More Cybertruck news, Tesla update, Lucid Gravity, and more
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And we are live for a new episode of The Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lemberger-Oss and I'm joined by Seth Wirtraub. How are you doing today, Seth? I'm good.

All right, this week's episode is sponsored by VMAX. If you're looking for a high-quality e-scooter with superior performance, check out the new VX5, VX2 Pro, VX4, and the R40 and R55 high-speed race scooters from VMAX. We're going to have a little bit more to say about them later on the show. And today's episode is also sponsored by...

And electric cycling specialist currently offering $400 off on your next e-bike purchase during the Cycrown's early Black Friday sale. A little bit more to say about them also on the show. So stay tuned for that.

But let's jump right into the news this week. We're going to start with a little bit of a Tesla news, as we usually do. And then we have an unveiling of the Lucid Gravity, the SUV that we've been waiting for. We have also the new Cadillac Optic EV, a new EV from Cadillac, and a bunch more. So let's jump right in with some Cybertruck news, which has been our go-to in the last few weeks because there's a lot of little tidbits of information coming out ahead of the

official unveiling that is coming November 30th. This week, there was this video making the rounds that was a very confusing video. We don't know how it got made. It was posted on Instagram and on TikTok. And it's someone walking up to...

a Cybertruck prototype and getting inside of it like there's nothing and filming the inside of the truck as well as the outside. So it's very strange because there's been plenty of Cybertruck sightings over the last few weeks, over the last few months and

Tesla's engineers that are driving these trucks have been pretty welcoming to people, like taking pictures and like talking to them a little bit, but never of the interior. They don't let people take the pictures of interiors of the car. And when the car is parked, they generally put something over it to hide the interior and to hide the truck in itself, really. But...

This time someone was able to just get in, film the interior. So we got a good look at it. We got, I can put the video right. I don't know if this sounds going to be on. Okay. That's okay. No sound. Good soundtrack too. There's a soundtrack. They put a good soundtrack on there too. But you cannot hear it right now, right? Oh yeah. I can hear it. You can hear it. Really? I cannot. So weird. Oh, it should be gone.

So yeah, you see the user interface. You see the side doors. You see all the pockets in there. You see a good look at the seats. The back seat looks like it's up. So you don't see the actual back seat, but you see the screen in between the front seat. You get a good look at the tonneau cover. I don't know if that's real speed. If it is real speed, it's pretty damn fast. Yeah. And then a quick look at the outside too.

But so definitely our best look at inside the Cybertruck since the unveiling. And then the other thing that came out of it is like, if you look at that screen right here, you can get some information about the range of the truck. Now we need to put this into context because a lot of people are freaking out because technically it says a range of 267 miles. It's like, is it going to be a top range of the Cybertruck or the first version, whatever it is. But

What it is, is based on the navigation system, if you look at the... So whoever was driving that truck at a location in the navigation that was only 16 miles away...

And you can deduct the displayed range from that by using the 71% state of charge right now. Test always on the prototypes, always use the state of charge and percentage rather than in miles for obvious reasons to try to disguise the range of the car. But knowing the 71% and knowing that you're going to be at 65% within 16 miles, you can add that up over 100 miles. You can scale it up and you end up at roughly 267 miles of range.

Now, that's not the EPA range of the vehicle. It's the displayed range calculated through the navigation system. And we know the navigation system takes a lot of factors into account, including the driving habits of the driver over a certain period of miles, wind resistance, elevation. There's so many things that are taken into account that the predicted range on the navigation of the Tesla vehicle is going to be much shorter. Well,

Not necessarily much shorter, but definitely shorter than the range of the EPA range. A lot of people are trying to give a number to that. If you look at what the Model 3, Model Y is doing, again, it's so wide. There's a wide range here, but a lot of people are saying it's about 80%.

the navigation range versus the EPA range. So you could scale that up to the 267 and get over like around a 350 mile range on the car, which would be in line with what Tesla has announced. If it's a dual motor version, a dual motor was announced at over 300 miles of range. And then the tri-motor version was announced at over 500 miles of range. But that was four years ago at this point. And we don't know exactly what that's going to be like on the production version of the vehicle.

But yeah, it's still some decent information coming out here, just not perfect. Any thoughts on the range set? Yeah. I mean, I guess it's a range, but still, I think people were kind of expecting a lot more range. And obviously, we've talked in the past about how Tesla is extremely optimistic with their range estimates. So it'll be interesting to see what

you know, how this is extrapolated out, how this ends up working. I mean, you know, it's a prototype. It could, could be literally anything, but yeah,

It is interesting to see this. Yeah, it could even be like the car was towing like in the last few miles before that and that was taken into account. Like, we don't know. I'm just throwing things out there, obviously. Maybe they're testing it, driving at 100 miles per hour. Yeah, maybe the guy was accelerating like crazy, doing some off-road. We have no clue.

But 267 miles is not bad to either with, again, within the knowing how Tesla is optimistic with the EPA. So the EPA would be much harder than that.

I didn't include that because I just posted it before the podcast too, but while we're still on the Cybertruck, I want to mention Javier Verdura, I think is his name, a longtime Tesla design executive, was on a conference in Monterrey, Mexico earlier today, and he apparently disclosed that Tesla is only going to deliver 10 Cybertrucks at the delivery event at the end of the month. So also a little tidbit of information there.

It's not too surprising. If you look at past delivery events for Tesla, there was never a big number. I remember the Model 3 maybe being a lot more cars than that. I think there was a decent number of cars that were delivered. But Model Y, there wasn't that many either. All right. So this thing happened earlier this week. Tesla updated...

the section of its buyer's agreement for Cybertruck online. And they added a clause in there where you couldn't resell the early version of the Cybertruck. So do we have the exact language? So that's the other poster here.

