Tesla Autopilot 'recall', Porsche Macan EV, Chevy Blazer EV first drive, and more
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Welcome to a new episode of the Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host. And as usual, I'm joined by Seth Wintraub. How are you doing for today's show, Seth?

I'm good. All right. This week's episode is sponsored by Wolfbox, a leading brand in the automotive electronics market with an unvarying commitment to quality and durability for its customers around the world. We're going to have a little bit more to say about them later on the show. Stay tuned for that. But thanks to Wolfbox for sponsoring this week's episode of the Electric Podcast.

this week's episode we're gonna have a little bit of tesla news as usual uh but then we're gonna talk about our first drive of the porsche macan ev set had uh did that last month i think and then you had it's actually in october in october all the way back in october so there was a big embargo on this so now i can finally discuss everything about the mic and ev which

itself has been delayed quite a few times. We can't wait to see that car hit the market. It's going to be a big one for Porsche. Then we also had the first drive of the Chevy Blazer EV that our own Jameson Dow did earlier this month.

He's going to be joining us on the show later to talk about it. But let's jump into the Tesla news right away. So one of the bigger pieces of news that came out this week is the whole Autopilot recall, safety recall. I'm using air quotes here if you're just listening because people don't like to use the word recall for Tesla recalls because most of the time, like this time, it's just an over-the-air software update that is being implemented.

But this is still a bigger recall because it's hopefully the conclusion of the big NHTSA investigation into autopilot, even though more specifically into autopilot, Tesla vehicles using autopilot and crashing into emergency vehicles that are stationary on the side of the road or on the road actually.

So there were like 11 crashes that added up over time and it's investigated why it's happening. I mean, the emergency vehicle thing was kind of, I don't know why they added that. Like the real thing is like the problem with stationary vehicle on the road that for some reason autopilot doesn't detect or doesn't break for, doesn't try to avoid them and just ran into it. At the core of it, it was always clear to us, we're regular autopilot user that this is

At the core...

A user error, like most of the time you have time to react and technically the way that autopilot is framed is that the driver is responsible. You should be paying attention at all times. And when you see that the autopilot is not slowing down for it, you are the one that's responsible for reacting. However, there's also the other side of things that why Tesla doesn't detect those things and doesn't react to those things. That's definitely a product error. There's no doubt about that.

But in terms of actual defect, NHTSA kind of sided with Tesla on that side of things that this is a user error, but they still decided to push for a recall. So that's a big news this week because they feel like Tesla is not doing enough

to make the driver pay attention and or react on time. So this is the core of the news this week. So they did issue a safety recall on 2 million vehicles, which is about the number of vehicles in North America that have...

uh autopilot one one version of autopilot obviously there's been three versions since the launch so that's about two million vehicles uh so in the safety recall tesla kind of explained what they do to um for the fix uh so it again just a software update um they they say in the defect too that there's always a chronology of the uh recall in the

in the defect notice that they call it. And in there, they say like all the way back when it's announced that they were doing the

the investigation and later on they explain like we had our discussions with NHTSA and then later Testa says that he doesn't agree with the conclusion of NHTSA but they are reluctantly doing the voluntary recall but even though they feel forced but voluntary recall

And what they basically... It was like a compromise, if you will, with NHTSA that...

it's going to be more alerts, more warnings, and more programs to make sure that people are paying attention, including new punishment. If you're not paying attention, if you're getting forced recall, forced disengagement, you are going to be suspended. So that's what Tesla announced in the safety recall. But what we just learned today, just a few hours ago, because Tesla started to push the update and we obtained the information

release notes thanks to not a tesla app which tracks this the software updates we get the actual release notes now i haven't seen the update just yet i haven't used it i haven't seen anyone used it so this is more details on what this is actually implementing but it's not exactly clear so let's read them together just to be clear uh so because this is pushing to every car out there this is this is going to be the new way that autopilot works in every tesla vehicle north america

So one, improve visibility of driver monitoring warning alerts on the touchscreen by increasing the text size and moving the notification to a more prominent position, Model 3 and Model Y only. Yeah, because Model 3 and Model Y only, obviously, because Model S, I think it's already, Model S and X, it's already pretty clear because you have the instrument cluster in front of you. So you have the alerts in front of you. Model 3 and Y, it's on the center display, a bit more difficult. More specifically, the alerts come

at the bottom of the left side of the display. Plus, if you're not picking it up right away, you have a flashing red light at the top until you get like the beep, beep, beep, beep, beep alert. Now, I would assume that now that that text that comes to the bottom is going to be bigger, probably higher up a little bit. That makes sense. I don't think that's going to be a big issue. I don't think most people won't be calling that like, oh, this is too much snag. Next one.

Added option to activate autopilot features with a single start depression instead of two to help simplify activation and disengagement. This is actually something that Tesla pushed a few weeks ago that pre-recalls. So I'm not even sure why. I guess that Tesla pushed that a few weeks ago based on the NHTSA discussion. Like it was part of the deal with NHTSA. So now they're including it, but it's already in Tesla vehicles now.

All right. This one is the one that we need to see how it's being implemented because this one might be an actual increase of the NAG. Increase the strictness of driver intensiveness requirements when using auto steer and approaching traffic lights and stop sign off highway. So traffic light and stop sign off highway. This is more like it is the better it sounds like. But anyway.

This one, I don't think it's going to be that much of a problem, but driver-intensive requirement when using auto-steer. This one is the biggest one because this auto-steer is autopilot, basically, the main feature autopilot. And...

increase the strictness we just don't know what that means so but it strictly relates to uh the driver motoring uh driver intensiveness and specifically so that has to be either the alerts that you get the frequency of alerts uh the at which level because tesla changed the frequency of when you get the alerts based on the speed uh that you're driving at so if you're driving now at the higher speed maybe you're going to get like alerts every like 10 seconds instead of the early

30 seconds if you're not, if the tester doesn't detect your hands on the wheels. So that one could be a true increase in so-called autopilot nags. And it could be annoying because of Tesla's problem of not being able to detect

hands on wheels and just detecting the torque on it. So you might have to just wiggle the wheel a lot more often and that's annoying as hell. I'm hoping that this is more about the cabin facing camera. Because the cabin facing camera has been pretty good for me. Like when I'm looking at my screen instead of the road, when I'm looking on the side instead of looking in front, it detects it pretty quick and send me an alert. And I like those alerts. Those alerts are actually useful.

Now, if it's the hands on wheels, I'm not on board with that. That's going to be annoying. The next one is introduce a suspension policy that will restrict auto steer usage for one week if improper usage is detected. Improper usage is when you or another driver of your vehicle receive five forced autopilot disengagements.

