Tesla Cybertruck update, UAW strike ends, Chevy Equinox EV pricing, and more
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In 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 Wintraub. How are you doing today, Seth? I'm good. All right. All right. That's perfect because we have a nice show for you today. I'm still in Japan.

uh it's uh it's saturday morning for me 5 00 a.m uh with all the travels that i did last week i didn't have time to look up in details every one of those stories that we're going to discuss so i'm going to discover some of them at the same time as you guys so it's going to be fun with that but let's jump in with some of those that i i know or at least i should know because i wrote myself um

And there was a little bit of a tiny Cybertruck update from Elon Musk because he went on the Joe Rogan podcast, Joe Rogan Experience this week. Probably the biggest thing that came out of it is that nice shot of Joe Rogan shooting a compound bow and arrow to the Cybertruck, proving that it is arrow-proof, I guess. That doesn't mean much.

I don't have to worry about Native American attacks from the 1800s. Yeah. If the Cybertruck ends up being like the DeLorean DMC that impacted the future and you go back in time, you don't have to worry about a raid from another that even had compound bullets at that time. Yeah.

Those things are actually pretty powerful. So it is fair that blocking an arrow with a campanbow looks like he's at 15 yards or something. It is a pretty powerful weapon. But apparently it's top 9mm, like, Tommy gun. So it's not...

It shouldn't be a surprise that it's top and arrow. But that's not really the news that came out of it. Elon had a few comments on it. The biggest one, probably the weight, because we already had the gross vehicle rate rating a few weeks ago when the VIN were released for the Cybertruck. So the VIN gave us some information, but it's more of a range of gross vehicle ratings that

And that's not the actual weight of the truck. It's the weight of the truck plus the cargo, including passengers. So that just gives you an idea. But now we can compare that to Elon saying that the Subra truck would weigh about 7,000 pounds with some version closer to 6,000. So that gives us an interesting range here because...

We compared it to the F-150 Lightning, and it would be, if you compare it to the range of different weights, because there's also a range of different weights with the Lightning, it appears to be a little bit lighter or similar, and it's

the gross vehicle rating rate is actually higher than the F-150 Lightning. So it could point to Tesla being able to be a little bit more efficient in terms of the cargo capacity versus weight of the truck, which is important for a work truck if you're actually going to use it as a work truck, carrying cargo and all that. It doesn't include a towing weight. You can forget about that.

What else he said? He said that they are aiming to get the cyber truck under three seconds for the zero to 60 miles per hour acceleration. So that's actually in line with what they originally announced in 2019, but they haven't talked about it since then. And now considering that the production is coming by the end, well, the deliveries are coming by the end of the month. It should be an indication that this is still in the plans.

Obviously, the less than three seconds is probably going to be the tri-motor version and not the dual motor that we're also expecting to see at launch. Finally, he did an update on production goals. And it's weird because we got one just a few weeks ago at the earnings, and now it seems to be different. He talked about Tesla aiming to produce about 200,000 Cybertrucks per year.

but just a few weeks ago he said that it would be 250,000 truck breakers. So I'm not putting too much value on that comment because obviously he could have just misspoke or he could have just not been thinking straight. I don't know because but the official thing from Tesla is actually 125,000 unit of install production capacity at Gigafactory Texas. So that's apparently what it is right now but

We've questioned that chart that Tesla released with the installed capacity because it's not clear exactly what they mean by that. 200,000 is still quite a bit though. Yeah, it's a decent amount, but we saw that Tesla communicated to the suppliers that they were aiming to 275,000 units a year, but that also includes like a 15-20% error rate that they said. So it could be much fewer than that.

um so maybe tesla is kind of uh playing possum a little bit here it's not clear we got a best look so far at the front trunk of the cyber truck the front of the cyber truck and it was at night so we see the lighting uh system in it we see that the uh

The strange looking Cybertruck logo font that Tesla had since the original unveiling of the vehicle. But we weren't sure what Tesla was going to do with it beyond some marketing that they used. It's actually going to be on the truck or inside the truck more accurately in that front area here where I'm pointing. If you're watching the video version of this, we get a better look at the bottom of the

of the frunk here where we saw some pictures of TESLA engineers before sitting on it as if it was a bench. So we weren't sure if it was like completely flat or it looks like there is a bump at the opening here, but it's not too big. So it could actually be used as a bench like from some like tailgating situation or I guess like front grading gating now. And we saw that the powered version of it, this is for the first time we see it in use.

though it's a very short gap here. We do what we can when we spot the Cybertruck, and this is coming from JX here from X Twitter. It looks, in terms of size, it looks like, I don't know, like two or three carry-on luggages or maybe like a Golf...

Yeah, you definitely fit a golf bag in there. Some maybe two carry-ons. My big concern is that kind of sharp edges on the thing. Oh yeah, this year? Yeah.

Yeah, you don't want to accidentally get your finger caught in there or anything like that. It looks kind of dangerous. Yeah, I mean, I don't know how Tesla is going to pass all these regulations for pedestrian collisions and all that. It seems like the Cybertruck, I mean, you'd never want to get hit by a pickup truck regardless, but it seemed like the Cybertruck would be a particularly damaging one to get hit by. Yeah, just, ow, just looks painful.

I mean, probably with, of course, with the hood down, it wouldn't be as bad, but still, like, it clearly, you're right, it clearly highlights how sharp hedges, how many sharp hedges there are on the cyber truck.

Yeah, just a few weeks ago, if you remember, we got the leaks on the Model 3 sports seats coming to the performance version of the Model 3, the updated one with the Highland. Now we get the Plaid Model S seats getting an upgrade. Again, something that is called sports version. This is, again, coming from Dislacker Green. Yeah, sorry. Dislacker Green confirmed that it was coming, but now we get from the

updated service manual, we get the confirmation from it and we get a picture because in the service manual, sometimes you get pictures exactly like how to remove things in the truck and how to remove this new seat here, give us this

but a clear view of the new sport seats for the Model 3. Similar to what we heard for the Model S Plaid, similar to the Model 3, we get the bigger side support, but it looks even, at least from that picture, is only the top half. Even wider at the shoulder, you get this little indention in the middle with what appears to be a Plaid logo in it, like some kind of Plaid decal. Longer headrests.

Different materials. It looks like to be like, so you have the perforated like fake leather as usual, but on the sides almost look like Alcantara on the side here. It's interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

it's hard to tell from the picture. It's not the highest quality, obviously. And this picture is pretty bad, the creasing here on that. Yeah, it's weird. Yeah. This might be the test seat for Tesla where they do, you remember the butt robot? They do that. Right. Or they're stretching it out to make it flatter or whatever. Yeah, exactly. So this is probably not how it's going to get delivered. But

Yeah, so very interesting stuff because Tesla is not, I want to say never, I'm not exactly sure if that's true, but for the most part, it doesn't update the interior of its vehicle at all for a performance version. So now this, at least, the seats are going to get updated.

I'm not sure if it's going to be all Plaid, all Performance Model 3s, or if it's only going to be a separate interior upgrade for people that have Plaid, for people that have Performance Model 3. It's really not clear. Is it going to be the only change that you get? Is it you're only going to order the sports seats or are you going to order an updated interior for the Performance version? It's all new for Tesla because as you know, for the most part, Tesla doesn't change the hardware at all between the

top non-performance version of its car and the top performance version of its car it's all the same other than sometimes on the plate you have better suspension, option for bigger wheels and the actually software unlocked the powertrain capacity it's not even a different powertrain

We got good news from Gigafactory Mexico. It seems like the government are following the earnings where Tesla had to set. Elon said some things about the factories where temperate expectations pumped the brakes a little bit. It looks like the government in the Nouveau Leon came out

Trying to counter that a little bit, saying that putting some confidence into Tesla actually coming to the region. So it is Secretary of Economy, Mr. Ivan Rivas. He said that Tesla just obtained all of the permits at the federal and provincial state level for the factory.

And he reiterated that he believes that Tesla is coming to the state and they already gave us all their needs to start construction. And we are sure that this is coming to Nuevo Leon. So this follows again, the comment from last week where Elon said that while Elon was clear that Tesla plans to come to Mexico and do Geographic Mexico, and these seem to be committed to that specific location in Nuevo Leon, but

He said the timing is the issue and he referenced again the macroeconomic situation, the economy. They are waiting to see exactly what happens with that before they move forward with construction there because they said that they still have plenty of room in Gigafactory Texas to grow and especially to do the next generation vehicles which were first associated with Gigafactory Mexico.

which is why we've been tracking the project closely, making sure when it's going to happen because it sounded at first that when Gifford Mexico happened, the $25,000 Tesla happened, the robo taxi happened and all that. But now that's not the case anymore. But now it's fully in Tesla's hand to get the green light or not for the construction because Tesla,

They have all the permits. I know that they're also waiting, like they said, needs to start construction. I think that refers to the infrastructure project that needs to happen around the factory. So Tesla has requested some energy, water, road, and rail infrastructure to be deployed to facilitate the project. So we're going to keep an eye on that if it finally moves or not.

Puerto Rico is getting the VPP, the Tesla Virtual Power Plant. Earlier this summer, we said that we reported on that, that the

Tesla said it was coming. Tesla was applied with the local authorities to change the regulations. You need a lot of regulations to change when you want to sell electricity. A lot of regulation around who can sell you electricity or not. They want to control that tightly. But Tesla has a big opportunity in Puerto Rico because ever since that big hurricane a few years ago,

Tesla has focused a lot of effort to deploy energy storage system there, namely the Powerwall, and also partnering with other companies to deploy solar system with it, strengthening the grid, offering people alternative to just the grid that has been extremely weakened by natural disasters there, and also politics and whatnot.

But now it finally launched this week in Puerto Rico with 75,000 Powerwall owners being able to jump on the program. So that's not what people are in the program right now. But at the same time, Tesla was able to confirm that they have 75,000 Powerwall owners on the island. And now they can just sign up directly to the app and they will start jumping.

um getting compensated for sending back some electricity into the grid and uh the rates are we haven't seen the rates just yet but i would assume that they are going to be advantageous because again puerto rico is in dire need of a more stable grid when uh the closer they get to a brown now the closer they get to a blackout the higher they're going to be able to compensate those um

those power owners to send some electricity back. You're going to also be able to limit that amount of electricity back so that if there is a brownout or a blackout, you have some backup power for your house. Interestingly, with the launch of the VPP, Tesla said that they are partnering with Sunova and Sunrun. So partners for this. I think it's the first time that Tesla has a partner for a VPP.

which makes sense. Those are obviously residential solar deployers, installers. It's very useful to have that in a VPP because you can do a VPP just with an energy storage system. But obviously, if that energy storage system is powered by a solar that you produce yourself, you produce a solar power yourself, it is a lot more advantageous.

You think it's weird that Tesla is joining other solar installers now? Do you think Tesla is kind of pulling out of the solar installation world? Yeah, well, Sunrun was always a partner for deployment of Powerwalls. So that one is less surprising. So Nova, I think it's new for me. I've never heard them deploy Powerwalls. But yeah, to your point, we've been seeing a lot of Tesla moving away from

deploying its own solar panels now, doing the installation itself.

Instead, they are really much focusing on owning the brains behind those systems. So through the Powerwall, through the Gateway, through its own solar inverters that it's selling now, all these things are allowing Tesla to deploy these products and sell these virtual power plants and Tesla Electric also now in Texas. So these things, I think, are clearly where Tesla wants to go right now.

Drew Baglino, TESTA's SVP of Engineering, commented on the launch of the Puerto Rico virtual power plant. He said that with these 75,000 customers, up to 300 megawatts of power capacity, it could become the biggest virtual power plant in the world rather quickly if all those people sign up for it. It's going to be 300 megawatts of power.

That has to be a lot of smaller coal power plants and things like that in terms of capacity. Yeah, and it's nice that it's deployed all over the island, I'm assuming. Completely distributed. Right. Not concentrated. All right, we get a new automaker on board with the Tesla NAX connector, a Japanese one to Subaru.

the japanese have been a little bit slower to get on board we i think we have only nissan so far now we have subaru also i mean subaru's isn't isn't quite surprising their only ev is a toyota and toyota is already on board so yeah yeah you're right toyota is also on board so nissan toyota and uh super are not all on board so that's uh that's great news uh let's see the details if they're a bit different we've seen that they've been updated lately so

The company will adopt NACS ports on certain BEV launch in North America starting in 2025. Certain has to be all new BEVs or not. It would be, makes no sense otherwise. And Subaru will provide access to an adapter for Subaru in the CCS. They don't say the timing of the adapter. That has been what changed. More recently, we've seen automakers announcing NACS adoption and they don't get the adapter until 2025 versus 2024 for other companies.

But again, like you just said, only the Solterra is available and we have the units here, 5,000 sold since last year. So we need to find 5,000 adapters basically to satisfy the demand. It shouldn't be too big of a task. All right. The UAW strike is over. Last week we reported on Ford. Then...

reaching a deal with UAW. Then it was Stellantis this weekend. And this week, GM also on board. Big win for the union, really. I mean, it's not exactly what they asked for. Obviously, some negotiation. You leave some behind. But some big wins across the board. I was particularly impressed with the Stellantis deal that included

If I'm understanding correctly, a new battery factory that wasn't announced before was made part of the deal. And looking at it, I thought at first it has to be that the deal is that the UAW worker is going to work that factory. But no, it's a new factory. It's as if the union is pushing Stellantis to go electric faster than

through that deal. So, I mean, if I understand that correctly and that's the case, like that's kudos to the union. Maybe they were originally intending to like import batteries for like that, you know, the RAM pickup or whatever. