New Tesla Model S/X, robotaxi service is coming, new EV price war, and more
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And we are live for a new episode of Electric Podcasting. I'm Fred Lambert, your host, and as usual, I'm joined by Seth Winchell. How are you doing today, Seth? I'm good. All right. I'm coming to you live.

from Seoul, Korea. It's 5 a.m. there, here, and I just woke up. So if you hear it in my voice and more in my energy, I apologize. But I'm going to wake up and have my coffee with me. And I've been used to waking up around the same time anyway all week. Well, I've been testing out the Kia EV4 here. I cannot talk about it, about the driving experience.

just yet there's an embargo a two week long embargo i think it's like the 16 or something so uh it's gonna be a few a few podcast episodes later maybe we'll talk about it uh but i can i can tell you that um that these i can say i can talk about these i cannot talk about the driving and the design of the vehicle and very nice i mean it's uh basically an ev6 with a

I think Kia is doing a great job with the design of its vehicles lately. It looks like the EV6 design idea wouldn't translate very well to a sedan.

But it actually does the way they do it. They change the taillights and everything, and they manage to create some sort of symmetry. And it's very nice. I do prefer the hatchback version of the EV4 that we've seen, and that is not coming to North America. But the sedan is? They've said that? The sedan is. Which I assume that's why you're there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's because of that. I mean, the idea, I think, so I don't want to be mistaken. So yeah, the EV4 is going to be produced in Korea, the EV4 sedan, and then the EV4 hatchback in Slovakia, Czech Republic, one of those Eastern European countries. So they are sticking to that for now. And they say that because I think the hatchback would be popular too. I mean, sedans are not that popular in North America anymore.

I know that people love their bigger cars too, but I thought the trunk opening in the back of the EV4 is not that big. It is useful to have an hatch. But yeah, they said that they designed the hatchback version specifically for Europe and then they're producing it specifically in Europe. So for now, it's just for that. It's not coming in Korea either, for what it sounds like.

all right uh because i was away uh it's not the biggest week of news here but still we are we have a few interesting items we're gonna talk a bit about elon uh kind of uh turning away uh and being being becoming an ally again when it comes to uh regulation for evs in the us and and clean energy that would be an interesting thing the numel s and next design update has been spotted

And it's not very exciting, to be honest with you. A little Robotaxi update. A little update on sales in Canada and Quebec here. So I know we have a lot of Canadian and Quebec listeners, and that's good. BYD triggering a new price war in China. So that's going to be interesting. And then we're going to end on the Electric from Los San Grand Prix coming in 2025. I want to remind you about that and invite you to it. It's coming in just over a month now. All right, let's start off with...

With Elon, Elon has officially exited his role. That's great artwork. Oh, by the way, that's pretty much my talent with AI here. It's my limitations and that. But...

So I just woke up. I missed basically most of the day, most of Friday because I was sleeping because of the time difference. Have you heard anything about the Trump-Elon? There was supposed to be a press conference for his exiting of the... I haven't heard that. The big news was the New York Times article about Elon's drug use. Yeah, I did read that diagonally pretty quickly right before I went to sleep.

I used to be pushing back a little bit on this, like we don't know for a fact that he's a drug addict or anything like that. This article is pretty damning. And I have to say that in the last few weeks, I've talked to a few people

that know Elon, that have known Elon, I should say. So it's not super up to date. So I couldn't, I'm not really actionable on it, but it's starting to make me think that, yeah, it is a much bigger problem than we thought. And obviously the anecdotal evidence is there just from his behavior. But yeah, the article, I mean, I read it pretty quickly, but I don't think there was like that much like crazy details. Yeah. So, but yeah, I think it might be a real problem.

But no, we're talking about here, we're talking about something somewhat positive about Elon, even though I don't think it erased everything he did or anything he did, really. But he hasn't been talking negatively about any of the Trump policy for most of Trump's new administration, so the last three months or so.

And now, just as he's exiting the administration or he's not allowed to be the head of Doge, even though probably was never allowed to be the head of Doge, but now officially he has retreated from his role. He's starting a little bit to talk about what's bad about what's happening. And when it comes to Tesla specifically in electric vehicle and clean energy. So Tesla this week,

issued a statement that on the bill, on the big, beautiful bill, the budget bill that Congress has passed now, but now it's stalling, unless something has changed today. It's stalling in the Senate. There's three or four Republican senators that are uneasy with increasing the debt ceiling by $4 trillion, as they should be, especially if it's for giving

tax cut to the rich. And yes, but we discussed last week exactly what it means for electric vehicles and solar energy and energy storage. The tax credit is going away, the $7,500 tax credit for EVs by the end of the year. Same things for the ITC, the 30% tax credit on solar and energy storage and wind. All of that is not being phased out on anything. It's like 2026, January 1st, no go.

And Tesla issued a statement on that this week. They spoke out about it. They said, abrogately ending their energy tax credit would threaten American energy's independence and reliability on our grid. Note, specifically, they say abruptly. We urge the Senate to enact legislation with a sensible wind down of 25D and 48E. So that's the...

energy storage and solar and all that. This will ensure continued speedy deployment of over 60 gigawatt capacity per year to support AI and domestic manufacturing growth. So Tesla is not outright saying don't kill it. They're just saying phase it out, which is extremely reasonable. Obviously, I would prefer it to stay, but

Energy storage projects, solar projects and all that, they take time. So even if you secure the project by the end of the year, you make it happen, like you pay for it and everything.

