Lucid Gravity first drive, Tesla Model Q rumors, Nikola heading to bankruptcy, and more
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Welcome to a new episode of The Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host. And as usual, I'm joined by Seth Wintraub, who took a little break last week, but he's back. And we have also Scooter Doll coming back from last week's episode. How are you doing, guys? Good. Good.

Wonderful. Happy to be here again. Perfect. All right. So no sponsor this week. So what does it mean? It means more time for you guys. So if you guys have any questions for us about any of the topics that are in the show notes today or any other topic in the EV world that you want us to discuss, you can jump into the comments section.

It's only going to be for myself and Saddop because Scooter has to go not too soon. So if you guys have questions about what we're going to talk about with Scooter right now, you should put them right in and we'll try to get to it right away. And that is starting with the Lucid Gravity, the highly anticipated electric SUV from the Californian brand. Scooter was one of the first ones that managed to drive it. And he posted an interesting article on it on Electric. How was it?

It was, it was an amazing experience. Um, as I said in my post, it's, it's something I've been looking forward to for years now. Um, they've been teasing the gravity ever since they shared the launch video of the air. So we've known it's coming, you know, we've gotten glimpses of it. Um, and I've gotten up close looks at it a couple of times the past year, but this was my, uh, my first opportunity to actually get behind the wheel. So, um, it was a great experience, got to really see everything inside and out and get the inner workings. And, uh,

Just being able to take it out on the road was quite an experience. Yeah, so you were saying something interesting about this. You're kind of saying that it's like more than one vehicle. Like it feels like several vehicles like smash into one or at least the best aspects of several different vehicles. Exactly. I think Lucid...

Derek Jenkins, who's head of their design over there, walked me through everything and talked about their new ad campaign that's basically compromised nothing. And I really think it holds true in the design of this vehicle. They've just combined the best elements of several different types of vehicles into one. And it really is just a real showcase of

design. It's sporty, it's fast, it's luxurious, it's modular, family friendly. It just checks all the boxes. And we just got the official EPA range, which I found out about last week, but we couldn't

share until this week, but the official EPA range is 450 miles in the Grand Touring trim, which is 10 miles more than originally advertised. Yeah. I mean, when it comes to efficiency, Lucid is really leading there. Yeah. I mean, the technology itself, the inner workings, Lucid is just miles ahead of most automakers. They just...

are masters in efficiency and they're able to provide technology that is smaller, lighter, and more powerful, which goes a really long way in the EV world, as you know. Giant Fronk, do you hear? Yep. Fronk with the bench seat. Yeah, giant Fronk.

Yeah, you could take a seat, show off, or just fill it with extra luggage. Tons of interior volume. The third row hides away, or you could use that little stowage below for luggage or whatever.

any other groceries or anything like that. But the drive itself was just, it was really interesting for, it's a relatively large vehicle. I mean, compared to other SUVs, there's competitors in the segment. It's,

probably even or shorter, um, uh, not as tall, but it's still a big vehicle inside because they maximized, uh, the interior. But when you're driving it, you don't feel any of that. I mean, it feels like an air sedan. Um, I, I said in my article, there was a point I forgot I was even in an SUV until I looked in the rear view mirror and saw three rows, you know, the two rows behind me. Um, it's, it's, it's nimble, it's sporty. Um, the,

The pre-production model I drove, I drove the Grand Touring. It had the suspension package that Lucid is going to offer. And they're also going to offer this on the Touring if you want. But not only are you able to change the height of the vehicle, depending on what you're doing, you could also change the stiffness of the air suspension in the springs. So you could have a very like plush suspension.

you know, easy, comfortable ride, or you can make it, you know, tighter and much more sporty and track ready, which I thought was awesome. Again, they, they just kind of give you everything in this vehicle. What am I looking at here with the steering wheel on the, so that would be, that's your, uh, your control. It's kind of like, um, a touchscreen or an Apple remote. You just use your finger, um, swipe, swipe and tap.

So the interior, like I'm not the most familiar with the air, but I assume that they are sharing a lot of parts here on the interior cockpit. They've actually changed it quite a bit. They moved the driver display up and it's now floating instead of being into the dashboard. They turned the center display horizontally and then they changed the wheel too. So it's more of that.

steering wheel. So it gives you a better line of sight while you're driving with the, with the floating display. Also some cool features like augmented reality HUD, which looks really cool. I was disappointed. I didn't get to test that out. It wasn't in the pre-production model.

But I am really looking forward to that because it looks very cool. It not only gives you like a line of sight in front of you like a HUD, but it'll show your next turn. And then as you get closer to it, the distance will shrink and it'll tell you basically they made it so you never miss a turn, that sort of thing. That's something I'm really interested to test out. The seats look great here. They remind me a little bit of the Volvo. Yeah. I mean, just great quality inside and out. Lots of different...

