Hey, welcome everyone to a new episode of the Tech Check Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host, and as usual, I'm joined by Seth Wintrom. How are you doing today, Seth? I'm good. All right. Let's jump right in. A lot of news this week.
Well, using the EV community, we're going to start with Tesla. We're going to start with the same thing we did last week, which I know it's... And next week too? Maybe next week too, depending on what we get our hands on. I know it might sound like smaller news, but I mean, everything points to this being the most popular thing right now. Everyone is tracking the Tesla Cybertruck extremely closely. Arguably the biggest vehicle program of the year, new vehicle program launching this year.
So yeah, we are keeping a close eye on it and every new prototype that is part of the new beta prototype, which much closer to the production version coming out, is an event really. So last week was the first time we spotted a beta prototype and it was only from the back side of it though. And in the side a little bit. This time we have a front view of a beta prototype for the first time. We still think it's a beta prototype based on...
Well, the general quality of it looks a little bit sharper than what we've seen in previous prototypes. But the main thing is these new mirrors here that you see. So these triangular mirrors that now Ilana has confirmed are going to be removable. They are the main indicator that this is a beta prototype. So the main thing, and these pictures come courtesy of Mr. Gregor Truk, Greg on Twitter. And yeah, the main thing is...
the front look at the vehicle here and it's in broad daylight too so we get a good view there might be some distortion to this picture to be to be fair like it's not it looks a bit weird to a degree it looks a little shorter yeah shorter but again it might be just picture destruction like not as much gland currents maybe but again the picture seems to be taken from fairly close
in a fairly high viewpoint. So that might change the look of it too. The main thing you're going to see is that windshield is just massive, massive, massive, massive. And with that comes a massive windshield wiper because Tesla seems to be sticking...
to a single windshield wiper. And obviously the most strange thing about this windshield wiper is that it's completely not hidden. Its resting position appears to be on the side pillar, on the side of the windshield rather than tucked underneath the hood because the hood is flush with the windshield, which I would assume is something that is going to help with aerodynamic performance.
But that giant monstrous windshield wiper was on previous prototypes before and Tesla, not Tesla, but Elon specifically said that that won't be the one in production. But now we have a better prototype. It's as far as I can tell, the same exact same windshield wiper as the one that we saw before. So and of course, Elon has not made new comment on it, but I would assume for now we need to assume that that's probably what's going to make it to production.
But yeah, the interesting part is the resting position, clearly visible. And I have to assume here is because the connection between the hood and the windshield, as far as I can tell, is basically flush. Yeah, and it doesn't look good at all. Like, I wonder if that would be removable. Like, you know, it's a sunny day. You just put it in the... Oh, yeah. Do you think the thing is going to have a frunk? From this angle, it kind of looks like it will. Yeah, I mean, if...
Even just the fact that it's so flush, I mean, it's still possible, but it would be a short one. It would be a fairly short one. Yeah. And it has a front motor, obviously, so that takes up some space in the front. We know that Tesla's dual motors vehicle don't have as big as a front trunk. That's right. Yeah, go ahead. Also, the front is a little bit different, right? The angles on the...
the front of the vehicle yeah i mean something that i noticed is like the the space between the light bar i mean looks like this is really sticking to those like unconventional headlights that are integrated into this continuous light bar from one side to the other we've seen some automakers adopt like a full-size light bar but they still have um regular headlights in between that on each side of that light bar that's not the case anymore as far as we can tell
And I think there's like a little bit more space between the light bar and where the hood starts. Might be just me. Then there's a second light bar at the bottom where I think those are the blinkers on each side and then the fog lights. To me, it looks pretty good, but...
I'm really curious to see when Tesla actually brings that truck to regulators, what they're going to say about it. Because there's a lot of unconventional things there. And there's a lot of weird laws or regulation in the automotive business that...
stops you from doing just simple things sometimes so it would be interesting to like once it's gonna be a big day once that thing is clear from regulators i think some uh the small update to the bumper too like which appears to have like some kind of grill and a lighting system underneath it so i'm not sure what this is about yeah probably from for cooling the uh the batteries and the
The grill. I wonder how this thing is going to crash test as well because stainless steel is quite a bit different than the steel that is used in most vehicles. I think it's more rigid. It doesn't kind of bend back like it has memory or more memory than regular steel. I mean, I wonder if that's going to be a concern. I don't know how well the DeLorean was crash tested, but
Yeah, good question. I wonder how that's going to go here. We should look into that if there's any wrecked DeLoreans out there. See what happens with the steel. Also, the repairability of the truck is going to be a big deal too. We now know at least that
it looks like most of it is actual body panels even though they call it an exoskeleton it looks like you could probably remove them and repair them but like that winch i mean it's not i assume it's not as bad as the model x windshield too which uh wasn't i mean was not cheap to replace but not extremely expensive for a premium vehicle of that uh price range either so
And this one is actually flat, like it's a straight windshield. So it's actually cheap. Yeah. And we reported recently on Tesla, like developing some new glass, some new type of glass that's more malleable for that windshield. And going back to the wiper where we started, Tesla does have some patents for like a laser windshield wiper stuff. We're going there? Yeah, I'm going there. Why not? Yeah, I mean...
I would be shocked if that makes it to the Cybertruck. Where are the lasers? The hood is flush with the windshield. Where would you put the lasers? No idea. Maybe inside. Who knows? I need a real live demonstration of that technology before I can...
put my seal of approval on this. We've seen the pattern. The pattern is pretty straightforward. They're literally shooting lasers with a windshield. They said that the technology could be used for cleaning solar roofs. When are we going to be putting lasers on self-driving vehicles? It's going to be a
Quite a day when that happens. But yeah, so that is the latest progress on the Cybertruck, looking at the Cybertruck production because we're getting closer. We are basically mid-February now. We are just months away from the planned start of production. So every prototype that we see from now until then is going to be pretty damn close to a production vehicle, pre-production vehicle, like a production unit.
If you guys see one out there, please make sure to send us pictures. We always look at any kind of potential details that we can get. I like the wheels on this one too. The wheels are pretty... Yeah, much better. Yeah, a little traditional a little bit. All right. The other thing that was spotted last weekend with the Cybertruck was a new video that pops up that shows... I think it's a little bit older video, but...
It shows, we've never seen it before, and it shows the four-wheel steering or rear-wheel steering capability of the cyber truck. I don't know if I click this. Okay.
on the sound so if you keep a close eye on that rear wheel you can see it right there going inside a little bit which normally is not the case uh for regular steering again you're gonna see on that turn and it's hard to tell exactly that just how much sharper of a turn it is but you can clearly see that the rear wheel steering right there like very obvious um so the idea is like you can get a little bit of a sharper turning radius with this
Of course, we've seen also other automakers that have used the technology on their electric trucks, like GM with the GMC Hummer and Rivian. Well, no, Rivian actually doesn't have rear steering. It's just the torque thing they have.
Yeah, they have that. They have the tank turn with it, but obviously you could do that even easier with rear steering too. And GMC is the crab mode that they get. You can literally move diagonally. Go diagonally, yeah. I got to play with the Hummer and the all-wheel steering, and it is a total game changer for the turning radius. Because the Hummer is one of the biggest vehicles ever made. Yeah.