So this one, actually, I don't think that's a big deal either because obviously it sounds like extremely harsh, a one-week auto steer suspension. It's one week. For one week, you're not allowed to use a feature that you paid for in your car. It sounds extreme. But...

Getting five forced autopilot disengagement is kind of a big deal. I think I've gotten one in like four years and hundreds of miles of using it, hundreds of thousands of miles.

I can probably count on one hand how many I've gotten. Yeah. Yeah. So getting five, they don't say like over which period of time getting five though. Yeah, I don't know. So like if you're someone that tends to get them, or first of all, if you tend to get them a lot, like you probably need to change your approach of all you use of the palette. Like it should be a pretty good indication that you're doing something wrong. Unless there's a problem with your system, I don't know.

So yeah, these are the four new policies that Tesla is including into the recall that's going to be pushed to all Tesla vehicles that Avalto pilot, which is pretty much all of them in North America over the next few weeks.

So I need to see for the second point, or the third point, I need to see it in action to be able to judge it. Otherwise, I don't know how to think about this. All right. Next piece of news is Cybertruck. We've been tracking since the launch of the Cybertruck an idea of the production. Obviously, we don't have exact numbers or anything like that.

Since there was a fear that Tesla would just launch a Cybertruck and then not ramp up production right away like the Tesla Samai last year, we've been tracking it a little bit closer. And thanks to the several drone pilots, specifically Joe Techmeyer, that are flying over Gigafactory Texas on a daily basis, basically, we can get a pretty good idea of what's happening with Cybertruck production. And today, Joe spotted basically 40 Cybertrucks flying

on the Tesla Gigafactory Texas site. There was like 19 of them that were being clearly prepped for shipping. They were being outbound. A few more in the testing area and 15 of them were also parked on the south end of the factory, probably again awaiting preparation for shipping to customers.

So this is, I mean, 40, we don't know for over how many periods of times, what period of times they were built, but it's still a good number of trucks that is being built, adding to Tesla sending a bunch of emails to reservation holders, letting them know that they can be ready for delivery soon in California and Texas. And next year, they're going to expand to other states. So I wouldn't be surprised if...

We see in the hundreds of Cybertruck deliveries by the end of the year. So I think that's pretty decent. It's not nothing major, but it's pretty decent. And then obviously the bulk of the ramp-up is going to be throughout 2024, aiming for volume production at a rate of 250,000 a year at some point mid-next year, I would assume. When do you think they can reach 1,000 units a week?

It's probably going to be mid next year, I would imagine. Mid next year? Oh, boy. A thousand a week? Yeah. I was thinking like late Q1. I mean, these kind of seem like almost design intent vehicles. When you're making a handful a day, it doesn't seem like they're really ramping. So I feel like the ramp is going to happen Q1.

And then they'll start hitting those big numbers maybe in Q2. Yeah, that's fair. I mean, $1,000 a week, it's less than $200 a day. I think it's doable. There's probably a handful of bottlenecks right now that are preventing just that. So I think those are fixable within a quarter, I would assume.

Maybe Tesla also shuts down production during the holidays and use that time to make some upgrades and things like that. And it comes back in January with higher production. Things like that are very possible. Right. And also Model Y, I think they're kind of slowing down on that. They probably don't need to go full throttle on that right now.

Yeah, I mean, I think they switched the production of the Model Y in Texas to the non-4680 cells to focus 4680 cells, Cybertruck, so that changed things up a little bit.

We learned of Tesla partnering with Uber to sell their vehicles directly to drivers through something that they didn't know existed, the Uber marketplace, vehicle marketplace. So they have this platform where they offer vehicles directly to drivers with discounts with partners. And Tesla is a new partner for Model 3 and Model Y with discounts up to $3,000.

on inventory model 3 Model Y. And what's interesting is that the discounts are based on the level of the driver, whether it's a blue, gold, platinum or diamond drivers with diamond drivers obviously getting the higher discounts at $3,000 off their purchase. So Seth and I were discussing this, like where do we think that Tesla is doing the full discount of Uber is doing the full discount? And I'm thinking that Uber is actually contributing for that discount because

So if I'm listening correctly, when you bought your Bolt TV, you used that program, right? - That's right. - And you had to become a Uber driver to use that program. - That's right. - But you never actually did a Uber drive. - That's right. - All right. So, and you were still able to use that program. You just signed up to be Uber driver online, takes a few minutes, whenever it's done. In this case, they had the requirements of to complete a hundred trips before February 15th.

So I think both Tesla is contributing to this because one of the requirements is that the test of equal is being delivered during December 23. That's a weird way to phrase it, like by the end of the month, basically. So obviously, Tesla is trying to deliver as many cars by the end of the month to hit a new record number and deliver on the 1.8 million guidance for the year. But then it was not the...

complete 100 trips. So if Uber is hiding that requirement, Tesla obviously doesn't care what you do with the car once you have the car. But Uber cares, especially if they are subsidizing it. So they're like, all right, you have to do 100 trips by February 15. Otherwise, you cannot take advantage of that discount. So I think both Tesla and Uber are participating in this, which is pretty cool.

Obviously, there already are plenty of Tesla vehicles on the Uber network thanks to the Hertz deal that brought 50,000 vehicles to the Uber fleet, Model 3, Model Y.

All right, we got some bad news for Tesla on the tax credit front this week. So we already knew Tesla signaled us that they were losing half of the tax credit starting next year on the Model 3, rear-wheel drive and Model 3 long range. But this week, they actually announced that now they expect to lose the full tax credit on those two trims. So we had a lot of...

A lot of companies that have been just like digesting these list guidance and rules from the IRS regarding the updated requirements for battery materials and components in the updated tax credit system next year. And they were like trying to figure out how it's going to affect their sale. We know last week we talked about the Model 3s and the Mackie, the Ford Mackie that also seeing its tax credit reduced.

And but it looks like they were still interpreting the laws and the updated guidances. And now they believe that the full tax credit is going away. We assume that has to do with these models using the LFP battery cells from China. That is at least our assumption. But then what we learned just a few days later is that the Model Y is also going to lose the full 7500 tax credit. It's going to be

likely reduction. So Tesla is not going as many details as the Model 3, but in the configurator, they highlighted a note that says that reduction is likely after December 31st. They do not even mention which model. We assume it is the base model, the new Model Y rear-wheel drive.