There's some color schemes on exterior and interior that match the air, but then there's a few that are new being introduced with gravity. So they're kind of expanding that. You could do more sustainable materials. And I think there's two interior options for quality leather. So that's the back screen. Yeah, back screen. What about the third row? What are we looking at here? The third row is...

extremely roomy. Um, I got, I, I think, uh, if you scroll down a little bit more, I took a picture of myself sitting in the third row before my drive. And, um, I, you know, I'm five 11, I had plenty of room and that's with the second row all the way back. So those second row seats could scoot forward even more, uh, depending on who you have or if you have anyone in those seats. Um,

but easy to get in and out of very roomy and comfortable. It's not like your knees were up in your chest or pressed against the seat. A lot of, I can't say enough about the way they maximized every inch of space in the interior of this vehicle. I think that's an eight foot surfboard. It's either eight or seven and they said they could fit another foot surfboard. So plenty of room there. Seats go down. You could do it at the press of a button or,

Um, or you could do them manually. So are they motorized? Yep. Yep. Oh, yeah. And they have that third row stows away in that little nook below. Completely flat. Completely flat. Mm-hmm. Oh, that's sweet. Yeah. Just a lot of little details, um, went into this and, uh, it really shows. I think it'll really resonate with, uh,

with people that are looking for an electric SUV, if they have the money for it, I mean, it's still a Lucid, it's still a luxury vehicle. So especially the grand touring coming, coming out, it just starts just under 95,000. So it's still an expensive vehicle. But the performance and the modularity of it, interior space and comfort and how it just, how it drives, it's, it's really impressive. I was thoroughly impressed. Yeah.

And as far as fit and finish, does it feel like Mercedes quality or maybe – I mean, I don't know. This is pre-production. Yeah. The model on display there that I took the images of is a production model, and it does look very Mercedes-esque. Fred, you commented on the seats. Everything looks –

Really well, very premium, well put together and nothing wobbly or shaky. It seems like a very, very sturdy vehicle. The one thing I, you know, I do worry about just for Lucid because of the air is UX and software. You know, they've had some issues, some bugs in the past, but they are going to be rolling out their UX 3.0 with gravity, which seems to have a ton of improvements. Yeah.

So I think if they could overcome that hurdle, I mean, they're a serious contender in the industry. Yeah, I mean, Sid has a good point. Like fit and finish needs to be on top of it because this is like a premium brand, premium prices. They're competing with the big boys that deliver on that quality level. And when you're a relatively new entrant in the industry, it's hard to have that premium attached to your brand. So they're still building that.

But in terms of actual specs and everything, it looks on point to me. The design, I mean, not for everyone, but like you said, it looks great. So I think especially with the level of efficiency that Lucid is achieving, resulting in this crazy range, that no other... You're going to be able to convince some people that buy crazy luxury SUVs.

This is, like they said, no compromise. You'll get, as long as the quality is there for the production and everything. And like you said, fair concern with the software. Have you, so we just posted, or we're about to, there's these rumors, well, I mean rumors are not rumors anymore, Peter Rawlson saying that...

They are discussing partnership with Automaker. So what's your dealings with Lucid in the last few weeks? Have you heard anything about that? I haven't heard anything, but I mean, it makes a lot of sense, right? They're...

Their technology is ahead of a lot of automakers, and I can see OEMs that are a little bit behind in the EV space turning to Lucid. Because of their efficiency, they're able to create smaller, more compact, lighter motors that are way more powerful than a lot of their competitors. And these are performance vehicles, like just making a regular old passenger car.

car. I mean, I can't imagine what they could bring to the table for that. Um, so licensing their technology makes a lot of sense for me. Um, and hopefully it could help fund, you know, their business further in developing their own vehicles, you know, as we move on to midsize and beyond. Any speculation? Yes, go ahead, Sid. Uh, just wondering any speculation on which company might be doing it? I, I haven't heard anything on my end. Volkswagen's doing stuff with Rivian. Yeah. Yeah. Um,

I'm really not sure. Maybe one of the premium Germans? I was thinking more Japanese companies. Yeah, I was thinking Japanese too. I was thinking Japanese too, but I don't know. And they needed the most. But timing-wise, it would be great because, yes, if they can partner with one of those higher volume automakers to license or produce for them, supply them,

with some of their power electronics or drivetrain powertrain batteries or whatever verters yeah all of it it would probably lower their cost to higher production higher volume which would be great timing for the transition into the higher volumes next generation vehicles that they have and also i would assume that the gravity itself helps with that because i would be shocked if

by this time next year, gravity is now way ahead of the air in terms of volume in the US at least. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's the plan. And then when touring comes, you know, that'll be more affordable. I think that's supposed to come in around 80k. And then I wouldn't be surprised if they try to make an even more affordable model. And I'm sure there'll be a tri-motor Sapphire version someday too. Yeah. That

That's got to be just ridiculous. One of the first deliveries planned right now for the Gravity? They should be rolling out very soon. Orders have been open, I think, since October. So I'd say if not later this month, early 2025. Okay.

All right, moving on. Another of your articles this week that was very interesting. Xiaomi has been making a lot of waves in the electric vehicle world, mostly known for their personal electronics and appliances. Now they've

just taken over with the SU-7 that you see on the left. And they're planning to continue that momentum with an SUV version, the YU-7, which looks insane, to be honest. Yeah. And you're already seeing a design correlation here, right? Like those vehicles look very similar. And I think that's part of the reason they were able to roll it out so quickly after the SU-7. I mean, they came out with the SU-7 just...