And, you know, you could turn it almost like in a radius, like not much bigger than the truck itself.
The crab mode, that's kind of a gimmick. You need to go diagonal, I guess, a few times in the world. And also you have to punch a few buttons to get it to do that. It's not something you would just break out in the middle of regular driving. But for real, the four-wheel steering is pretty amazing. And Mercedes also has that on the EQS. Yeah, it's not just the trucks. There's
There's no reason why you wouldn't make it just on a truck, but obviously it is a little bit more useful when you have a bigger vehicle just for it to get that tighter turning radius without making any change to the actual chassis of the truck. So yeah, that's the first, the best look we get from it. And also you get to see those headlights here in action. It looks like the fog lights and the light bar produce some significant lights here. It's not...
You can see where while they are willing to forego the regular headlights for that because it seems to work. Obviously, we would need to see it in action on a dark day. But still having with the new stream, you're having some issues backing away from post. Might have to stop sharing for a second to do it. I'm not sure what this is about. But we're going to be right back in in a second.
are you on windows or mac i'm on mac right now interesting all right some a little bit more pricing adjustment from uh from tesla here uh we've been talking a lot about tesla pricing obviously since the big um price cuts last month but they they kept adjusting the price a little bit and we talked about like the 500 increase on the mobile y prices a few weeks ago now
Tesla has adjusted model Y up and model 3 down a tiny bit this week. So that's 15...
Yeah, $1,000 increase in the Model Y price, the base one. Well, the base one in the US at least, the long-range version. The base one that you can configure in the US because obviously you have the standard range with 4680 cell, but that's not configurable. But Tesla does have some in inventory if you want to buy that. Yeah.
But yeah, that's a $1,000 increase, which adds up to a $1,500 increase since the big price drops. And of course, that was a $13,000 price adjustment on the mobile long range last time. So it adds up basically to a $12,500 reduction versus the price last year before the tax credit. So you almost get a $20,000 difference now versus last year.
other than December because of course Tesla offered their own discount in December. The Model 3 though got a little price increase, price decrease of $500. So very small price decrease. It now starts at $43,500. That's for the base version, so the standard range with rear-wheel drive.
uh long range versions still not available to order um of course Tesla removed it last year claiming that there was just too many orders for it and they had to um just temper it by by removing the capability to order it again however now that we get closer to the model 3 refresh I think it has more to do with that than anything else right now it's just it's not worth uh
not we're reopening orders if they're about to shut down the production line for a bit and uh and uh update it with the what they call the project highland but yeah a little bit of a price uh adjustment from tesla this week yeah and uh we are wondering if that's a price uh drop ahead of the upgrade that we've seen a few times the uh the the model 3s with the uh front and back covered yeah
Yeah, I mean, at $500, we cannot say much. I mean, it would make sense that Tesla has some issues, some issues selling Model 3 right now, has the knowledge about the new update comes. But that's also true of probably any vehicle from Tesla right now because of hardware 4. A lot of people are waiting for that too. So this isn't a weird situation. But in the U.S., it's different, obviously, because there's also some urgency from potentially a change in the...
tax credit in the US. But again, it's such a strange situation because it obviously doesn't apply to everyone. A lot of new car buyers don't even have access to that because they make more than $150,000 a year. So it's a strange situation, but it does affect everyone differently. Yeah.
We got the numbers from California this week for the full year 2022 and Tesla had a record performance. It's hard to overstate just how much of an impact the California market has on Tesla in the US. Tesla
like almost I think half of Tesla's sales in 2022 came from the US and then almost half of those came from California so huge market from Tesla and the blue things away this quarter with not this quarter in 2022 with Model Y and Model 3 in that order coming in first and second for
the best-selling vehicles period. So Model Y came in first too for best-selling light trucks, they call it, which is, I think, California consider everything that an SUV or a pickup truck, a light truck. So that beat the RAV4 from Toyota, beat all the F-Series put together. That's huge. 87,000
Model Y in California last year. Yeah, it wasn't even close. Yeah, it's huge. It's massive. Then the Model 3 came in at almost 79,000 units, also beating the Camry, beating the Corolla, beating the Honda Accord. Beating the Honda Accord and the Honda Civic put together. Historically, best-selling cars put together, they beat them with a 15% market share in the passenger car, so that includes everything that's not
a pickup truck or an SUV. Yeah, and again, not even close. Not even close. I mean, look at this. Look at the...
Obviously, this is not just because Tesla had a massive growth last year in California and everywhere, really. But the market has been going down. The car market, the automotive market in general has been having an issue recovering in every sector other than EVs. And you see, I mean, everything else is lower, maybe not Mercedes and Kia. Obviously, those are fairly...
high volume brands but genesis is low volume cadillac is low volume the tesla is the only one with a massive like a significant increase with 44 increase in sales in california last year versus most other brand in the negative including some like big brand luxury brand like howdy and alexis getting this two-digit decrease uh that's that's that's significant
Yeah, I mean, automakers should look at that chart and also the Model 3 Model Y number and clearly see if they want to get out of that funk here, those declining cells, you have to have compelling electric vehicle available in volumes. And you just don't see that right now from any other automakers. It's just the volume is not there yet.
You start seeing a little bit more of it, but like with the ID4, with the MAC key and things like that, but it's nowhere near Tesla's numbers just yet. Moving on, especially now that we are talking about scale. So Elon confirmed that his master plan part three, which he's been talking about for like over a year now, is going to be fully unveiled at this investor day.
So far, the main thing that's been attached to Investor Day has been the new vehicle platform thing. That's probably going to be the main show. But other than that, the event has been unclear. What's an Investor Day? Tesla has had the AI day, it has been pretty clear. The battery day. But Investor Day sounds a lot like the shareholders annual meeting, which is generally in the summer. But now, that's March 1st, as this new thing called Investor Day, they've been talking about for a few months.
And Elon now linked it to the master plan part three. So it clarified basically what the event is going to be about, because we know what the master plan part three is going to be about. It's going to be about scale. It's going to be how Tesla achieved the scale of 20 million vehicles per year by the end of the decade, 2030. So we're talking about obviously new gigafactories, both on the vehicle side, both on the battery side of things.
We're talking about deeper involvement in the supply chain all the way down to the battery materials and everything that comes with it when we're refining. Possibly the mining, though Tesla seems a bit reticent at actually getting itself into mining.
But now I think things are getting a little bit more exciting right now in that space with Tesla's competitor getting a little bit more into deeper into that space, mainly GM. I think we're seeing an interesting thing with GM now that might be actually pushing Tesla for a long time. Tesla had the clear lead in terms of securing battery cells and down the supply chain. Early partnership with Panasonic being a big part of that, obviously.
then getting deeper with other battery cell manufacturers too, and companies like Glencore, Vale and whatnot. Now you have here at the Battery Valley in Quebec that I've been talking a lot about because it's going to be the biggest hub in North America in terms of battery material, cathode, anode, lithium refining and all that.
