New Tesla Model Y unveil, Mazda 6e, Aptera solar car production-intent, more
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We are live for a new episode of The Electric Podcast. I'm Fred Lambert, your host, and as usual, I'm joined by Seth Wintraub. How are you doing today, Seth? I'm good. All right. So, no surprise, the big subject of the week is going to be the Model Y Refresh that came out last night. It was on Ville in China. Let me shut down my notification. I should do that before the show starts, but...

we've just been doing that for i don't know six years and i never do it all right okay uh yeah the model y refresh was unveiled in china like uh same thing that happened with the model 3 same thing that happens with most tesla vehicles these days china first it's the biggest market it's the biggest factory it's the most efficient factory that's there so tesla is able to launch things a lot faster there

And that's what happened with the Model Y Juniper, Model Y Refresh, Modify, Mid-Cycle Redesign, however you want to call it. So let's take a look right away. So we already like the big thing is like no big surprise. Basically, everything was reported ahead of time. Now we have more like a complete look at it. Feature image show a lot here. The feature image look.

Quite a bit retouched, if I have to say. First of all, a car in the snow don't look like that. I don't know about you, Seth. I know you've been driving the snow a lot too, but my car doesn't look like that at all. All right. So the front end here, is they being refreshed?

As expected, the light bar, like the three-section light bar with the headlights on each side completed with the round in the middle. This is something that's becoming very popular. The Lucid obviously has that. A lot of Chinese vehicles have that, and we're going to talk a little bit about that later. And then you have these secondary lights here at the bottom that sort of comes out of the air intake on the back and a bit of an updated lip here in the front also.

The back, again, another light bar. People say that now it's a more pronounced trunk here. It looks flatter, more pronounced because the plates go here, not here. I do agree with that. It looks kind of empty or something. And then before we go into the specs, let's look at the interior a little bit. So the interior here.

Again, mostly just transfer over from the Mold 3 refresher this year. Nothing completely new here. You have the ambient light that's here. Now, people have noted that on the right-hand drive pictures, you do see a stalk.

So Tesla has released the pictures for China, but it also launched a vehicle in Australia, which is right-hand drive. And on that unit, you do see a stock for the turn signals. Now, I don't know if this is just for Australia or just for right-hand drive market, because we obviously don't see it on the Chinese version. But I'm not sure if those things here don't look like force touch button turn signal, but it's hard to tell. So...

I think Jamie said that, so I'm missing. Yeah, he says they're gone, but I'm not 100% sure on that. It could be interesting because it could be like if, because Tesla has done it on all other vehicles except the Model Y, maybe I've done it on the Model Y now. And for sure, the gear selector is gone, which is weird for me because I've driven the new Model 3, I've driven the Cybertruck.

And I actually don't mind the turn signals. It takes a little bit getting used to, but I don't mind it. I know a lot of people do. But the gear selector is annoying the hell out of me, though. I hate the gear selector on the screen or on the top of the... Like, it makes no sense to me.

So I would have liked the other way around. They keep the gear selector and they remove the turn signal or they keep both, you know, it's not that hard to do. So yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how that pans out because Tesla has launched a vehicle right now in China, but deliveries are expected in March only. So we're still a few months away and then they haven't launched it in other markets other than Australia, like I said. If we go by the Model 3 refresh, we're going to expect like 30%,

three to four months before the changeover is done in north america and europe too so uh well yeah europe might come before north america we'll see all right um oh yeah those are like yeah okay so you did post the hong kong and uh australia one here it does you do see the little stock there oh yeah one of the big feature inside too that has been added is uh the powered back seat uh you have buttons in the trunk to uh

fold one side or the other side automatically. That's good. All right, let's look at the actual specs update. So you get about 3% more range based on the CLTC standard, which again, a lot more relaxed than the EPA standard. So

And translating that to the new one, well, straight from the CLTC, it's 20 miles improvement if you look at the previous version versus the new one. So very similar to what Tesla did with the Model 3. Now Tesla is quoting the highest range version at 719 kilometers, 446 miles. But again, it's probably going to be closer to a 350 mile range vehicle, the EPA range. Yeah.

Range affected by the size of the wheels, obviously. Then Tesla quotes a lot of improvement regarding the cabin being quieter, suspension improvements. All those things have also been introduced with the new Model 3. They do talk a little bit about a little bit faster. So the all-wheel drive version goes from...

4.9 seconds, 0 to 62, because they go with 100 kilometers an hour in China, to 4.3. So you can expect like a similar reduction in a faster 0 to 60 also in the US version.

And that's for the all-wheel drive because just like the launch of the Model 3, the performance version came much later. So it's something to keep an eye on. Also, we noted that the seven-seat version is not going to be around at launch. Yeah, yeah. They're really limiting the options at launch. Is it called launch edition or something? Yeah, yeah. They also have like a little bit more... It is more expensive to start with, but they do have this launch edition that comes with this badge here. Okay.

That makes it a little bit more, the lunch series that they call it in China. So the price now is 263,000 yen, which is about $36,000. It's a 5% more expensive than the previous price. So not that crazy more expensive, but a little bit more expensive, which makes sense because they still need to sell the existing Model Y, which I'm sure there's some in China, but also a lot in North America also.

Yeah, a couple of our commenters are talking about the lag time between the Model Y launch in China and the U.S. People are obviously not going to be as excited about buying the Model Y. Justin says, how many sales do you think the Model Y refresh will cost Tesla this year since China won't get deliveries until March at the earliest in countries around May? And when will the U.S. get the refresh? We're thinking mid-year as well.