Ahead of schedule. I mean, every time I do a report on this company, they're ahead of schedule. So they're definitely taking a lot of their know-how in smartphones and electronics production, and they're just wielding it to crank out these EVs. But they seem to be quality. I mean, the performance specs and everything really make them competitive right out of the gate. And they're selling them like crazy, and they're producing them like crazy.

The ramp up was insane. 100,000 in six months or something like that? Yeah, it's unbelievable. And now, yeah, they were trying to make 100,000 in 2024 and they hit it like two months early and now they're aiming for 140,000 vehicles. This company didn't exist three years ago, at least the automotive division.

Yeah, the company was Vint for a while. So that was the only two image that they released here, front and back? Yeah, there were some more. I think I saw some more come out of the Chinese outlets the next day, just like a side profile. But we haven't seen any interior on the YU7 yet. But this was our first official glimpse of it. When the SU7 was coming out, they told us they were working on an SUV that they were going to use to compete against the Model Y.

And we saw some camoed images earlier this year, but this was our first official glance at it. And yeah, we're looking forward to an official launch next summer. But this is our first look and it looks sharp. That looks great. Yeah. It will be interesting to see it compete in China against the new version of the Malawi coming out next year. Yeah. And I think at the rate that they're moving through China and just the way they're ramping up, I think

would be very surprised if they weren't expanding to new markets very soon um you know possibly europe first and then you know maybe i don't know other parts of asia um but i i think they're they're all in on this so i could definitely see them expanding no it's one of those that i'm like ah it's a bummer that we don't get them in the u.s yeah i know i know all right the last one's an interesting one this is a space that's growing right now it's um

Trailers made for electric vehicles. We've seen a few new entries in the last few years and Lightship was one of them that caught my attention the most, but wasn't sure if they were actually going to get to production. And now it is, it is starting. You got to actually see this thing in person, right? Yeah. Yeah. I've, I've been following Lightship for a while. This is a company founded by two Tesla alums and I think they've taken a lot of that strategy and,

and know-how into this. And I think it shows. If you're on Electrek, anytime we cover electric vans, electric last mile delivery vehicles, everybody wants an electric RV, really. But this might be

Yeah, I, you know, I do too, but this might be the segue in the meantime. I don't, I think with where batteries are right now in a lot of, in a lot of ways, it's really hard to get the range that you want out of an RV and,

But having a towing trailer like this with an electric motor in it that helps maintain your vehicle's range, whether you're in a gas car or an EV, I think this is a nice little segue. And I think these are going to do really well. I think there's a market for this. I think the whole recreational vehicle camping industry is very stale right

So adding this level of technology and luxury, I think, is something really interesting. So it'll be fun to watch because, like you said, there's a couple other companies that are doing something similar. Yeah.

So this one is doing both the – it has its own drivetrain to compensate for the loss of range of the vehicle towing it. And also it has the aerodynamic improvements that you can see how low it is versus when it's –

I think they're selling a version without the electric drivetrain, so it could just be a trailer that you pull. But that still does help with aerodynamics just due to its design. But to really, especially with EVs, we know how much range you could lose by towing. Being able to put an electric motor back there and help alleviate some of that I think is huge. Okay. And right now they're selling the first 50 units for 250K each? Yeah.

Correct. This flagship design was originally called the L1. That's what we've reported on over the past couple of years. And they just, when they officially launched the production version, they're launching with a special Cosmos edition where they're only building 50. And they've renamed the trailer the AE-1.

So, yeah, we're starting with Cosmos, which is on sale now. And then there's going to be three additional trends to follow, which I've detailed there. Yeah. I have a starting price of $125K after the current price of the

cosmos edition but that's going to be in late 2026 yeah yeah they're going to try to get those more expensive ones out for first for sure yeah it's the right approach but this thing with like uh you know a silverado with the max battery pack or a rivian max battery pack like you can get some distance on this it's uh yeah it's really going to give people the

some level of parity between traditional gas cars and towing a trailer and going camping. You could go as far, if not farther, and then you have this sustainable recreational vehicle that can unfold and you have a little hotel room connected to your EV. Yeah.

And it looks sick. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's super cool. Like I said, this whole industry is very dated and they're bringing some cool to it. So I think it's, it's a long time coming. It's exciting to follow. And I'll have more on that to report on, you know, some of the competitors in probably in January, there's some other stuff in the works but I can't say anything on that yet, but there's a, there's a lot of exciting stuff going on in this segment.

Super, super. Well, I appreciate you joining the show, Scooter, this week. Everyone, if you want to read this stuff, it's on Electric every week and Scooter Doll on social media. And we'll have you back soon. Looking forward to it. Always a pleasure, gentlemen. All right. Have a good one, Scooter. Okay. See you. All right. Moving to some Tesla news.

This was a weird one that came out earlier this week. The Model Q rumors came out of China. There was a few reports on this that was really strange. So it was based on a meeting with Dutch bank and Tesla's new head of investor relations, Travis Axelrod.