GM has basically bought out like most of the capacity from that already, even though it's still getting built right now. They already have deal with POSCO there, with Livent, Znamaska Lithium there. There's Nouveau Mont Graphite there that's building anode capacity. Like they're buying out everything there. And now there's been rumors that came out this week that
GM is even thinking about buying a stake in Vale. And Vale is Tesla's number one nickel partner, nickel producer and nickel mining producer. So that would probably, that probably lit a fire under Tesla. If those rumors are true, maybe now they're going to be thinking more about getting involved into the mining side of things.
Which Elon has said it is not against it, but there seems to be something missing for Tesla to actually get involved because it's a brand new business for Tesla. But it led me to look into this here because we're talking about scale and there's this chart here from Tesla's earnings the week prior.
And it's a very impressive chart. It looks at Tesla ESPs, its average sales price per vehicle, and it went down literally by a half since 2017 versus 2022 on average, despite actually going up from 2021 to 2022 a little bit because we've talked about Tesla's pricing being raised a lot in 2022. Now, of course, going down in 2023, and I will assume that the price is going to be down quite a bit in 2023.
while the operating margin is going up. So very impressive. But now looking into the future, Tesla might have to almost replicate that again over maybe not five years, but pretty close to five years, five to 10 years for sure.
And it's hard to imagine Tesla going down now from an average of, it looks like 57,000 ESP, cutting that in half. So between 25 and 30,000 ESP, that would be extremely hard to do. But when you look at the numbers, and that's what I did there, is that it's...
basically inevitable that they're going to have to do that to get to 20 million units a year because 20 million units a year is is huge it's like 20 percent of the of the auto industry that they want to home it's massive so as you go down you need to go down market for that because tesla right now is at the capacity of around 2 million units with four models um
I think they have the opportunity to go up to about 3 million units with those four models, though they're going to have to introduce like lower price version of those models, especially the Model Y. Like the Model Y in China starts at $40,000, even less than that. So if we had something like that in the US, obviously, would be a massive difference. So I think you can still, you can ramp up those four models
models to around 3 million units with a little bit lower price ones in the Model 3 and especially Model Y. But after that, okay, what do you get? Okay, you get this hybrid truck.
If you are looking at it up, like, best case scenario, basically, I think for the Cybertruck would be 2 million units a year with a bunch of different trims. Again, a bunch of different trims. 2 million units a year, and that would probably get your average sale price up a little bit, but not that much. Again, because you would need to have
a base version at $40,000 basically, and then an average sell price of probably like 55. So basically what Tesla has right now. So to get 2 million again, I know that there's going to be a 70,000, 80,000 version of the Cybertruck, but I think that at 2 million volume a year, those are not the most popular trends. That's just obvious looking at current pickup truck prices. Historically,
historic pickup truck prices because 2022-2021 was pretty insane for pickup truck prices. I don't think that's sustainable long term.
So yeah, then you're now at 5 million units a year. How do you get from that to 15 million units a year? And all the other models, obviously, we don't even know about exactly from Tesla. I think you have to go down market with it and a lot down market. So you're going to have to bring that ASP down significantly to get that 15 million extra units. And I think that's what the investor is going to be about. It's going to be about the Tesla third generation platform.
which is going to be cheaper, more manufacturability to achieve scale and to offer probably a plurality of new models at different price range. So I think you can get something like just a little bit like smaller than the Model 3, maybe with an hatchback.
and maybe something more like a bowl TV size thing that's closer to $25,000, maybe like $25,000, $30,000 around that range. And that can achieve, I think, a lot of scale. But then you can probably have a compact vehicle too that's closer to the $25,000, like no more than $25,000 range. And that's probably where Tesla is going to get a lot of its volume. Right.
several, several, several millions. I think it would make sense. And that would bring you closer to 20 million, but it's still hard to imagine that 15 million, like how do you fill up that 15 million units extra a year? People have mentioned the Tesla Semi, like the Roadster. What about those ones? Like those are going to be like fairly low volume compared to everything else we can talk about. It's not, it's going to be like a drop in the bucket of that 15 million bucket units. What do you think, Seth? Yeah, I mean, you kind of just,
Just basically multiply everything by 10. You know, you sell 1.3 million cars this year and you want to sell 20 million in a few years. You got to multiply your Model Y and Model 3 by 10x and then throw in... Yeah, I mean, the model, whatever, the bolt-sized Tesla that may or may not have a steering wheel and may or may not have, you know,
made not drive itself. Um, that theoretically could count for a lot of vehicles, but you know, I don't know. Uh, Cybertruck is going up against, uh, Ford F-150. They sell millions of those. Um, so maybe Tesla thinks it's going to capture a lot of that. Well, I did put 2 million in Cybertruck in my estimate. That's a, that's a lot.
Yeah, that is a lot. Yeah, I don't know. It seems daunting to multiply 10x even though they've doubled almost every year. Not doubled, but pretty close to doubling. And when you double every year, you only have to do that a few times to get to big numbers. So they definitely can do it. I just don't know if everybody else is just going to let it happen or maybe they get their
their electric vehicle programs up to speed and don't let Tesla take all that market share. Who knows? Yeah, that's going to be interesting to see. Well, that's all the investor is going to be about, I think. That's going to be the focus on like
What can Tesla achieve with that third generation platform, which obviously is going to involve most likely the 4680 cells with structural battery pack and a more larger casting capability all put together for, again, easier manufacturability and lower cost. That's going to be the big thing. But then we'll see if Tesla, like, what can they do with that now? All right. Moving on from the vehicles, but still staying with Tesla.
They started sending out their payments for the virtual power plant in California and other markets too. But obviously the California one is the bigger one. And you get some interesting payouts there. Actually, the highest one I saw when I wrote this article was $575. But someone else reached out today saying that they got $700. Wow. So that's a lot. Yeah.
couldn't confirm how many power walls they have though I would assume might be more than this person we had three and people have like freaking out yeah you need to have three power walls like most installation these days are more than one power walls like you have a few single power installation but most houses
I have more than one because it just makes sense. Like personally, you see here in the back, I have two of them. Yeah, I think you have two or like, yeah, you have four total, but two per house. So yeah, I would assume that most houses are like two or three actually, rather than just one.
But yeah, $575. And that's for... Tesla originally launched the virtual power plant in 2021, but that was without compensation. That was just like a test run. The actual virtual power plant in California with compensation started in the summer of 2022. So that's just half a year. Obviously, I think the summer is the biggest consumption in California because of AC and whatnot. But still...
with for a full year you could you could see something closer to like people getting a lot of people getting 500 to maybe a thousand dollars um because most of the most of the payouts i've seen are in the 300s and 400 dollars but yeah one guy got 700 so
It's pretty good. And so Tesla said it's for California emergency load reduction, but it's basically they have events. And in the case of this person that got $575, that was 10 events over 26 hours total for delivering 297 kilowatt hours to the grid. So that's a pretty good payout per kilowatt hour here. You get almost like $2 per kilowatt hour. That's a lot. Yeah, that's huge.
I mean, I pay $0.09 per kilowatt hour here. So if I could get those kind of pricing, I would make a good money. But yeah, so I think this is going to be the future because it's going to have a big impact. Like if you can remove $500 to $1,000 off your cost of your Powerwall installation over a year, again, if you combine with solar, it's even the bigger deal. Most of the time it is combined with solar.