Well, I won't read that whole thing. It was a little bit longer than I remembered it. But anyway, the agreement is that Tesla is going to sue you for up to $50,000 if you resell a low-end version of the Cybertruck for a period of time that is included in the contract. So while they have this clause in the early contract, obviously they would remove the clause after a certain time because it's part of a...

car ownership to have to resell your car at some point. But this is something that Tesla is not the only one to have adopted. A lot of other automakers have adopted this for high interest vehicles. Normally, it's more like in the supercar type sphere than pickup trucks. But with the extremely high interest in the Tesla Cybertruck, it does make sense to have something like that just to avoid...

making the market just about reselling, about having a low VIN rather than respecting the delivery of the reservation process, even though we know Tesla has a lot of problem with that. But people have put their reservation early for a Cybertruck. Now some are waiting for four years.

And Tesla doesn't want to be the whole lunch about being just trying to make money flipping the Cybertruck. Now, what's interesting is that after it was reported that Tesla put that in there, a few days later, they removed it. Now, there's a lot of speculation about why they removed it. A lot of people say that Tesla just backtracked it for some backlash of some people being upset about this clause.

We don't know. Obviously, we have no one to reach out to Tesla to ask about this. But I tend to believe that it might be more about simply Tesla realizing that that agreement shouldn't even have been there in the first place yet because Tesla is not delivering any trucks right now and not for a few weeks. And even then, for a few weeks, it's most likely only going to be for Tesla.

employees or company insiders, basically maybe like board members and whatnot. So I think maybe Tesla was just ahead of itself. I wouldn't be surprised if that cause shows itself back once the full agreement is available, but we'll see. It does bring up a question though, like how do you kind of curtail the people just selling, you know, flipping their vehicles? It was kind of interesting. I was at a Rivian event and talking to one of their people about

This exact issue and they were they they were trying to figure out a strategy to avoid that. And one of the things they came up with is that they would sell one of their vehicles to one of their early reservation holders. But then every other vehicle they were thinking, we're going to put that on eBay and we're going to get the most money that we possibly can out of it.

And then the next vehicle they would sell to one of their customers. Because Rivians at the time were going for like, you know, $150,000, $200,000. Were they though? Like, I know they were listed for that, but do we know actually people paid that? I think there were a few people. I don't think it was like, you know. It's not a high number of cars.

But the idea was to get people to stop. If Rivian was putting them up, you would buy from Rivian rather than buying secondhand. Anyway, they didn't do it. And here we are. Yeah, I think it might have something to do also with like there was the –

peterson museum that put one first up for sale and they said it was a low number of in and we're not even sure if tesla was involved in that and that went for four hundred thousand dollars so obviously that could create a market by itself uh uh with like a first first evidence of uh of the cyber a low-end cyber truck being sold for a high amount so i don't know it's uh i don't understand that market that much like i understand like a

A rare vehicle that you might want to pay a good amount for, but I don't even have feedback in my headphones. It's weird. But yeah, I don't understand a truck that is going to be 250,000 of these trucks by 2025 on the road. So I don't know how much of a low VIN would actually go for. I guess if your crowd wants to see Cybertruck, like having it out early, being the first one, there's a certain cachet to that.

You know what I think is going to pay for those early VIN at the high price? Who's that? Other automakers. It's just reverse engineers and everything. Yeah, I'm sure Ford and Radeon will be on that list. Yeah, Ford would be willing to pay $400,000 for one. But the goal of that truck is going to be to destroy it basically. So it's not someone that's going to keep it and hope that it becomes a collector's item. Right.

All right, we got a second deal of Tesla selling superchargers to a third party. So that was an interesting one when it was announced last month with BP buying $100 million worth of supercharger hardware in order to brand them BP station and install them at gas station in the U.S.,

Now we have a second of such deal. And at the time, too, Tesla did say that this is a new business they want to get into. So that was the first deal. And we expect the other deal to come. It just took a few weeks for them to announce a new deal with the EG Group, which is actually a very big group. Interestingly, also based in the UK. So BP are the British Petroleum, but BP...

is UK-based, but these stations were apparently for a gas station in the US. So the EG Group...

Operates, put them in there. Yeah, they are mainly in Europe. They have 3,000 something location in Europe. They have 1,700 in the US, 600 in the UK and Ireland, 500 in Australia. So a very large group that operates convenience stores and gas stations. And they've been deploying their own chargers. They have some at 600. They have 600 deploys at 109 sites right now, but they want to expand that. And instead of buying them from

ChargePoint or Tritium or ABB, they decided to buy them from Tesla. So not unlike the deal with BP, but we don't have a scale volume for that deal. There's no dollar amount like there was for the BP deal or no number of station. But they did say that they plan to roll out more than 20,000 superchargers at 3,600 sites. And again, right now they are at 600. So...

There's a lot of opportunity for it. I'm not saying that Tesla is going to deploy all those stations, but it could very likely be a very big deal. This is a very interesting new business for Tesla because obviously with the NAX, what happened with NAX, Tesla...

made itself very strong in North America in the charging space and they hit hard the charging station companies, especially the level two station because now they all have to adapt to NACs and at the same time Tesla just cut the grass under their feet with the universal wall connector that has both NACs and CCS at the same time and it is super cheap.

and also has all the specs that you need for home station. So it makes it like a very attractive buy for EV buyers now. And all these charging station companies were already relying mostly on non-Tesla EVs. You could buy one if you had a Tesla, but for the most part, they were relying on non-Tesla EVs because they are the ones that had a native J1772 chargers.

And now everything is moving to NAX. So it makes sense to buy a NAX station. And even if you don't have a NAX car right now, you might think, oh, I can at least get a wall connector from Tesla and use the J1772 adapter in the meantime. And then just use the NAX connector whenever I get another EV that's going to have NAX. Because starting from 2025, it sounds like every other EV in the US is going to have a NAX connector.