So there was this meeting that apparently happened. And then from there, a bunch of reports came out in China about this model Q coming out next year, early next year, based on the Unbox platform, like the CyberCab, which weird because everything pointed to including Tesla saying that only the CyberCab is going to be on the Unbox for now.

Code name Redwood, 15% smaller and 30% lighter than the Model 3, equipped with LFP 53 and 75 kWh battery pack, single and dual motor option, coming in at about 218,000 Chinese yen, roughly 30,000 US dollars.

um it sounds like the the travis and particular didn't deny the report directly but he said like this was kind of uh taken a little bit out of context between the conversation with dutch bank it sounds more like this is dutch bank the the chinese report made it sound like it was travis saying that which gave weight to the rumors uh it very does sound like the other way around it's like they met with tesla's

investor relations but this is like dutch bank's idea of tesla's next vehicle and not but then the codename redwood into it like it's very muddy report but like i said in my take i gave it very little credibility right now because as far as we know they are two cheaper tesla vehicle coming early next year

On top of the new Model Y also. But they are not unboxed. But other than that, the specs should be probably somewhat similar to that. I mean, they do make sense to me. 30% lighter than Model 3 though. Yeah, especially with the LFP batteries. Those are heavier batteries. Generally, yeah. Yeah, 30% seems a little bit excessive. Unless they really stripped the inside of that thing. And the Model Tesla vehicles inside are already pretty stripped.

All right, I don't know about you, Seth, if you've been watching your supercharger pricing around you, but they've come down in the last two weeks. There's been a bunch of reports that Tesla was cutting down on supercharger prices. Much needed, because I don't know if you look at your supercharger prices lately, but Tesla

It was coming dangerously close to a tank of gas. In some places where it's like 60, 70 cents a kilowatt hour, like for the least efficient Tesla vehicles, like the bigger one, like the Cybertruck, Model S, Model X.

even more white to a certain degree, it was becoming a bit crazy. So we needed badly some price cuts there. And Tesla has implemented them. Max DeZegger, Tesla's new head of charging, has confirmed it on X, saying that they are aiming for...

the price low to accelerate EV adoption while we pass cost efficiencies, but also be efficiently sustainable to invest in the network growing dependable freedom of travel. So appreciate that. I looked at my local rates here and they have gone down. They were roughly like most stations around me were roughly 50 cents per kilowatt hour Canadian. And they've come down to 42. All the ones that I use in the two main corridors in Quebec.

I've come down $0.08 per kilowatt hour. Obviously, still a lot more expensive than the actual energy rates here, which are about $0.09 per kilowatt hour. But that's the thing with DC fast charging, and they have to account for the cost of operation of this station, the cost of the hardware, and also the peak rate charges when you use a lot of the energy at the same time, a lot of the power, it costs a lot more energy.

You're always better off charging at home. There's no doubt about it. Moving on from that. Okay, yeah, this was a weird one that came out today, and it's one to add to the list of collusion between Elon Musk and the Trump administration. It's still wild to me that the richest man in the world

who has giant stakes in a lot of companies that have direct relationship contracts with the government or is heavily impacted by government decision, is almost in charge of the transition team and a lot of the policies that Trump is planning to implement early on. And this one is probably the biggest example of

is Elon doing that for himself or is he doing that because he think he's actually helping and doing good for the population? Uh, I think that this will become clear from this example. Uh,

The Trump transition team, according to a router's report, they obtained a document from the team that says that they are planning to kill a program from NHTSA, a specific program about reporting crashes involving ADAS, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems. In these reports...

Tesla is the biggest reporter of that. Now, to be fair, it's not necessarily because they have a higher crash rate. It is because of two things. One, a lot more Tesla vehicles and other vehicles are using ADS system because they are standard. Autopilot is standard on Tesla vehicles. And then you have FSD also on top of that. That also is an ADS system.

And also, Tesla has high level of connectivity inside these vehicles, so they are aware of crashes a lot better than some other automakers, so they can report them better. But Tesla is complaining that they don't want to report that, which makes no sense because you have a new technology, rapidly evolving technology that affects the safety of every road user out there, whether you have a Tesla or not. You want to track that. You want to track how good it is. You want to track how dangerous it is.

And this is simply a program to track that. Now, to be fair, NHTSA has used that to issue a recall on Tesla vehicles last year. But that's not a bad thing per se, especially the recall was over the years software updates, so it's not the end of the world. But Tesla is lobbying to get that kill. And now it's one of the first things on the Trump transition team agenda

removing the need to report crashes involving autopilot and Tesla self-driving, which is, I don't know how you justify that, to be honest. It's just, it's madness. Yeah, it's hard to swallow, especially in light of all the other corruption happening. Yeah, you can get a lot done with $250 million to Trump's campaign, apparently. Yeah.

Do you see his tweet also this week? Like he said, anyone that invests a billion dollars in the U.S. will get expedited approval, even for environmental thing. And it's like everyone who invests a large amount of money in the country will get expedited processes for most of the time. So, Elon, again, I keep confusing the two. Trump saying that is more like, well, you'll get a guaranteed process approval.