Like over eight years, you get between $4,000 and $8,000. When you combine that to time of use savings that you can get, Powerwall can pay itself in just a few years. It's nice. Yeah. And I don't know if you saw, but the guy, the Redditor, who was like, hey, you posted my post on Reddit. I read Electric all the time.
So he linked to his YouTube channel where he's got a bunch of stuff on his Powerwall stuff. Right there. Yeah, I wonder if Tesla would do leasing programs for people in high, like in California where there's really high demand charges, just because they know people would be there
It would almost make sense for people who can get like $1,000 per year, just give them free Powerwalls and just have them sit in their house. And if they can get $1,000 per year, maybe not free, but very inexpensive Powerwalls because Tesla could just reap that money and that energy. And people there would probably not even notice. Yeah.
I guess it's similar to what your agency does in Vermont. And I think also Tesla's virtual power plant in Australia also has that. They have a program where it makes the most sense. They basically give the people power walls and they just hone part of the capacity.
So part of capacity is for the owner to do backup power, time of use, time of use savings. And then the other part is for that
that electric utility to use at will when they need to. So there's a lot, there's so many things you can do with that. Like these distributed energy assets are such a game changer and it's such a small part of the market right now. That's why like for years, a lot of people, even myself, I was like, when Elon says that their energy business is going to be as big as the automotive business and still today, when you look at the
revenue breakdown between Tesla's automotive and energy business. It's hard to imagine. But just seeing this kind of impact, the economical advantage of that, I'm saying, "I can see it start to pick up." And obviously Tesla is the mega pack. I think you're going to see Tesla building the mega factory they have for the mega packs. I wouldn't be surprised to see Tesla do the same for
just a Powerwall factory like that. Yeah. And it's interesting because Tesla is like rushing to get to scale on that stuff because they know that just like with cars, like they know what's coming, you know, like everybody's going to want these huge batteries everywhere. So Tesla's, you know, rushing out to make this huge factory and bring it to scale. Meanwhile, everybody else is kind of waiting to see like, well, let's see what happens to the market. Let's, you know,
So again, Tesla is going to be in a really good position in a few years when that market becomes more mature. Agreed.
All right. We have a few non-Tesla news items I want to get into in the next few minutes. But before that, I just want to remind you that we are live on all platform right now. So if you guys have any questions for us, either about the subject that we are discussing today, already discussed or about to, you see in the show notes right now. You can ask us a question in the comment section right now. Or if you just have other subjects about the EV space or the energy space that you want to discuss with us,
live, you can do so too in the comment section on Facebook or YouTube or even LinkedIn too. We get the comments from LinkedIn too. All right. The eSprinter 2024 has been fully unveiled and it met our expectations. So the original eSprinter, the electric version of Mercedes-Benz popular van,
was released in 2019 but we were less than impressed to say the least with basically like just over 100 kilometers of range on it it just wasn't there was it wasn't really practical other than maybe for like some delivery or city option like some some city some city delivery services and things like that that maybe that makes sense but other than that like it was just we didn't see
a lot of use cases for it. But last year, we did see them testing a new version of the eSprinter with a much longer range. It seems to be around 500 kilometers, about 300 miles.
So this week, Mercedes unveiled the official 2024 e-sprinter and confirmed that it comes with three-by-track options, 56 kilowatt-hour, 81 kilowatt-hour, and 113 kilowatt-hour. So the last two are new, 81 and 113. And yeah, the 113 should give you close to 300 miles of range, right?
depending against on maybe the EP is going to be a little bit lower than that probably a little bit lower than that but still
It's a big upgrade that makes it actually usable for a lot more use cases, including maybe a little van life, a little Kemper version would be nice. Oh, man. We've been jonesing for one of those. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of things you can do with it. Because you can also get just the bed version of it, and you can build anything on the back, or you can get the enclosed van version. There's a lot of things you can do with it.
Two electric motors option, 100 and 150 kilowatt peak output. So nothing too crazy, but you don't really need that for a van anyway. The charge rate is capped at 115 kilowatts. That's kind of low for any electric vehicle launching in 2023. It's a 2024 model year, but it's coming this year. So yeah, I don't know what's the limitation on that, why they cannot just go higher. Yeah.
because especially if you want to get some range out of it like it's nice to be able to charge a little bit faster uh but they're also investing a lot in the production of it so 50 million dollars in three fact each factory where it's going to be produced charleston
Dusseldorf, and Ludwigsfeld, all getting 50 million each to produce a new version. And yeah, you heard that right, Charleston. So that means it is going to be produced in the US and it's going to come to the US and Canada because the 100 kilometers version never made it here. So now North America is going to get the eSprinter.
And so that's going to be one of the rare ones that the consumer is going to be able to buy. So that's going to be nice because obviously the fleet is the main target here. But a lot of those electric vans that are available on the market right now are just going to fleets, are not consumer available. So we're looking forward to that to change with starting with, well, not starting. And there's a few other options like the transit, Ford Transit, e-transit.
E-Transit. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see these two vehicles up against each other, the E-Transit and this guy. Yeah, I think Ford is going to release a higher mileage version of the E-Transit in the next couple of months because, you know, right now they're at a low 100 something miles.
Um, and obviously, you know, they, they, they, they will say, uh, well, you know, we know what our people drive and these delivery vans only do like 120 miles a day. So that hits 80% of our market, but you really just want to have a lot more mileage. Yeah. You need some wiggle room in there. Right. Cold. Yeah. Weird things. Cold is also a bigger impact. All right. Uh, this I included because, um,
I was actually asked on the podcast last week, so I went and looked into it. People were asking us about Alpha Motor and them raising some money. So I did a little bit of digging here. And yeah, it's basically a warning that I would be very careful investing in. Well, I would be careful investing in any EV startup, I think, including the one that are in a public market, obviously.
But especially the ones that are doing crowdfunding, and we were just in the newsroom, and actually we were just talking about Aptera. Which, Aptera, I would still be super careful investing in them, and I have a healthy skepticism about them. But at the very least, Aptera is not actually bringing a car to market. It's bringing a trike to market. A lot fewer regulations about it. A lot lower cost of capital expenditure to bring to production. But still...
careful i would be careful it is crowdfunding but there's also a few crowdfunding companies uh atlas mortar atlas mortar being the the main one i think um but then the sono also did it uh
Lightyear, I guess, was also crowdfunding a little bit. And now Alpha Motor is the latest one. But Alpha Motor is the one that I put the biggest asterisk next to, as the most red flag. So we first reported on them because they had a good media push and a lot of media reported on it when they released those renders of this product.
this truck here the wolf the electric wolf pickup truck because a lot look good it does look very good looking some ritual style to it and but sleek modern features also um giant oversized wheel obviously that's a standard on all concept but it looked pretty good and the media just
bought it up because they said 275 miles or range at 36 000 price tag so like hey this is uh incredible uh but then when we first reported on it we we had a lot of skepticism because i i looked into their filings and uh
I couldn't find any serious theme behind it. Only people that had their name attached to the companies were like copywriters that were writing those press releases about them. And especially press releases about from Neuron, Neuron AV that was also like look extremely shady.