Yeah, I mean, China is going to be the place that hits the hardest because it's already available there and we're going to skip almost a full quarter of it. So yeah, that's going to be the thing that's going to hurt the most. In the other countries where Malawari is still in production, I don't know how hard it's going to hit because it's not that big of a refresh. Do you think they launched it today because of the big leak yesterday? I don't think so. Maybe. Maybe.

Maybe. Also, same day, we're going to talk about that, but Xpeng unveiled the G7 in China too. And that's expected to be like the closest competitor to the Model Y in China. And probably Tesla wants to lock in the orders before people go for the G7.

So speaking of that, speaking of the design that Tesla wasn't interested in, because the Xpeng, for those unfamiliar with Xpeng, Xpeng was called a Tesla copycat for years with good reason. We call them a Tesla clone. We call them a Tesla copycat because they straight up stole the design of the instrument cluster from Tesla. The autopilot user interface, exactly the same. Of course, Tesla sued them for, not them, but an engineer that went to them

claiming that he stole the Tesla autopilot source code. Then at one point, he even copied Tesla's website, like frame for frame. This was Tesla's website in 2020. And this was Xpeng's website at the time.

same font same framing exact same uh things that are emphasized on it it's pretty funny but now things have reversed and uh yeah even have the senior designer rafiq farag at xpeng that claim that tesla is now paying tribute to their own design because the new malawi here

Looks extremely inspired by the P7 Plus and, you know, explains the rest of the lineup as similar features. So you can see the

light bar in the front, the three section light bar with the headlights on each side, very similar to the P7 Plus. Then you have the secondary lights here. If they were lit up, you would probably see even more resemblance, but they do come out from the top of the air intake, exactly the same. The only real difference is the lip here. The opening at the bottom is a little bit less wide than the wider ones on the P7 Plus that goes almost all the way to the fenders.

So other than that, it's a very, very similar vehicle. And I think they have a point. I think Tesla might have been inspired because Xpeng has been...

doing great in China recently. In the second half of the year, they've seen their sales surging with new vehicle launches. And they're up 37% in China this year compared to 10% for Tesla in China, minus 1% overall. And like I said, right before the unveiling yesterday, the day before that, Xpeng released the first official images of the G7, which along with the G6 that they're already selling,

This is a little bit more high-end version of that and closer in price and features and capabilities to the Model Y. So it's expected to be like the biggest Model Y competitor in China. And Tesla needs the Model Y to do well in China. Otherwise, it's kind of screwed.

So I wouldn't be surprised if this is in response to that right now. I mean, they only released a few images of the G7. So this is the best one I could do from the front hand, but it looks also very similar. Maybe the secondary lights here are a little bit bigger than the Model Y, but other than that, it's very, very similar design language. So yeah, what do you think, Seth? What do you think? Do you think this is a good refresh? Is it as good as the Model 3?

It's kind of disappointing, I have to say. I mean, we're talking five years after the debut of the 2020, right? Five years. And I mean, so Tesla does do incremental updates. We know this. They've improved the Model Y a lot, but not a lot. I mean, if you look at the 2024 to 2025, there is a design change in the front and the rear. But like overall, it's pretty much the same car.

I think the design change in the front end is significant. I don't know if I like it that much, though, to be honest. I think I like the Model 3 refresh better. I think it matches the car a little bit better, especially the back end thing. Maybe it's going to grow on me. I kind of like the lights on the original, too. They were more like Porsche or something like that, and this is like a Prius. Yeah. I would have liked to have...

Like one big feature addition that makes a difference maker. We talked a little bit earlier about a lot of people posted these, there was the big leak that they did before that showed the full car testing in the winter, but there was also a leak right after that that showed the interior, but I don't think it was the Malawi interior. I think people...

confused it with the Model 3 Highland with a modified wheel because it had the Squirtle wheel. And I've seen a bunch of those aftermarket lately. So people thought that was in and people thought that was an indication of steer by wire. And of course, prior in the week, I had...

started to introduce the idea of what if they do release stear by wire on there because i thought that would have been like a big feature improvement uh because i did really like the stear by wire in the cyber truck and i thought like this this would have been the thing that would have made me upgrade to a new model why if it had like that big of a feature upgrade right now it's just it's just design upgrade a little bit of a range slash efficiency bump which i do like but it's it's a little one

is it worth 5% more in pricing? I don't know. It's hard to tell for me. I don't think it's a flop, but I do not believe it will help sell that much sales. On the contrary, probably you've heard sales that changed over this year. But can Tesla maintain a million plus Model Y sales per year unless they

They trade cost improvement and they can slash cost over time next year after this is fully ramped up. Maybe. Otherwise, I don't know. I don't think so. We were talking earlier about it. And one thing that we were kind of disappointed to not hear about was like a vehicle to grid or vehicle to home or whatever. Tesla's obviously been talking about it. We believe, I think, that the Model Y has had this for some time.

But there's no announcement of that in this vehicle. Obviously, the Cybertruck has some pretty good vehicle-to-grid stuff. So you would kind of hope that Tesla would just make it an option for the Model Y.

Yeah. I mean, it could be a surprise. It could be something they don't talk about right now because the vehicle is only launched in China and they haven't launched anywhere. A few countries only. I haven't launched it in Europe. I haven't launched it in North America. Maybe they're waiting for that because we know that Tesla appears to be using now in its cars, uh, the same or very similar inverter as the Powerwall 3. Um, Powerwall 3 has a big bumps in, in, in the capability and power capability. Um,

And it is bi-directional, obviously. So if they're using the same in the cars or similar one, then it could make sense that they have bi-directional charging capability. It's just not turned on. It's just not advertised. And Tesla is still having some issues ramping things up and completing the software on the PowerShare for the Cybertruck. Still also just...

hiring the issues with the deployment of the system too. So maybe Tesla is waiting for that to gain some experience with that with the Cybertruck.

