Tesla Cybertruck spec leak, Volvo EX30 first drive, EV earnings, and more
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Three, two, one. We are live for a new episode of The Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host. And as usual, I'm joined by Seth Winchop. How are you doing today, Seth? I'm good. I'm good.

All right. We have a big show today, a lot of news. Just a tiny few little news items from Tesla this week. A lot from other automakers because it's kind of the EV earnings week for Rivian, Polestar, Lucid, all the EV-only automakers. So we're going to get into that. And of course, whenever there are earnings, there are other news that comes out of that. So we're going to jump into that. Also, you have set, can finally release is Volvo. Yeah.

What is it? EX30. I'm having some issues with Volvo's naming scheme. They are all keeping you at the same time. I'm still in Japan right now. It's 6 a.m. for me. I got a little bit confused with the time saving not being applied in Japan. But I'm up and early, ready to do the podcast, sort of.

I'm trying to be as energetic as I can. But this is my last day in Japan. Next week, I'm going to be back in Montreal. Well, tomorrow I'm going to be back in Montreal. But for the podcast next week, I'm going to be ready to go back to normal for me.

I want to thank, before we start the show, I want to thank our sponsor for this episode. We're sponsored by VMAX. If you're looking for a high-quality e-scooter with superior performance, check out the new VX5, VX2 Pro, VX4, and the R40 and the R55 iSpeed race scooters from VMAX. That's a lot of scooters for this little plug, but we're going to have more to say about those scooters later on in the show, so stay tuned for that.

But let's jump right into the news now. I'm going to start out with a little spec leak for the Cybertruck. So we've been trying to get as much information as we can about the Cybertruck. It is the biggest EV to launch this year by a wide margin. And we don't have that much information for the production version, which is surprising, but not for Tesla. Exactly. That's how they are.

Generally like to do things with new vehicle launches. And this week, what we got is a leak coming from TFL EVs. Well, the TFL is a truck channel, really, and that's their EV version of their channel, I think. And they have a leak that is somewhat credible because they do have some pictures, some new pictures in the claim to...

Well, the core of the leak is from a supposed Tesla insider. So normally we stay a little skeptical about that, obviously. But it did come with pictures. So that gives the leak some credibility. And also the information is sort of...

in line with our expectations. So that helps too. So mainly it's all the dimensions of the truck really. So we have the overall length of the truck now that's coming in at 18.6 feet. Overall width without mirrors of right short of 80 inches, 143 inch wheelbase.

They got the exact curb rate, which we got last week. We got pretty close to it with some information that came out. But now we have supposedly the actual one with two versions of the truck, the dual motor version coming in at 6,670 pounds, the three motor version coming at 6,890 pounds. So you have only like a 220 pound difference for the three motors. That's

should pretty much give you the weight of the motor that Tesla is using because I don't think you can fit a battery capacity difference in that weight on top of another motor. Yeah, some motors, some inverters, maybe some big wires, but yeah, mostly motor. Yeah, power electronics difference maybe.

um tour rating and event thousand pounds that's uh what tesla has originally announced so no surprise there max tongue what's what's that even mean that's important it's supposed to be it's supposed to be torque but okay that makes a ton more sense so a little typo on our side here apologies oh the already the bed that's probably one of the the dimensions that people are most interested in when buying a pickup truck is the bed length so that's coming at 72.8 inches

So that's just over six feet, right? If I'm not mistaken. Yep. And then a width of 51. So if width of 51, that's probably the figure that I would like to compare with other pickup trucks because that was our concern for the width based on the pictures that we saw of the Cybertrucks bed. Front volume of seven. Say that again, Seth?

Oh, yeah. So the bed width is a little bit smaller, actually significantly smaller than Silverado or F-150. And that's because Tesla has kind of buried the wheel wells. So if you're talking about between the wheel wells, it's a similar width to Ford or Chevy, but

Because, you know, the Fords and Chevys have like space around the wheel wells. This is a lot more narrow. Yeah, that might be an issue for some people based on their use cases of the Cybertruck. But you have other options now in the EV pickup space.

What else? Well, I mean, you have the front volume 7.1. We've seen the front recently. We had a report on that last week. A good look inside. Weight capacity of the front, 420 pounds. That's how we knew it was real. Yeah, Tesla loved the 420. Headroom, 41.6 in the front, 39 in the rear. Legroom, 41 in the front, basically 41 in the rear too. Shoulder room.

That's not one that we usually use. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff here. Yeah, no outlets in the front, one outlet in the rear. 110 volt twice and 221. That's the bed here, I think. So that was the picture. Yeah, that's the image we got, yeah. I think that's important because, you know, especially the 240, if you're going to do...

you know, back up your house type of stuff or, or, you know, run tool. I don't, you know, I don't know if construction workers are going to really going to use this, but theoretically you could run a, you know, a tool, tool shop kind of look, you know, on, on site. Yeah. Some of the more high power, power tools, even like, like something like a bench saws or I mean, even a welder, I guess. No.

Yeah. And, you know, the other thing is more of a gimmick, but, you know, Ford does it. So you could also charge another vehicle with that. Yeah, technically. So, yeah, on electric, you have all of the charts that we posted with this leak of comparing all these dimensions that we just discussed to the other big pickup truck, EV pickup truck, and also just all the top sellers in the ICE pickup truck market also.

We should note the width at 79.9 is just under the 80-inch max width where you have to put those three lights on the front and back of the truck. So obviously Tesla wanted to keep it under 80 inches. Yeah, 79.9 inches.

All right, we got some new information coming from a reported meeting that Elon Musk had at Gigafactory Berlin with the employees. So earlier this week, he went to Germany and visited the factory at some word for the workers there. It comes amid some union pushes for Tesla, obviously. There's all the deals that have been made with the UAW in the U.S. There's been talk. We're going to talk a little bit more about that later, about Tesla.

What's going to happen next with those big victories for UAW, what it could mean for Tesla and other automakers in the U.S. that are not unionized. Tesla workers are not unionized in Berlin also, at Gigafactory Berlin, even though unions are extremely strong in the auto industry in Germany. And now in Europe, there's been a push to unionize Tesla a bit. We talked about IG Metal recently.

organizing some things at Gigafactory Berlin. Some employees apparently have some concerns. There was some kind of showing with a thousand employees or so a few weeks ago. Now there's a union strike in Sweden with service employees. So that's a bit different than the manufacturing side of things.

And also that's kind of amid a broader union strike with port workers that Tesla is kind of trying to get around, which is obviously upsetting the wider union base. So all these things happening at the same time. Elon shows up at Gigafactory Berlin amid a pay raise for the workers there. So that timing is pretty good, even though they stated officially that it has nothing to do with the unionization effort.

But the most interesting thing that came out of...