So now, again, why we're reporting on that now is because they launched a new crowdfunding effort that we were asked about on the podcast last week. They're trying to raise up to $5 million at $125 million valuation. So I went ahead and looked at the new filings for it and see what happens.
what they have for $125 million. Did they have anything more than we saw last time, which was basically nothing. And yeah, it's pretty close to nothing. It's next to nothing really for $125 million. And they already raised $700,000 from 399 small investors. So yeah,
Sorry for those people. That's over $1,000 each. That's close to $2,000 each. It's crazy. It's a decent amount of money. So looking at it now, they sort of clarified. So the last time the only people that could see in the fighting was Kevin Lee. Couldn't see the actual CEO of the company, but
It was actually another guy that was listed as the chairman of the company that all the experience it could link to was like a barista in car shows. That was the link to the auto industry, basically. But now they say that Edward Lee is the CEO of the company and chairman and founder of the company. And he does have an automotive background as a designer, as an exterior designer. So he has about...
close to two decades in the industry as a car designer. That's it.
I couldn't find anyone in the company with any kind of engineering background. Kevin Lee in the filing is listed as the chief of research and development in charge of R&D at Alpha. So you would think, okay, that's the guy with the engineering background. And his profile on the crowdfunding effort is a bit shady because it mentioned he has over 17 years of experience leading the development process of vehicle from concept to production stage, which includes a successful to some old three. So that catch investor high, oh, they have the guy that
I brought the Model 3 to market from development
from concept to production like that's how it sounds so i looked into this given the guy thinking all right he's gonna be like what like everyone may i mean i know who the model three program managers were from the entire history of them of the model three so i know it's not him but maybe he's like oh the guy under one of those program manager i don't know uh turns out he's a modeler he does like cat modeling like that oh so he's the one who created the uh
the 125 million dollar design yeah well i mean not just the design like you can actually like basically build like those uh uh like pusher prototypes basically not an actual like working prototype but the pusher prototype he's a he's a modeler he's a designer like he graduated from the art center college of design just like the ceo uh edward lee so everyone is has more to do with design and engineering on anything i couldn't see anyone with actual engineering background
I know that they have an advisor like Rodak. That was the guy that opened up Tesla in Europe and everything. But he's an advisor. He's not working in the companies directly. So best case scenario, this is kind of like a karma, Fisker kind of situation. Yeah.
Best case scenario. Yeah, best case. Best case scenario. Like this is like – I don't want to say scam because like they might actually like think that they are going to deliver on this. Like they might – I'm not saying that they – but if they do think that they can deliver these trucks with these specs at this pricing, they're completely delusional. Like this is like completely –
Theorical at this point is just like, all right, all the spec things are just pie in the sky. The designs are good. I mean, they should open up like a design firm and try to work with other automakers or something like that. But trying to raise $5 million for $125 million valuation for those
for those renders and i guess i guess they have a pusher prototype that they showed at peterson but not a working one it's not much uh and then i look at the actual like financials of it and uh they raised a million dollars from two people that are related to the ceo oh that's the only money that they were able to get is like crowdfunding is generally like kind of a last resort type of thing a lot of these leaves involved here another what please
There's Ed Lee, Kevin Lee. Yeah, yeah. His family. Yeah, there's a lot of Lee people. I don't know if they are related, all of them, because obviously Lee is a very common name in Asia, especially in Korea, I think. But yeah, yeah.
Only a million dollars they managed to raise from Relative. So it's like a seed funding basically. And now they're trying to raise 5 million through crowdfunding, not a good sign. If they do raise the full 5 million, that's between 9 and 13 months that they think they have money to operate. So they will need to raise a lot more money again because bringing a vehicle to market generally is like half a billion dollars in spending that you need to put.
Crowdfunding is just not, doesn't make sense for a full vehicle program like that.
A lot of the $125 million valuation seems to lean on the fact that they claim to have 52,000 pre-order indications. So that's a weird term to use, pre-order indication. I think they are using that to be on the safe side because a lot of EV startups have taken a lot of flak for overstating their pre-orders, like calling things that are pre-orders and they're not necessarily pre-orders.
Well, and they still use the term pre-orders, but they had indications behind it. But basically all their pre-orders don't require any deposit. They're not binding anything. So it's the lowest form of a show of interest in the truck. Like, oh, the design looks cool. If you ever bring this to market, maybe I'll buy one. It's basically what people are saying. And you can count me in on that. Like if you can bring it to market with those spec at that price point with that design, like I'll buy one too. Yeah.
But it doesn't mean anything because I'm not putting any money on this. So yeah, I would be extremely careful to everyone that are looking on that. So since you guys asked last time, we did some digging. There you have it. Still wish them the best of luck though, obviously. If it's not a scam. With companies like Magna out there that can do 98% of the building and...
these guys doing some design and being able to make a pusher. Theoretically, it's possible that this could come to fruition. It just doesn't seem very likely or, you know,
But then like the thing is like even Magna, I think they're finding out now that with Fisker, like the price point that Fisker promised people and everything. I think there's some reckoning that's happening on that front. So same thing with that. Like Magna can look at this as like, all right, we can build you this pickup truck with 275 miles of range at $36,000. Yeah, you want to sell it at $36,000 all the way, but we're going to sell it to you for 50. So do what you want with that difference here. Yeah.
I just don't see any other way that this is going to happen. All right, Lucid. Lucid announced something weird this week. They're like, hey, we can give you a $7,500 credit on the Air 2. So obviously the Air is completely out of the MSRP price range for the $7,500 tax credit in the US. But Lucid didn't want everyone to be left out. So they offered for a limited time
They say, "We think our customers still deserve a $7,500 credit for choosing an EV. Lucid Air owners have told us how much they love this car from the world-class driving experience to the elegant design and spacious interior. With this limited time offer, we hope to get Lucid Air into the hands of even more customers so they can experience the best for themselves."
So it applies to an air grand touring or touring. Yeah, so the air grand touring or the touring version until March 31, which is again when we expect some updated guidance on the tax credit.
So basically, I assume that Lucid is having some issues closing some of their reservation into orders because of the tax credit. Not that like, again, completely out of the pricing range in terms of MSRP. But even that, like a lot of people, a lot of people, even if they would be buying a car at that price, they just, if they are eligible to the tax credit, they're going to want to go for a vehicle that is because they feel like they're going to be leaving money on the table otherwise. Right.
So that probably is where Lucid is having some issues here. Because again, I don't think it's $100,000 sedan. I mean, technically there's a version of it that starts lower. But right now, I don't think you can get one for less than $100,000. So hard to justify that. All right. Last piece of news before we jump into the comment section. Make sure to put your questions and subjects you want us to discuss.
In the comment section right now, it's the Lexus RZ450E, the first electric Lexus coming to market. We have all the details now in terms of the specs and pricing in the U.S. So nothing too impressive in terms of the specs because it's basically a BZ4.