And after that, it makes sense. And they start seeing value in that. Maybe they say, hey, by the way, this new Model Y has vehicle to grid. And even maybe like, oh, the Model 3, Model Y built since like whenever the Powerwall launched last year or around the same time, whenever they did the change, you can use that. That would be great. I would be happy about that. But I'm not saying that I know that's the case. I'm saying that's a real possibility. Yeah.

All right. We have a couple more Tesla news to discuss, and we're going to talk about the new Mazda 6E, the EX30, the car of the year for electric, Abterra, and then Afila. If you guys want to, we're going to have time to talk to you guys too. If you have questions for us, you can put them in the comment section right now. We're going to get to them in about 30 minutes. It can be about any of those topics that we're discussing today or any other topics in the EV world that you would want to take on.

And then if you do like the show, we'd appreciate if you can give us a quick thumbs up, a like, whatever it is on the app that you're watching right now. And you can also subscribe and hit the notification button to know when we go live. Though we're pretty consistent on Fridays at 4 p.m. Eastern time. All right. This is...

One that I've been talking about for a while, the self-driving computer failure. I had a couple of articles on this over the last month saying that this is a real issue that is putting a lot of pressure on Tesla service. And it is also a real problem for the customers involved with the newest computer, self-driving computer in Tesla vehicle as a tendency to short service.

at a higher rate than the previous computer. And when it does short, it shuts down the entire computer. It just doesn't work anymore. You start to stock in kind of a loop system. And it drains a lot of battery in the system and it kills all the features that are powered by it. And I said in my original report that I think this should be a recall. I was back in 16th of December because...

It removes the rear view camera, which is a safety feature since 2018 in all new vehicles. And there first should be a recall. But Tesla was being quite quiet about it. There wasn't even a service built in about this. No communications with NHTSA.

And now, finally, today, earlier this morning, I was vindicated on this because when I first reported on this, oh my God, the lash back that I had from the Tesla fan and the Elon cult, like crazy, like calling me like a liar and I'm just trying to short the stock and all that. Like, there it is. You have it directly from Tesla. So Tesla admitted the problem. Over 200,000 cars are being recalled. That's in the US only because this problem is also being seen in Europe.

The population effect is 2024, 2025 model Y, model 3s. And surprisingly, some 2023, 2025 model Xs.

I've seen Model X being affected, but not all the way to 2023. That's an interesting one. And Tesla said that it's equipped with certain core computers, like we reported before. Internally, it's been referred to at 4.1, AI 4.1, and then operating software released in that period. So like I said in my original report, Tesla had some kind of a software fix. It doesn't fix the actual issue, but it helps prevent further short-circuiting of the system.

So Tesla says that it has started on December 18, two days after original reports started pushing an update that the thing will prevent further shorting. But now they are having to replace the computers for those that have been shorted already.

And Tessa says that it already had over 800 warranty claims on this. Again, that's probably just the US, not Europe also. But now at least the issue should be somehow under control with this technology.

with this software fixed on top of replacing the computers. But again, it's still an issue because I have some people that reach out to me that are saying that they are deep in February now to get their computer replacement. So that's like months of having a brand new car that just doesn't work properly. All right, this was an interesting one I read this week. So Elon Musk,

You might know him as the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, XAI, Neuralink, a boring company. He's not the CEO of them, but he's the de facto leaders of all these companies. And what was he doing on a Tuesday afternoon? Playing video games on a stream on X. But...

I mean, he was testing X streaming. It was not for pleasure whatsoever. No pleasure. So yeah, and during that stream, he was asked by chats some questions. And one of the answers was about Tesla self-driving. And his answer was kind of surprising because it was kind of a big announcement. But I honestly think that he either misspoke

or he's confused about it. He doesn't know what he's talking about, which I know it's kind of a big claim to make. Like, am I in Elon's head? Thank God I'm not. But listen to me for a second. Hear what he said. He said, Tesla full self-driving unsupervised. Maybe I'll mention we are going to. Then he corrects himself. We actually are doing trials of that. Tesla full self-driving unsupervised.

With Tesla employees already, and we expect to have that in commercial service sometime this year, which I mentioned at the last running call. All right. So the key word here is Tesla self-driving unsupervised. But the way he said it, it was almost like he was reading a comment about it, like Tesla for self-driving unsupervised, pause. And then he said, okay, maybe I'll mention we're going to, corrects himself, we actually are doing trials of that.

And that would be weird. So what I think, what it means by that, because then he referenced the last earning call. So what he said, he said two important things on the last earning call regarding that. He said, one, Tesla is going to achieve unsupervised for self-driving in California and Texas in or around Q2 2025, which is just a few months away.

And then he also said regarding trials, because then he mentioned trials here with employee. He said that Tesla is doing with Tesla employees in the Bay Area, we are already offering

ride ailing capabilities. So you can actually, with the development app, you can request a ride and it can take you anywhere in the Bay Area. But then he specified there are safety drivers for those, which makes sense because Tesla is not allowed to operate on supervised self-driving vehicles in California. It doesn't have a permit for it. It doesn't have a permit for that anywhere. So that comes back to, okay, what do you think now about trials of full self-driving unsupervised?