Elon's visit based on a report from routers about the meeting is that he said that Gigafactory Berlin will get the production of the next-gen vehicle. So that's very interesting because Tesla has been very quiet about the vehicle programs that they're going to introduce at Gigafactory Berlin. Currently, it only produces the Model Y. We thought maybe Tesla would introduce a Model 3 after the Model Y was ramped up, the Factory V, which has been like

quite a few months now since they reached 5 000 units a week which generally is what tesla considered volume production uh so during those months we didn't have any information about what's happening next to the factory um we thought maybe model 3 maybe like cyber truck was always unlikely just because the european market is not that hungry for pickup trucks

But now Elon apparently announced that the Unbox production system, which is going to power the next generation vehicle for Tesla, namely the $25,000 Tesla that we're calling the cheaper Tesla vehicle. We don't have a better name for it just yet. By the way, on that cheaper vehicle, Ron Barron went on CNBC this morning and called it, I mean, not that he knows or doesn't know, but I feel like he knows more than most people. He probably has...

or conversations with Elon. He called it the Model 2. Yeah. I mean, you're probably right. He does have some conversation with Elon. He does know a decent amount. I don't know. I don't even know if Tesla knows the name of it. That's a good point. Yeah. And it does just sound better calling it the Model 2 than the $25,000 Tesla. Right. Yeah. And the other one is the Robotaxi, obviously.

So, Elon apparently told the crowd there that these vehicles are going to be produced at the factory, which also makes sense amid the unionization effort because adding new vehicle programs to a factory does create some sense of security for the workers that...

They plan to utilize the factory long term, which was never that big of a concern for Gigafactory Berlin, obviously. But still, we're starting to think it was kind of weird that Tesla was not announcing a new vehicle program there. And also amid what's happening in Gigafactory Mexico with the delays there and Tesla showing some uncertainty in investing in new production capacity outside of existing plant right now.

all right that was an interesting new one here we we got an answer on the question that we had for a little bit since uh elon announced that he's uh building a new uh a new ai company xai uh we we had some concern about what it means for tesla which is also in the ai space and and elon uh

alleging that Tesla has the best AI team in the world and Tesla is going to contribute to general artificial intelligence development. And then as he says that, he's like, oh, also, I'm building a completely separate company to do those same things. So very weird. But he did say at the same time when he launched XAI that the new company will work closely with Tesla and

didn't elaborate exactly how. Now we have that answer as the new XAI launched their first product or like a soft launch type of product, early beta type of thing. So the first project for XAI is Chatbot. It's called Grok AI. I've only seen it written. I've never heard anyone pronounce it. You think Grok is correct? Grok is correct, yes. Grok. Grok AI. So

As per XAI's description, Grok AI is an AI model after the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, so intended to answer almost anything and for harder, even suggest, far harder, even suggest what question to ask. Grok is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak. So please don't use it if you hate humor. Okay.

So, yeah, I mean, think chat GPT with a bit of a hedge, basically a little bit more up to date. Obviously, it has the advantage of being fed all the data from X, from Twitter to build a model. But how does this relate to Tesla, you ask? So one of the early beta tester, Brian, I'm going to destroy his last name here, but Brian Romanelli, Romanelli, I don't know.

reported some information that Grok, based on, I think he has access to the code or something, that a smaller quantized version of Grok will run native in Tesla vehicle using the local compute power. And Elon liked his comment when he reported that on Twitter and then had it provided or vehicle AI computer is able to run the model. Tesla would probably have the most amount of true

usable interference compute on earth even in a robotaxi future meaning when the computer gets even more used the cars will only be used for one-third of hours one-third of hours per week leaving two-thirds for distributed inference like scti which

I don't know how that, like, SCTI is like, if I understand correctly, it's like extraterrestrial search, I think. Yeah, there was a SETI at home project where you would use that, you know, like a screensaver where you would use your computer's downtime to help it find extraterrestrial signals in the sky. So they're saying that when your computer's, or sorry, when you're,

your car is not being used, Tesla's going to fire that thing up and use some compute cycles to look for alien AI stuff. Maybe, I don't know, but help them with their AI stuff. Yeah, but the comment was directly in response to that comment about the Tesla vehicle using grok.

Right. So I think he's basically confirming that and adding the concept that the compute power inside Tesla vehicle is going to be underused even with a robot taxi service, I guess. Because like one third of hours per week is still a ton more than...

what cars are being used right now. So he's referencing. So like the hours are going to obviously increase as your car, if your car becomes a robotaxi.

But still plenty of time and therefore compute power to be used. So, yeah, I mean, it makes a ton of sense. Obviously, Tesla has been increasingly using like voice command, for example, inside the car. Elon famously said any input is an error. He wants the car to basically anticipate your needs. He's talked about things like you.

you get into the car and the car knows where you want to go to drive based on your schedule and then drives directly there so it makes sense to have some kind of ai assistant be part of that and help into that process i mean we've seen other car makers adapting uh integrating things like alexa inter inside their vehicle um

I assume that the automakers that have the Android native now, the Android Auto native, have Google Assistant. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. So... Yeah, there's... I mean, Google does a fantastic voice recognition and... Yeah. And, you know, as far as Tesla's concerned, you know, I still have problems with my windshield wipers AI figuring out when it's raining. So...

we need to see some more evidence of this i think oh yeah this is completely unproven here like yeah i i love i love x now i mean as soon as he posted that like the grok ai thing like assuming like no one was able to use it yet other than a few early beta tester and like you automatically had a thousand comments on under his post that was like grok ai will be the best ai ever will destroy uh chat gpt and all that so

And he sees that. He loves that stuff. He starts liking those comments. Of course. But everyone comments on that based on zero information whatsoever. Yeah, I mean, when you think about it, Twitter's got some really good real-time stuff. That's going to be fantastic. But it also has a lot of really bad stuff. So how does...

You know, like how does it filter it out? And then like, you know, is Elon or is Twitter going to use, you know, the paid for as a signal of, you know, being reputable, which seems like a really bad idea because a lot of the paid for accounts are also like, you know, the super racist ones or whatever. So it'll be interesting to see how this all goes down. I mean, if nothing else, it'll be entertaining.

Certainly will, as is most often the case with Elon stuff. Yeah. All right. Yeah, we talked already a little bit about the strike in Sweden. So Tesla officially commented this week after it first started late last week.

Tesla's response via TT, Swedish National Wire Service, said, it is unfortunate that IF Metal, the union in question, has taken these measures. Tesla follows Swedish labor market regulation, but like many other companies, has chosen not to enter into a collective agreement. We already offer equivalent or better agreement than those covered by collective bargaining and find no reason to sign any other agreement.

So this is in line with pretty much Tesla's overall policies with unions. They do believe that they offer better conditions than union workers are going for in adjacent industries in some cases, because IF Metal right now doesn't cover specifically what Tesla is doing in Sweden, because in Sweden there's no...