BZ4X. Yeah, BZ4X. Yeah. But I'm not a big fan of Toyota's naming scheme. It's almost like they don't want you to know about your things or to remember them. Almost. Oh, yeah. It's right there. BZ4X.
So a little bit of a bigger motor, I think, on it. And that's about it. So 71.4 kilowatt-hour battery pack up to 220 miles of range. Yeah, 313 total horsepower. So a little bit higher than the BZ4X. But similar range, same battery pack, like very close other than you get a little bit more luxury out of it with Lexus batteries.
Lexus interior and branding and whatnot. But now we get the price on it and it starts basically at $60,000 with a luxury version, luxury model at $65,000. So basically dead in the water, in my opinion, unless you're like a very like huge Lexus fan and all you want to buy is a Lexus and those people exist out there. But to those people, I would show them something called a Model Y because it's
I think you get a lot more out for your money. And I know some people, they just don't like the Tesla interior and whatnot. But like we put in there, like the Model Y, you get the 330 mile version. So you get basically a hundred more miles for the same price. Yeah. Or you could get like a Mercedes EQB, which is like 55,000 starting price, third row, like a better range. 220 miles. You get better range though? Yeah. It's 240, I think, or something.
That EQB is actually pretty nice. I drove that around Germany a little bit. Drives really nice. Doesn't have acceleration like a Tesla, but third row, Mercedes, $55,000, pretty good. Oh, yeah. There's no lack of other options than the Lexus RZ450E. I know people are like, you guys are always hammering on Toyota. Of course, Lexus is Toyota. But...
Like tomorrow morning, they unveil like a nicely spec, nicely priced, high volume EV. And I'm back on board. I'm back on the Toyota train. But it's just the key being down on all electric, battery electric vehicles. And the very little effort that we see from them is done things like that. I will say the new Prius actually looks pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah.
And it's got double the electric only range, which is nice. So like if you're going to buy a Toyota Prius Prime, maybe. Yeah. Whatever they're calling it. Yeah. If you're not ready to go completely electric. Yeah. It's a decent option. All right. Let's jump into the comments section. All right. Commenter Dan Oberstay. Hopefully I'm pronouncing that right.
Is this Cybertruck photo the driver's head looks close to the roof? Indication that the photo isn't distorted as bad as you might think? Yeah, I mean, if it was distorted, I wouldn't say it was badly distorted. But yeah, you're right. It looks like the angle is fairly high. It's not from like a driver's position. It looks like maybe the person was actually outside their car and standing. Like maybe a six foot tall person standing taking a picture. But that will distort a little bit the height of it.
Yeah. And the front end looks curved. We talked about that a little bit, um, a little bit more curved than the other prototypes, but, but that might just be the angle as well. Uh, question. How much do you think Tesla is investing in retooling for the cyber truck? Will they invest in that retooling gradually to ensure demand is as expected? Your thoughts? Um,
Why retooling? Is it not just tooling if it's your first time you're building a production line? Yeah. So I guess they're asking like how much Tesla is spending to build the production line? That's a good question. I mean, we did have the total capital expenditure for the year, the guidance for the total expenditure. Now I'm blanking for some reason. I want to say like seven or eight billion, something like that.
But that includes everything. So obviously Tesla is still investing in other things in gigafactory Texas that has nothing to do with Cybertruck. Same thing in Berlin, same thing in Shanghai to a degree, because the project is going to be maybe a little bit of a ramp up in Shanghai. And then the new factories in 2023, there's going to be a lot of spending on new factories too. So it's hard to tell how much it's going to be. But
Our understanding is Tesla is bringing down the cost of capital expenditure per car, per production capacity. So it might be not as crazy as you might think for something like that. But at the same time, there's some new technology in there too. So it could be, I don't know, half a billion? They're getting better at making cars, which is...
You know, it's kind of scary. All right. Daniel DeYoung question. They have 1.5 million in deposits, but it's not a big commitment. I think they have more than that. I think 1.5 million reservation with deposit, with $100 deposit. Right. So 150 million in deposits, but it's not a big commitment. How damaging is it to Tesla if it turns out it's a dud?
Would they make another truck still? I mean, what is a dud exactly? Everything right now points to Omron, to me at least. For everyone that says, oh, the design looks ugly as hell and I'm not going to buy it. How many people are not going to buy the truck because of the windshield wiper? Right.
what percentage of those 1.5 million people that put a deposit in was like that wishing wiper is a break deal breaker for me i don't know what it is but i would assume it's fewer than like five ten percent uh so like like there's gonna be a lot of misstep that tesla needs to make in order for to make this a dog i think right now most things point to an arm run from tesla i think yeah i'm i'm not as optimistic i still think the design is
even though they have 1.5 million reservations. I don't know that it'll go mainstream, but I've been wrong about Tesla going mainstream before. So we'll see. All right, moving on. Dave Canada question. Will the new Cybertruck configuration details become available on Investor Day? If not, then which month of 2023 will customers be able to configure Cybertruck orders? Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. Yeah.
March might first of March might be a little bit early for that. Just historically for Tesla. If you look at like the Model Y rollout was the most recent one. Tesla has like just slowly open up configuration for some people like very slowly, even though it would make a ton of sense for them to just like release the details and just look at the demand, like people actually configuring things and like look at
the demand for the different version of it because from what we know so far, they already had that
with the first unveiling they knew exactly like uh what percentage i think most people were going for like a dual motor version uh then after that was a trimotor version i think the trimotor and the dual motor was actually very close in popularity and then the single motor was the least popular one but as you get closer to production i think it would make sense for people for this to ask a little bit more money from people like uh to to put a thousand dollars instead of a hundred like to put like 900 more to confirm an order and to update the specs and the configurations
so that you get more serious people now like the 1.5 million is going to go down for sure but uh to gauge the seriousness of people with different uh configuration and that will help with production i think so the sooner the better but just historically from tesla i think we're more looking at maybe end of april may maybe even june yeah and also that price sticker shock is going to be not 39 000.
We'll see how much they cost. Daniel DeYoung, I'm 7,000th in line for Cybertruck. I don't know if that's the number. I don't even know how you know that, Daniel. Hoping for a gradual rollout. A few months maybe. Want to see reviews and make sure that there's not a rash of people throwing steel balls at the windows. You mean like random people throwing balls at other people's car? I don't think that's going to be happening. No.