That's what's weird. That's implied. No billionaire is thinking, I wonder if I'll get expedited process if I spend a billion dollars. Of course. Why are they even saying the quiet part? They don't need to say the quiet part out loud. Everybody knows that Trump is for sale. That's what I wrote in the article. I wrote like this is like

America, when you can have like open broad daylight corruption now, it's like it's out there at least. Everywhere else there's corruption. In Canada, we have a lot of problems with funding political campaigns because there's limitations on the funding per individual companies. So there was some backroom dealings going on.

In the U.S., you don't have that. I don't know if it's a plus or a negative, but at least it's right in the daylight. You know exactly what everyone is doing. It's clear as day. All right. Bad news for Tesla regarding the autopilot self-driving program. They lost their head of hardware engineering for the system to Zoox, of all people. Amazon self-driving startup, Zoox.

Which Tesla has had problems in the past. They had even a settlement with them. They claimed that they stole some logistics system from them. Some logistics trade secret. Not even like regarding self-driving. Just about logistics. And the Zoox ended up settling for that. That was years ago. So Zoox had some up and downs. And they got...

bailed out basically by Amazon. But they're doing pretty good now. They are leading in California based on the DMV reporting in terms of mile between this engagement. The last I saw was like over 100,000 miles. So they are...

We're way ahead of Tesla on that front. Obviously, they have a lower speed vehicle, city driving vehicle, so it is different, but it is a useful case, especially when you think about Amazon and what kind of vehicle Amazon needs. They're probably doing some good on there. And they also got the robot taxi service approved too in San Francisco, I think last week or last month. But yeah, now they have a new top engineer in Zhangzhou.

who was at Tesla for eight years in the last three, was leading autopilot hardware engineering. According to his LinkedIn profile, he was managing the mechanical engineering, thermal engineering, display engineering, and camera engineering teams for low voltage electronic system. So basically all this, the sensor suit and the latest Tesla vehicle these days were designed by him and his team. Before that, he was at Apple.

Yeah, so a great get for Zoox and also, you know, getting a little bit worrying for Tesla if Tesla is really about to deliver on supervised self-driving. I don't know where the head of hardware would leave, but who knows.

All right, this one was a weird one because last week we reported that Tesla's China comms teams, because they still have comms in China, denied a rumor that Tesla was planning to launch the Cybertruck in China. And yet this week, we see that Tesla has filed and got approval from the China Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for the energy consumption homologation for the Cybertruck.

So kind of a weird surprise. Why would they get homologation in energy consumption for a vehicle that they don't plan to launch? Like now it's kind of reigniting rumors of Tesla launching the Cybertruck in the world's biggest EV market. With that said, you know,

I think it would be weird just a few months ago, Elon said that it would be hard for Tesla to do that. Do we need to modify the Cybertruck to do it? This is only one of several steps in the amalgamation process that they need to do to do it. So it's not like...

This is done. And it could be something that would have needed to be done for, I don't know, private people importing the Cybertruck in China, which we've seen in the last few months. We even reported this week that BYD apparently got one to benchmark or reverse engineer.

So I don't know, maybe it's for that process, but obviously not specifically for BYD to do it, but for a general use case in the market. But something to note, something to, you know, more questions than answer at this point. All right, we just have a few more news items to discuss before we jump into the comment section. So if you guys have questions for us, you can put them in the comments right now on YouTube, on X, on Facebook, LinkedIn, everywhere. And we're going to get to them in just a few minutes.

Toyota, as on Ville, its next EV after the BZ4X. They also have the BZ3X, but that's just in China. This one, this new urban cruiser EV is expected to be more likely than not its next, maybe not global EV because there's no official plan for the US, but it's coming to Europe at least. So there's that. And I assume the local markets also in Japan. So it is...

A little bit bigger than its Yaris Cross, popular in Europe. So just a tiny bit bigger. It looks a bit weird on the side to me. I mean, it looks like they optimized the cabin and long wheelbase. You know, some short overhang in the front. Doesn't look bad, just kind of a weird profile. Big instrument display. Oh yeah, they partnership with the Suzuki for the platform. So it has a new dedicated EV platform. It's going to be offered in...

49 and 61 kilowatt-hour battery pack option with the smaller pack only coming with front-wheel drive producing 106 kilowatt-hour of power and 128, no, 135 for the dual motor version. Here, okay, you have a front-wheel drive also with a higher, okay, the front-wheel drive with the bigger battery pack has also a higher power at 128 kW.

The official debut is coming at the 2025 Brussels Motor Show and it's going to launch in the UK at least in Q3 2025. So we're still about a year away from launch and then it's going to be followed by other European market. The price is expected to be around £35,000 or US$45,500. Though again, no actual plan to launch this in America right now.

I mean, it kind of looks like the BZ whatever, right? 4X? It looks taller. Yeah, somewhere between that and a RAV4 maybe. Yeah, exactly. Closer to the RAV4 than the BZ4X. I mean, it looks kind of... I mean, it's supposed to be the urban cruiser, but it kind of looks off-roady. So, I don't know. I really think Toyota could just make a fully electric Prius. Those new Priuses look really nice. And they would sell a billion-dollar...