Chances that they are completed by the end of the year are not that high. And even for a smaller project, I've talked to a few people because I recommended that people in the U.S. get their home solar and batch pack and home batch pack done as soon as possible because of that. And some people that like in the last few weeks, even last month in April, someone told me that the I think it was in New York, who said.

They ordered their solar and home battery pack, signed the deal and everything. And the installer said it was going to happen in November. So it takes a while. And, you know, it can be delayed. You never know. So it could be a problem. And that's just for like a small home project. You can imagine like Tesla right now, most of its business is like mega packs. And those are giant projects that require utility connection and all that. I mean,

Home project also requires a utility connection, unless you're doing a full half-grid system. But you know what I mean. It's a bigger thing at the regulatory utility front. So they want just a phase-out, a reasonable phase-out of that. I think that would make sense. Now, Elon retweeted that this week. So it's like, oh, it's a tiny little form of protest of pushback against the Trump administration. But then he also said, so Gail, a big Tesla Elon fan, talked about, what about ending the...

fossil fuel credits and an incentive around the fossil fuel industry.

And Elon retweeted that and added, there is no change to tax incentive for oil and gas, just EV and solar. Now, you would know that this is just a statement, a true statement that he's saying. He's not saying that shouldn't happen. He's not saying that, hey, Trump, you're sold out to the oil and gas industry. He's not saying any of that. So I'm not saying that he saw the light or anything. But it is a tiny little, because even for those who don't know,

Even prior to backing Trump, Elon was open to ending incentives for electric vehicles and solar and all that. If the U.S. government, which subsidized fossil fuel, the fossil fuel industry at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars a year, would also end those subsidies so that you would have an actual level playing field between renewable energy and fossil fuel. If they would end that, then it would be fine with the EV solar tax credit going away.

So he's basically going back to that policy. And it makes sense because Ilan has been backing that. I don't think it's a bit. Obviously, I think it's a bit stupid that he's now realizing what's happening. It's like, oh, I mean, this is going away and it's going to hurt Tesla. But they're not taking away the fossil fuel incentive. Like I said, they issued for years.

This was never going to happen, obviously. Trump has made it clear that it's the campaign on a drill, baby drill. What do you think is going to happen?

But I like to see Elon kind of waking up to the idea. And I say that purely, you guys know my position. I think Elon shouldn't be at Tesla. I think Tesla should have another CEO. I think he's hurting the brand, not just hurting the brand, but also hurting the company with his actions that are not related to brand and marketing. Just, you know, Cybertruck being the only vehicle that Tesla launched in the last five years and all that. I think those are problems focusing solely on autonomous. Serious problem.

But he's not going away, it looks like. He just ended his time at Doge. He says he's coming back at Tesla, SpaceX, XAI. It's not like we're going to get a full-time CEO at Tesla anyway. But it doesn't look like he's going away. And like I said before, the only people that can push him out are the shareholders. And the shareholders have a big dilemma that if they push him out, the stock crashes because the stock trades on his lies regarding self-driving and humanoid robots. So...

It's a big dilemma. So we kind of stuck with Elon at Tesla for now. So it's nice to see him going back at least a little bit to this idea because this is going to hurt Tesla badly. Why? Because

Because the U.S. is kind of keeping Tesla alive right now. We're going to talk about Canada in a minute. We talked about Europe plenty. Europe is basically down 40% for Tesla this year. It's massive. It's really bad. And China...

Doesn't look too bad for most people right now, but as we've been reporting for the last few months, Tesla is literally being squeezed out of the Chinese market right now with extreme competition. And we're going to talk a little bit more about that when we talk about what BYD did earlier this week or this weekend. They did that last weekend.

So the U.S. has been where demand for Tesla has been maintaining. I mean, Tesla has been the leader by far in North America of electric vehicle deployment. And it's been going down lately, but they're still the number one. And that's also where they've been selling vehicles profitably. It's not been the case in China lately. In Europe, some of it, but a lot fewer, as we just discussed. You take away the $7,500 tax credit.

And you take away a lot of that. Tesla's not going to be able to maintain the kind of level of delivery they do now. I know that they say, oh, but the others are also going away. Yeah, but if you make a vehicle $7,500 more expensive, you reduce your market. It's as simple as that. And what's really going to hurt the state even more because the EV business has been going down anyway is the energy business has been going up. But why it's been going up?

A lot of the reason of that is because the U.S. market has been giving a 30% tax credit for everyone that installs solar with a power wall, which is what Tesla's deploying, and also for the utility scale stuff, the mega pack. So I...

I think Elon right now is kind of realizing that, all right, I went to the Trump administration to cut costs and stop immigration. Stop immigration? Okay, it looks like that worked. I don't think you're going to be on the right side of history of that. But from his point of view, I think there was a little bit of an achievement there. But a big thing has been reducing costs, and that has been a total failure. The government is trying to pass right now one of the biggest, the biggest increase in that.

the deficit ever or the debt. And I mean, there was also the goal of killing the woke man virus, but I think that was always like a stupid goal anyway. So everything fell and now he's coming back and Tesla is in trouble because of the Trump administration. It's a terrible situation and I hope he's trying to, he has some buyer's remorse for the $3 million that he kicked. Well, you know what's interesting? I've heard a take that like,

So, you know, Elon and Trump have had a kind of back and forth love hate relationship. He's kind of told Trump that he should he's too old. He should retire. He should get out, which, you know, like those are probably the nicest reasons for him to leave. But there's this take that like, oh, Trump, this has been a long game for Trump. He fooled Elon into leaving.

you know, making huge donations to his campaign. And he gave him a job that basically nobody would want to do because it's going to destroy their reputation. And basically he made Elon kill the, you know, the biggest EV industry in North America, like shot himself in the foot. Like, I'm not saying Trump's smart enough to do that, but like, that's a good point. But yeah,

He's coming out better than Elon. That's what you're saying. For sure. Trump destroyed Elon. If this is a Trump versus Elon, who came out better? Trump owned him. Yeah. You even see it in the polls, the surveys about favorability. It's...