I think that one, this is either not true. And this is the same thing that he talked about earlier, just supervise self-driving ride ailing, like the app that he's talking about, just that. And so no news whatsoever, or he's talking about private roads because that the only way that we could do that. And we've seen some cyber cabs driving around Tesla Gigafactory Texas in the last few months. So that might be it. It's just, you know,

taking an employee from one side of the factory to the other, just like the demo that they did at WeRobot that was on the private roads at the Warner Brothers studio. Yeah. So the reason they did that, because that was in California, Tesla does not have permits to do that in California, but they can do it on private roads. So the same thing happened here. So a bunch of people jump on that news, but honestly...

Honestly, I think he misspoke or he's confused about it. I think because it cannot be more than that. I've looked everywhere. I tried to find the permits. If there's something changed, nothing has changed. I've been seeing even a permit application from Tesla about that yet. And the fact that he was literally playing video games at the same time as he was saying that, I should be like kind of a hint. It might not be the best information ever. I also just think that Elon is just not into Tesla that much these days. I mean,

The Model Y was unveiled almost like 24 hours ago, and he tweeted like hundreds of times over the last 24 hours, nothing about Tesla. Really? Hundreds? Well, I mean, I posted like a quick roll down of his feed. I didn't count them all, but it has to be close to the hundreds. Obviously, you can make the argument that he doesn't want to push the new version of the Model Y, but...

Right. Same time. Like it exists, like acknowledge it at least. Yeah. I remember when he spoke to us directly, he was really, he was really adamant about not revealing new vehicles. I mean, we were talking about vehicles that had not even been announced yet. Yeah. He was like new, new vehicle announcements ruin everything.

the current vehicle sales so he's concerned about that for sure but in this case it's tesla releasing it and actually i would get ahead of it i'm like hey yeah this is a very good update and everything but you know it's it's marginally improvement versus the current version which is five percent less expensive right now so you can go with the five percent expensive or go with that actually i think it motivates the sales of the existing one apparently that are cheaper and you can sell them without further discounts because of that

Yeah, and some people are not going to like the light bar and maybe the interior. Last chance to get those Porsche-looking lights. Yeah, and it's not a bad-looking car to start with anyway. All right, this is a big one here. The Tesla board members officially settled their excessive compensation case for nearly a billion dollars. So that should have helped Tesla this quarter. It's going to be good for the financials this quarter at Tesla.

So this is a case that's been going on for a while. It's another case under Judge McCormick in Delaware, the same judge that indulged the Elon CEO competition case. At the same time as that case was happening, there was another case at the same time.

specifically for the board members that took billions of dollars of compensation. And now, for the same thing, the shareholders, specifically the police and fire retirement system for the city of Detroit, on behalf of shareholders, sue the company and its board members for what it describes as overcompensation. Because like I said, hundreds of millions of dollars, well, in the billions, because they're returning a billion dollars.

When during that same time, the average compensation for a board member on an S&P 500 company was just over $300,000. So you can imagine. And yes, so the board members involved here are Kimball Musk, Elon's own brother, Brad Buss, our Efren Ress, is that how you pronounce that?

Antonio Gracias, Stefan Jorvetsons, which are all close friends of Elon Musk and people who had financial deals outside of Tesla with Elon.

Things like on SolarCity, SpaceX, and all that. Then you have Linda Johnson-Rice, Kathleen Ellison-Thompson, Iromichi Mizuno, and Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle and also a close friend of Elon. So all those people are involved. He doesn't need the money, really. Yeah, he's already a billionaire on his own. Yeah, so what they're doing now is they're going to return $277 million in cash for...

$459 million in stock option. And they're going to... So the deal and the lawsuit was specifically for compensation between 2017 and 2020. But as part of the settlement, they also forego $184 million of stock option that was awarded between 2021 and 2023. So more recent. So that's part of the settlement. And the settlement also even includes... So if you add it up together, it's basically a billion dollars. And it also includes, which I...

then I didn't even think it was not a thing already. So it makes sense that now shareholders will have to approve board compensation. Kind of makes sense. Yeah, why not? And so Elon was on the boards during that time, but didn't take compensation from the board. He

It took a CEO compensation of $55 billion one, which also was rescinded by that judge. We learned this week also that Tesla has now officially appealed. So it's going to head to the Delaware Supreme Court. I would be shocked if they maintain the decision at the Supreme Court because Tesla is really like boneheaded the way they approach that. They almost use it like marketing for Elon's political ambitions that it's like,

"It's just they're taking shareholders' right to vote away." It's not even about that. But what it is about, it's about Tesla's governance. The fact that Elon, even though he owns only 13% of the shares of Tesla,

he can do whatever he wants at Tesla because he has no oversight because he owns the board. And one of the ways that he owns the board is that while they were giving him a crazy CO compensation package, I know shareholders voted on that one. That's fair. Sure. But what was challenged in this court case is that

Tesla's board was the one negotiating with Elon on it and they didn't really negotiate it, not at least in good faith because they are in Elon's pocket because they also receive at the same time this giant, clearly excessive compensation according to this case. So they are like, all right, I'm going to give you that and then you give me that. Backscratching. Yeah, backscratching. Just classic.

And yeah, I mean, until shareholders like kind of wake up and realize that Elon is not really what he says he is. And that Tesla is run like, I mean, Leo Kuguan, one of the largest Tesla investors put it the best. It's like, it's a public company that's run like a family business and the family's Elon, like Elon and his brothers and a few close friends on the boards. That's it. I think that's fair.

There's one person, though, that I really have questions about, and that's GBStrouble. Because now GBStrouble is not listed in there because he was not a part of that. He didn't get the excessive compensation and all that. He came on the board later, more recently. And I would like just a peek in his head a little bit what he thinks about this entire situation. I would love that. We can...