So Tesla's already made a big impact on charging station company from that. And now it's going after the fast charging station market by selling the hardware, the supercharger hardware, which we know for a fact that is much cheaper to deploy than competitors right now. So Tesla getting into that business, they might have a big advantage over the competition already just from cost of deployment.

Next news is this rare information coming out of Tesla's investor relation department confirming something that we already knew really, but it was never stated clearly by the company. So if you're a Tesla investor, you know this famous 50% growth rate number that Tesla stated many times over the last few years. They are very confident that Tesla can grow at a 50% rate.

On the long term, it doesn't mean a 50% rate every year, but long term, it's going to add up to a 50% rate of growth, which is completely insane for the toolmaker of that side. This is kind of like a software startup type of growth rate, which is a lot easier to achieve, obviously, in software. When you have a car with 10,000 unique parts in them, it doesn't make sense to grow to 50%.

rate but tesla had a lot of credibility in making that announcement because they have been growing at that rate and better for the last few years maybe not at the 2 million unit rates that they are right now but still very impressive but now now that they are at 2 million units a year growing 50 a year that's quite the task and we were not sure how tesla was gonna achieve that and um

Gary Black, who's a longtime Tesla investor and commentator online, said that at an investor conference this week, Tesla IR, Tesla's Investor Relations, said that they are, the way he phrased it in his own post is that Tesla is now in an intermediate low growth period. So inting at less than 50%, obviously. And then Martin Vieca, the head of Investor Relations at Tesla said,

jumped into that post to clarify. He said, what I said specifically is that we are between two major growth waves. The first driven by three and Y platforms since 2017. And the next one that will be driven by the next gen vehicle platform. So that's a good point.

So basically what he said is that we had a giant growth wave from Model 3 and Model Y, which we've seen. And now Model 3 and Model Y seems to be plateauing a bit. There is some hope with the new Model 3, the updated version of the Model 3. It might be some growth there. Model Y has already had over a million units a year. There might be some space for growth there, but not much. And then you have the Cybertruck that is launching by the end of the month. But Cybertruck won't be any kind of significant volume for

a year at least. And even at full volume, Cybertruck doesn't enable 50% growth. 50% growth for Tesla next year is going to be adding a million vehicles to the production capacity and to sales at Tesla. And Cybertruck is going to be 250. So that's a quarter of that. How do you get the other three quarters? That's the big question. So basically, Vietcote has confirmed that

That's going to be it. It's not going to be that kind of growth next year for Tesla. The next growth is coming from the next-gen vehicles, and that's a big question mark because when is the next-gen vehicle or next-gen vehicle platform for Tesla coming? We don't know exactly. We know that there has been some production development at Gigafactory Texas, but we know that until very recently, the plan was to build it in Mexico, and then Mexico was delayed.

Though we also had the good news in Berlin where Elon said that the next gen vehicles are also going to be built there. So we don't know. The timeline is what we don't know for the next gen vehicle right now, but it's the one that's supposed to be based on the on-box manufacturing process. But so...

They're talking about profits, right? They're talking about profit growth or revenue growth or numbers growth? Well, I didn't specify that here. So volumes, talk about volumes. Yeah, so volume growth. Okay, because I was going to say, we've already known that the Cybertruck is going to take a long time to turn a profit. Relatively long, not really a long time, but a year or so at least.

Probably a lot more. So I would see like that would make sense as a low growth period in terms of profitability. But in terms of numbers, it is a little surprising that there is no Model Y, Model 3 growth predicted for the future.

the next year or so. There might be some, there might be some, just not nothing significant. Like, can you imagine this growing Model Y, Model 3 more than like 10, 15% next year? I mean, that would be a huge amount of vehicles. Like there's already Model Ys everywhere right now. So a million vehicle a year. And now, so it's a hundred thousand more to just grow it by 10%. Right. I don't see that happening, but you never know. You never know.

Tesla has surprised us in the past. You know what? We should do our first read. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do right now. Let's talk a little bit about VMAX. All right. I should probably find these before I say doing our next read. All right. Today's episode is sponsored by VMAX Mobility, one of Europe's leading e-scooter brands. The brand was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Switzerland. After eight years of growth in Europe, VMAX e-scooters are now available in North America.

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All right. Speaking of sponsors and advertising, Tesla has published their first video ads since dipping their toes in advertising. So for those unaware, Tesla has never really advertised before until this year. A lot of marketing. So there's a big distinction between marketing and advertising. Advertising is actually advertising.

Paying for advertising space, advertising time versus marketing can englobe a ton of different tools, including producing videos that are much like advertisement, but they're not

being pushed uh to paid time paid space uh they were just put on their youtube and uh shared by tesla fans but in this case now tesla has produced their first video ads which people have been pushing for so since tesla did its toes in advertising earlier this year after it was asked by tesla investors and elon said yeah we're gonna try it a little and see how it goes this has done a bunch of google ads so written ads but now they have on youtube a lot of people have noted that uh

Maybe there was one before you opened this show right now. I don't know. That would be kind of cool. But yeah, this pre-roll from YouTube. And the first one focused on safety. So the test vehicles have performed very well on the safety crash test. Your thing is playing noise again. I don't know why I'm not getting feedback in my headphones. I can hear you, but I cannot hear the stream. It's strange. That's weird. But yeah.

So it focused on safety. This has done very well in crash test results. And now the...

Specific ads also, you have a link on it. So if you place on the link, you ended up on the demo page to schedule test drives from Tesla. So an interesting approach. There's been a second video ad also spotted today focusing more on pricing. The premise was kind of like the best selling car in the world. You can now get it for $400 a month, which is the base lease price, I think, for the Model Y now. But yeah, interesting.

Tesla is a little bit more than dipping in stoles right now, or at least maybe dipping in stoles in the video ads, but a wider advertising effort, which is going to be interesting because so far in the last year and a half, two years, Tesla has...