Trump's base, the MAGA base, you cannot convince them of anything else, anything bad about him. He went down a little bit in the federal vote. I think a lot of the fiscal conservatives and all that are a little bit upset about the situation. Even the poor people that were concerned about inflation are still with him, which is nuts.

you haven't changed much people's perspective of Trump with all that. With Elon, Elon also has his own MAGA group, his own hardcore fans that there's nothing you can tell them that's going to change your mind. But if you look at the Farrow V rating, a lot of people that were in the middle that kind of have a positive view on Elon because he did an amazing thing with his companies for years,

These people are gone and it's going to be hard as hell to get them back. Hard as hell. Maybe even impossible. All right, let's talk a bit about the new Model S and X. I don't know if you remember this, but earlier this year, Lars Morhauve, VP of Engineering of Eco Engineering, said that there was going to be a... I don't think he said a refresh. What did he say? What was his exact word?

Just to give it a minute, we'll get there. The upgrade a few years ago was bigger than most people thought in terms of architecture and structure. He's talking about the 2021 refresh of the Mojave S and X. We'll give it some love later this year. Everyone here has a little place in their heart for S and X, but they are going anywhere anytime soon. So a lot of people, myself included, thought, all right, a new refresh coming later this year.

Makes sense. 2021 was early 2021 last time. 2025, almost midway through 2025. It's like a mid-cycle refresh for the rest of the industry. That's what it would be. But we see Tesla doesn't really operate like that. But...

This week, we started seeing the new Model X and S spotted on the road. I mean, the S was spotted on the Narboring Ring, our performance version. We couldn't see anything very new on it. There was a little bit of camouflage on the front end and a bit of camouflage on the back end. So it sounds like that's where the update is going to be. But the kilowatts and the Model S are spot on.

parked somewhere and they uh he took a few pictures of the vehicle showing a few updates and it is extremely minor stuff uh folks so the front end a little bit updated like the the

The slant here at the front where the logo is has been a little bit updated. It's barely visible. There's a bumper camera. So that's probably the biggest update. So finally, there's a bumper camera to the SNX. And inside, there's a blue tape that we're seeing inside that looks like it's probably going to be an RGB light strip, just like the MOL3 and MOLY. That's pretty much it for now. Obviously, there could be something under the hood.

But then Lars said, oh, people didn't realize how big the update was under the hood specifically for the Model S and X in 2021. So I don't know if they're still going to do that again or they are banking on that. I hope so because the design update is extremely mild and won't do anything for sales of the Model S and X, which have been going. I think last quarter they were

about 8,000 or something like that, 8,000 units in a quarter, which, you know, 32,000 units a year. Yeah, we can't even break that out because Tesla groups them with the Cybertruck, right? Yeah. All the programs that are doing badly, they just group them together and it's like, figure out which one is dying. It's like, well, it might be all of them. Right. No, I mean, at one point, I mean, it still is. Model S and X lines are set up for 100,000 units a year.

And now it's operating at basically 32,000 units a year. It's very bad. I think the only thing really that could help Tesla on that front is like massive price cuts. Like if you start selling like the Model S for closer to like $60,000 and Model X for like $65,000, then maybe you can bring those vehicles back. But for now, I think it's pretty much a dead program.

all right we're gonna have plenty of times to talk to you guys so if you guys have questions you can put them in the comment section below i see dan is here as his skeptic is here uh we already have a call a lot of our um long time followers and listeners to the podcast appreciate you guys for being here if you have any questions for us you can put in the comment section below and uh we're gonna get to it in like 15 20 minutes we don't have that many more articles to get through uh we have the update on the robotac cns set i mean the more i'm reporting on this the more i'm getting worried about it uh

It's getting scary a little bit. At this point, I'm hoping that the whole thing is fake. It's going to be fake because I think otherwise it's going to be... I think it's either going to be fake or it's going to be a mess or both. I think those are the options right now. I was just going to say both seems like possible. Yeah. And when I say fake, I just mean that there's going to be extremely high level of Tiddle operation going

possibly even like a one-to-one ratio of the operator to car. Like there's one car, there's one guy that's just like watching everything and ready to press the button like if something happened. But even that is not ideal because there's obviously a delay, even though you can probably get it down. I'm sure that the Tesla has set up something like 5G or something to be super quick and geofenced it around an idea that they tested for connection and all that. I think...