There's no manufacturing work being done. It's service. So I get the point to a degree in Sweden here, but in other markets where Tesla is producing, it's a bit different. Like you can compare those jobs a little bit more directly. Yeah, I mean, Tesla always says like, hey, we may not pay as much as everybody else, but we give you stock options. And our stock options, you know, until recently have always been going, you know, up, up, up.

And, you know, I mentioned the Ron Barron interview we saw earlier. He kind of made that case. He said like, hey, we're going to make five million Model 2s by 2025. We're going to sell five million of those. The stock is going to be at four billion, which I think is maybe a little bit wishful thinking. Four trillion, you mean, right? Four trillion, sorry. Yeah. Yeah.

And you're going to have the richest auto workers in the world working at Tesla. So that's one way to look at it. I think, you know, if you were being a really fair person, you could give them both. You could say, hey. Why not? I don't see that. Like, why is like one or the other?

Yeah, I don't know. There's no law saying you can't do it. I think he just doesn't want to be unionized. So that's the one carrot that he has, I guess. Yeah, and I think he was officially reprimanded by the regulators in the U.S. when he said that because

Yeah, like you said, there's no laws preventing you from giving stock options to unionized employees. A unionized employee, the only difference is that they collectively put their effort together to negotiate with the automakers rather than do it one by one. It's the only official difference. There's no...

On the contrary, that's a bargain and could include stock option. Yeah, I mean, I will say I do like the idea of workers sharing in the success of the company. I feel like

That should be part of the union negotiations with Tesla saying, hey, if your stock goes up, then pay us more. Or if you meet all these goals and you bring in a lot of money, share some of that with the workers. In fact, I don't know why that's just not like the status quo of union shops anyway. Yeah, I don't get it either.

So Biden, still in the same vein here, Biden chimed in following all the success of the UAW with the big three automakers. I have an actual quote here from the president.

I don't have the actual quote, but he basically gave his support. He went and met with Fain, the president of UAW, and gave his support to push for a broader organization of the auto industry in the U.S. So Tesla and Toyota were specifically mentioned because obviously they are two of the biggest non-unionized automakers producing vehicles in the U.S. right now. And

Those comments follow Fein's comments from last week where he said that the next time they go to the table for negotiating, he believed they won't be negotiating just with the big three, but he said the big five or six, I think he said something like that, which implies a union push to Odorto Makers. And UAW, even though it was a big win for them the last few weeks with those deals with GM, Chrysler and Ford, said,

Their numbers have still been dwindling for decades right now. So they are not in a great position either. Obviously, that also comes with a lot of... It's not just...

because of them themselves, the union itself, but the automakers have diversified their portfolio really and gave a lot of jobs to suppliers instead of having bigger factories. So that also contributed. But on the other side, Tesla is doing the contrary to that. And they are vertically integrated and their factories are extremely dense with employees. So

If they can get into one of the big Tesla factories in the U.S., just that alone would be like a big boost to the numbers. Yep. All right. Should we do the read right now or you want to jump into the Volvo EX30? No, let's read it. All right. Let's talk a little bit about our response for VMAX.

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for exclusive offers for a limited time thanks again to vmax for sponsoring I can't wait to take a look at these things um they look pretty cool and uh you know race scooters are always something that it intrigues me yeah this one looks insane uh 34 miles per hour and uh 40 mile range

I mean, I'm always a little bit concerned about going that fast on a scooter, but this one looks pretty solid. It was just looking at the suspension harm here and everything. Yeah. This is a full-scale vehicle. It's a scooter. It's crazy. All right. Thank you, VMAX, for sponsoring this week episode of The Electric Podcast.

All right, so a few weeks ago, you were able to get a first drive in Volvo's new entry-level full electric vehicle, the EX30. What did you think? Yeah, so, you know, I'm a huge Chevy Bolt fan. So this is basically the same size as Chevy Bolt, a little bit longer than the...

the uh the base model Bolt EV and a little bit shorter than the the EUV so kind of like right in that sweet spot in between um I've had a Volvo before long you know a long time ago before uh EVs made sense um so I I know the brand pretty well I think they really hit it out of the park with this vehicle um it's it's super fast uh it's very responsive it drives really well um

Obviously, it's the quickest zero to 60 car that Volvo's ever made, and it's also their cheapest car. So it's kind of a weird combination of things. They also call it an SUV. Some people will call it a hatchback, but whatever it's.

it is what it is. They do that now when they do like a smaller car that just is shaped like an SUV, but... Right. They kind of do that shape. So, yeah. So now the SUV means like the shape of an SUV and not the actual utility of it, but whatever. Yeah, I mean, it's got some good trunk space. You can put the seats down and store stuff. The interior is amazing. It looks awesome. Yeah, they really did some like

you know deep thinking about that they took the speakers out of the door um they put the glow box in the center they instead of having speakers in the doors they have like a um what's that called a speaker bar um like you have for your tv but yeah it's it's in the front of the car it's not the sound system is really great um so this is almost like sorry is this almost like a

The table and the dash here? I mean, you can put stuff on it. It's a little bit like that. I don't know if things would stick to it too well. Maybe you need some Velcro. But yeah, I mean, it's kind of flat for the passenger. It's nice. There are a few downsides. One is that the center display wasn't terribly bright or big. So reading some of the smaller Google Maps stuff on it, for instance, was...

a little bit trying you know obviously i have reading glasses so uh your mileage will vary uh depending on how good your eyes are it looks it almost looks like it's a tablet like you can just pick up and leave with it it does it does we we tried it's pretty firmly in there though um but yeah it does run google uh google's android for cars os it's very similar to the pole star um

OS and, and other Volvos we've tried that run, run that, uh, same OS. Um, it, so the specs wise, it's got 150 kilowatt charging. It'll go from 10 to 80% in 26 minutes, which actually isn't not, not that bad if you think about the 150 kilowatt charging. So it, it's, uh, it's actually like, uh, you know, a smaller battery, 69 kilowatt battery, kilowatt hour battery. So, um,

that 150 kilowatts is filling up a smaller battery uh quite quickly so it's a pretty good uh setup you can see there if you're watching uh be charging it at a local charging station there i do like the wheels on it they're a little bit bigger than uh you know obviously the chevy bolt that made going off-road uh pretty easy and pretty fun um

You know, this car does pretty much everything. My concern, my big concerns, you know, there's some little stuff, but my big concerns are this is made in China. You know, if we have some sort of political BS with China, you know, in the next couple of years, is this going to be something that's, you know, put on the table?

um, we're, we charge them a 27% import duty, but I, I'm, I think that Volvo gets around this somehow because a lot of their cars are built in the U S or something. Um, the, the, the executives would be, were super cagey about that. I was like, well, are you paying the 27%? And they're like, nah, kind of. And I was like, well, you know, yes or yes or no. And they're like, well, it's, it's more complicated than that. We build cars in the U S and in Europe. And, and so it doesn't

necessarily equate that one to one. And I was like, well, why don't you just build them in the US? And they're like, well, we're going to have an announcement. And the announcement actually was that they're going to build them in Ghent in Belgium. And they're looking at the US market. Their CEO, Rowan something, the day of the... So if you want to know if a car is prioritized for the US market,

look at when the global...