DM him on Twitter and see what he says. Yeah, he's not on Twitter, which is like, yeah, it's probably a good sign. If you're not on Twitter, you're probably doing a lot better than the rest of us mentally. All right. Moving on from Tesla. So I didn't have time to look that up too much. That happened yesterday here. It's the new Mazda 6E. So if you're an electric vehicle enthusiast,

reporter. You don't talk about that much because it's not a lot to talk about. But now, because they don't really release like global EVs. So if they release an EV, it's like for a specific market.

And this one is for China and Europe. So we're not going to see it in North America. But looking at it, it's like it's a complete EV that could be like a mass market, you know, global EV. So the 6E or 6E? Easy 6? Easy 6?

no it's just the mazda 6e okay now the easy six is the different one from the chinese joint venture but it's it's similar i think it's the same design all right so

It's offered in 80 kilowatt hour and 68.8 kilowatt hour battery packs. That's pretty good. WLTP provides 343 miles, 550 kilometers. WLTP does not include the temperature, the climate control.

So, you know, if you do use those, you can expect the range to be closer to like 300 miles or so. And 300 miles or 479 kilometers for the smaller version. I do like those battery pack size. They are decent. So you have the sizes here, which are very similar to the Model 3. Good to know. The interior looks pretty good. Looks Mazda. Do we have a price yet? No, no price yet.

It's good to see them finally getting on the EV bandwagon. I mean, they've had compliance cars. These vehicles will actually go far enough to kind of replace them. It's a compelling car rather than the MZ30 was the one with the suicide door. Getting like 100 miles of range. All right. Good news from Volvo. So the EX30 officially became the electric car of the year for 2024. We haven't received a thank you from them yet, right?

Informal, thank you. Informal, thank you. Okay. Sales are going great. So 2024, they sold nearly 100,000 of them, which is pretty good. They say that Volvo sold 352,000 electric vehicles, but they do include pro-gang hybrids in those. So pure EVs, I think was closer to half of that. 175,000 pure EVs in 2024. So pretty good.

And the EX30 was more than half of those fully electric vehicle, 98,000 EX30 alone in 2024. And that's with the US launch being more recent. And also, I think the cheapest version, the single motor is coming early 2025 too. So, yeah.

Still plenty of room to grow there. Yeah, the 36,000 single motor version, early 2025. So that one obviously is going to have a big impact, I think. But yeah, the EX30 is in full swing right now. Yeah, that's a great car. I think Volvo will sell as many as they can make for quite a bit of time. Yeah, I agree with that.

Aptera made a little bit of an appearance at CES this week. Nothing too crazy. They called it the unveiling of the production intent version of their solar car. We managed to get a closer look. We had some of the 9to5 staff there at the event taking some pictures.

Uh, but honestly, like it was kind of, uh, you know, it is a, a more like complete version of the vehicle, but I'm not sure just how big of a, an announcement it was. Like I watched the video and it was like a, like film with a phone, like moving like that. And the official one on the Amterra and, and, uh, quick awards from the CEOs of the company. And that was about it. I'm not, I'm not, I like the design. I think it's pretty cool car. Uh, the, the, the, um,

The solar panels, the solar cells, I should say, look a bit new. They have new patterns in them. They do look different. Yeah, I haven't seen that on the car before. But yeah, they reiterated that they're going to have the first deliveries this year. But honestly, take that with a grain of salt. I don't know exactly if it's going to happen. They're still looking to raise money to bring this thing to well in production.

It does look like a pretty complete vehicle right now, though. I know they've been doing a little bit of like immediate drives there, like in the parking lot or whatever. So nothing too crazy, but they have a working prototype. They also announced a partnership with LG for the batteries. Yep, they did. So LG is going to supply them batteries, which, you know, it's not nothing. Like for a small company that hasn't reached production yet and that's going to, you know,

aim for relatively low volume production, it can be hard to get a direct deal with a battery supplier. Normally you have to go through resellers and that will have to your cost obviously. So for them to have a direct deal with LG is actually pretty good news. But the bad news is what we reported on that before, but they went back to crowdfunding because they couldn't get the 60 million that they were looking for to bring this into production.

The good news is that they already were able to raise $60 million, even more than that, I think, on crowdfunding before over years, though. So have they exhausted that market for investment or can they go back to it is the question. Yeah. All right. One more piece of news and then we jump into the comments section with you guys. So if you have any questions, now's the time. In about two, three minutes, we're going to get into it. All right. Also at CES, you had...

I guess the final unveiling of the Fila, Sony and Honda's partnership for a vehicle that they actually plan to bring to market. I see a little bit. I don't get that vehicle that much, honestly. I don't know. I don't get the appeal that much. The way I see it is that it's like they try to do the same thing that Apple did and they couldn't really make it work either.

But Apple was like, screw it. We'll take the $10, $20 billion loss for that project and just give it up. And Sony was like, no, no, no, no. We'll try to make this work. And good luck. Because what we got now is like the design has been updated a little bit, but nothing too crazy, is that we got the pricing on this thing. It's going to start at $90,000. And then you have a new...

Signature version, the first version to come that is going to have some specific colors, badges at $103,000. And then you have to get a subscription on top of that for the entertainment and autonomous feature of the vehicle that's going to come.

They don't have a price on that yet, but they say that you have three years complimentary. So you can use your car for free. Well, for free included in the $100,000 price for three years. And then you have to pay a subscription. Of course, it's Sony and Honda. So Sony has a lot of entertainment stuff. And then also they're talking about autonomous features. I'm not sure exactly to what level they claim to achieve.