But the thing is, we never were able to confirm that the Model Y, Revoldrive, use LFP cells in the US. We know that in China it does. But in the US, the user manuals still mention charging up to 80%, which normally doesn't say that when it's LFP cells. So this points to...

to regular NCA cells. But at the same time, some Tesla owners were buying the vehicle and asking Tesla or getting mixed signal from some Tesla people says they have LFP cells, some people don't. So it's like a very confusing idea. Obviously, Tesla has moved away from letting people know what kind of battery they're getting for a few years now, which is kind of a dumb strategy, if you will. Like, you're buying the car. Let me know what's in my car. Right, exactly. Yeah.

Such a rude approach. A label. And we've always wondered, like all this year, how Tesla was getting the full tax credit on the LFP Model 3s. Like, that doesn't make sense. Those batteries are coming from China. Like, there's no LFP batteries being built in the US as far as we know. Not in volume, at least.

Yeah, I assume that the government maybe gave some relax for the first year. I mean, there was already some relax because the rules were set that they'd increase the percentage of materials that are coming from America needs to increase every year. So there was already some relax, but probably there was some exemption on top of it for the first year, I assume. They just don't talk about it much. Yeah, that's fair. All right, last piece of news before we talk about the...

the Porsche, Macan EV, and the Chevy Blazer. But some Gigafactory Mexico news. So Gigafactory Mexico is basically on hold from Tesla the last time we heard. It was supposed to come in super fast after the announcement in March, but we haven't heard much. And then Elon finally announced

confirmed that they are basically putting it on hold. They're still ordering some long lead items that they need for production. But in terms of breaking ground, they are not breaking ground until they decide that the economy is recovering. They don't see that just yet. They want to make sure that the economy is going the right way before investing in that, especially since they still have room in Texas, if it takes us to

to expand if they need to. So they don't have to make that big investment early, uh, in Mexico. But so that's on the Tesla side, on the Mexican side of things, they've been, they've been going moving forward. So, uh, last month we learned that, um,

Tesla has secured all the permits to start construction. So it's completely on Tesla's side to start construction. Today, what we learned is that the Nuevo Leon government has approved an incentive package for Tesla to build in Guadalajara, Mexico. So that includes, it's basically valued at $153 million. It includes investment in local infrastructure, infrastructure

investment in that includes like water and roads and things like that and also a reduction in the payroll tax so these two together adds up to 153 million dollars which is pretty good deal for the states because we know that there's been other states that offered a lot more but the

Tesla is investing $4.5 million, would it be, in there, creating about 4.5 thousand jobs. And in Zurich, it's going to be much more. The government talked about 30 suppliers that are already there or coming to the region in order to supply Tesla. So it's going to be a big job creation for the region of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico,

All right. Let's talk a little bit about our sponsor, Wolfbox. All right. Today's episode is sponsored by Wolfbox, a leading brand in the automotive electronics market with an unwavering commitment to quality and durability for its customers around the world. The team at Wolfbox believes that driving is oftentimes more than just a means of transportation.

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Yes, thank you, Wolfbox. All right, we have a few more news items and then we're going to discuss your questions. So if you guys have any questions for us, you can put it in the comment section right now on the bottom of your screen. We're live on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook. We're even getting... I don't think we can take questions for Facebook anymore, right? Is that the one that's bugging out for some reason? No, we just got one, I think. Oh, wait, no. There was some before, but we're actually getting Twitter questions

Yeah, Twitter is new. We can take questions from Twitter now, which is nice.

And then we have Jamie that's waiting in the wings that's going to come in to talk about his review or his first drive of the Chevy Blazer EV. So one of the new GM Altium electric vehicles that we are excited about. So we're going to talk about that in a moment. But first off, we're going to talk about something that we've been waiting to talk for a long time. The Porsche Macan EV.

Yeah, so this actually happened in October, so I barely remember any of this stuff. It happened the same time period that the Volvo EX30 happened. I was in Europe for that, and I went from Barcelona to...

Germany for one after the other. So that's how long ago this actually happened, which is a little frustrating because we like to talk about things fresh in our heads. But as far as I remember, the drive was pretty cool. The vehicles are great. The Porsche...

just makes fantastic vehicles and they make fantastic EVs. Unfortunately, uh, we didn't get to drive the, uh, Macan. Like we got to sit shotgun while, uh, engineers who knew a lot about the vehicles, uh, drove us around the track, which was like, you know, white knuckle holding on to, you know, the handles, by the way, uh,

you know, this thing is really late. Like they expected it at least a year and a half ago. Um, and there's like an Audi version of this. That's also super late and it's going to not coming out until next year. So, um, the Macan is a, you know, kind of a compact, uh,

but it's a Porsche, so it's absurdly fast and it handles really well on the track. The interior, we didn't even get to look at the interior. It had like curtains all over everything. Oh, really? Yeah, so it was really frustrating because I was like,

you know can i talk about like you know where the handles are to hold on to and they're like well you can talk about this but you can't talk about that you can talk about this but you can't talk about that i'm like uh this is just you know like kind of a minefield i mean look at the car it's it's a gorgeous car but even even that even the interior the exterior right there is there's no added like camouflage on this

There was no camouflage, but they only had black ones, which I thought was weird. Yeah. Cause there's some, there's some pieces that I feel weird about, but it looks cool. It looks cool. Yeah. It's a great looking vehicle. Um, they have, you know, three different tire models, typical for Porsche. Um, they're, you know, wheel sizes, uh, they have, you know, softer wheels. They have like racing wheels. Um,

And it's, you know, it's quite fast. It's like, you know, mid three seconds, zero to 60. So it's, it's, you know, what you would expect from a Porsche, even though it's an SUV form factor. One, one nice thing we got to drill deep on like the charging aspect. It's still 270 kilowatts, but it's,

Porsche's battery engineers got the charging curve to be best in class. And we were like, compared to what? And they were like, we can't tell you. And we're like, okay, like competitor one, competitor two, competitor three. Yeah. We have to guess now, which for those who are just listening, we're seeing like a bunch of charging session curves here, but we have the PPE platform, but the rest is all just name of the competitor, not the name of the competitor, but just call competitor one, two, three, and four.