press release or, you know, when, when the embargoes up and for us, it was 3am. So obviously we were not, we were not the target market for this thing. But, you know, in that period between 3am and 6am, when I woke up, their CEO was like, Oh yeah, we're thinking about building a U S assembly line for cars like this. It was like, Oh great. That's, you know, a lot, a big part of my take was like, Hey, you need to build one in the U S. So,

Hopefully they do that. Um, obviously, uh, Volvo flew us out to, uh, Barcelona, put us up. Uh, we had a great time. Uh, I don't know if that influences my, uh, views on the car at all. Uh, but it was, it was sure. Nice. Um,

But I've loved this car before any of that. And I think it's going to be a big hit. I think Google, or sorry, I think Volvo has no idea how popular this is going to be. They're like, we'll see how it goes. There's no other car, anything like it with the Bolt disappearing. This car could just, it feels like it could sell unlimited amounts. I mean, it's so fast, so inexpensive. So it feels so like luxury and it's so inexpensive at $35,000.

And of course, you can lease it and get some of that 7500 back. So that's going to be a much lower priced lease. And people will do those one day leases where you buy it out day one and you can get the 7500 or tricks like that. So a lot of options there. And it's coming to the US first quarter next year.

Yeah, I mean, Volvo didn't fly me to Barcelona and wine and dine me so I can tell you the truth about this. And I'm kidding. I mean, I completely agree with you. My only concern is like you said, unless they do build it in the US or whenever they do build in the US, then maybe I think it will take off for now. Like they have all the ingredients for it to be a big success.

It's just that I don't think they're going to come in with the volume until that happens. That's right. Because of the game they have to play with the volume of vehicles they are producing in the U.S. versus what they're importing from China. They could sell 100,000 of them in the U.S. pretty easily. But that probably would trigger those...

import duties so so i don't i don't see that happening i see probably a trickle of those in the u.s market until they get imported with from europe which would avoid that import duty but would again prevent the federal tax credit on this like you said you do a lease thing uh you do the lease loophole so yeah it's uh it's it's as all the ingredient for being um an omron for volvo but uh

at the end of the day you need to have the volume allocation to your dealers and for now i just don't see that happening for the x30 but yeah i mean ironically uh since there's no import duty to europe they would import the the ones from china to europe and then they would import the ones from europe to the us uh which makes no sense at all but you know that that's probably financially the best way to do it yeah but i but that's a great point you brought up about like

trickling numbers. You know, this thing is not just popular in the US or not going to be popular in the US. It's going to be popular everywhere. And Europe's going to want as many of these as they can get. And since they don't have to pay an import duty on the ones in Europe and they're going to build them in Europe, it's probably going to put most of them in Europe. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We're talking more about the US market here, but obviously a lot of other markets are going to be hungry for this. And there's a chance for them to have the volume.

All right, we have a few more news items we want to discuss, and then we're going to be able to jump into the comment section. So if you guys have any questions for us, you can put it in the comments. If you're watching live on Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube, we're going to have a few minutes at the end of the show. It can be about whatever we discussed today, or it can be another subject in the EV space that you want our take on. We'll get into that in a few minutes. So we'll go through those topics.

News item a little bit faster here. Mercedes announced a deal with Buc-ee's. You know, guys, I'm a big fan of Buc-ee's. They do have chargers already. They have a deal with Tesla. They have a few Tesla superchargers around Buc-ee's.

in Alabama and in Texas. And now Mercedes Mercedes Benz, which we've been very excited about lately because they are one of the few automakers that are going to have their own dedicated fast charging network branded Mercedes. So it's not like a conglomeration of automakers put together. It's more like a Tesla supercharger situation, which we have been pushing other automakers to do for a while. They announced that

earlier this year, I think. But now they need places to build those charging stations and Buc-ee's is going to be one of those places. They announced a deal that the company will start with about 30 of them by the end of 2024. I don't know how many Buc-ee's there are out there. There are not that many actually, I think. I would think. Well, they're just so big. Yeah. You don't need that many. You need one Buc-ee cover. It's a big area. One per state. Yeah.

So yeah, good deal with Bucky's. So you get some nice clean bathrooms for your charging breaks, some beef jerky and pulled pork sandwiches, and then you're back on the road. All right, so Polestar, it's Polestar Day. So there was another news coming out of that. But the biggest one is a new factory coming in Korea for Polestar. Interesting choice.

So they're going to get into the Hyundai Kia backyard and build some electric vehicles out there, specifically the Polestar 4, which we've been excited about. Look great. Polestar 2, Polestar 4 are the two next vehicles from the Swedish slash Chinese brand.

They also announced a vehicle to grid capacity to work with virtual power plants. So we talked a lot about virtual power plant with Tesla, what they're doing with the power wall. But Tesla is not big on vehicle to grid, vehicle to home, vehicle to everything.

It is coming, but right now it's not the case. Polestar has indicated that they want to do that. And now they're going to combine it with a vehicle to a virtual power plant. So that's going to be an interesting project. They're going to have a trial in California and in Sweden. Finally, they have also announced a new trial to put some of the store.com

They call it the 350 DC capable batteries in the Polestar 5 prototype. So they're going to be one of the first automaker to adopt this technology from Stardot, which if I remember correctly is an Israeli company.

But yeah, they've been making a lot of announcements. And I'm a bit skeptical about Storedot. A lot of their announcements, there's not a lot of details about their battery technology. And they say things like, oh, we're unable to...

charging of 500 miles in in in five minutes and things like that it's like what does that mean at the battery cell level you guys are making battery cells like how can you charge miles per minute in battery cell like it's it's a lot more complicated than that there's a lot more bottlenecks into charging an EV than just the cell capacity so I'm a little bit skeptical but

i like pole star so if pole star is uh is getting into it it does give uh the brand a little bit of credibility so we'll give him that uh maybe uh we'll follow start out a little bit closer now that uh yeah that's the case uh they have their their latest prototypes of the battery day you can check jamie's news hub for some sweet little pictures so that uh that pole star news day was uh

coming at the same time as the earnings of Polestar came out. And that kind of felt like they were trying to bury the lead a little bit because they didn't have the best quarter. I didn't check all the details here. I'm going to learn them at the same time as you guys. But I think the big headline is that the –

they reduced their production goal for the year. So there's only one quarter left and they now know pretty firmly that they're not going to make the original production goal, which was 80,000 units. Now it's going to be between 60 and 70,000 units. So it's a big, big slowdown, but still a decent amount of delivery for what is

a fairly new player in the game, a fairly new, I mean, a post-star brand has been around for, for a bit, but as a relaunch, all electric brand, it's, it's very recent. So it's not, it's not a bad number. Uh, but in terms of financials, uh, what, uh, they came out is, um,

Let me see here. Revenue of $367 million, up 25% in Q3, which is not too surprising considering the ramp-up in deliveries. The increased cost led to a gross profit slipping 62% to $36.3 million, but still a positive gross margin, which is uncommon for EV startups.