We relied mostly, if not entirely, on price cuts in order to keep demand going. But a lot of people have been making the argument that without having done any advertising since the beginning of the company, there might be an opportunity to reach different people with ads rather than price cuts and do it cheaper than price cuts, really.

So it would be interesting to see the result from that. But Elon has been commenting on this lately and he said that they're basically testing a bunch of things, seeing what works. And once they find out what works, they're probably going to invest more heavily into their advertising effort. You're surprised there's not more on Twitter or X, Twitter or whatever?

I mean, I don't know. I'll kind of run my little ad block sometime on the X out of defiance. But I think it would be just...

It wouldn't go over super well, I think, if Elon used Tesla to boost X's advertising, especially in the current context right now. You guys have been following a lot of people are pulling their ads from X again, not the first time, over Elon putting his foot in his mouth again. But what else is new?

It was an interesting Tesla update this week that brought two small but interesting features to Tesla vehicles. One, Tesla vehicles with autopilot and full self-driving. Now you only pull down one time on the stock to activate autopilot rather than two times.

uh so tesla is making it a little bit more simple i guess but not that it was super complicated before uh but yeah going slowly towards a wheel like that and eventually it's going to be no pull it's just going to get in the car and the car is going to drive itself it's just going to know it's going to know when you want it to drive exactly or maybe you won't take your hands off the wheel yeah maybe you won't even be able to drive it yourself i don't know uh but it

This move feels like Tesla is preparing people that way, even though I'm a little bit skeptical, but we'll see. The second update is for people that have a Tesla vehicle that has the rear screen. So that's the new Model S and X, new Highland 3 in Europe and Asia. It's...

Now you have a way for people to separate the audio from the front and the back, meaning that someone, the driver and the front passenger can listen to a podcast that is running from the main screen. Obviously, it's not...

on the screen, but like you control it from the screen, the main screen of the car. And you can have kids in the back watching a show on Netflix on the rear screen. But the problem with that is that you have the audio from the front and the audio from the back. So now to separate that, there's a way now for passengers to connect Bluetooth wireless headphones to

through the back screen and then have the audio just from the back screen going there. So obviously very helpful for families traveling and you have something playing in the back, something else in the front. Should we do our second read? Yeah, let's jump right into it.

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Oops, I lost this. I pressed the wrong button. All right.

Moving on from Tesla news, we have a few other news items we want to discuss before we jump into the comments section. So if you guys have any comments, any questions for us, you can put them in the comments section right now. It can be about things that we discussed today on the show or it can be something else in the EV space that you want or take on. Put it in the comments section right now. If you're on YouTube, Facebook or LinkedIn, we should be able to see those comments and respond to you live on the show.

All right, big unveiling this week in, I think it was with the LA Auto Show or at least around that, the occasion. Lucid officially fully unveiling the Gravity SUV. So that's something that we've been waiting for for a while because Lucid has been struggling a little bit with the air since it's mainly in the US right now, obviously in Canada and Europe a little bit, but still.

still the footprint is mainly the US and luxury sedans right now are hard to sell in the US. So an SUV would be a lot easier. And we knew about the gravity. We knew about the gravity coming for a long time. I mean, it leaked all the way back when before the air even made it to market. And we know that you're using the same platform, but they want to do it in a SUV form factor. And now it is finally here. We have a bunch of image elements.

like we can share with you. So if you look at the front end, it's going to be familiar with the Lucid branding. But the back obviously is the biggest difference here with the hatch. A little bit of gravity styling here with a roof rack looking pretty good, looking pretty sleek. Roof rack and the bike rack at the back. You have the hatch open here.

Looks like the hatch opening is kind of thick a little bit like on the sides. Yeah. But the air is like that also. Yeah. I mean, with the hatch in the back is going to be a big deal because the air has a relatively small opening. Yeah. But this year, I don't understand as much. Yeah, it's weird. Yeah.

But the air is like that too. Spec-wise, let's look at the interior a little bit. While the interior is obviously closer to the air, Lucid is known for very luxurious feeling interior. I heard some comments from people that are not a fan, but I wish I could drive one. I've never driven an air yet. Yeah, and they have the front window that kind of comes up over like the Model X. Mm-hmm.

We have the front screen that also has analog buttons on it. I know that a lot of people like to have analog buttons for some of the most common inputs that you need to have. You have these nice trays in the back here. That's nice. Good looking interior. You have the rear screen too, like we just discussed on the Tesla vehicle. 34-inch curved OLED display in the front.

Oh yeah, and obviously the feature a lot of people are talking about with this truck is the front trunk can also be a bench. That's like the... Cybertruck. Yeah, I don't like the Cybertruck, but it's the feature a lot of people are talking about here because it's... Yeah, it's like a porch for your car. Yeah, great for tailgating or front gating, I guess. Yeah.

Spec wise, do we have a nice chart here? There you go. 900 volt architecture, 113 kilowatt hour version. So about the same size as the Air.

range of up to 444 miles. Obviously, Lucid has been known for offering long range versions of its vehicles. It's been a trademark of them. Charging up to 200 miles in 15 minutes on the 350 kilowatts. So if you can get that kind of power up

Up to over 800 horsepower. So still a lot of power in there. 3.5 seconds with 60 acceleration. Pedal capacity, 1,500 pounds. A towing capacity. So obviously it's an SUV. You don't want some towing capacity. 6,000 pounds. So not bad. Nothing crazy. It's a luxury SUV first, I think, before an actual utility of it. But 6,000 is more than decent. 112 cubic feet of power.

cargo capacity. They talk about drag coefficient of less than 0.24. They say that's targeted, so it's not confirmed. Obviously, that would make it most likely the most aerodynamic SUV out there. They talk about a starting price of under $80,000, which is not too surprising considering that's the threshold to get the federal tax credit. But I mean, if you look at the versions of the

and you would assume that the Gravity would be a little bit more expensive. It's probably going to be the starting price of the base version that's going to be at $80,000 and then you're going to get versions that are going to be much more expensive. That would be my take on it. But we're going to have more details on all the different trims of the Gravity with specs and pricing in 2024 when the vehicle actually comes to market.

