market is not... The North American market, not just the U.S., is not big on smaller cars. But a smaller car is cheaper. And then if there was incentive stills, and there still is in the U.S. for now, I think it would sell pretty good. Like a $30,000 EV3 with a $7,500 tax credit at the price of purchase, obviously. But...

They would need to be produced in the U.S. for that. All right. Let's move on. One bi-directional aid sap and should be universal. It would be nice if it was universal, but isn't yet. Sylvan Spark 2014 with the 400 foot-pounds of torque. That's more than a lot of Ferraris. I remember when we first heard about that, that was one of the hot cars that we talked about quite a bit. It was the first car with CCS.

charging, fast charging. Oh, yeah, it was. Had a place in my heart, that car. J.O. says VW ID.1 coming to the U.S., unlikely. And then there's the ID.2 before that, too. There's a little bit bigger ID.2, ID.Life, whatever. Even that is not set for the U.S. so far. So if they have an even smaller, cheaper one, I think you can forget it.

yeah yeah I it's it's sad but the the North American market now is getting a little bit uh boring a little bit more hesitant and all that but uh in Europe and in Asia it's still going strong so at least we can get some comfort in that and in Canada I'm still hoping sloping if because like not this week too we didn't report on it really because like it's it's hard to keep track but

Trump said now that the tariffs are going to go in place on April 2nd. We'll see about that because he said that last time too, and then he backed out of the last second also. So we'll see. But if they go to... Right. They don't tariffs if you're the 51st state. Yeah, that is not going to so well. No, I can't imagine it. Yeah, I mean, it's not...

he didn't even suggest that that is insane but anyway yeah if it does go through with the tariffs which you know it's i gave it like a 50 50 chance right now i i'm all on board like open the doors to china like come come sell their evs here and uh yeah and see what happens i know there's a few still few manufacturing of energy vehicles in uh in canada that they would be too happy about but there's really not that many and and all of them are

I think all of them are American companies too. So like, why are we protecting American companies if the U.S. is going against our free trade agreement and putting tariffs on us? It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe the Canadian market will get a little bit more exciting by the end of the year. We'll see about that.

And then I'm going to be able to drive down. I'm going to drive down to UCEDD, to Vermont and New York with my Chinese issue. You can't buy it. Unless you want to pay 100% tariffs on it. No, I'll just drive it down. Yeah, it's not easy to do that either. All right.

That's it for us this week, everyone. I appreciate if you're still listening. If you are still listening, you can give us a like, a thumbs up, whatever it is on the app you're watching. It helps the show a ton. It's free to do, and we appreciate when you do it. Same thing if you're listening on your podcast app right now, if you can give us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, that helps the show a ton. And we're going to see you same time, same place next week. Have a fun one. Bye-bye.