Higher expenses in the quarter led to an operating loss of $261 million. So they are losing about a quarter of a billion dollars a quarter. So not exactly the best, but they're still sitting on some good cash, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, they are just short of a billion dollar cash. So a few quarters of run rate going.

Most likely going to need to raise money within the next year unless they have a big turnaround. But that has been like the case for most of these startups right now. As you're going to see, because we're going to discuss real quick, Lucid. Ouch. Yeah, Lucid, a little bit.

A little bit harder to talk about. Of all the EV startups, they have been the one having the toughest time financially, even though they have big money backers in Saudi Arabia. They are bleeding cash badly right now. So same story. They are cutting their production targets from... What was their production target originally? $10 billion.

oh yeah yeah so yeah the original target for the year was 14. it was already cut earlier this year to 10 and now it's been cut to between 8 000 and uh 8 500. so another big reduction obviously lucid is in this kind of situation now where they're they only have the air sedan

And the sitting market, especially at the higher end right now, is not very healthy at this point. And they are mainly selling in the US. They recently expanded in Europe and Saudi Arabia too. But obviously those are not big volumes.

The footprint is in the U.S. in terms of stores, service centers and all that. So that's where they have an opportunity to deliver volume. But it is the U.S. and the U.S. wants SUVs, wants pickups. So we don't expect Lucid to really take off until they have that gravity on the road and SUV that's coming from them. So talking about financials right now.

Qtree revenue was at 137.8 million down from last year's 195 million. So that's not what you want to see from an EV startup that relies on growth. Operating loss widened to $752 million. That's a lot of money. Net loss grew to 630 million.

Now they have lost already $2 billion this year with one more quarter left. What is the cash balance? That's one we need to keep an eye on. So we didn't post a cash balance on this one. You know what worries me more than all of this? The CEO took cash instead of stock. That, to me, says more than anything. Yeah.

I mean, we have it here. They still have $5.4 billion in liquidity. Yeah, but they're burning it pretty fast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's $600 million a quarter. It's going fast. But they still have more probably coming from the Saudis, but how much, we don't know. Yeah, when we know the Saudis, when they get tired of something, they just disappear. Yeah.

you can say that again that's the end of it yeah i mean five five billion dollars i mean if the titan things up a little bit and they have an opportunity at least for the gravity to come to come in and if the gravity can be a success i think they're gonna be fine uh but a lot relies on it so it's kind of uh the gravity is kind of a make or break program for lucid yeah

Rivian, Rivian, again, another good quarter, not reflected in the stock price. I mean, I haven't followed the stock price today, but this came out on Wednesday, I think. And then on Thursday, the stock was down bad until the last degree quarter. So I don't know what happened since then. It's up a little today. It's at 1540. 1540 still. I think it was at like 17 before the earnings. Yeah, it was 18 or something.

So we already knew the revenue would grow because the deliveries grew. So deliveries were up 24%. So revenue was up, was $1.3 billion.

great revenue uh but um the the big thing is obviously the margin that we try to keep track for rivian uh so right here gross profit okay i always need to be careful because rivian's order is weird when they put this in so uh september so june is the one here okay all right

Revenue 1.12 for vehicles, gross profit minus 412. So that's minus 37%, negative 37% margin, which sounds bad, but, oh no, sorry, it's September here. So 30, yeah.

I was reading the June numbers. One point two billion in revenue, four hundred seventy seven million negative gross margin. So thirty six percent. So, yeah, it's a much smaller improvement on the gross margin than it was last from the second to third quarter. That was a big jump.

There was an improvement in production, improvement in deliveries last quarter. So people were hoping for a big jump again this quarter, but it slowed down drastically. So Rivendell is still losing $30,000 per vehicle delivered, but it is going in the right direction. So what we're hoping right now is that we see...

Another big jump in production leading to another big improvement in gross margin, because if we keep going at this pace, that was last quarter, it's going to be a bit rough.

Some things could help. We know like Rivian announced that they are stopping to just deliver their vans, their delivery vans to Amazon. And we don't have the details of the deal with Amazon, but the deal was made a long time ago, a long time before deliveries. And they are delivering quite a bit of them now. So it does have an impact. I'm pretty sure that the R1T and R1S are the vast majority of Rivian's revenue.

but the van still contributes. And the deal with Amazon could have been negatively affecting the gross margin if they were locked in into a certain price versus what they were able to produce. So now that they are removing that exclusivity to Amazon, and I think they still need to deliver quite a bit of vans to Amazon, but they're going to... Yeah, they're at one-tenth of their total order. Yeah, yeah. It's nothing, basically. But...

it was going to hurt them if they are going to have to deliver all those vans before they move to another client that they can have a new contract with that is a little bit more favorable and i'm pretty sure that a lot of people are going to be interested in those vans so that could help um gross margin a little bit faster than just incremental improvement because

Rivian cannot just keep going at that particular pace. It's not going to reach its goal to being in the positive gross margin next year at that pace.

So we're still looking for some big jumps here. Yeah. And there's one other kind of important thing that, and they talked about this a little bit. It's the fact that they're running out of people who are, they're starting to burn through their pre-orders, the people who ordered before deliveries. And Rivian basically jacked the price up $15,000, $20,000. And they're,

So each vehicle that they're delivering, they're bringing in $15,000 or $20,000 more. So half of the gross margin is right there. Right now, it's a mix. Rivian won't tell us what mix of cars they delivered pre and post. In Q3, you think it was still like a majority of...

I don't know if it was majority. It was a certain percentage. I mean, I have two friends that are still waiting for their vehicles that they ordered before the price rise. So I know there's people out there still waiting, especially on the R1S. I think the R1T, you know, those have been fulfilled. But people who ordered the R1S, which is obviously a much more popular vehicle, especially now with, you know, there's competition everywhere.

You know, coming up with the Cybertruck, but also Silverado and F-150 for the R1T. But the R1S is kind of singular besides the Kia EV9, which, you know, doesn't really go off road. And, you know, Scout that's coming up and, you know, a Land Rover that's coming up. So R1S is still the kind of vehicle to beat right now. Yeah. Yeah.

And the big news out of the earnings was they raised their production goal, which is in complete contrast to what we just discussed with Polestar and Lucid. With everybody, basically. Yeah. Oh, yeah. There was an announcement from Ford, too, and all that over the last few months. So, yeah, it's a big difference, but it was not enough to convince people that Rivian is on the up. Just because, yeah, the...