Right. So we don't know, uh, who they're comparing to and if they missed anybody, but it, it does charge quite fast. Um, and you know, like at a Tesla, uh, magic dock charger, uh, it'll charge, um, you know, 400 volts. It'll charge quite fast as well. It splits the, uh,

It makes each side of the battery pack charge at 400 volts, even though it's an 800-volt system. So it can actually charge fast at either type of charger, 400 or 800 volts. And it can go 10% to 80% state of charge, which is, I think, 200-something miles in just over 20 minutes, which is pretty solid. Like, that's kind of...

you know top top spec right now at optimum temperature though 23 c so yeah yeah i mean the way you look at this graph and we're looking at a graph on the screen um you know anywhere between 15 and and 40 degrees celsius you're going to get a pretty you know under 25 minute charge

So that's, I think that's pretty solid. So we got to see, you know, we got to talk about charging a lot. We got to see the, you know, internals of the car. They had a really cool Oculus 3 demo where like people are walking around a room, like looking underneath the car hood and all kinds of stuff. But of course we can't show you that and we can't, you know, there's no visual representation. Even if we could take pictures, you can't take pictures of VR really. So yeah.

But they use the battery technology. They've revamped the navigation system. In Europe, there's so many more fast chargers. So it basically figures out 10 different ways you can get to your destination and the fastest way and whatever ways that are at good restaurants and all that stuff. So they've worked on that quite a bit. But the main thing any Porsche...

uh, is the track. And this thing is absurd on the track. Um, you know, I think things that would have flipped most cars, uh, these guys were taking, taking them so fast. And this was the only footage I was allowed to get. And I only got it because I was just hanging out outside, you know, after the event. So, uh, you know, they provided a bunch of, you know, B roll for us, but it was all just very generic and stuff.

So I don't know. I don't know what to tell you about this because like the car is obviously very good. It's obviously way behind schedule and not complete, you know, at this, this time period, it's a 2024 car. So it's going to come out at some point next year, probably earlier. It's like the parts that we got to, to, to drive were fantastic. They even, they had an off-road thing. If you scroll down a little bit that, you know, take us through it, like a little river and stuff.

But Porsche's off-road track was just – it felt like somebody's backyard. It was very, very basic. I mean, we take some Porsche off-road. Right, right. So I guess that's the point. It was just a little bit silly. I guess like, hey, you're driving your Porsche SUV and you hit a flood. Well, that's some decent water on this one. Yeah, it's like a foot, a little over a foot. Yeah, I mean –

It's great. It works fine. It just wasn't, you know, like a real SUV, you know, like a Range Rover test where you're like going down in crevasses or Rivian. But did he tell you why it's been delayed for so long? I don't think we've never got a straight answer on that. So, yes, they told us, of course, off the record, there was issues with the software. They kind of pointed the finger at VW and their software group.

the porsche wants nothing to do with volkswagen forever at this point because of this um and i think audi's in the same boat uh i think the ppe platform like was really ready a long time ago they just didn't have any software for it and frankly like the fact that they didn't let us you know use the the actual dashboard at all means it's still being worked on so

It's just quite frustrating. If you're watching, the screen you see right now is the interior that we did not get to see. It has three screens, kind of like the Mercedes, like the passenger has a screen so they can watch Netflix and stuff. But we didn't get to see that in real life. So do they plan level three autonomous driving? Yeah.

No, Porsche is not a big autonomous driving. They'll do like traffic. Yeah. And actually the driver cannot see that screen. It's like walled off or whatever. So yeah, it's, you know, and we also got to see the Panamera hybrid at the same time. And that's, you know, a 50 mile on battery. Yeah.

So, you know, they're cool, but like, man, just give me the keys. Like, give me the keys and, you know, I'll be back in a day and I will have like a really good review of this thing. They were just like, we were on the shortest of leashes. We were there for like two days and we got like very little time behind the thing. It was all just, you know, like, you know, these learning labs and, and...

It's just quite frustrating to go all the way to Germany and get such a little amount of information. But I think it's going to be a great car. So hopefully we'll have a bigger... It's an important car for Porsche because the Macan on the gasoline side of things is the best-selling vehicle for the lineup. I think it's the second best to the Cayenne, but yeah, it's certainly up there. So we have Jamie joining us for...

the Chevy Blazer EV. Hello. Hey, Jamie. So you got to drive that thing up in San Diego. When was that? A few weeks ago? Yeah, two weeks ago now, something like that. All right. So what did you think of this? I like your headline because I think that's one thing. When we got all the details of the Blazer EV, the thing that we're like, oh, I don't know about that was the pricing of the vehicle. So

uh yeah i don't know if you want to answer that the question right away we want to get into the first drive but take it away yeah well it is uh i mean it's 56 000 um there will be future versions of it that are cheaper um the uh uh there's a rear wheel drive wait

Is it the rear-wheel drive? There's so many configurations of this car that I forget which one. Yeah, I think it's one of the only vehicles that's got front-wheel drive, rear-wheel drive, and all-wheel drive options. Three different options. Which is awesome, by the way. I actually do like that they're giving so many options and configurations to everybody, not only in the options stage when you're building the car, but also...

in the user interface, there's a lot of different customization you can do to the drive modes, which is really cool. But, you know, we're starting at 56,000 right now, 60,000 for the RS version.

There will soon be an even higher performance version, which we didn't get to try yet. That's the SS? Yeah, the SS PAWD, Performance AWD. And I don't know how much that's going to cost. And there will be a front-wheel drive LT, which is supposed to be under $50,000. But they didn't specify exactly what the actual price will be on that. Okay.

I think under 50,000, you're getting to the point where this could be doable, but 56,000 is pretty hard to justify when you can look at the Lyric, the Cadillac Lyric, which is a really nice car and spend, you know, $800 more and get a base model Lyric, you know? Yeah. It's, it's really close in price. Um,

So I think that the pricing is really the biggest issue with this car because otherwise it's, you know, it's a big SUV. I don't particularly love big SUVs myself. I want it to be smaller. But, you know, I tried to review this with the knowledge that people who are looking for big SUVs want a big SUV. And, you know, it's got plenty of cargo space. It's got plenty of headroom and legroom. The legroom in the back is actually amazing.

Um, not as good as the FF 91, but these are not quite in the same category. Yeah. Yeah. It's, that's just a quick video of me sitting in the back seat with my, um, uh, you know, taking a video with my iPhone and my knees. I really had to slouch to get to the point where my knees were touching the, uh, the seat. So, uh, is there going to be a third row version of this?

Uh, they haven't said anything about a third row. I don't think there will be. Um, and frankly, I think that's fine. Um, you know, I feel like the third row would probably be pretty tight, uh, if it did, um, end up having third row.