Another vehicle unveiling that we had this week is the Optic EV from Cadillac. So it is also the... Not working. It's also much like the Gravity is to the Air, the SUV version of the Air. This is kind of the SUV version of the Lyric, which was the first electric vehicle to be launched by Cadillac under the rebranding of it since the...

What was the name of that Volt Cadillac? ELR. ELR, yes. Good memory. So the optic, yeah? Yeah, the optic is, it kind of looks like it's a Equinox size. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Not only you say it, not only size, but I mean, it's probably especially the two-tone that's giving me this effect that looks a lot like it. So Equinox, we've seen it a lot. But it does look a lot like the Equinox. Yeah, it does. Yeah.

The front end, you have the grill, fake grill. It's a bit more Cadillac. But other than that, you're right. It looks a lot like the Equinox. A little bit more expensive Equinox, but not too expensive because it's going to start at... I don't think they have exact pricing. They just said it was going to start below the Lyric, which I believe is $58,000. Below the Lyric? Yeah, the Lyric starts at $58,600. Do we have specs on these things? I don't know.

So that's the leak from China that we talked about before. So, okay. So it's just the pictures that they released today. Yeah. So these two pictures, okay, that's not, that's nothing to write home about. But yeah, we have, we had some information that we posted earlier this summer based on the

The version that they're going to launch in China, so take that with a grain of salt, might not be the same spec, but they indicated a dual motor system with 140 kilowatts in the front, 60 kilowatts in the back, and a battery pack that's going to be supplied by CATL. Some size difference would be, I think it's similar to the Model Y, so it's like crossover size. That's about it for now. We don't have that much more information, unfortunately.

Lastly, last piece of news before we jump into the comment section guys, Rivian had a little bit of a faux pas this week. They sent out an update that kind of break the infotainment system inside their vehicles. So a rare backfire of the very useful over the air software update. So you took that one, Setsuo. What happened?

Yeah, so pretty complicated, actually. It turns out that they had tested this software and actually the re-release of the software started rolling out today. But they had tested the software for a month on thousands of vehicles. They were ready to go. And then some engineer copied the wrong URL of where the software was located, which, you know, I'm thinking to myself,

that's all that has to happen. Like one guy or girl, just, you know, whatever. So yeah, I guess that's, that's the case. So this,

Actually, the software wasn't bad, but it had some bad certificates on it, which the developer vehicles that they immediately tested the software on didn't need the certificates to run it. So it ran fine on the initial vehicle. That's how they didn't catch it. And then it went out wider. So we later found out it was around 3% of the consumer vehicle fleet. This wasn't for the Amazon or the...

the vans. So obviously that's going to be a vocal minority of people when the software stopped at around 90% on the install. And basically the car just didn't show anything on the display. You could drive it around, turn signals worked.

HVAC didn't work, which is a big deal, especially if you're in the cold. You could set the HVAC via the app. There was all these workarounds that were kind of worked out in the hours after this happened, but obviously a huge problem. Rivian wasn't even sure that they were going to be able to fix it over the air. They thought they might be either sending out USB sticks to people or having people come in, which would have been a nightmare, but there was a way to

send out another over-the-air update and they did that yesterday. And from my understanding is that it worked for everybody. There's a really small amount of Rivian drivers that don't use a smartphone app. And those people had to do theirs, I guess, over the phone. They had to give the go ahead to send the update.

So, um, everything's fixed, but, uh, you know, I know this update is waiting for me to do in the car and I'm, I'm just not ready to do it. I have to drive, uh, from Vermont to New York tonight. So I'm going to do that when I get home, I think, especially if, uh,

I haven't heard anybody, you know, successfully executing it. But I mean, yeah, I think that the bigger thing is like, how could, you know, how could this happen? And more importantly, like it cannot happen again because like,

You're basically trusting the auto company, whether it's Tesla or Lucid or now the legacy auto manufacturers are doing over-the-air updates. You're trusting them. When they say, hey, there's a new software update and you hit, okay, you want your car to work in the next couple hours. This is a big deal and trust has already eroded with

Rivian drivers like myself, I just don't trust that the software is going to work. And maybe over time that'll come back, but it's kind of a big deal. I think some people had to use Ubers or whatever, and those guys will get reimbursed. But

Um, it's just interesting that the, the system that they used, um, didn't catch it. And, and I, I got to speak to, um, my scene, Ben said the, uh, the head of software for Rivian. Um, and you know, obviously the guy hadn't slept and,

Like 36 hours because they were working on this fix. But he said, yeah, we're going to re-overhaul everything. There's not going to be a way for this to happen. Basically, it's like the nuclear codes. Like two people have to have it. Like, you know, buttons have to be pushed on both sides. They're going to really rejigger their thing. They've all been scared straight on this. At least something good is going to come out of it. Yep. All right. Questions? Yeah, let's do it.

All right. I am in the market for an EV truck in Canada. Lightning Pro is a good deal at $55,000 Canadian after rebate. I'm worried about the battery recall discussed in the Lightning forums. What's your take? I didn't realize that there were... Well, I remember there was a recall at one point with the F-150 Lightning. Oh, right. The fire risk. Right. But...

I mean, Ford is on top of these things generally. So I wouldn't be too afraid on that front. Like if your car is at risk, if the VIN – if you put the VIN on the NHTSA website, it tells you that you need to bring back the truck and you bring it back and Ford is going to take care of it. But now if you're buying it right now new, I don't know if it's – like you can definitely ask your dealer about that and –

I would think they would take care of it beforehand if there needs to be any kind of service to be done. So I wouldn't be too worried about that. All right. Do you believe GM... What is this? The Buick version of the Watt? I think we got the wrong country. Some kind of Ultium, but yeah.