I mean, they're more than doubling year over year. I actually, we were thinking about writing a story like Rivian's going pretty far up and Ford and GM are cutting back and obviously Stellantis is nowhere. When is Rivian becoming the second largest EV maker in the US? Might be soon. Yeah, I mean, we could plot that chart and know. I mean, GM is cutting back. Ford is cutting back.

I think Ford would probably still be pretty good next year, but without the Bolt, GM's got nothing or almost nothing in numbers. Rivian's going to probably pass Ford and GM next year for being the number two. Rivian's more than doubling year over year. They're growing faster than Tesla's ever grown, really, when you look at the numbers year over year basis. Can they continue to do that?

But I think looking back, their decision to focus on a pickup and the SUV versus like Lucid doing sedans. That was the right move. That was the right move. And Rivian, you know, their initial vehicle was like a sports car. So good pivot there, I guess. Yeah.

And they're sticking with the same approach, but with like a cheaper and smaller size for the next generation. So that's also likely going to be a success. All right. Last piece of news before we jump into you guys' comments here, being ready for that. Volkswagen wants to launch an EV under $35,000 in the US. It says it's not scaling back. So.

Obviously, they have that $25,000, $30,000 vehicle that is supposed to come to Europe. The ID Life, I think, is the name of the last time we heard about it because that car had a bunch of different concepts with a bunch of different names. But they never really confirmed that car for the U.S. market. Now they say that the $35,000 car is going to come to that market. They didn't say which one it's going to be.

I mean, the ID.3 is basically a $35,000 car, isn't it? Yeah, if it were to come to the US, I guess it would be around that price. I don't know if that's the form factor they want to go with, though. I wouldn't be surprised if they go more like EX30 or something like that, kind of a competitor to that, more like SUV-looking hatch.

But yeah, they are talking about three to four years to make that happen, sourcing batteries locally in order to achieve that price. Well, no, to achieve the sub $35,000 price and add the tax credit to that to make it a vehicle in the $20,000. Fisher was the...

The head of strategy for the VW Group in America said we're not scanning back plans for EVs in the US market, despite what the Ford and GM announced lately. So yeah, good news for Volkswagen because we know that the plans haven't gone exactly as planned.

Things haven't gone exactly according to plan in the U.S. for the automaker, which is doing strong in Europe. But other than the ID4's early success in the U.S., they've been affected like everybody else by the high interest rates and whatnot. So there's been a bit of a slowdown itself, but they are still looking to invest heavily into the EV space in the U.S. So good to know.

Yeah, you know, for Volkswagen, I can't for the life of me figure out why they don't bring unlimited amounts of ID buzzes here. I mean, a third row, inexpensive EV that also is, you know, iconic of the microbus. Like, that's a perfect, perfect, you know, combination of stuff for this market. It could be the best, you know, one of the best selling cars ever.

you know, in the U S and they're just like, Oh, you know, we're going to import some from Europe where we don't know if it's going to do well here. But they said they're going to build it here though. Eventually in Chattanooga, they said they would build it if it got a good reception. I'm like, Oh,

Set it up. Take a risk. Just use some common sense. This is a perfect vehicle for the US. Half of my dad friends are like, oh, I would love to drive that instead of my stupid minivan. It just seems like the perfect car. VW US, I

come on and there's there's nothing else in this bb space nothing else like it yeah right so they they introduced an id4 which is you know kind of the same thing as a model y which is way you know it's less expensive has a charging network way faster like like people aren't going to buy id4s when the model y is right there and doing so well so yeah all right let's uh let's jump into the comments section while uh volkswagen digest that that rent

All right. We got some nice stuff. Hi, guys. Love the show. Peace, Calvin. All right. Question for the end. Fred, you've often talked about the 2025 as a major tipping point for EV adoption in the U.S. Are you sticking with that in light of recent news about some makers pulling back on EVs? No pressure, Fred. I mean, obviously, the economy has had a big impact on the EV space right now in the U.S. So, yeah.

But what's important to keep in mind is affecting and keep in mind also right now, my brain is still 6 a.m. Japan time right now with two hours of sleep because it was my last night in Japan. So we did win out. So I'm going to try to make my thought as clear as possible here, but it might not flow as it usually does. But my...

gut feeling is that the gist of it is still is still in place because my point has always been no one past 2025 is going to want to buy a new car that is not all electric in their right mind um

And the big thing is my main point has always been the resale value of those vehicles. You can see the impact right now. The resale values of EVs have been badly affected by those price drops. You've seen companies like Hertz, companies like Autonomy that rely on their value of their big EV fleet having a lot of issues because of the giant price cut that Tesla has done.

That has happened and has shaken the confidence into that move. But if you look just a tiny bit long term, I think everyone can see that the future is definitely all electric for the US market and the world's market, really. So it just hasn't completely entered into the...

into the broader mainstream whereas people know that if you buy a new car right now your resale value if it's not all electric is likely going to be badly affected within a time range that is it depends for everyone obviously like some people will buy a car every four years every five years every ten years it depends but

if you are buying um and a lot of the market for the new cars is that it's like on the lease basis really so a four-year lease things like that that makes a big difference if you have a four-year lease and you have a buy option at the end the value of that car after four years changes everything and if that car is a gasoline car and the uh

new market sales in 2024 ends up being like 20% of EVs up from around 10. Now that's a trend that's going to affect your resale value. And then when you buy your next one or not necessarily you, because that would be like within two years or whatever. But then the other person that sees that makes no sense for them to buy anything else than the EV.

Again, in their right mind. There's still going to be some people that just, oh, I never want an electric car for whatever reason. And those people are going to die out eventually. But for now...

uh it's still it's still something that you hear but i'm still fairly confident that in in around 2025 so maybe this little economic situation might push this to into 2026 or something like that but in 2025 it's not going to be a hundred percent ev cells in the us that's impossible but it's going to be a point where uh this is going to you're going to see a shift from people that

So you're going to see automakers talking about shutting down plants that produce ICE cars. You're going to see a lot of shifting production capacity to batteries and to battery electric vehicles just because even though they don't have the capacity to build all new cars to be electric, people are not going to want to buy the gasoline option. And then what if Trump gets elected in the U.S.?

At this point, these presidents in the US, I don't see a difference. There's going to be some change in policies. But you know what? We've seen somewhat of an impact with the tax credit being renewed in the US. But technically, Tesla was doing better back when they didn't have the tax credit and the other automakers were doing the tax credit. And Tesla is the volume in the US. So...

It's really hard to tell how big of a difference it does. Obviously, again, economic situation at the same time, maybe it countered some of that. Not maybe, definitely countered some of that. But by what margin? I don't know. So I don't know how big of a difference Trump would make on the EV market, to be honest. If anything...