And then one big thing about this review that I was really interested in, and I don't know if anyone else is all that interested in, was the interface. They got rid of Apple CarPlay, and this is the first of their vehicles that you can, you know, the consumer can buy and try this new non-CarPlay, the post-CarPlay GM interface.

uh user experience and it's actually pretty good uh surprisingly enough i i did not expect a big traditional auto company uh a a company as stayed as gm uh to make a really good user interface and it's it's good i mean it's not the best interface i've ever used but it is more than uh acceptable

uh especially compared to everything else in traditional auto i think i'd even prefer it to car play honestly interesting they kind of had to right like you know you don't make a big move like you go screw screw car play and then come out with the shittiest software ever yeah i was kind of expecting that would be at least okay but yeah but you never know because if you compare to everything else on the market everything else is just terrible

Especially the German. The W and all that, I can't stand it. It's just impossibly bad. And what I like to say is that all of those interfaces are made by the best software engineers in Detroit. It's like...

I mean, to be fair, this is Android, really. I mean, Google engineers are doing most of the legwork on this. Right. So Google is a large part of this. But GM did hire the head of cloud engineering from Apple, the former VP of cloud engineering from Apple. He's now their senior executive vice president of software.

uh, at GM. And so, you know, they've, they've got some expertise and, and it turned out to, to work pretty well. So, um, that was one of the points that I was expecting to be like, guys, you didn't do good enough. And I can't say that, uh, which is, um, impressive because I think that almost every car software thing isn't good enough. That includes the car play and Android autos of the world, because, um, my issue with them is that they're not

They're not consistent, a consistent user interface experience that gives you access to all of the vehicle functions. You're kind of siloed into a phone version of your, your car software. And I would rather something like Tesla or Rivian where you have just everything all in one and you're not swapping between the native interface and some other separate interface, you know?

Yeah, I mean, I think, like, for instance, Mercedes did such a bad job with CarPlay that you want to use their built-in software. Like, for instance, CarPlay won't project up into the heads-up display. You know, if you're navigating, that's a really nice thing to have. And, you know, they make it a small window. Like, Lucid makes the CarPlay just like a really small window, like, you know, like you're running CarPlay in a, you know, emulator mode or something. Yeah.

And maybe that's the way to do it. Maybe that's what you should do is make CarPlay so bad that you don't want it and nobody will use it.

Yeah. I mean, as long as you, as long as you compliment it with a good native interface, that's usable and that you don't necessarily need to leave in order to get to stuff like text messages and things like that, you know, cause, uh, you know, my, my model three doesn't read the text messages on the screen, but I can just say, Hey Siri, read me those messages. And maybe it's just said that in front of your phone. Yeah.

I went and tapped it just so that it wouldn't shut up and not listen. That's right. They'll at least listen to your own voice. Hopefully you're listening to this on headphones. Yeah. It's a pretty good interface. They're going to update it. They've got help from Google. I think that's all really good. The one

Big problem that I had from my perspective with the car was that the pedal response was not what I like. I like a much faster pedal response and they sort of built in a little bit of a delay. Now, for most people, this is probably not going to be perceptible, especially if you're coming from a ICE vehicle.

But anyone who's been driving like a Tesla for a long time or some other electric car that has a really punchy pedal response,

would probably notice this and and it's weird because you hit the accelerator and then you feel like it's kind of you're waiting a little bit so you hit it a little bit more and then the whole thing jerks forward and I I just think that this actually leads to a jerkier throttle experience um when they add their own delay they're doing it because they think that by adding that delay you're smoothing out the response a bit so that um so that the car feels smoother but to me it has the opposite effect um

And it's kind of a tough middle ground because you have to decide whether you're tuning the pedals to somebody who's used to an electric car or somebody who's used to an ICE car. And they seem to have erred a little bit on the side of the ICE car, which I think is not the right way to go. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I mean, there's also the argument that that, you know, is a little bit less hard on the mechanics of, you know, the electric motor and the, I guess there's not really a drivetrain, but, you know, having a smooth acceleration rather than jerking it forward.

Right. But so I agree with you. I think what they do is they make modes. You make it like hardcore mode and chill mode. Yep. And I think that's exactly what they should do. But what they did is they they did have modes, but the sport mode is still just not.

quick enough for me. And I did, I did, I could tell the difference between the two, but I think that the sport mode should be tuned a little more aggressively and the, um, the comfort or tour mode, I think is what they call it, uh, could be as smooth as you want. Um, uh, that said also, no matter what mode you're in, the AWD is pretty underpowered.

Um, the, uh, the base model all wheel drive version. Um, you know, it's a big car. It's, I think it's 288 horsepower, something like that, which is fine. But I, I wasn't feeling like on the freeway when, you know, the nice thing about having an electric car is you can really just squirt your way into any, uh, open slot that you want to be in.

And, uh, I didn't get that feeling. There was definitely a little more warmup required to get the car up to the speed I wanted it, but it's the base model. So, you know, that's fine. I'm sure the SSPA WD will be plenty quick enough. That said, maybe it's going to cost 70 grand, which is, uh, a lot. Yeah. For a blazer. Uh,

I think that's a good take. What's the starting price of a Blazer, not an electric? I think it's in the 30s. Yeah, I was going to say. It's not a high-end car. I mean, Chevy is typically a value kind of brand. Yeah, it's $35,000. Yeah, so almost double the price for...

Well, I mean, for the rate, that's the starting price. So if you compare to the starting price, it's like $20,000 more right now with the $56,000 price. But yeah, it's something that's difficult in the way that most people buy their cars. Like if you go to a dealer, now you're talking to a dealer, a GM dealer, you're negotiating with them. Then you're not sold on EV, you're like considering it. And you have like a $35,000 Blazer.

gasoline powered and a $56,000 laser. And let's say you don't qualify for the tax credit or whatever. It gets harder and harder to make that decision. So I've never been pro having a gasoline and an EV model because of that, especially with the dealer system.

Yeah, I agree. Now, to be fair, this is very different from the gas blazer. You know, I specifically asked them how many parts are carried over between one and the other. And they wouldn't give an actual number. But I said, you know, what are we talking? Are we talking on the order of 10%? And they said, if that, you know, because it is, it's a shorter, longer number.

i think wider you know so basically all the body panels are a little bit different um the user interface is different everything in the powertrain is different uh so there's there's not a huge amount of carryover but that said they're still calling it blazer so people are going to make the comparison um i assume that maybe like how recent is the gasoline generation blazer maybe they're gonna kill it maybe that's why it's gonna die

So eventually they do want to go. I mean, that's what they said. They said they want to save their nameplates, their brands, uh, because eventually they're going to be an all electric company. Um, but that's by 35. Exactly. But you know, they're, they're going for a gentle transition, uh, through the timelines or something. So I don't know if the blazer will get another, uh, gas, um, uh, iteration or not. I, I would imagine so, but, uh,

Yeah, I think they just want... They know the Blazer is like a popular nameplate that they wanted to keep holding on to, was the idea. Oh, the ICE version has more space in it. Yes, in fact, it has a slightly higher roof. That's why. Because the EV... Yeah, the main thing is the slightly higher roof. I imagine maybe the floor is slightly higher on the EV because of the... Magic pack?

battery pack, but yeah, because in the, in the rear, in the cargo space, but it's a difference of like one cubic foot or two cubic feet or something. So it's, it's pretty minimal. And there's no trunk here. There's no frunk. The trunk has a pretty cool auto open function where you can walk up to it with your key in your pocket. And if you just stand there for a couple of seconds, it opens up the trunk for you, which is pretty neat.