Ron King says they had investor day in 2018, 2019. No different. Well better than what GM and Ford had in the last year. I don't know that they did. Did they have investor day? I was following Tesla pretty closely. I would have remembered that. I think you're confusing them with the shareholders annual meeting. Right. All right. David W., I live in Minnesota. Electric vehicles are not being sold at
any level, 0.3% of vehicles. Well, yeah, it's certainly lower than California everywhere. But the reason that we cover California so closely is because A, it's half of the US market and B, it's kind of ahead of the curve. So just like your clothing, just like how houses look, things happen in California first and kind of work their way, happen on the coast first and work their way inland. So-
That's why we don't cover Minnesota as closely as California. Also, it's just such a smaller market. Yeah, it's much smaller. So this is, I think, we were talking about this in the Slack room. Have you seen the article about Elon Musk meeting with White House aides to discuss climate goals? Do you think this could result in the expedited development of Tesla fast charging?
and i you know i can't click on the link from here but yeah i don't know if that's a new meeting because i think last week reported on that too like they met i think i think this is the reuters report yeah probably is just a rewrite of the rudder's report from today rodgers report from today was like i think rothers just stumbled upon this and they're like oh this is new to them because they don't follow this closely at all and i've been very disappointed with rothers uh
coverage of Tesla in the last few years. I think it's come down a lot. But yeah, I mean, we've been reporting on that for years. Yeah, Tesla needs to open the supercharger network, not for years, but since the IRA, basically, that Tesla needs to open up the supercharger network in order to get the subsidies. And it looks like they're waiting for a new guidance from the DOT in order to make that happen. All right. We have, speaking of shareholder day, I don't know if you remember a couple of years ago, a genius
got up on or got on stage and said, I'm a genius. Level three genius. Level three genius. This guy, Joseph Kovacs. I don't know if you meant this seriously. I have solutions for Cybertruck, Wiper, and many more problems for Semi and Roadster. Please send to Elon or Franz.
You know how many of those I get a week? I get at least five of those a week, people sending me emails thinking that I'm super close to Elon and Tesla. I have this new battery, I have this new whatever that's going to save Tesla. Please send it to Elon. I'm like, no, I'm good. Sly's here. Hey there. Hey, Sly.
See you in Quebec next time. All right. Question. A lot of the volume will be sales in China of the $25,000 car. When is the CCP going to allow the Shanghai expansion as that small car will take other Chinese car sales? Is that really the problem right now? Is that really the CCP blocking the $25,000 car from Tesla? I don't think so. That's a conspiracy theory. Yeah. I don't think the CCP is the problem with that right now. I think Tesla just need to make it happen.
All right. Is Tesla giving a big competitive advantage with the imminent opening of the supercharger network? I have a CCS adapter and I would not get a non-Tesla EV based on the fast charging experience. It's a good question. I mean, Tesla may not open it. They kind of seemed like they switched direction for the North American market when they
announced the north american charging standard well if they're trying to push the standard why would they put ccs on there i think they dipped their toes in it i think they dipped their toes and like let's see if we can make this happen where if we can get people on board uh then it would be another solution to that requirement for for the subsidies but if they no one bit on it
other than maybe like abterra but uh like is it what abterra got me a lot confused because then they were like okay they were the first one to get on board but then they said like no dc on on the card there's going to be no dc charging so like what what then why
But then they changed back. But they changed back to CCS. But the fact that they did it in the first place, let me think that they might not have the greatest discussion with Tesla about it. Maybe they thought, we will raise our hand first and then Tesla will get on board with us. And then maybe it's going to be a win-win for us and Tesla. And then Tesla was like, actually, we need an actual car manufacturer to get on board to actually get the...
the requirement checked off. I don't know what happened there, but the fact that they went back and forth with it, like let me think that after what might not be the best solution for that. Yeah. Uh, so, so yeah, I think the more like they tried it, they were like, let's, let's give it a shot for fun and maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't work. But the only thing that this has announced is that like other, uh,
charging station operators have adopted the standard, which I can understand. That would make it like EV Google was already doing it. That makes sense for an operator of charging station because their goal is to get more EVs using their network and there's no other brand that has more EVs than Tesla, so you might as well just use their connector. But on the other end, getting other automakers, that's what you need. You need to get other automakers to
to get that too. That's the hardest part for Tesla. And I just, I just don't see it happening right now. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder how much extra it would cost to have like a dual CCS Tesla because that, I mean, that would be the best of both worlds. But,
But it would cost more. And then eventually, if everybody did that, then people would be like, well, why don't you just do that? But right now, it looks like the magic dock on the supercharger is the way that this is going to go. And that's how they're going to open up the network. And to Daniel's question, that's going to remove a big competitive advantage.
Yes and no. Maybe Tesla only needs to do like, all right, we have a 20 supercharger station with 20 stall in the station. And we have like a few of those that has this and a few that doesn't have it. And that's the other thing. Tesla also has deployed the most connector per station than any other automaker or sorry, any other charging station operator.
So I know that in some markets, especially in California, where there's a ton of Tesla, and on certain travel days, it is still a problem. And then onboarding non-Tesla EV is going to be an even bigger problem. But for the most part, I know here in Quebec, even though Tesla is pretty popular, I've never showed up to a Tesla supercharger that was full.
And I would assume that Tesla is going to use that extra money for the government to just deploy more of them, more stalls per station. Right. And they can actually make a profit on other vehicle manufacturers. Yeah, I think it's, I mean, it kind of fits with their thing is propelling electric vehicle adoption. The mission. Also, it's just time that any EV owner should be able to go to any
charging station, not think about it. Like it's that, that that's obviously the future that we should be aiming for. We talked about Tesla cyber truck timelines. Yeah.
Mike Parker looking at getting a Tesla Model 3, but as somebody who has grown up in northern climes, wondering why they only have rear-wheel drive or all-wheel drive options. Have you guys covered this before? So I assume he's asking that you would prefer front-wheel drive in winter? Yeah, I think that's... Which I disagree with, actually. Yeah, I also disagree. I have no problem with the Model S. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, Tesla's really good at... Am I lagging or are you lagging? Maybe. Yeah, I don't know. But the electric vehicles in general are much better at not slipping when they're accelerating. And also, gas cars have the big block engine at the front usually, and that's why they put the front wheel drive there. So there would be more pressure on the front wheels.
But electric vehicles, most of the weight is in the middle. So it doesn't really make as much sense to do that. Moving on. Yeah. And if slipping and like traction in the winter is your big concern, then you're going to want to go all wheel drive anyway. Yeah. And winter tires make a bigger difference than anything else anyway. That's true too. Yeah.
Uh, Jimmy snack stack says our local Walmart has 40 transit, 120 mile per hour range. Yeah. I think each E-transit depending on if it has a high hood or high roof or low roof or spinner configuration, it's a little bit different, but, um, they all, they're all around a hundred, a little over a hundred miles. Um, but that's going to go up soon, I believe.
Stefan Froker question, skip the last name, save your tongue. Okay. When will we see a Powerwall V2G system that handles three phase like here in mainland Europe? That's a good question. We've been talking about that for a while. I mean, Elon sort of hinted to it at one point with like a Powerwall 3.0 type of thing.
but then it never came to market. So I don't know if it's ever going to be something that Tesla... Probably it will, because I know there's been some relaxing on that front from Tesla in the last few years. Starting with a Cybertruck, every vehicle going forward will have vehicle-to-grid capacity. So it would make sense for Tesla to have a device that do it, like you said, like a new Powerwall.
But no other indication than that, than Tesla kind of saying that, oh, yes, from Cybertruck going forward, it's going to have the equal degree capability.