By the time, like it was still a year away from the election, I think we should get back some momentum during that time. We're probably going to enter some kind of recession and the interest rates should go down. That should help new car sales drastically by the end.

by the end of next year, by election time, basically. And then Elon is going to get elected. Trump gets elected and the EV space picks up and he's going to just take credit for it. He's going to go from electric car sucks, electric car disaster is terrible to I invented electric cars. Yeah, exactly.

All right. The affordable Tesla from Germany is the carrot that will be withdrawn if the union makes progress with Tesla employees. I don't think that's true. I don't expect the affordable one to come from Germany in any case. I mean, Dave, as a point, like we didn't really expect, like we expected Shanghai, we expected Gigafactory Mexico, but what happened? Tesla said, actually, it's going to be Texas before Mexico. So that kind of makes sense with Berlin. So I think...

I think we're just seeing a trend right now of Tesla wanting to exploit more their existing factory rather than building new ones. And also, I think it makes sense for the first production capacity of that new on-box production manufacturing process to be deployed where Tesla has their manufacturing engineering teams. And that right now is mainly Shanghai, Berlin, and Texas.

Yep. All right, Carl in San Diego. Oh, wait, hold on. Richard Bentley, vehicle-to-grid two-way power flow is a big issue in Australia. You have not mentioned. Now you have. And then we'll continue on. I don't really think that you should say vehicle-to-grid is coming with Tesla. That was probably misreported based on a single statement answering a surprise question. No commitment ever from Tesla about it. No, that's not accurate, Carl. Yeah, we did see it in...

the Europe case. And then we see that NEMA 1450 outlet on the cyber truck. So regardless if Tesla wants people to put that electricity back in the grid, it's,

It's going to... That's what you need to power a house. No, a Cybertruck is confirmed as having vehicle to whatever capacity. And then it's more than one common from Tesla. Drew Baglino said it several times. I know that the last time Elon chimed in and like...

It confused a lot of people. That's completely fair. But I don't think he was killing vehicle to good at Tesla when he said that, Elon. He was just selling Powerwall, basically. And I think Elon has a point with that. Powerwall is a better product for that than using your car. I think they are a complementary product. You can have a Powerwall and you can have vehicle to good in your car in case of...

natural disaster, prolonged power outages and all that. But yeah, it's confirmed. And if you remember our last report on Powerwall 3 about the Powerwall 3 power inverter most likely being the same as the one in the new vehicles, I think that's, I mean, we cannot confirm anything from that, but it's a good indication, a very good indication. Yeah.

All right. Here's an interesting one. Being associated with Elon Musk via my car is becoming a significant burden. We have a broad spectrum of friends and extended families, and now I'm embarrassed. Oh, my God. David Perrin, I have the solution for you. Go to our merch store. We're going to have a...

bought before Elon went full Elon bumper sticker. You slap that on the back of your car and you're free. You're free as a bird. Yeah. I'm not a big fan of that thinking. I mean, it's a great car. Like...

Elon didn't touch your car. Yeah, he has some part in making it happen for sure. So give him credit for that at least. Even if you don't agree with everything else he says. I'm on the side of like separate the artist from the art in that situation. Yeah, I mean, and the fact that Elon owns Twitter and has to kind of keep noise coming out.

I think that makes it a little worse. Like, I'm sure if, you know, you learned everything about Maribara, you'd probably not like some things that

she said or did or whatever. Yeah. Is there an automaker you can buy from where you like all the leadership there? All the leadership aligns with your values and your friends. David sounds a little bit more like he's concerned about his friends, his opinion of him based on his card and actually his own feeling about the car.

Well, I will say I like Rivian for that. Yeah, Rivian is a good example. That's until RJ gets all powerful and starts... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give him a few billion dollars cash. Once they're profitable. I just realized that. That's an interesting point. Elon really went down when he was always a billionaire. RJ is a billionaire now right now, I'm sure. I don't know what his ownership of Rivian is, but I'm sure on paper he's a billionaire. But Elon was always...

a billionaire on paper and it really got bad when he was a billionaire cash when he had that money in the bank that's where things started going downward he had money in the bank he bought Twitter and then all downward from there uh all right moving on Nick Cedar says question set the xc30 speckled interior plastic looks cheap on camera was it really that good in person seems like not worth the virtue signal

I don't know about a virtual signal, but the interior is really nice. There's you can get a speckled or you can get the non speckled. The speckled was kind of like to indicate that like, hey, this is all recycled stuff. So I guess that's the virtue signal. I think I think people really like the interior and those things are starting to show up at Volvo dealers. So you can go look for yourself. I think, you know, they just really hit it out of the park inside and out of that one.

uh clearly was designed in in uh sweden it has very scandinavian feel to it the fabrics and everything all right uh mike the car geek says this saudi pif will take lucid private 100 ownership fred is that possible yeah i mean it's uh definitely it could be done uh especially with that kind of ownership they have right now they could they could make a deal to do that happen instead of just seeing the stock price go down on the public market uh

Yeah, and it's selling, trading pretty low right now. So it wouldn't even be that big of a buyout. Yeah, I'm sure the shareholders would take a deal. David Perrin is back. Unions represent a challenge to Elon Musk's status. An independent CEO would be most appreciated. We don't go an episode without somebody saying Elon should step down. So we can tick that checkbox. Who wants the job, though? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, where Elon's the biggest shareholder. Yeah, when you have Elon looking over your shoulder at all times. All right. Q is the first wish on your Christmas list. Will be a Tesla jack back this year? I wonder if that's a plug or something. Yeah, I'm not sure. What do you expect from Fisker next week? They delayed their earnings call. Well, that's always a good sign. Yeah. It's probably not going to be good. Let's just put it that way.

Yeah. I mean, I have, uh, like I've been saying, I've been very skeptical about Fisker since the beginning. Like, I mean, they've been, they made a few cars though. Yeah. They built a few cars, but even before they even built one, there was ads everywhere to sell them. Like, and I, I'm not, I'm not sure about it. And then I watched a Fisker day or whatever they, they called her their event. And, uh, it's a bunch of new prototypes before they even had like two deliveries of the ocean. It's, uh,

I don't know. It's just getting red flaggy for me. Yeah. All right. Just a question. How many, what percentage of new level three charging stations will include Chatham-O? Are you in the US here, Joseph?

Yeah, probably not a lot. You might want to think about some other options at this point. Yeah, I mean, JetDemo is going to have to be serviced by adapters. There's just...

Or you just have to deal with level two and it's just not going to be a trip car. You're going to have to turn it into a commuter car, which is fine. That's fine. But Chattamo is just going out. The fact that Nissan is still selling a Chattamo Leaf is almost a

should be a war crime. I mean, Japan right now, there's still CHAdeMO everywhere. They don't have that many electric cars here, but where they have chargers, it's CHAdeMO. I mean, Japan stuck to the Betamax for a while too after the rest of the world went to VHS. It's their thing. They move slow and they are a bit insular at times, so

If you buy a Japanese car in the US with a CHAdeMO, you should know that what you're doing, you're not buying the connector of the future here. Yeah. And I think China's system is based off of CHAdeMO. It's not straight CHAdeMO, but it's like based off of it. Yeah. So there's still some remnants of that around.