But they are trying right now. If you're in California, you can reserve one, the F-Ela one, for $200, fully refundable, only if you're in California. And you can expect the car in, I think, mid-2026, I read that. Yeah. Yeah, mid-2026. I cannot be less excited about this car. Yeah, I was going to say, like, I'm just...

kind of should feel i feel like they should just give this up or make it a honda sub brand or something it just doesn't seem like very compelling yeah maybe sony wants to get into the automotive business a little bit like a panasonic or something and then uh the this is going to be kind of a show at first we all thought it was that it was going to be some kind of showcase prototype for for that for to get into that business but you actually want to sell that thing i don't know the the

Or linking it to the PlayStation 5 to gaming capability inside the cars. I know there's some hardcore... I'm not a PlayStation guy myself. Grew up on Xbox and now I'm a PC gamer. But I know that there are some hardcore PlayStation people that maybe have $100,000 burning in their pocket that don't want that car. But I mean, if I have $100,000 for a car right now, I'll go back to Lucid that I had last week. I won't buy this.

Oh, yeah. So did you feel bad giving that thing up? Yeah, yeah. I talked about it a little bit last week, so I didn't put the article in there, but I did post my article on, I think, yesterday on it. And I focused on the winter driving test because I think that was a pretty good winter driving test, even though we barely have a winter anymore. The timing was good in this case because I got some minus 18 Celsius temperatures.

weather and uh and and my entire driveway here is literally a high shrink like it's it's crazy and uh so you know we i drove it in the middle of a snowstorm also really impressed by that car like really impressed for it's not cheap it's expensive it's a sedan also we've been hammering that for a while so sedans are not popular in north america compared to suvs but honestly

If I had $100,000 to spend on an luxury sedan, I would get that over pretty much everything else, I think. Especially like an S-Class or something like that. Like I would much prefer that. And then when I was there, the guy was like upgrading from an S-Class too. And I'm like, you're going to love this. It's way better. Yeah.

The Model S, you could argue the Model S is a competitor. It's a little bit faster. Not unless you get the Sapphire version, but the Sapphire version is like $250,000. It's different. But I think Tesla's only in vintage over Lucid right now.

technology-wise is, and that's if you care about that, it's full self-driving/autopilot. Those things on the iOA are very good. I think they do help the experience. Not sure if it's worth the price, but especially the autopilot is really good compared to... It's the best driver as a system.

I have serious doubt about full self-driving, achieving unsupervised like Elon is talking about. But other than that, it's big. But if you want to drive your car, which a lot of people, when they buy a $100,000 car, it's to drive it. The driving dynamic, the balancing of that 5,000 plus pounds is very impressive. It's not necessarily a sport car. It's fast as a sports car. It has a lot of power. Even the air-throwing version that I had is the third best.

most powerful Lucid Air. There's two more powerful units in front of that. And I never felt like I didn't have enough power. I even leave it in the smooth driving for most of the time. You have swift and then you have an even faster one. And I put it in swift a few times when the road were nice and everything. But other than that, I leave it in smooth. And in smooth, you have a clean, comfortable ride

That is super quiet too. The interior is super quiet. A ton of modification, like of customization for the seat.

Like you have like 20 different customization on the seat. Like you could spend hours just getting it right. But those, just like any other luxury vehicle, are expensive when you start adding them up. Like if you want like the good sound system in there, if you want the good seats, if you want the good, all of that. I think the version that I tested was like over 120,000 Canadian, which is like 80,000, 85,000 USD, I think, something like that. So it's not cheap. It's expensive.

But if you have the money, I say go for it. All right. Let's move to questions. Damn no overstay. We got to test our lucid and Canadian weather here in Arkansas today. Nine inches of snow last night. Wow. In Arkansas. That's surprising. Justin says, I'm guessing Tesla is going to add stocks back to the Model 3 eventually. Not impossible. Yeah, it would be kind of nice. That would be a nice upgrade. Maybe an option.

uh new model y in china has the turn signal stock yeah okay so he's confirming it it's on there yeah we just don't see it uh tesla should call the new model y the re-foundation series it's not the launch of the model y after all yeah

Do you think anyone will even notice this refresh? I doubt it'll move the needle very much on demand. I think the light bar in front is going to be noticeable. Yeah, I mean, it is a significant refresh. It's not a giant change and everything. From the side, it doesn't look too much different. Yeah, if you catch, you can catch it on certain angle and not tell a difference for sure.

All right. He likes the light bar. All right. Then we have a long thread from James who doesn't seem to be a Tesla fan or maybe he's a Toyota person or something. But I'll just read through this. You need home chargings to get a Tesla, but you could say that about any other EV. In fact, you could probably say that more about other EVs than a Tesla. Yeah.

Because Tesla has the best charging outside of home network out there. So I saw a few people respond that you shouldn't get an EV if you don't have home charging. I disagree with that. I do agree that you have a lot more value in your electric vehicle if you have home charging. No doubt about it.

But depending on how you use your car, depending on the actual street parking situation, depending on access to overnight charging every now and again close to your home, stuff like that,

It's manageable, certainly manageable. I mean, to start with, if you don't have home parking, if you have like street parking, it's already not a great car ownership situation. You probably shouldn't even have a car in some cases. Like, I don't know how people get it. Like when I go to my girlfriend in Montreal, I see like all people like park in the streets with their car and having to move them every few hours and things like that. I'm like, what are we doing there? Like, it's crazy.