I think that makes sense. But from what we heard last month, we reported an article that Apartheid Tester had yet to start testing its RoboTaxi as of the end of last month. No, earlier this month. It was the first week of the month.

first week of May, now we are the last week of May, the last day of May, they had yet to start testing the program without safety drivers. So it's just safety drivers in the car. And we noted that that's problematic because Waymo

Waymo has tested their service with and without everywhere, but specifically for Austin, let's compare it to Austin. And by that time Waymo already had a lot of experience running its service without safety drivers in other markets like San Francisco and Phoenix and LA. They tested six months with a safety driver and six months without a safety driver before launching a service. So it was worrying that a month or so before the launch,

Tesla had yet to test without a safety driver. Now Elon kind of confirmed this report this week where he said for the past several days Tesla has been testing self-driving Model Y cars, no one in the driver's seat on Austin public street with no incident a month ahead of schedule. So he said that this week two three weeks away from the launch saying that they are ahead of schedule for having starting to test without a safety driver. What does that mean? So a month ahead of schedule like

Were they planning to not test with a safety driver? Were they planning to launch with paid customers for the first time without a safety driver? That makes no sense to me. I don't know what he's talking about. But yeah,

But yeah, this is, again, this is apparently what's happening right now. Bloomberg also came out with a report this week that backed a little bit what Elon said. And he said that Tesla is aiming right now for a June 12th launch of the system. And it's going to be very limited, like we previously known, like 10 to 20 mile a year max. It's going to be limited to probably an invite only at first. And then they're going to open up through the Tesla app and everything.

But again, we know that it's going to be a geofence system. That's not too surprising. And we don't know if it's going to be highways and city streets or both. But we do know, based on what Tesla communicated to Wall Street analysts and all that, that there's going to be a heavy demand.

level of teleoperation Elon also confirmed that it's just we don't know by to what degree is it like I said I think it's very likely that we see a one-to-one it's basically a remote control call I mean it's not remote control because yes the FSD is going to do a lot of the heavy lifting but

But it's still the same if it's not exactly, but still pretty close to what we get in the consumer vehicles today. And we know that that is pretty bad in terms of like intervention, critical intervention every 400, 500 miles or so. So if so, that would be for a robot taxi.

I don't know what's going to be the utilization rate of that, but I would assume that they would be able to do that within two days. That means a critical intervention every two days. It is a scary thing to think about with no one in the car. Now, again, if there's someone with teleoperation capability watching everything, I'm a little bit more at ease. But still, would you get in one set? No.

I mean, I get in one every day sort of, but no, I don't know that I would get in a driverless. No, no. Get in the backseat of one right now with no one in the driver's seat like a Waymo does. Probably not. No. Like, I wouldn't. It's scary. It's a scary thing that some people would. I mean, I...

And I'm aware that it's not the same of getting in my car right now. I mean, my car is a hardware three. Sure. Okay. Like let's say I'm getting in the hardware four car with FSD and getting in the backseat and just, you know, tricking the system to keep driving. It's, I know it's not exactly the same because Tesla has, it's not exactly the same version because Tesla has optimized it for Austin. It's geofence around Austin. There are teleoperator. So I know it's,

better than what I have in my car but I know it's the same core technology and I know how bad that is right now and you guys know my point on that too like I'm saying it's bad compared to what it's supposed to be but if FSD was developed in a vacuum without all of Elon's

claims about achieving unsupervised self-driving without Tesla selling it as a full self-driving system. If it was just an ADAS system, I think people would be super impressed and the program would be celebrated by most people. But that's not the case. Maybe they're running a version of the software that's, you know, super safety enhanced, very safe, like slow. When there's any question, it kind of just pulls over or freaks out or calls up the Tesla, you know,

remote drivers or whatever. Or maybe, you know, there's a, I mean, there maybe there's a one-to-one remote driver, you know, just watching as they're going around. Yeah. No, I think, I think it's going to be the lighter or both. It could be both. It could be, there could be speed limitations to avoid the high speed crash case. But, but even then, like, yeah, it would,

It would have to be limited, not on highways. I think that would be the big thing because Tesla has a problem on highways. Again, this week, that's why I said I'm scared of this whole thing. Even this week, we saw in China, someone just rammed into a truck on the highway. They weren't paying attention. I get it, but now we cannot use that as an excuse anymore because there's no one in the driver's seat. There's no one paying attention unless, again, the teleoperator can address that. But

Even for the teleoperator, I hope they're going to have a feed of what the car sees too. And I don't mean the cameras, but I mean, for example, let's act like I'm a teleoperator right now looking at a car. It's driving on the highway and there's a car stop on the lane in front, which is a very common accident with FSD, especially with people who are not paying attention. Plenty of time to stop. And a lot of time, FSD will stop.

So you need to know that it's not going to stop. Otherwise, you're like intermingling for no reason or like, I don't know. So like this situation here is that's part of what I think is worrying here. Well, yeah, it's happening apparently June 12, though Bloomberg did say that it could change.

All right, GM has become the number one EV seller in Canada. That's for the first three months of the year. Q1, they saw a surge of 252% of deliveries led by the Chevy Equinox with almost 2,000 units delivered. Almost 900 units in Canada alone for the Silverado EV. The Cadillac Optic, I'm starting to see some Cadillac Optic in Quebec. They just launched, but 615 units delivered.

And it's already about the same level as the Lyric. Yeah, that's the Lyric at 720 units. So the Optix is the entry level. Lyric's a little bit higher hand. And then you have the Vistac too, but is that in Canada? They are not quoting the sales here. 186 Hummer EV, well, up 232%. Oh, no, that's just the pickup 232%, 88% for the Vistac.