I can see that being annoying if you're just hanging out. You can turn it off. Okay. But I like it. I keep it on. Why not? Turn it off when you go to a car show or something and people are milling around the car. Volkswagen has this nice thing where you just kick the bumper and it opens. Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah, a lot of people have that foot thing, which people are happy with. But, you know, they just wanted to go with a slightly different technology. I think it's cool. It worked pretty well the two times that we tried it, which was, you know, I didn't get a chance to, like, walk up to it with a bunch of boxes in my hands and see how it works. Right. Yeah, the interior looks cool. Sorry, go ahead, Sam. No, I was going to say the interior looks really cool. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, the red interior is aggressive. Yeah. There is a red interior and it is a lot. If you want a flashy interior, get the red interior. It is extremely flash. It is very red. Yeah. But on your iPhone camera, it looks a little bit cheap. It's so aggressive. I like...

bright colored cars and it is a lot. It's very loud. This looks like, just like my problem with the Bolt early on, like now when it wasn't as cheap,

It was like a $35,000 car and it didn't feel like a $35,000 car inside. It felt like a cheap compact car inside. This is looking pretty good because you compare it to the Lyric, for example. It's still a GM vehicle. You feel like there's still a bump in luxury, like in the luxuriousness of the interior.

interior? Yeah. I mean, I haven't sat a lot of time in the Lyric, but the Lyric does feel more... I mean, it's more Cadillac-y. Now, some people may not want a car that's like a Cadillac, but I feel like with the price difference there, it's just... you're going to see a lot of people who are upgrading from Blazer to Lyric for a difference of

a grand or under a grand or something like that. Okay. And like, what's the what's the status in terms of like, these these things are being delivered right now?

They are. They've just started. I'm not sure how many of them they have out there, but you can theoretically go find one at a dealership, take a test drive. We have some people in the comments of the review who have recently taken test drives. So they are out and about. However, they are gradually delivering cars of different option levels. So they're starting with the higher option ones. That's one of the reasons why

56,000 is the base price right now because you have to get ones with the comfort and convenience package and the driver convenience package, something like that. So all of those options are included. So eventually they'll have a lower price one.

But you can get an LT, but the LT has a package included, has the upgraded packages. So you can get all that. But the one thing that's weird is they don't have super crews available. So for the first few months, they're doing all these highly optioned vehicles that don't have their their, you know,

driver assistance package so it's just kind of a weird strategy I think maybe a few after a few months once things shake out and we have access to the whole um uh model line and all the trims and we know what the pricing is on all of them which we still don't know uh and all the options are available I think then we'll have a little bit of a better picture of what's going on here but um

Right now, that base price of $56,000 is pretty high. Which battery pack did you try? Did you try the one with the 102 or 85? Both of them. I did a short drive on the first day in the RS rear-wheel drive, and I did a longer drive on the second day in the LT all-wheel drive, which is the LT all-wheel drive is less powerful with 85 kilowatt-hour battery pack. RS rear-wheel drive had the 102.

I'm so confused right now based on that image. You cannot get an LT in 102 rear-wheel drive? Right. Yeah. The LT is only with a smaller battery. You cannot get an RS 102 all-wheel drive. Right. But the SS all-wheel drive will likely have the 102 battery. Yeah, it does based on that picture. Yeah.

yeah that's a weird way let's put it there it's it's confusing yeah uh they're also they're using four different size motors i think yeah uh it depending on the configuration or maybe it's three different size motors but depending on the configuration of the motors it's like who goes jamie a big motor in the front the small motor in the back it's weird

you know what it feels like it feels like this is like the test bed for the old simpl even though there's been cadillacs with the old sim platform already like for it feels like a test bed for gm's uh ultium platform like they wanted to test a bunch of different configuration of motors with battery pack but in terms of the estimated range that they give uh what did you think in terms like it looks like it was getting close or

So we didn't really have like a normal drive experience. It was a lot of twisty roads and, you know, hitting the brakes and going up and down mountains and stuff. So we were nowhere near the range things that the range estimate that they got us. But in other tests that I've seen, other people have gotten close to or a little bit better than us.

The estimated range. So I'm not going to say that the estimated range was was bad based on the test drive, because the test drive was not really the ideal, you know, average day on the road.

Okay, got it, got it. All right, if you guys have any questions for Jamie regarding the Chevy Blazer EV, put them in the comment section right now. We're going to have one quick last news item to discuss, which is still an all-time GM news. And then we're going to get into your comment section. So if we have like a few minutes to get into your question before the end of the show. The last piece of news that we're going to discuss is the latest Cadillac EV. Sorry, the...

VSTEC EV is going to be a new SUV that's going to sit between the Lyric and the new Escalade IQ that was unveiled a few months ago. To be honest, there's not a lot of details. So GM announced the vehicle unveiled this picture right here. It looks like a full-size SUV.

Then you have this picture right here, like very much in line with the latest design accents that...

Cadillac is going forward with their new EV vehicles. It's going to come as a 2026 model. So I assume some point in 2025, end of 2025, most likely. And no specs or anything like that. But again, they said it's going to be between the Lyric and Escalade. So you can expect that it's going to be, I don't know, like a $60,000 to $70,000 range SUV. Also big size, but not quite as big as an Escalade.

that's, that's about it for the Vistic. What'd you guys think of the design? I like it. Yeah. I don't like it as much as the lyric. I think it looks a little old style, but then again, that's kind of a, you know, Cadillac is kind of looking for that, that sort of a traditional purchaser anyway. But I think the lyric has a bit more punch to it. It looks a little more new, more exciting. Yeah.

Also, they're going too far with the IQ thing. They're going to run out of words with IQ at the end. They can make up words, obviously. Well, is Vistick a word? No. Everything's like, Vist does work. Optic, laryngic. Why isn't it escalate? Escalate IQ. Yeah, and then...