All right. The X-Ping G6 is the one that the Model Y seems to be the brother of. Yeah, it's a little bit cheaper. It's the design. I don't think it looks as good. I think the G7 is going to make the big difference. Because the G6 is a little bit more the market, I think. All right. We're just going through James' stuff here. Doesn't seem to be a Tesla fan. We got to hold that tribe.

Let's move on to Carl in San Diego. Motor normativity is the term used to describe the bias toward driving that results in society accepting risk and harm from motor vehicles that they would not accept in other aspects of life. That's a new word for me. Motor normativity. Ah, okay, yeah. Yeah. Oh.

There are different cultures that are not like that. There are cultures that are like really anti-cars and they don't like cars. It's pretty rare these days, but it do happen. All right. Lou Backover is not a Elon Musk fan, it looks like. He says, the trader Musk isn't getting a cent of my money ever. Not Tesla, not Starlink, not X. Okay. All right. For the Model 2 or whatever they call it, the lower cost one, there will be rumors about different design per region.

Has this Model Y definitely looks Chinese? Could it be that Europe and US get a slightly different Y? I don't think they will for the Model Y, but that is a good point though. I do think the Model Y has been optimized for the Chinese market. The comparison to Xpeng is no joke. Xpeng is doing well in China, and I think that Tesla was inspired by that.

Yeah, I think that Tesla is prioritizing the Chinese market. A lot of automakers are. It's not just Tesla. It's the biggest market. It's the biggest EV market. It just makes sense. For other vehicles, I mean, it's not really Tesla. Like a lot of other automakers, they do it. They do, you know,

make different models for different market. This hasn't really done that much. They have some options that are already available in certain market and not others. Do we see that for the first time with the next gen? Well, not really the next gens, but the cheaper Model 2 and the Y vehicles are supposed to come out the first half of the year? Maybe. Maybe they don't release them in North America. I don't know. No, this makes sense because they want to make them in North America too. Yeah, no, I don't think so. I think it's going to be a global vehicle.

All right. Asif Fornum says, any good stats for percentage of Tesla owners that are not going to buy another Tesla? DT, Musk Antics. D2, Musk Antics. The build quality now really good. Price reasonable. A lot of incentives. FSD 13 mint. And yet, quarter four was meh. I mean, obviously...

Elon is having an impact, I think, because just like you said, Q4 was record incentive, record discounts, new Cybertruck in the lineup. Everything was there for achieving growth in 2024 and they couldn't do it. I think that points. And then I posted a report earlier this week. We don't have a breakdown per regions of sell with Tesla, but we have some pretty good estimates. And the one from Troy, Tesla, puts Tesla's sales down 5% in the US

That's with Cybertruck having like over 40,000 units or so. Maybe, I know that could be Canada too. So let's say over 30,000 units just from the Cybertruck. And then, you know, Model 3 Refresh, the discounts, the zero percent financing on almost an entire quarter. And like a lot of these things should have helped Tesla grow in the U.S. in 2024. And it hasn't. In Europe, it's 10% down.

And I think those are the markets that Elon has the biggest effects, obviously. US, it's on market. And then Europe now, he's on a mission to talk about every political issues in Europe. And a lot of people don't like it. So...

I think that's where it's having its biggest effect. Somehow, Elon never mentioned politics in China. It's so weird. Weird. Yeah, he comments on politics in Canada. He wants to house every liberal leader in the Western world. But, you know, communist China...

what communist china nope never never a word not a word not a peep yeah russia too like never don't hear talking bad about putin much all right any vta v2l or vtg options or 120 or 240 fold plugs uh not in the new model y that we could see maybe maybe you know in the trunk or something maybe that's an option i don't know

Carl says the Mazda 6E interior looks sharp. There are videos from European first looks in YouTube. Yeah, we should add that to the post. In the EU, we have it indicated out of roundabouts by law, and we have lots of them here. The stock makes sense. But I had that on the Cybertruck too for a week, and I did some roundabouts. You need to get used to it, but you could click it pretty well too.

I guess it's the model why we'll have the single stock in all markets, just that we do not see it in the LHD images. Oh, now that I think of it, though...

Yeah, a Cybertruck is a lot easier for the turn signals, especially in the roundabout because of the progressive steering. Hard by wire. Yeah. Yeah, if you don't have progressive steering and you're like in the roundabout and you move your hands, because you never move your hands on a Cybertruck, so it's easy to access the buttons. You're always like that. But if you have to move your hand on the wheel and you're not lined up, then yeah, yeah, I get it.

All right. Moving on. I've gotten more pessimistic about Aptera getting to production, but I'd buy one if they do. Yeah. Aptera just needs to make some vehicles already. I'll say this about Mazda. Their sole red crystal is the best looking paint color available right now on mass market cars. They do have nice colors. Yeah, that red's good. A Fila specs equals $30,000 EV sedan. Is that supposed to be Aptera? That's fair. Oh, no, that's the Sony. That's the Fila one.

Yeah. Okay. I had a 82 RX-7 back in college. Loved that car. 82 Red wasn't as good as today's. My dad had an RX-7, so we're all getting nostalgic here. Let's see. None of the EV channels are talking about the fires in LA. Is it important to keep talking about emissions? I mean, I don't like the...

Both sides making this thing political and like about one side is making it about climate change. The other side is making it about the politicians and Ling of the drought. And I mean, the D-E-I.

The DEI stuff about the firefighters is just completely insane stuff that Elon is on about right now. But right now, it's very devastating for a lot of people. What is it? Like 50 to 75% of the houses there are destroyed. And a lot of people, they don't have a lot of sympathy for it because the rich people, but...