Oh, wait a minute. No, it's 186 just for the pickup and 252 for the SUV. Damn, some people have money in Canada. So it's a total of just shorts of 6,000 EVs delivered for Tesla and Q1 in Canada. And they claim the number one spot with that. They are now the best seller. And it's not too surprising because who was the best seller before its...

it was tesla and we don't have all the canadian number for tesla because we don't have all the canadian number period yet but uh a big newspaper in quebec managed to get some uh some stats just for quebec uh with the saaq and uh they uh they figured out that uh tesla delivered only 524 vehicles in quebec in q1 and then for people who don't know quebec is the biggest market for abs in canada um

And that's down 87% year over year. It's pretty big. Now, there's a few reasons for that. Obviously, the incentive going away is one, but the incentive went away during the quarter and that boosts sales normally. But now there was a very weird situation with Tesla with the end of the federal tax credit for EV. It's not a tax credit, it's a direct discount, but anyway.

We talked about the situation before Tesla filed thousands of requests for refunds for the incentive worth $42 million more than they could have ever delivered. And people saw it as being shady, didn't know what was happening. And Tesla finally came out and said, hey, it was nothing shady. It was just a backlog of refund requests that we hadn't filed. And when we saw that the program was ended, we decided to file them now.

Which is a weird thing, too, because this is probably months of backlog that you guys weren't filing, and now you filed them. Why were you not filing them before? Why were you leaving this money on the table? It's not clear. But now you have that that happened. Put sour taste in people's mouth running Tesla in Canada. But on top of it, obviously, the brand damage has been...

higher in Canada for Tesla than in the US because of the trade war, because of Trump talking about annexing the country. Obviously, how this is affected by that is through Elon backing Trump. And then Elon himself threw some oil on the fire with saying things like Canada is not a real country. He's like, what are you doing with that? Yeah, that's just a no-no. Yeah.

So you have the brand damage to Trump and Elon. You have the end of the incentive. And then to top it off, there's a 25% import tariffs now on Tesla vehicles in Canada that started in April. And that was the cherry on top. It's just the sales just plummeted. I have a source that told me that Tesla is not planning to import new vehicles for the end of the quarter.

They just have too many already in inventory. Yeah, so they did manage to squeeze in some inventory in Canada before the tariffs, specifically the new Model Y, basically.

So there's some of that available. But like a new order right now is $85,000 Canadian dollars for a Model Y. So it just makes no sense. And no one wants to buy that. So they're not importing anything. They're just trying to sell what they have right now, which is some Model Y inventory and a lot of Cybertruck inventory. They have some S and X, Model 3 left, but not that many. And yeah, so now they're...

they're just liquidating the inventory that you have on hand and the rest of the market is basically gone for Tesla in Canada. I mean, this is a Quebec numbers, obviously, but I think we're going to see similar things in the broader Canada because of the tariffs and because of the brand damage. So yeah, the Canadian market is now gone and I don't see it coming back unless the tariffs go away. So the tariffs will give, if they go away, will give a little bit of a boost, but yeah,

We thought this week with the tariffs being made illegal by a court, you know, could help Canada also remove theirs. But then it's been announced that they are going to stay in place during the appeal process yesterday. So that's not going to change anything. So, yeah, until that changes, I think that's basically done in Canada. And then obviously, even if the tariffs go away, the brand damage will stay for a while and that will reduce the sales market in Canada. So, yeah.

Not a great look for Tesla Canada. But good for GM? Yeah, GM. Look at them. Who would have thought? I see a ton of Equinox everywhere. The Equinox EV is everywhere. And the Cadillacs, too, now are starting to pop up. How close are they in the U.S.? Probably not even close. No, no, no. Like I said, the U.S. is still keeping Tesla alive right now. Right.

BYD has triggered a new price war, a new electric vehicle price war in China. They announced this weekend a bunch of new incentives here on Weibo and other platforms where they're basically cutting prices between 20 and 34% all across their lineup, which was already fairly inexpensive.

They gave an example of the Seagull Hatchback for now 55,000 yen. That's just short of $8,000. That's a 20% reduction. It was already below $10,000. Now it's like below $8,000. It's crazy. The dual motor hybrid plug-in is cut. The plug-in's actually got a bigger cut than the BEVs. 34%, 53,000 yen.

to 108, 102,000 yen. It's, uh, you know, price warrants, uh,

I mean, it's kind of been ongoing, so it's kind of a resurgence of the existing price war that kind of slowed down a little bit. But price never went up, really. They always stabilized or went down over the last year. But the price war really started in 2023 and hurt a bunch of automakers greatly, including Tesla. Tesla had to cut prices in a lot of China to the point now that it's basically not making any money.

on its vehicle that it delivers in China. And now there's basically BYD has triggered a second wave of it. And we were hearing all week from other automakers following through. And not just BYD,

They're not just cutting prices on the existing car, but they're also doing what Tesla is likely to do soon, too, is they're introducing cheaper versions of their existing vehicle, like the X-Peng with the Mona, for example. It's a $20,000 car now. You know, the X-Peng was...

framing itself as a luxury vehicle. And now they're sending a $20,000 version of their vehicle. So things are changing. And basically, we hear that Tesla is going to do the same thing with the Model Y. Model Y is by far its most popular vehicle. And now they are planning a stripped-down version of it. So they are reacting to that trend.