They just didn't even try with Escalade. Yeah, I don't know what they thought of this one. And then they were like, oh, we're not giving up on the Escalade name, so you have to deal with it. Escalade IQ. Oh, boy. I mean, it's their best seller. Yeah, it's not a bad name, but with the IQ, it's a little bit worse of a name for sure. All right, let's jump into the comments section. All right, we were talking about the autopilot update with the 1.0.

uh down button electric brian when you set any other car for cruise control it doesn't alarm anything i guess that's uh there's a there's a there's a i think there's a yeah there's a little bing and then you see the your speed being registered the speed that you're set at i guess that's the only indication that you guess is that is that what you're saying

I think so. I should say anecdotally, my wife was driving the Model Y up to Vermont last week, and we had done the update, and she usually just puts it in cruise control, but not

you know, not autopilot. And she put it down once and it went into autopilot. She's like, what is going on here? Oh, that's right. Yeah. That's a problem. If you're one of those. I mean, it's just a setting. You go into the settings and you change it, but like, it's probably disconcerting for a lot of people who don't read like the, you know, the updates. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. It should have been the other round. Like you should, you should be able to set it at one. And if people are used to two, that make it as a default. Yeah.

All right, David Bellamy, France just announced that they're not giving incentives to China-made EVs. Do you think this will accelerate Tesla's plans to produce Highland in Berlin?

We don't even know that they want to produce Highland in Berlin. Tesla has not confirmed a second EV program in Berlin. Elon sort of said apparently to employees in a meeting last month that they're going to produce the Model 2, 25,000 or whatever it's called, and the new lower-cost Tesla. But that's it. So, don't even know.

However, yeah, probably. It makes sense. You don't want to leave money on the table. So it could make sense that you try to go after those subsidies. And especially what I think is I think France is just one of several that are going to do the same thing because the US has done it now. France is doing it. I think a lot more are going to do that than Europe.

to try not to get that China just walk away with the entire EV market, which might be on their way to do. Right. All right. If the Model 3 is still built in the US, it should get half. Yes, the battery isn't made from enough good sources, so it won't get all. If it's losing all, are only highlands made in China coming? It is a weird question. I need to go back and watch the rules because I think you might be right. I think you're...

I think you should still get half. Go ahead, Jimmy. So if it's built in the U.S., it has to be final assembled in the U.S. in order to get any of the credit. But then the credit is split into two different categories. There's battery components and then critical minerals. And then battery components need to be assembled in the U.S., I think. And then critical minerals need to be...

either extracted or processed in the US or in any free trade partner. And then there's specific like carve outs that they go into place in 2024. And this is the new thing that changed it. In 2024, there's a specific carve out that says that any

Like I forget the term, but it's like any basically national enemy, any any entity that the US has described as as bad. If there's anything from there in the battery, then they get disqualified. Completely. That's the reason. Yeah. And maybe it's disqualified completely or maybe it's disqualified from one of the two.

from the battery component well that's what we need to come from because that would explain maybe the situation here but at the same time i don't see tesla not like why would this is they have a huge production line from all trees in the us right now why would they stop that just to get china made tesla vehicle which are gonna be harder to sell in the us just for perception too so yeah

yeah they definitely have uh have made it as uh as weird as possible yeah the rules all right with the loss of the tax credit it's an opportunity to bring the highland in with differently sourced batteries i don't know but what source like you to me to make the base model 3 you need it to be lfp to be the performance and the price

that you're looking at and there's just no LFP made in the US, right? Well, or at least not in volume needed to achieve that. It's coming, though. It's coming. Yeah, I would love to see more LFP in the US. Here in Quebec, we have a factory here that was starting to make some and the company went under and they were just bought by another bigger company, I think,

I think 901, they bought it and they just invested a bunch of money to make volume production of LFP in Quebec. So that's going to be good. And that counts as North America too. So even if we speak like Europeans, it's America's hat. Yeah.

All right, David Bellamy, any information about the timing of Model Y refresh? We haven't got the Model 3 here yet, but we're already on the Y. Let's see about the timing on the Model 3 Island coming to the US. Maybe they do both at the same time. I asked Grok about it, and Grok says it's coming in the first quarter of 2024. The island is. Yeah, the island is another Model Y. And I think Grok knows more about Tesla than...

then we know like this. I think it's plugged into the source directly. Yeah, maybe Elon is fed an internal Tesla document. Yeah, it reads like Elon's emails or something. Oh, God. All right, Greg Poland question. Does the founder's Cybertruck all-wheel drive qualify for the $7,500 tax credit? I don't think so. That's expensive, right? So do all the options count towards the tax credit? So the way that you frame the foundation, I think it's foundation series and not founder series. Right.

It's a package. You buy the whole car for that price. There's no option, anything like that. And so the starting price of the all-wheel drive is $100,000. So no, it doesn't qualify. And even that, what's the point anyway? If you can afford a $100,000 car, I cannot be surprised that it works with you'd be eligible for the tax credit anyway. So I don't think that's a big market there. All right. How was the heads-up display on the Blazer, Jamie?

Um, it was pretty good, but it suffered from the same issue that every heads up display except for the Mercedes EQS suffers from, which is that if you're wearing polarized sunglasses where you're driving, which I do, uh, you can't see it. Um, this one, I could see a little bit better than most. Um, but basically when your head is tilted straight up,

The thing disappears. And if you tilt your head to the side just a little bit, it shows up. So if you want to drive like this with your head sideways, you can see it. Can you get polarized sunglasses that are diagonal or something? No, I mean, that's just the you polarize them that way. So that reflections from from, you know, like.

like water and, you know, things that are normally going to reflect, get polarized out when your head is in the direction that it's supposed to be in, which is of course the difficulty is when your head is in that direction, it's also working to polarize, you know, the reflection off of the screen, the, um,

windshield in front of you. So this one actually worked kind of okay when my head was like I could kind of just ghost see it when my head was straight up and down. So it was a little bit better than most, but Mercedes EQS works completely no matter which direction your head is when you have Polaris sunglasses on. So it's like if they

If they can figure it out, please everybody else figure it out. It's got to be doable. It is not physically impossible because I've seen it happen. You know, take the screen, turn it 90 degrees or something like that, or add some etching on the windshield, whatever you need to do. Just make it work because this one didn't. Otherwise, the quality of the display was nice. It wasn't as nice as the Mercedes EQS in terms of what options or what stuff it shows you, but it shows you a good amount of stuff.

navigation pretty intuitive? Yes, actually the navigation. So it goes through Google and the navigation will route you through EV chargers, which a lot of nav systems don't do. You know, we're seeing more and more of them now that do. But if you say, you know, take me to Portland or whatever, you're

Uh, the car will tell you, all right, you're going to charge it, you know, Harris ranch, you're going to charge at Sacramento for 45 minutes. You're going to charge here and there and so on and so forth. Um, which is really nice, uh, for people who don't want to have to think of their own charging. It's just really cool to be able to say that and just have the car suggest where you charge and how long. Yeah.