Carl in San Diego, the R1S might be the SUV to beat, but mainstream buyers don't trust buying a DTC. What does DTC stand for? Startup product. Orphan trucks would be a nightmare. Rivians are doing quite well. Yeah. I'm not too worried about that. Yeah, they're losing money on it. But direct consumer. They still have a lot of direct-to-consumer. I don't know if that's the concern more than...

Well, I mean, yeah, I guess if the startup goes under and it was a dealership model, they would still be serviced, I guess. But it would be a concern for me too at that point. I think the concern is more the startup in general, I would think. But yeah, Rivian is not in any problem right now in terms of short-term, mid-term.

bankruptcy or anything like that. Yeah. I think their biggest concern would be like if the market changed dramatically, if, you know, if we had a, like a big recession and nobody had any cash, um, they, they are doing all the right things. Like the big thing that they need to do now is make a cheaper car and they're working on that. So, um,

Maybe now's the time to buy a Rivian stock. I don't know. I'm in there. So hopefully, hopefully it goes up. All right. Therese Petker. I always Uber with EVs nine out of 10. They are Tesla. I always ask how they like it. Every time it's cheaply built the interior, small things breaking, then usually follows up with dealer visits for smaller things. I could have fixed $300. Only one of the past several drivers who,

who bought new wish they did so maybe it's just an uber wear and tear issue but really put me off buying a tesla i mean i have a completely opposite experience than you do uh i also mostly ubers with tesla especially since they have that deal with earths and uh i also always ask how they like it and most of the time they're loving it and

um especially like it's the cost that they love it's the like uber drivers i mean they're all different they all have different uh schedule and work rate but a lot of them have very significant fuel costs so when you cut that down like that's the that's the headline normally that's the first thing they say it's not uh cheaply built interior and whatnot uh

I don't know. It's a completely different experience. I'm not saying that I didn't get their name, but they're lying. But I'm not saying that. But somehow completely different experience for me. All right. Getting a little late now, so we'll go quicker here. What is the spec leak for the Cybertruck? You'll have to rewind a little bit, but it's out there.

I'm so confident in my 2015 prediction that 50% of new cars will be Bev by 2025. It depends on what country, probably. Yeah. In the U.S., it's not impossible, but it would require a giant crash of gas sales, which I think that's what we're going to see. But we'll see.

In the middle of America, there are very little trusts for EVs. We'll see how long that takes to change, but it seems it would take many years to establish trust needed for the masses to go EV. I think you need pickup trucks and you need NACs, superchargers going to all...

Once everyone experienced superchargers, like you don't have an EV owner telling you, yeah, I mean, I'm having issues charging. I go to a charging station. It's not working and all that. Once you eliminate that, you're going to build a lot of trust. And the supercharger network going to Nantes Levis is going to do that. I don't quite understand this one question. What do you think is the tipping point for getting a new Model S to transfer supercharging?

if coming from a 2014 P85 with AP1, new screens, dual inverters, and about 45,000 miles. I don't think I've ever heard of free supercharging transferring, and I don't expect to. What about you? No, no, it's happening. You have that until the end of the year. Free supercharging? You can buy a new car. If you give your free supercharging car, you get free supercharging on your new car. Oh, that's right. That's right.

That was surprising. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm not exactly sure what they mean by their typical point of it. I mean, they say it's only until the end of the year, so it's not like you have an option to wait for something else. But at the same time, they say that they could do the same promotion next year. I have no idea. All right. There are four rooms, interior color colors for the EX30. One of them has the speckled panels and only available in the top trim, oddly enough.

Yeah, so you're not required to get speckled panels. Let's see. What are your thoughts on Honda's Prologue looking like an ICE vehicle? Is this a good strategy for the next wave of EV adopters? Does it look like an ICE vehicle? I mean, it looks normal. It looks like a normal SUV. So I guess in that sense, in that sense, it does. But to me, like an EV is a normal vehicle. So I don't know. But I think it's one of the...

good looking ones. So yeah, it should, it should help with EV adoption. Like people don't, there's, we're done with the wacky EVs now, the wave of wacky, wacky looking cars. But what was the term that Elon used? Weird mobiles, like we don't have any. Weird mobiles. Yeah, that time is gone now. So you're going to have a lot more EVs that just, they look like regular cars. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Last question here. Tesla unionizing. How likely do you think it is? What's the over-under? What's the time period? I'm 50-50 for me. Before that, I would have been like... Before the UAW deals, I would have been like 80-20. But with Elon being Elon these days and...

UAW having big wins. I think a lot of Tesla workers, I'm like, all right, who do I trust now? Elon or UAW? Before that, I think most of them would have been Elon, but nowadays, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on what the stock prices starts doing. If it keeps going down. That too, you're right. So, yep. But would you trust to increase the stock price? Did you trust Elon to increase the stock price? He hasn't seemed to care much these days.

Right. All right. I guess this is the final question. What would you do? What would it take for you to buy the new Model S? That is the tipping point. I said it before. I'm buying tomorrow. I'm buying a new Model S. If Tesla was letting me trade both my current Model S with free supercharging and my Model 3 with full self-driving and I can transfer both of them to a new Model S, then I'm doing it because then I get...

uh like 25 000 worth of value just from the transfer plus whatever they gave me for my cars so that that would be like a deal of a lifetime other than that like i don't i don't want whatever peanuts they want to give me for my moless signature um or for or for my model 3 to be honest my window is probably going to be more for my model 3 but still yeah that's what it would take

Yeah, I am also considering my Model Y with full self-driving. I'm not going to get rid of that until full self-driving is transferable or refundable. One of the two. But I think William here is trying to say, is it a good time to buy a Model S, basically? I think he's trying to say that.

I think the new Model S has never been better and cheaper for a long time right now. It's fairly cheap. Pretty good deal. And it's a great car. So if you feel like upgrading and you have that supercharger deal, you have that supercharger deal available for you, it's a great deal because it's for the lifetime of the car. So if you're an EV supercharger user, that's a big deal. If you're not, though, it's not that big of a deal, obviously.

Bring back the third row. That's the tipping point. All right. Thanks, everyone, for listening. The show was a long one today. If you are still listening, I appreciate you. You can give us a thumbs up, a like, a subscribe. All these things help the show tremendously. If you're listening on your podcast app, if you can give us a five-star review on Apple, that takes a second to do, free to do, and it helps the show more than you think.

All right, I'm going to go back to sleep because I'm flying back home tonight. And I had two hours of sleep. So see you guys next week back in Canada.