Maybe the Chevrolet Altium? I don't know. I know that GM has released some electric Altium-based Buicks in China, but I'm not sure what Jean is asking here, unfortunately. Yeah.

All right. Contacts owned a 2017 Focus EV and a Model 3 for the last five years. 4DV was pretty bad back then in terms of software, but drove okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't think you can compare the Focus to the Lightning, obviously. I guess I understand if you were here with me as a 10 based on that, but the 4DVs have changed a lot since then.

The only thing I would keep in mind on that front is like there's a new generation of the Lightning coming to A25. And I think it's going to be a big change, a big step change for the Lightning. But if you need the truck now, it's a decent enough truck to –

All right. Moving on. I'm sure new Cybertruck owners will manage to actually flip one physically. Oh, that's a joke. Yeah. Carl is not a fan of the Cybertruck. I think we established that. Carl is a freaking commenter on the podcast. We appreciate you, Carl.

All right. Question. Would Electrek ever write an editorial calling for Elon Musk's resignation? I guess he's never read a Jamie post. Just wondering in light of his recent anti-Semitic tweets. Also understand if that's not how you see your role. We were actually discussing this in the context of Apple dropping earlier. Ads all make sense. Yeah. I mean.

I don't know. I didn't quite understand the original tweet. It took me a couple times to still not understand it. And then I talked to Jamie about it, and I kind of feel like I understand it a little better. So just generally speaking, I think Twitter is not great for Tesla. Elon just talking, his brain flow is not a benefit to Tesla, but...

I don't know. It doesn't seem like this particular thing is, is like the thing that's going to break it. Well, the board is certainly not going to, you know, override Elon for, for, for that.

I would be surprised if that's the case. Especially the situation. I definitely don't agree with that. Because it's not even Elon's tweet. It's another tweet and then he responded to that tweet. So...

Definitely don't agree at all with what that tweet said. But I think it's more of an example of like the level of communication there is on X. And that's, you can credit Elon Musk for that since he actually owns a platform. But it's just not a great form of communication for nuanced thoughts because I wouldn't be willing to

calling on an anti-semite like i don't know him super well but uh in the past he's never he's never come out to me as someone that's racist or anti-semite and then i that i admit that that tweet is not the guy that posted that tweet sounds like he might have some anti-semite tendencies for sure uh

But there was a little bit more to the tweet. It's like about immigration too. And I think Ilan has been very outspoken about immigration lately. So I think it's more that that he was supporting than anything else. Again, not a good look to agree with it at Tyson might, obviously. No. Not a good look at all. And obviously his tendencies have been very right wing lately. Yeah. I mean, I don't even know if we can say lately. Maybe like since COVID. Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, calling for his resignation, personally, we've been extremely critical of Elon when we think it's warranted. We never went as far as calling for his resignation. Before that, what I would hope, and I don't have any hope that's going to happen, but what would be very nice is to have an actual board that has power over Elon or at least some kind of...

it seems like it has power because right now it seems like it has nothing. It seems like Elon can do whatever he wants and the Tesla board won't do anything because generally, the board has some power over the CEO. It doesn't seem to be the case with Tesla. And I saw some pretty hilarious posts about the X front because technically,

elon is cto at x right and uh linda uh is there an internet yeah yeah uh linda is the ceo and uh some people were like posting like okay now it's gonna be very interesting now if uh uh linda is gonna decide to fire or cto because he said something anti-semite on her own platform that's a very hilarious thought because obviously

If you think that the CEO has any power to fire the CTO in this case, you'd be mistaken. Even though technically she has the power, but then... That would be interesting to see, especially since he owns it.

Yeah, so you could fire him as CTO, but then the next second, you would fire her as CEO, as the owner of the platform. So it makes no sense. So there's a lot of things going on like that in all of Elon's companies, obviously, including Tesla. Obviously, he's not the sole owner of Tesla, but he still owns 20% of the company, which makes him the largest single shareholder, making him giving a lot of voting power in the company and also just his general influence on shareholders,

give him a lot of power itself. And then the fact that half the board is a longtime friend of him and whatnot is also an issue. His own brother is on the board. So yeah, some more oversight to... I don't want to say to keep him in check at least like to... Because I think Elon is still super valuable to Tesla if he were just...

didn't feel like he can say whatever he wants whenever he wants um that i think it would be more valuable to this but yeah you won't hear me calling for his resignation to answer ben's question yeah i i kind of wish he'd just be quiet on twitter but that's not gonna happen

All right. Do you think GM can arrive soon with a Buick version? Oh, so this is the other thing. Buick version of the Bolt EUV Altium. The competitive like Volvo EX30 will be on the market in 2025. Competition like Volvo EX. So Volvo EX30 will be on the market in 2024. It's coming quite soon. It's going to be a 2025 version. I don't think that Buick in the U.S. is really planning on...

having any EVs anytime soon. Yeah, that was my thought too. I'm not sure what's GM's plan with Buick in North America. I know that in China it's big or big or actually stronger there, but here I don't know what they're doing with that. Yeah. Because is the Bolt EUV Ultium, is that confirmed? Like, you know, confirmed the Bolt EV is going to have an Ultium version, but do we know the EUV?