That's right. But you can see clearly from Toyota what vehicle they want to sell and what they don't want to sell. It's very clear as day. Let's call it the weirdest name and make it look not so great. All right. Kia has been teasing us about an electric pickup truck for a while now. And they've confirmed now that the Tasman pickup truck that they recently unveiled but was not electric is going to have an electric version of that specific model here.

However, it might not be the one that we get in North America. So I read this article from Pierre this week and I read the other reports and everything. And my understanding is that there's two electric pickup trucks coming from Kia. But one of them is going to be for emerging markets. And one of them is going to be for North American markets and other developing markets. So a little bit more feature buffed and probably longer range and whatnot. More expensive products.

And this one, so this one is probably the Tasman, which is going to be also electric, is probably going to be the one for emerging markets, according to what they said, because this was confirmed by Kia's head of marketing in South Africa. So that should give you a bit of an idea of where they plan to sell this. The Tasman is slightly smaller than the F-150 Lightning. Very different design, obviously.

Pretty big bed. A little bit Jeep-like from this angle. I'm not sure what it looks like. It looks like you asked AI to draw a Jeep mixed with a Land Cruiser or something. I don't know. Yeah, a bit of a Land Cruiser in there.

say because in the us there's been a pickup truck spotted with camouflage but it looked more like ev9 based so you know you can imagine maybe something a little bit bigger bigger cabin smaller bed something like that but it is coming so we're gonna have more competition in the electric pickup space in the u.s yeah always welcome

All right, last article before we jump into the comment section. Nikola is kind of in shambles lately. Well, lately. Lately and for the last four years or so. It's funny when you say Nikola. I'm always like, Nikola's still around? Yeah.

Yeah, they are. They are. It's, it's a bit sad at this point because, you know, they're still trying to siphon money out of the market money that could probably go to other projects that could have better chance of removing emissions from the trucking industry. And so that's, that's why I've been like focused on this lately, then a little bit, like we had like three articles this week on this on the last week. Uh,

It needs to end right now because they are just desperately trying to avoid bankruptcy, which is undoubtedly coming. And I think they went quiet now. They haven't posted anything since October, no press release or anything, despite a lot of things happening. But they're not talking about it because they did something this week where they're trying to raise $100 million at market.

Despite being worth right now $122 million. So do the math, you know, near 100% dilution. They have also converted, they managed to secure $65 million by converting some notes. So they gave share to note holders that they're not allowed to sell, which again, bad for shareholders.

And, yeah, it's just not going well because in those releases, in those SEC filings, at the very end, they hide the fact that, like, literally the last paragraph of, like, a 30-page filing, they say that they had more layoffs this week, which I reported on yesterday. They are losing, or at least last quarter, they lost $200 million, and they had about $200 million in cash, $650 million of debt.

So you do the math, its chances are very low of survival at this point. Now they did some 15% layoff in October, which should reduce their burn rate. And they did further layoff the last few weeks, but we don't know how deep they went. But what we do know, what we reported today is like, it looks like the layoffs were big enough that they stopped production now or they're fuel cell trucks. So-

If you remember what happened to their BEV trucks, they caught on fire a bunch of times. They had to recall them all and they're still going through that recall process. Last week, 40 trucks were spotted sitting in the dirt at their factory without battery packs and 100 more trucks were there. It wasn't clear if they were battery packs or not. The drone didn't win right over it, over them.

But yeah, it looks pretty awful right now for Nikola. And to me, what it looks like right now, it looks like Nikola is just, they're staying quiet. They're not announcing any of that stuff. Like literally like production stop, layoffs, running out of cash. They're not saying anything because I would assume that they have some kind of deal where these note holders that got away with a nice 65 million deal

are able to sell right now on the market while this is happening so they can unload a little bit more share on retail investors, which have been getting decimated on this stock for the last four years. It's wild. It was like four years ago that Trevor Milton left the company because of the allegations of misleading investors. It was two years ago that he was convicted for fraud. And this is still happening. This is...

Still around there trying to dump another 100 million shares worth, $100 million worth of share on shareholders. It's sad to see, really. And like I said, it doesn't mean, this doesn't mean that BEVs for trucks and FCEVs for trucks is a bad thing. I mean, FCEVs now, I always add my doubts and I still have serious doubt about it. I think BEVs are going to take over the semi-truck industry too. But,

This just looks to me like just a completely mismanaged project that, you know, from the start was started by a guy that was, you know, very sketchy to say the least in Trevor. Not literally no problem with lying. And then a bunch of people try to salvage this thing, didn't do the best job of it. And even if they would have done the best job, I'm not sure it would have worked out.

Yeah, it looks to me like this is finally the end of the debt spiral for Nikola. Oh yeah, they still owe $80 million on the $125 million SEC settlement that they did. So that was a direct settlement from the company. Because, you know, it's not just Trevor lied, but he lied in the name of the company. So they had to do a settlement there. And...

On the other way, at least, the company was thought they would be able to recover $165 million that the court ordered Trevor to give back to the company, but they have so far failed to recover that from Trevor. So...