All right. Question. How do you rate the mass media coverage of EV adoption? I see recent headlines with negative slants, but then read the best-selling car worldwide is an EV. I mean, there's a lot of nuance in that. I don't know. I think mass media is kind of all over the place. I would say, like, you know, we spend all day thinking about this stuff. Mass media, typically, they're on the fringes. They have to cover so many more things that they don't really...

dive deep. They kind of don't see the patterns and they don't see the BS. I don't know. What do you think? Yeah, I got a lot to say about this. Yeah. I mean, I think these like

a headline someone writes it or like evs are going bad or they see they see these dealerships sending them a press release about not wanting to sell evs or evs are not selling and they just i take an opportunity like i'm gonna get a few clicks out of this i don't like you said so i don't think they are like diving deep into the subject and trying to i mean some of them are to be honest like i've seen some articles from mainstream media or corporate media or whatever you want to call them that uh

I've debunked this idea too. So I don't think it's like everyone's a culprit here. But yeah, in general, I think Ike Angelis is correct. I think there's a negative view of the... Oh, was that someone else? Yeah. No. Yeah. So I don't... Obviously, I don't think much about it. I don't read corporate media that much these days. But yeah, what do you think, Jamie?

Yeah, so I think there has been a bit of a backlash because in October you were seeing all these headlines about EV sales being down, which they never were, by the way. They're up. Just the contention was that they would be up by less than people thought they would be up. And then in like November and then this month, you're seeing a lot of people who are actually looking at the numbers and they're like, wait a minute, this is not they're not down. They're still rising at the same rate that they were rising anyway.

Um, and if you look at all the numbers, we're at about a 50% increase, uh, year over year, uh, which has been the case for quite a while. So I think EV cells are growing at about the same rate as expected. I think anyone who's cutting production plans is probably doing the wrong thing. Uh, and, um, yeah.

There have been some arguments made. David Reichmuth of the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote an article about how he thinks, well, part of the article was that he thinks part of the reason for this talk about a slowdown is because they're working on new EPA regulations.

for how many electric cars we're going to be selling into the future. And if manufacturers all make it seem like electric cars aren't taking off, they think they can possibly influence the EPA regulations to being a little bit more lenient.

That's a bit of a conspiracy theory, but I think there's something there. But it's based on history because they did exactly that in the early 2000s, late 90s, early 2000s in California and with the EPP. And if Trump gets elected, there's going to be some major backtracking.

Yeah. So there's that. But then the other thing is, there are some headwinds right now. The next transition, you know, a lot of people are maybe thinking I can wait a year and get a car with NACs instead of a car with J1772. And interest rates, people might be waiting out, but interest rates are affecting the whole auto industry too. You know, people talk about EVs

gathering up on dealer lots. But if you look at a dealer lot, they're also full of gas cars right now because everyone's kind of slowing down a bit. So I don't think there's that many specific EV issues right now. All right. Kind of on that same subject. Based on your experience, Jamie, how serious are all in? Does GM seem on EVs? You know, talking to everyone there at the event was like, you know, people, people, people were interested in, you know, in GM. They were all, you know, pushing them. But

At the end of the day, 3%, 4% of their current sales are electric. And they've been talking about being all in for how many years now? And the average U.S. electric sales is like 9% or something this quarter or 8% last quarter. So they're bringing down the average, you know.

So I don't know how somebody, how a company can say they're all in when they're bringing down the average. If they were all in, they would be bringing up the average. And there are a number of countries, companies other than Tesla that are bringing up the average BMW, Mercedes, Volvo are all selling more than the average. So, you know, it's,

it's really hard because i know they're all working hard on these cars and they're making pretty good cars the bolt is fantastic um the blazer is fantastic was fantastic uh but you know the fact that the bolt was fantastic was an amazing car seven years ago and went through an entire seven year lifespan being an amazing car like that means that they did get a start at some point it's just that

you know, we got to get there. We got to, we need more cars. We need them out now. They're finally getting cars out. Hopefully we'll see more, uh, out of them and we'll see them pushing them harder, but then you got to get the dealers on board and everything. And that's a really hard conversation that I was talking to them all about at the event. Um, and GM is, is having trouble with that. Uh, but I will tell you that one engineer while I was there,

I was talking to the engineer and saying, I don't know how seriously you guys are taking it. And he was like, if you saw how hard Mary whips us every day,

to work on electric car stuff you would think otherwise so he feels like he's being pushed from the top and that was i would like that engineer to spend a week with working with elon c oh yeah yeah okay sure yeah i'd change his perception of what uh whipping an employee sounds like sure yeah yeah yeah or the literal meaning might be a little bit yeah yeah it's no longer it's no longer a metaphor yeah

All right. We're getting pretty late. We'll do one more question from Seattle, Vienna. Will the Cybertruck ever be sold outside the U.S. and outside of North America?

Outside the US, yes, it's going to most likely be to Canada because we basically copied the US road regulation. So it's going to work in Canada. In Europe, though, it doesn't sound like it right now. It sounds like it would need some major redesigning to be legal on European roads.

China, probably. China's a free-for-all. They're not big on trucks, though, so I don't know if we'll make it there. But let's see if they find space in Shanghai to make it. I'm sure they could. Yeah, I'm sure some rich Australian guy will get one sent over there.

Australia too. I'm not as familiar with the rules in Australia, but they do love their pickup trucks. It's right-hand drive though. They might have trouble with that. They're going to have that arm extender that Tesla sells. It's steer-by-wire, so it's easier to make right-hand drive with it.

Oh, Michelle says that you skipped a caption. So we should go back. Is Ultium revolutionary or is it just marketing? I think it's kind of just marketing. It's just, it's just a new different platform. It's the same as the EGMP platform or whatever else. It's just, you know, this is how we've organized our batteries. I don't think it's a, it's a great step forward in battery technology. It's just, it's,

better tech than the ones they were using before yeah it's a lot of modularity reusing stuff but that's kind of like everybody else yeah yeah all right well that's it everyone for this week's episode of the electric podcast thanks everyone for listening thanks to wolfbox for sponsoring this week's episode uh if you do enjoy the show if you can give us a thumbs up a like and subscribe all over it is on the half you're watching right now because we're live everywhere uh

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