But to what degree? We know that the vehicle to grid, the term is pretty straightforward. It's like your vehicle capacity, energy capacity to the grid. But people now are using vehicle to everything and things like that, from using just output of electricity, but not necessarily something that's aimed at powering a house. So we'll wait and see. We're going to have to wait and see.
all right uh david perrin uh my tesla doesn't even have blind spot warning and the cynical cheap workaround is a dangerous alternative auto wipers and headlight dipping are woeful unless an industry standard can't can't argue with that uh my my wipers are horrible uh but there's a lot of good things so uh dan uh two-seater pickups are very unpopular these days that's true yeah they they like the uh minivan in the front and pick up in the back
Magna seems like a very good way for startup EVs to get built. But how would the service and repairs work for a very small EV company? How is Fisker planning for that? Well, the Fisker, like I really don't understand people that are hyped about Fisker because as an investment, I mean, like if it does work, like great, like we actually get the ocean and all that at those price point, I would be happy about it. But Fisker,
i mean they claim that they own like the interior like all the the ip of it and everything on the car that that's nice and they have the design capability and all that but they're outsourcing everything else so they're outsourcing the manufacturing of it to magna like you just said the repair and service it's another company uh forget the name uh it's a big company though that but i think they're more like they do like commercial
fleet repair and service like that. Not really consumer. So I just...
like it's it's it's a model that i guess is a little bit closer to like a dealership model i i guess when and that's not something that we're really hyped about um and obviously i think there's a huge advantage of owning your own service repair there's you close loop you cut the middleman uh you when you're under warranty you're not you're not gonna screw yourself like dealerships screwed
manufacturer and vice versa sometimes. So if you can cut the middleman on that, then you can cut costs and obviously you can turn that to the consumer if you want, or you can just pocket that as gross margin. All right, we're getting close to the end here. Is Rivian finally in desperate shape now that Ford has bailed? Ford announced that it had divested most of its Rivian stock. I don't think it's a big deal. Yeah, I don't know.
It's not as big a deal as them being able to produce a car for the price. Well, we know that Ford was bailing for a while now. They've been selling for a while. Still on 1% of it, which is something. Not nothing, yeah. Yeah. But yeah, we know they've been divesting for a while and we know they dropped out a lot of their project they were working together, if not all project they were working together.
At one point, Rivian was supposed to help them build a pickup truck, was supposed to build a pickup truck for them. There was two different programs. They were going to build a Lincoln or something? Yeah, and that all went away. I don't think that's the disparate shape part of Rivian. I don't think they need Ford for anything other than they need to cut costs. That's what they need to do right now. Yeah, it's also interesting that the deal with Mercedes, Rivian doesn't seem to be good at
coming through with because Rivian had a thing with Mercedes for a little bit and then they decided no we're not going to do that I mean they're just spreading themselves very thin with even like now the e-bike thing like e-bike is obviously a lot easier than a pickup truck but still how about you make your main business sustainable right now because it's not sustainable financially sustainable at this point and I think maybe that's part of the reason why they aren't talking about the e-bike right now
Uh, Stefan back question. Is there any whole, any hold in the rumor that Lexus RZ will come with Chatham? Oh, I think never. Uh, you know, all of Toyota's, uh, uh, fast charging, uh, you know, the RAV or whatever CCS. So I would say no, maybe in Japan or Chatham was still big, but don't think so. Uh, would Tesla build anything more than a battery factory in Quebec, Ontario? Would they go as far as a whole full size gigafactory? Uh,
It certainly could. They're going to need a lot of them, a lot of vehicle assembly factories by the end of the decade. So Quebec, Ontario could be a place for that. But yeah, battery factory, I think would make the most sense at the moment, at least. Yeah, a battery factory, just because we have everything here in Canada for all the supply chain is there already. We just need to start producing cells.
I mean, and there's some like there, I know like there's an LFP place and just outside Montreal that's been bought out by another company. So there's some low volume stuff, but yeah. And we, we need it like trying calm. I think LG would make the most sense since they're working with GM and GM is buying all the capacity in battery Valley. It would make sense for LG, all GM, all GM to come and build the cells there.
All right. A few more. Andrew McDonald question. Will Tesla Investor Day hurt or help Tesla investors? Well, my two cents is that they're going to probably make a really good pitch of why Tesla is going to be, you know, the biggest, baddest company in the world in a few years. So I think they're going to make a good pitch for investors. What do you think?
Yeah, I mean, so a lot of these things nowadays, unless there's some clear announcement, and I think there could be some clear announcements, but maybe they're going to get burned before the Mexico factory. I would think that the timing would make sense to announce that there. Maybe something in Canada too. There could be some big announcement there that would make a big difference. So if you're talking about earthing or helping investors, I think he's talking about the stock price. So those things could happen.
But those things would also probably get leaked before. So it might be one of those situations that like Biden by the announcement, like sell the news. But for the most part, like you said, it's going to be a pitch on how Tesla is going to scale with those things.
And that all relies on the credibility of the people making that pitch, just how credible it is. And I know that Elon has lost a lot of credibility lately too. So yeah, I don't think it's going to be that big of a deal other than if there are specific announcements that are only for that investor day. But like I said, I think the bigger announcement might get leaked or we might get some inkling of it beforehand and that will boost the price before the day itself, investor day itself.
All right, one of a few more left. Question, the new standard range Model Y with the new 4680 batteries, do you think they are software locked on range and will unlock more range after they are proven?
maybe a little bit like in term of like just efficiency, but not software lock in the sense that Tesla is like limiting a lot of capacity and for, for, for like, uh, like pricing reasons or anything like that, like they used to in the past. Uh, it's more like, uh, they, they are being careful and they might unlock some capacity in the future. It's more like that. Uh, and that's a guess because the 4680 are new cells. And so, uh,
Might be just for like safety reasons or whatever. But it's not like, oh, it's actually like an 80 kilowatt hour pack and they're limiting it to 60. I don't think it's that. All right. Two more comments. Not sure if you're seeing this over there, but in Ireland, Nissan Marketing is doing a Toyota on EVs. So it is now officially called a Toyota. New Nissan QuashQui e-power delivers unplugged EV-like driving solution for eco-minded drivers. So those are the Nissans that...
are electric motor powered, but they don't have batteries. They're just basically they're just big generators. So the gas engine just generates electricity to drive the electric wheels, which seems crazy to me, but that's something that they're doing, I guess. Yeah. And then Sylvia and GM has broken ground in Beck and core for the their anode factory.
Is that GM though? I don't remember which one it is. Is it POSCO, I think, or something like that? I don't think it's officially GM though. But yeah, the GM has bought the capacity already, I think. So Optimus can serve drinks on Investor Day? Yeah, we haven't heard a lot about Optimus since the unveiling that was kind of nothing too great. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, if that thing is walking now, the actual real prototype, not the first one that they brought that was bad looking, it would make sense probably to have it do a little bit of a show because last time it fell too early for it. What was the last one? All the questions.
Cheers from the Netherlands to the Royal. All right. Well, that's it for us this week, everyone. I appreciate every single one of you watching right now. If you do enjoy the show, please drop us a quick like and a subscribe. That helps a lot. If you're listening on your podcast app, if you can stop by your Apple podcast app and give us a five-star review, that helps tremendously. Same thing for Spotify, wherever you're watching right now. That helps the show a ton. And we appreciate every single one of them. And we're going to see you same time, same place next week.
I'll be in Mexico though. Hey, bye-bye.