Mary Barra made some weird comments on the last earnings call that they're taking some learnings from the EUV to make the Bolt Ultium. So that makes me think they're going to make it look like the EUV, which to me is a mistake because I think...

you know, you have the Equinox, so that that's pretty close to the EUV already. But like, I think the Bolt EV is a more unique vehicle platform, whatever. So I think there's value there, but you know, I don't agree with much of the calls that GM makes these days. So anyway, Carl in San Diego, low-vend Cybertrucks will look rough most likely and

We know that. Yeah, that's a possibility. Like I said, I don't see it. Maybe there's going to be some short-term value to low-end cyber truck, but I don't see them having long-term value. So that probably would remove a lot of the potential buyers of those truck for higher prices that are hoping for them to be collectible items. So yeah, I don't think it's going to be a big market for that.

All right, Spikes43, do you know what the 220 power out on the F-150 Lightning is? That 1450 port on the Cybertruck is very appealing for Taiga Orca charging. That Taiga Orca is the snowmobile? No, that's the jet ski, the electric jet ski. I do know that the F-150 also has a 1450 port on it. And I think overall it can put out 9.6 kilowatts, I believe.

Uh, so plenty of power on the, uh, Ford F-150 Lightning. I think the Cybertruck and the F-150 Lightning will both be able to charge that thing. Yeah, you actually can find on our YouTube right now, uh, you can find a video of, uh, me and Sylvain Juteau charging, uh,

a Tiger Orca on a Ford 150 Lightning like that. It was a very seamless experience. Speaking of Sylvian. Another Sylvian.

Worried that the branded supercharger won't have the same time as real Tesla superchargers if the buying company is responsible for the maintenance. Yeah, we talked a little bit about that last time we discussed this new business for Tesla. And we kind of came to the conclusion, even though it's speculation, that most likely Tesla is going to be in charge of maintenance for these charging stations. It would make sense that they have these kind of deals planned.

Sorry, for like the mega pack, for example, the power packs and all that. So I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla is also, and they have already the technicians and in most markets anyway, like these superchargers, these third party superchargers will be deployed most likely next to Tesla's own superchargers in most case or very close to. So I think Tesla is going to include deals that will include maintenance, I would assume.

All right. Question. Electrify America price in Massachusetts was up to 64 cents per kilowatt hour this week, making DC fast charging more expensive than gas, $3.39 for most any class of car. Are we overpaying, overplaying the cost savings need a gas tax? And this, this kind of started up some comments in the. Yes, I think he's right. So that's,

You need to take into account how much of the DC fast charging you're doing versus home charging. And I don't know exactly what price are in mass for at home charging.

for electricity but i would assume it's nowhere near 64 cents per kilowatt hour uh so most of your charging happened there obviously not everyone is that kind of situation but no i don't think we're over playing the cost savings uh on the fuel sides of things with evs uh just you you need to do the math for yourself depending on your own needs obviously but for the most part you're gonna find some significant cost savings

Yeah. And for those people who don't have a garage or a place to charge that use street parking, just, you know, try to find the level two. Those are going to be way cheaper. Yeah. All right. Questions with the recent slowing with quotation marks of EV sales. Why do you think some car dealers have such a negative perception of EVs and are reluctant are reluctant to sell EV cars?

I mean, I personally have, yeah, I've, I've experienced this firsthand at first Toyota and then Chevy dealers. Fred's comment. Absolutely. Maintenance on EVs is non-existent almost comparatively. You don't need shot sparks. What am I saying? Tune ups. You don't need spark, spark plugs. You don't need brakes as often. Oil changes, all that stuff. So yeah,

And for those who are not aware, like the dealer's business model, that's where the money is. Like a lot of money is in that and a lot of money is in repairs. You obviously still have repairs for EVs, but not necessarily as much in terms of like the electric motor versus an engine, transmission, brakes and all that. But yeah, but I think there's also like another aspect of it of just like change or like just some reluctance to have...

They know a lot about gasoline powered vehicles and now you're trying to get them to go to EVs and it's not easy for them. So they want to do the easy thing. Right. All right. I've seen some car dealers argue that the US government should incentivize hybrid cars instead of EVs. They've argued that the high demand for Tesla will not equal the demand for legacy EV. And then how would you respond to the argument that car makers should focus on hybrids instead?

P.S. I don't with this argument, but I was curious about your opinion. I actually have kind of come around to the idea that plug in hybrids, there's a place for them as long as the bottleneck to producing electric vehicles is the battery supply.

So if you have a finite amount of batteries, you can spread those across more cars. More people will go on electric vehicles if you have a smaller plug-in hybrid battery and then a gas backup. But I think in a few years, we're going to have enough batteries for the car market. So I think it's a temporary solution.

What do you think? Yeah, it's undoubtedly a temporary solution. That's the thing. So your point is correct, but it is a transitional technology. It's not a future of the industry at all. So yeah, it's hard to invest in for some automakers. So you see a lot of automakers not doing them at all, going directly from either full I's or regular hybrids to BEVs. But...

uh yeah like seth said there is an argument for it i just i don't think if you look at all the trends of the e trends the the bevs they're still going up as a percentage it's just like maybe you have some overall sales going down because the entire auto market right now is is being affected by the economic microeconomic situation but if you look at all the different percentage of cells with bevs phevs hevs and ice

The clear trend is BEVs. So there's not a giant argument to incentivize them more or anything like that. I don't think so. All right. This one comes from Australia looking at a Model Y. I've got a X cancel $3,000 credit, but believe Australia will only get V3 software and no refresh yet. Do I forego the $3,000 credit and wait to get V4 software and a minor upgrade? What do you think?

I'm so confused. Yeah, I didn't quite understand what I was saying, but I think the question is, does he use a $3,000 credit or wait to get the V4 software? What's the V4 software? Maybe the autopilot hardware for that software, though.

I don't know, maybe we should just move on. Yeah, sorry Neil, like we kind of need some verification here. Alright, for Teslas with vision only, is there a timetable for summon and park assist to come back?

There was a release on that posted the new... It's a bit confusing because it's the note of the full self-driving data update that this is starting to push right now. There is some comments about using more data from hardware for cars to have these features, to contribute to those features. So now...