I don't think for Tesla it's going to be a good idea because their brand was selling well in China as a premium brand. It was a status symbol and the Chinese are very big, not just the Chinese, but the Chinese

People are big on like, what's the car that says that I have money and I'm cool right now? And for a while it was Tesla all over the world. And I think Tesla now is so popular in Europe and in America that it's not really that anymore. But in China it still was like in 2023 until the prices started getting cut a lot and the volume reached an all time high in 2024.

all-time high but with big price cuts and then you had a dual effect of a lot of people having teslas and tesla being cheaper so and then xiaomi came in the market with a more attractive offer too and everything so changed the game quite a bit yep

All right, Seth, we have the Electric Formula Sun Grand Prix making a comeback in 2025. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? Yeah, it's our yearly adventure out to... This year will be in Bowling Green, Kentucky, like last year, which is at the Corvette Museum Speedway. Universities from all over the country and even Canada and some from, I think, the Caribbean are...

I think we have the biggest field ever this year for the fastest solar car around the track there. Every other year we do a road competition versus a track competition. This year is a track competition.

So what's great about that is it's very easy to watch. So if folks want to see a solar race, which are very entertaining, especially when you get to geek out on solar technology and battery technology. And, you know, we usually have folks like Tesla and a bunch of technology companies there. Yeah.

Uh, it's a lot of fun. So, uh, the dates are July, uh, 4th and 5th, uh, is, are the race days. Uh, obviously, uh, 4th of July is a big, big day and, um, that's in Bowling Green, Kentucky. So if you're nearby or want to be nearby, make sure to check it out. Um, it's so much fun for us. Uh, we get to geek out with, uh, some of the best and brightest, uh, students in the country. And, um,

yeah it's just a ton of fun like you know you know we we spend a lot of time and money on this thing and it's so worth it yeah it's a really cool project to uh focus more on the technology a little bit than the business side in the market of uh of the ev sector like you know i think i think we might we might see some some solar on cars eventually in the commercial league i i said the other day uh i ordered a uber in montreal and uh fisker ocean showed up no way

I didn't even know they were selling them in Canada, let alone Quebec. And this guy bought it, went all the way to Toronto to buy it. And six months later, Fisker was bankrupt. But he's still driving it and he's still loving it. Yeah, I've seen a few. It has the solar roof on it. And they were showing it to me like, hey, I got it. So it's been a...

a year basically since he has it and he got 41 kilowatt hour out of the solar roof, but he's parking into the garage. So what you going to do? Right. Yeah. Obviously Aptera is a nice hybrid of a vehicle and one of these things. I'm always curious if you can find one of the old cars on eBay or something. It'd be kind of fun to roll one of those around town.

Yeah, but he said that the price are kind of stabilizing. He said that in Quebec or in Canada. On the Fisker? Yeah. So you can still buy them, but it's not a great idea. For him, he has to drive to Toronto to get the service done. So that's like a five or six hour drive. It's not great. And can you still get the service done now that they're bankrupt?

So actually, there was a deal when the bankruptcy happened. There was a deal, too, for a service in Montreal, because apparently there are a few in Montreal. That was the first one I saw. But that fell through. Now the only people that can do service are in Toronto. And yes, they can still do service because there's a bunch of recalls, for example, that needs to get done regarding the bankruptcy.

at the door handles I think but he says the car is holding up I think it's a it was a nice car for a Uber like the back seat is actually pretty comfortable it's pretty big um for the size of the vehicle because it's not that big of a vehicle like this it doesn't look that big and um and yeah it was holding up fine I mean those are magnet built cars kind of like an I-Pace right

Yeah, I mean, the guy was coming from a little while ago. I was a big EV guy and was coming from a little while. And he's like, yeah, I actually preferred this. I mean, I he's a little bit biased, obviously, but still. All right. Let's jump into the comments section of it. All right. Marco says, what are some good vans, minivans, crew vans choices now? Puree BEV, Kia PV5 sounds great and comes to Europe soon. Do you know some from China? We did see some nice cars.

Lincoln Company and Zeekr minivans. The Mixed is a pretty sweet one, I think. I mean, there's like a hundred different ones coming from China. Obviously... I hope they're going to come to Europe, though. Yeah. Nissan's got the NV whatever. Ford, I think, is still selling e-transits in Europe. Obviously, Mercedes Sprinter, e-sprinter vans.

um but the kia pv5 i think it might be like uh the best option for our phone yeah because it's specifically i mean it's a good vans and minivans like a crew what's a crew van i think it's just a size like a medium size yeah okay

Yeah. Here they have great vans. There's this Hyundai Strava, which apparently is not electric. It's a hybrid, maybe. And it's such a futuristic-looking van. It looks great. I wish they'd do an electric version of it here. But the PV5 is kind of similar to that. It looks similar to it. All right. Carl says this is not the time to rehabilitate Elon's reputation. He is a con man megalomaniac. So he's not...

He's not for the rehabilitation. And I don't think we're not trying to. We're just saying that he's still the head of Tesla, the biggest automaker in North America. So it's if he can be a little bit more positive about electric vehicle, that would be nice. That's just that's just what we're saying. Yeah. It would be impactful.

Question, who is Aaron Price, a director at Tesla that sold $301 million of stock yesterday, the same as Kimball sold $34 million? And then he follows up, oh, I see that Aaron Price sold another $190 million the day before yesterday. It must be nice to be a board member at Tesla. I don't know about the $190. I think it was more like $162 or something like that. But yeah, he sold...