That could be their saving grace, or at least their saving grace, like maybe give them an extra quarter. Because in their last filing last week, they said that we currently estimate that our existing financial resources are only adequate to foreigner-forecasted operating costs and meet our obligation into but not through the first quarter of 2025. So they are literally less than four months away from bankruptcy.

um like i said i think they're just pushing it as long as they can so those note holders can just unload their shares on on retail investors which is not what a company is supposed to do yeah it's sad all right do we have a few questions to get through yeah so strangely uh the twitter things are coming up out of order but um

We didn't discuss this, but the real reason that Trump is looking to cancel the new USPS trucks, they are way behind schedule and don't work as advertised. Get the scoop from Washington Post. They're, of course, talking about those really ugly... Oshkosh? Oshkosh, yeah. Oshkosh. Vehicles and, you know, a company that's never made EVs. Strangely, from a Trump employee, he got the...

Big money to make EVs. Just buy a bunch of 4D transits. This is not hard stuff. They make vehicles that do mail routes. Don't reinvent a mail truck when there's stuff already out there. That's right. That's from the Trump administration, that deal, right? Well, the guy, the postmaster general was from the Trump administration. Yeah. Yeah.

Because I saw Elon was shitting on the deal. It was like that was a bad deal and everything. I was like, yeah, but tell that to your buddy. Right. DeJoy, I think is the name of it. Yeah, I can now remember, yeah. All right, move on from Lucid. No one cares that they sell less than 3,000 cars a quarter. I don't know. I think they're pretty sweet cars, and I've seen quite a bit around. I'm supposed to get one in two weeks to test. Okay.

Yeah, I mean, there's a luxury market and it needs to be electrified too. And they have a chance of electrifying it a little bit. And they have ambitions for lower market vehicles too. And it makes sense to start with higher end vehicles when you want to get there. Yeah, and it also sounds like they're going to be licensing some of their technology, which might find its way into higher volume vehicles. I mean, nobody disputes like their motors are quite efficient and

Kind of the best, best to breed really. All right. We were talking about the gravity. How does it compare to the R1S, which seems heavy and inefficient by comparison? I don't know if the gravity is really meant to go off road like the R1S. I don't know if they're really good comparisons. Yeah, I think you're right. All right. Let's go on. How is driving pace coordinated between the EV and the trailer? Yeah, I was kind of wondering about that too. I mean, I'm sure they can do it. I just don't know what technology they use.

Yeah, I think it might be just like a cruising speed maybe that they try to alleviate that. Yeah, that's a good question. We should ask Scooter Dad for it. I mean, they could have like a torque sensor in the latch. Like if it's pulling, put in more electricity. If it's pushing, less electricity. If it's even, chill. That's kind of how they do e-bikes. So it's not rocket science.

All right. Skeptic says Musk doesn't even bother to hide his corruption anymore because his boss is just as corrupt as he is. Who's the boss? Is he the boss or is this from the boss? Who's running this thing? Yeah. Normally the boss is the one who signs the checks. Right. How long until there's an argument there? Oh, yeah. I gave them until the end of 2025. All right. Let's see how it goes. I'm sure they've got backroom deals going.

All right. Will you overnight a demo from Tesla store to test V13? Chuck Cook is impressed but agrees with you. Unsupervised wide by, huh. Can you translate that into understand? There's not going to be any unsupervised wide release of full self-driving by Q2 2025, which is what Tesla is claiming right now.

Yeah, I mean, I'm close to closing on a deal on a new car myself now to actually be able to test out the new SFSD upgrade and still, you know. A version 4 hardware? Yeah, yeah. What are you getting? My problem right now is like I'm kind of a little torn. So at first I wanted to do a lease deal.

Okay. Because of the buyouts, I was like, okay, now this is worth it because I don't want to just give my Fizzy away after three years. That's the reason I'm moving over is to actually use that thing and report on it. And I don't know that they're going to deliver or supervise within three years on that card too. So there's several reasons why I need a buyout. But now...

Because I did the math on the Model 3 and the Model Y. I was basically, by exchanging my Model 3, and I have $9,000 in Tesla credits right now. I was basically going to drive for free, the new car for free for three years, and Tesla was going to give me like $12,000 on top of it.

So I was like, this is a great deal. And then after three years, Tesla takes the risk of the devaluation of the Model 3 and Model Y. I was leaning towards the Model 3, but that's my thing. So now in Canada, we don't have the buyouts on Model 3 and Model Y for loans. It's only Model S and X. So screw that plan. So now I'm looking at buying it. But there's one thing that pisses me off.

The 0% APR is just on if you buy FSD, not if you transfer it, which is nonsense. Really? In my opinion. I already paid for FSD. You should just give me the same deal that someone bought it. Especially, I'm doing you a favor because I'm giving up an hardware 3 car that you don't want on the road with FSD anymore because you know you can't deliver it or at least…

whatever. So I'm moving on to the artwork for, so you should, you should encourage me to do that. So without that, I'm going to have to buy it. Right. Cause I don't, I'm for sure not paying 5% interest on, on this, but this is me off because I could have 0% interest and, you know, not have to take out $20,000 on top of my model three and the credit that I have. And the other thing that is kind of annoying me is that,

The Model Y is interesting to me. Like it would be a little bit bigger. I would finally have an H. I would have an H, a tow H. But, you know, the actually I know the new Model Y is coming just next month. So I'm like or in the few months that that's annoying me a little bit.