Now that Tesla has more data on these different sensors that they have in our way for it, that's a problem. Oh, well, vision. Wait a minute. So those are, is that what you mean by vision only? Because if you go back to vision only cars with that change, there's been the parking assist update already. That's that has been released if I'm not mistaken. But it's the auto wear for cars now that are also vision only, I guess, and that don't have it.

But apparently, Tesla is using more data from the new sensors. And so it could be coming fairly soon. But I think Elon's always said that it's going to be like six months behind the hardware three. All right. Has there been any... That's the question already.

and we should probably cycle through some of these. Okay, well, that's Neil, I think, clarifying his other, just after the opinion on buying Y now or waiting three months until it gets a slightly updated model Y. I'm going to say model Y won't arrive until three highlands arrive in OZ early 2024. Okay, is he still with the software V3, V4? I don't understand, but I guess, because I don't know, I'm not as familiar with the Australian market, obviously.

So it might be talking about getting a MoY from China, which is not the latest hardware version. It's hard to tell. I mean, personally, with that stuff, I'm always like, if you're satisfied with the version right now that they're selling, you should go for it.

There is rumor, obviously, there's going to be a Highland Model Y coming. So that's the thing. But the Highland Model 3 is not the biggest update either. So I wouldn't expect something giant for the Model Y also. So I don't know. If you need a car right now, get a car. $0.31 a kilowatt hour in Massachusetts. Yeah, it's pretty pricey. Yeah.

Get some solar panels. Yeah, get some solar panels. Those are probably very profitable at that kind of pricing. We're paying $0.09 a kilowatt. $0.09 Canadian. That's like $0.07 US. I got a bill from my condo for two months. It was $24. Two months of hydro. Yeah, you got all that hydro though. Yeah. All right. Which trim of the EV9, the key EV9, will include vehicle to home?

I think almost all of them do. I was reading Jamie's post today on the vehicle at the home. It's actually a pretty strong power output. I think it's around five kilowatts. So that would be pretty helpful. Powerwall two equivalent. Yeah. I mean, that's a big battery. So I would imagine only the bigger battery would do that, but that's speculation. Yeah.

All right. For plug-in hybrids to get incentives, they have to have good minimum amount of EV range, at least 60 miles, not cars with 10 EV miles. I kind of agree. I definitely agree with that. Yeah. Generally, though, the criterias are more like on the battery capacity. That pretty much is the same argument. People who work as car salesmen are bad people. Bad people consume conservative media. Okay. Yeah.

Conservative media hates EVs because successful EV companies don't pay to advertise with them. Whoa, that's kind of a very simple logic here, Ian. I mean, one, I don't think that every car salesman is a bad person. I don't think that every bad person is conservative or vice versa. I think those are very big generalization. Yeah. I'm not going to follow that one. Mm-hmm.

Question, will Elon's thoughts on the ADL have a major impact on his multiple enterprises? So we talked about his tweets earlier. I...

I mean, somebody who knows him probably should just tell him to put the kibosh on those ideas. I mean, to answer the question specifically, I mean, on these multiple enterprises, OnX has already been an impact. Several companies have announced they're pulling their ads, at least temporarily, IBM, Apple, and others. Tesla, it's always been hard to quantify, obviously, but

Over the last year or so, there's been a lot of movement from people claiming that they are selling their Teslas, they're selling their shares, they're selling their cars. They don't want to be associated with Tesla because of Elon. But I've been having a really hard time understanding, like, is that any kind of meaningful thing?

A number of people are doing that. This week or today or whenever Elon actually tweeted that and the backlash started happening, Russ Gerber, who's a longtime Tesla investor, has an hedge fund, said he got a call from clients telling him that they want to pull their investment in Tesla because of the latest comment. So, yeah, I guess there's going to be some impact on that front. Again, I don't know how meaningful it's going to be.

All right. One last, last second question from York Willie, a ranch owner in Quebec. I need towing capabilities, but also vehicle to grid capability for blackouts happening often in Quebec. I didn't know that was a thing in the winter. Which upcoming truck would be the best deal? It's happening. It depends where you are. So you said a ranch was probably...

like further out in the country. And the thing in Quebec here, we have such tough winters that it's not a problem really on the reliability of our infrastructure as much as like you have power lines and you have trees around the power lines. And with the winter, the trees, the branches that can fall because if there's a verglas called like a frozen rain. And so these things happen. Like here too, I would get some

Like in the winter, you get a few blackouts, but nothing that lasts super long. But which truck would be the best deal? I mean, we talked about the Lightning earlier with another person asking a similar thing about Canada, like the Pro. Especially if you're talking, I don't know what kind of ranch you're running, but if you're talking about the truck that's going to stay on your ranch, the Pro is probably the right option because it's not a super rangy option. But yeah.

That doesn't sound like it would be the issue here. You're just towing things around the range. That would be good. You can still get some distance out of it, of course, but if it's more than 150 miles or so or 200 kilometers, definitely going to need some fast charging.

Other than that, there's nothing much right now other than the Rivian R1T that's going to be a much more expensive solution. You might have to wait otherwise for next year when the Silverado is going to be available, the Cybertruck. I don't even know if the Cybertruck is coming to Canada next year, to be honest. Maybe at the end of next year. And same for the Silverado. The Ram, do we know when the Ram EV is coming? No idea. No.

I don't know what's going to be in big numbers, but yeah, I would bet on the Ford F-150 being your best choice. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

All right. Well, thanks, everyone, for listening to the show this week. We had a blast. A lot of people listening. If you enjoyed the show, please give us a like, a thumbs up, a subscribe. If you're listening on your podcast app, you can give us a five-star rating. That helps a lot. It's free to do. It takes a second. It helps the show tremendously. We appreciate every single one of you. And we're going to see you same time, same place next week. Have a safe weekend. Bye-bye.