About half of his position, I think, in Tesla. Haro has been a Tesla board member, I think, since almost 20 years, like 2007 or something. He's a longtime close friend to Elon and longtime Elon financier. So he's backed other Elon companies too, not just Tesla. And he's problematic because he was one of the...

independent board members that gave Elon his giant $55 billion compensation package. And that was part of the issue with the judge. He's not independent. He's been a longtime friend of Elon and he has financial dealings with Elon outside of Tesla.

So he's not in a great position to negotiate a deal and also negotiate at the same time himself a giant composition package that now results in these crazy sales of stocks. Yeah, Kembal sold too. Kembal is, by the way, the best at selling at the...

At the top, he's good at it. And sure enough, Tesla stock went down for the next few days. Yeah. Dan Obersay says, Putin is smart enough to convince Taco to own Elon. What does Taco stand for again? I saw this on TV or something. It's Trump always chickens out. Oh, yeah. And it's not a good idea, folks. I've seen journalists now asking him about it, like poking him on it. Like, don't do that.

Don't do that because then he's going to just entrench himself more in it. He's like, oh, they say I'm checking it out on the tariffs, so I'm going to double down on the tariffs. You know how he's meant. He's an egomaniac. You know how he works. You should check out that interview. Well, it's not really an interview. He was doing a press conference, and one of the journalists asked him about Taco, and he freaked out. He freaked out. And just as the judge said,

ruled that it was three judges ruled on the International Trade Commission that it was illegal. The tariffs were some of the tariffs. So it basically the judges basically gave Trump an out on the tariffs, which he needs badly. And and at the same time, you are poking him to to make him want to entrench himself more in this stupid policy that's going to destroy democracy.

the world economy. Yeah. Not a good idea. All right. Patricio says I installed comma three X on my model three 2021 in Europe. Installation wasn't easy. Definitely not for the tech savvy. It was like jailbreaking test driving soon and share thoughts. Oh, I'll be curious to hear about that. Yeah. Um, we were kind of, you know, comma has been one of those companies hanging in the wings, uh, started by geo hot or whatever. Um, so yeah,

We'd love to hear more about that. But it makes sense for Teslas in Europe because they are limited in their features that they have there. So I don't know if that could actually make a better experience than the regular autopilot there. All right. Skeptic says, four years ago, I'd have said I'd never buy anything but a Tesla. Now I wouldn't buy one if Elon came to my house and rubbed me off every night for the rest of my life. I think there's probably a better way to say that. But yeah, I think there's a lot of people in that boat, including Dan here. I was going to say that.

I think Tesla is done even if Elon leaves. I think we're far away from that. Yeah. I mean, what does it mean to be done? I think Tesla is on the path to becoming a more niche automaker. It's not going to sell millions of e-calls a year like it was on the path to do for the last few years. But I don't think it's going to be con gone. It's just not going to be what it was supposed to be, what it was on the path to be.

Uh, and she says, shouldn't there be a spy shots of the new bolt by now? Is it delayed? Um, we did see something that we thought might be the new bolt, but I think that was questionable. It was one of those, uh, I think Peter posted it. Um, you know, what's great about having a bolt, like they, maybe they don't even need to hide it. Maybe it just looks like a bolt. Yeah. But I don't know. I don't know. I, last I heard GM was on, on target for their release. Um,

I've seen a few Bolt, actually, here in Korea. Oh, interesting. And one EUV. One Bolt EUV, too. RoboTaxi Teslas are going to be so susceptible to being protested against by pedestrians just surrounding the car. Vulnerable road users around the car will bring the service to a halt. I don't know if it's that bad.

Yeah, I mean, it's potentially a problem, but I think that the Tesla takedown movement has slowed down a bit. So maybe if there's an accident, though, then you're going to see some issues. All right. Elon isn't waking up. He's now trying to play the good guy again for the EV world to regain favor with his core customer base. He'll be on a massive PR campaign over the next year.

I don't know about that because, like I said, it just stated the fact that the government is not removing the subsidies on fossil fuel industries while removing them on EV and solar. It just didn't even come out and say, that's stupid. That's resulting in worse air conditions for the U.S. and the world population that is contributing to climate change. It didn't say any of that. It just said the simple fact. So I don't know if it's going that way quite fully.

And if he is, it's a big risk for him because, you know, it still has a few like our Tesla fans that, you know, don't that cared about climate change and all that. But they just care about, you know, more for some reason. Weird, weird reason. Most likely financial reasons. But most of his fans now are like right wing people and very conservative and all that. And like if he start talking that way, it might not be good for him. All right. So.

People say they feel totally safe in a Waymo. Some say that it will not work. This is interesting. Mike, the car geek says, would I ride in a Tesla robo taxi? Yes. Would I cross the street in front of a Tesla robo taxi? Hell no. That's an interesting. Yeah, that's a good point. Careful out there, Austin.

I mean, you know, that's a good point because if, like I said, I wouldn't ride in one earlier. But if they do limit the speeds and it doesn't go on the highways, like I wouldn't be too bad for the people inside the vehicle. That's correct. All right. There was a big horrifying crash in China with a Tesla slamming into the rear of a truck. You guys have any info about whether that was a self-driving accident?

Yeah, I referenced that earlier. Like, no, we don't know yet. I tried to look at some information from China on it. So that's why we haven't reported on it just yet. But it looks like that, though. It looks like a ton of other FSD crashes we've seen. Here's interesting. Anyone else notice NACS news regarding manufacturers adopting the connector on car is completely stalled? Is it worth asking Farley and Barra if they're walking their plans for conversation back? Yeah.