It is traumatizing to lose everything, regardless of if you have money or not. And it's not just like hyper rich people, too. I mean, the Palisades is pretty, pretty frenzy neighborhood for sure. But now I think now it's going down to Hollywood, too, right? I've seen it more recently, like all the way Sunset Boulevard and everything. I used to live right across the street from where it went down. Like, it's no joke. Yeah.

So yeah, I think it's just not great to politicize that right now. I do think that both sides have some good point. I think definitely climate change and the drought and all that have impacted that. On the other side, I do think that probably not everything was handled very well regarding the water supply and fire prevention. That's fair too. But yeah, it's not the time to politicize that. Yeah.

All right. Moving on. Is there a chance automakers will release any surprises next year? Are we talking about 2025 or 2026? I don't know. There's always surprises. There's always a car that comes out of nowhere. Yeah. Personally, no stocks for signals. Indicator would be a deal breaker if I ever bought a Tesla. However, with HUD on EV6 GT line, I don't see going back.

Yeah, that EV6, pretty sweet car. Have you tried it with the... He's talking about the heads-up display? Yeah. That was a good heads-up display? Yeah. It's not too intrusive. It's just there. I love a heads-up display. A good one. All right, Asif Barnum, what's it going to take for Tesla's board to get a new CEO? Or maybe how could Tesla get a new CEO? Or maybe the question should be how... The realistic question is, how does Tesla's board get...

reshuffled so that they're not... We talked about that during the last shoulder meeting. And when I felt very disconnected with the shoulder base, they reinstated, they voted again for Elon's competition package, but they also voted again for the entire board. All right. Well, the stock's up. As long as the stock price is high, everybody's going to keep... If the stock price starts dropping,

just like Bitcoin, then there's going to be hell to pay. But when everything's going well, I think you're right. I think you're right. I think the stock price needs to go down, but at the same time, it's not going to go down because even though Tesla's core business is going negative right now,

People just believe – so as long as the shareholders believe Elon's crazy timeline for full self-driving and all that, Optimus robots, the trillions of units, these things are – I see value in the Optimus robot. I see value in FSD, just not the way that Elon is claiming. Elon is pumping the stock when he says these things about the trillion robot and everything.

and the biggest value creation ever with FSD.

So the shareholders base just need to wake up and remember that the guy that's saying that is also the guy that said that your 2016 Tesla would be an appreciating asset, even though now it's worth like a fifth of what it was worth before. He's the same guy that said that FSD would be coming at the end of every year and didn't come. He said that it would be...

The reason it's going to be an appreciating asset is because we're going to keep increasing the price of FSD as it gets better. As they did the biggest update, they did the biggest price cut on FSD too. And now it's like 40% down from the highest it ever was, even though he keeps saying that the newest update is the best one. You know, the same guy that you believe on all the things that you want to believe has been, you know, either straight up lying to you or being like,

suspiciously very wrong in a way that boosts the stock price. That's just facts. It's one or the other. I cannot confirm to you that he was lying. He could have been just wrong. But when you are consistently, conveniently wrong, there is room for suspicions. And I have serious suspicion about Enon's intentions. All right. Will the front camera be used for FSD soon enough?

Do you think they're ultimately going to have to add cleaners for the cameras or just make passengers get out and clean any other hardware needed? Level four or five in the winter in the Northeast and all that, you can forget it. Every time I get in my car this time of year, I get an alert that this camera, this camera, whatever, is obstructed. Yeah.

I'm like, I'm not going to get out of my car to clean it. I'll get it. Yeah, I'm not even trying it up here in Vermont. It's just not realistic at this point. Yeah, maybe in Vermont, but when you're on the highway or something, you put it on. Yeah. It would be nice if they had some sort of window washer liquid spray thing. Yeah. All right. Real quick question. Does the Cybertruck steering wheel spring back to center? I think that's a yes, right? I don't even remember. I think so, yeah.

A lot of people, when I argue that Model Y should get steered by wire and that would be one of the biggest selling points from it, a lot of people were like, yeah, why? Why would it be that great of a selling point and everything? And it's like, you have to try it, unfortunately. You have to get into a Cybertruck and try it. It's hard to explain. It is like, you have to give up some road feedback, obviously. But for that, you have some kind of... It's like I just got myself...

a racing simulator here to match with my... So I put it with my VR headset connected to my computer and then I have just a car seat that I put Logitech wheel and pedals on it. And I'm excited because the new Assetto Corsa is coming out and they're going to have the Hyundai Ioniq 5N in there. So I'm getting excited to try that on the Nürburgring and all that. But...

It does feel like a video game. The quickness of the responsiveness of it and everything, it's really fun. You have to try it. All right. Tesla needs LiDAR to solve night blindness, snow blindness, rain blindness, fog blindness. Vision alone isn't safe. At night, it works pretty well, though. I think autopilot works better at night than in the day, personally. And I think the argument is that if you can do it with your eyes, you should be able to do it with autopilot or with cameras. Yeah.

I don't know if they're going to be throwing LIDAR in there anytime soon. All right. And the rest is kind of just some people talking. All right. Well,

Thanks, everyone, for joining the show this week. We appreciate you. If you do enjoy the show, please give us a like, a thumbs up, whatever it is on the app you're watching. It helps the show more than you think. It's free to do. We appreciate when you do it. If you're listening on your podcast app, if you can give us a five-star rating, only if you enjoy the show, of course, that also helps more than you think. And we're going to see you same time, same place next week. Have a good one. Bye-bye.