And I do have the loyalty incentive of $2,600 in Canada on the Model Y. So that's leaning me toward that. Model 3 doesn't have the $2,600 incentive for whatever reason. In the U.S., you have it, $2,000 or whatever. But the Model 3 is interesting because, yeah, it's the new version.

but more efficient. But at the same time, I don't know if it's that much different than my Model 3. So I'm still like, I'm in between. Have you made any progress on your side? No, I have not made any progress. There's a lot of family paperwork that has to be done. But what I would say, the Model Y drives like garbage compared to Model 3. It's just not as fun to drive at all.

But if you do stuff like, you know, if you're doing long trips, car camping, stuff like that, Model Y is great. Like it's, you know, it's got a ton of room. It's just a great car size-wise for, you know. The flip side obviously is, you know, it drives like garbage. Yeah. Yeah.

The hatch thing, the back is something. But at the same time, I'm looking on the market next year for an electric pickup truck on top of it. So maybe I don't need it. Maybe I go with the Model 3 and just bite the bullet on the loyalty. There's some insane deals on electric pickups, Silverados and F-150s.

Yeah, there are deals, but right now I'm looking to upgrade the Tesla just so I can keep testing the FSD and all that and not lose my FSD too. It's becoming useless now with hardware 3. Carl says, Fred, just buy an i4. You know, my friend just bought an i4 and he's like gaga over it. He got the M version, so it's fast. Yeah, that's a nice car. He's just in love with it.

Yeah, but again, will they transfer my FSD or will they even value my FSD in my trade-in? Nope. Yeah, that's the thing. It's like I'm losing money on my car. Otherwise, I'm leaving value. But you could sell it on like the secondary market, you know, just put it on Craigslist or whatever. Yeah. All right. Will people value the FSD on that too? That's right. Yeah.

I don't know. Anyway, unsupervised FST outside of geofenced area will never happen, in my opinion. If somehow it does happen, it'll be a disaster that sets back autonomous driving a decade. I mean, it will never happen on the current hardware available. Yes, I agree with you. And if it does, it would be probably a disaster, yeah, because there would be some serious accident, most likely than not. Will never happen, period, though I don't...

that I disagree with. Like there has been significant improvement. Like I can't see a path there right now. It's just, it's a crazy long path over, you know, five, six years, which makes no sense because Tesla is saying six months, but maybe a new hardware, maybe a hardware five gets there a little bit closer, maybe like three years or something like that could make sense. Like this, like I'm not on the reasonable thing that Tesla is not going to get there. I,

Truly impressed with Tesla FSD is simply that what I disagree with is selling it as it's about to become full self-driving when you don't know that, when you've proven that you don't know that, and using that to sell cars on top of it. It looks like a classic case of misleading advertising and all that. Classic. Yeah.

All right. Does it not matter how good Lucid builds cars if they cannot do it profitably, need volume to bring costs down? Gravity is going to help on that. I think gravity is going to be higher volume. And then, you know, higher volume vehicles are going to come after that, just like Rivian is doing with the R2s and all that. There's a path to it. Let's not act like we don't know where things are going. It's not impossible that you don't get there. But, you know, they have a nice sugar daddy. And they might get another one now if they do get a deal with another brand.

This is amusing. Rumi says, I see that it will be very difficult for any legacy EV maker to survive in North America except Tesla. Will you guys be elect Tesla in five years? It's amusing because I was originally going to get called electric nine to five Tesla. I mean, that was one of the ideas, but yeah, wanted to be more generic.

I mean, I think that's what Elon wants. It's kind of his goal is that to just cripple the EV market in North America so that the domestic manufacturers have a tough time competing in it and they either die or turn to gasoline powered vehicles.

and lose their expertise because they only sell them in Europe and Asia, which we know that for U.S. manufacturers, that's a difficult thing to do. U.S. manufacturers have failed many times in Europe, and they have had a tough time in China, or they don't own entirely their production in China, which is also problematic. So even though the situation will hurt Tesla in North America, it feels like it will hurt them less.

And over the next few years, Tesla's market share will be able to come back up, which was always... The plan was the other way around. The plan was like, we'll dominate at first, but then they will start to catch up, but the volumes will increase and we're going to take over the gasoline market altogether. Instead, now it's like it's us or nothing. It's coming back to what Sam Altman said earlier.

you love him or hate him. I think that line stuck with me for a reason. It's like, Elon wants to save the world, but only if he's the one saving it. Like it sounds about right. Yeah.

All right. Well, that's it for this week's episode, everyone. I hope you enjoyed. If you did enjoy, you can hit the like button. You can subscribe, hit the notification button. All those are good things. They're free to do and they help the show more than you think. We appreciate when you do it. You can leave us a five-star review on the Apple podcast too. That also helps a ton and we appreciate when you do it. And we're going to see you same time, same place next week. Have a safe weekend. Bye-bye.