I don't know that that's true. I think that we've heard some announcements of NACs coming to cars. I was just in the IONIQ 9 that has a NACs port on it. Yeah.

I mean, Hyundai and Kia are kind of ahead of the curve a bit on that front. So it might be right that like Ford and GM, have they confirmed any of the new EVs coming with next? I mean, I think a lot, it has been delayed. That's true. Like we've seen some delays. Some of them were supposed to come by the end of the year and everything. And now it's more like 2026. Yeah. And I think we talked before about the Chevy Bolt, the Altium Bolt or Boltium or whatever. I think that's the first GM car that's supposed to have not been.

Okay. I mean, that's a big deal. And I think that's going to hurt Tesla more than anything, honestly. I think a lot of people are waiting to buy other EVs to get the NACs. Even though I buy a universal Tesla Charger. They're great. And they're $500. And they work awesome. And you have the NACs and you have the G1772. Easy on it. Yeah.

I don't think it's really worth waiting. But at the same time, yeah, I mean, on the supercharger network, it can be a little bit annoying and you have to buy an adapter. Yeah, I think some people are waiting for that. Yeah. To have it native on the car. All right. Carl wonders if the solar races are down to earth enough that attendees can walk the paddocks. They do have a time where bystanders can...

Check out the vehicles. It's not like walking the paddocks, but they kind of present the cars out and people can walk around. And Carl, you're a VIP in Electrek world. So let us know if you're there and we'll get you in. All right. Dan says, I just met a guy with a Fisker on I-81 in Virginia yesterday. He bought it for 12K, but couldn't get any repairs done for it.

That kind of reminds me of me buying three cake motorcycles for like $1,200 each and two of them are no longer working. But they're parts for the third one. Yeah, exactly. All right. Any EV conversion kits for classic cars? I'm surprised there aren't more options. Just know of California VW Company and Ford's Crate Motor. There is EV West also in California.

And I think if you do some Googling, you can find other ones. I know there's a guy in Florida that doesn't kind of bespoke, but. Yeah. There's another, there's a British company that's coming to the U S to, to, to make some, but I think they're very, they're limiting the models to like one or two models that they're doing is what's difficult with that is like adapting your system to different classic cars that are very different. So it's you like to focus on one in particular. Yeah. Yeah.

How's about getting our low Earth orbit cleaned up? I don't know why they're not doing this already. Don't bring back that outdated stuff to Earth. All right. Might have a little bit of a... Yeah, that's more of a SpaceX, Space Explored. Just trying. Right. I won't cross at a crosswalk if a car is making a right on red until I make eye contact first. Can't ensure a robo-taxi sees you before you walk in front of one. That is a good point. You don't know that the driver actually sees you.

I wonder if there's a way with some sort of lighting or something. I've seen some autonomous cars that have the communication system, kind of like the buses have a light strip that communicates with people, like a scrolling kind of thing.

So I've seen that. I don't know, Zoox or maybe Cruise at one point. Cruise did it at one point, maybe. It wouldn't make sense to add that to the robo-tax services. I don't think Waymo has that. All right. Have others been cold-called by Tesla sales to buy a new Tesla? They also invited to keep a Tesla for 48 hours and send an email survey. Smells like some desperation is hitting. I have been...

And also I got the 48 hour thing, which I thought might be fun for a Cybertruck, but I don't think. Yeah. I mean, Tesla is basically doing like short term rentals for free. Right. Like no joke. I don't know if anyone has tried that yet, but I was thinking if you're traveling in a city,

for two days. If you just try, if you time it right, because you can go to the website and reserve it and everything. Can you reserve it? It's like, Hey, I want to try the cyber truck for two days there. And then you have your card. You will need to figure out, I don't think they're going to bring it to the airport, obviously, but you would have to get there and back, but still could be like a pretty good way to get a cheap rental. Yeah.

all right and the last one mark says no cold calls here but did receive the 48 hour loan email yeah i mean 48 hour loans is uh is a good idea for sales because i think the ev experience is uh better uh long term i mean long term it's 48 hours but like obviously if you don't have a charging solution at home but even even if you just plug it in on the 110 volt and

if you haven't driven that much, you're going to be full the next day and everything. And that's for, for a lot of people that the realization they need for EVs is like, Oh man, I wake up every morning and I have a full tank of gas, the equivalent of a full tank of gas. It's pretty awesome. But, but for Tesla though, it's going to be rough because that's a lot of logistics to, to, to take care of. And it slows things down. And one of Tesla's biggest metrics for sell has been how many test drives you do. And obviously Tesla,

If the test drive goes from like 30 minutes to 48 hours, that reduces the number of test drives. You can do quite a bit. So it's going to be... Tesla is clearly having a rough time with demand right now, which makes... So with the report that we had last week and we discussed on the podcast that Elon says there's no problem with demand whatsoever. Also, yeah, if they're offering 48-hour vehicles, that means they have a lot of vehicles in inventory to...

And then all those vehicles that they're offering become used vehicles. So they can drop the price down for those. That's a good point. All right. Well, that's pretty much it for us this week. Appreciate you listening and joining us for the podcast. And if you did enjoy it, please give us a like, a thumbs up, a subscribe. All those things are free to do and they help the show more than you think. And we're going to see you same time, same place next week. Have a great weekend. Be safe out there. Bye-bye.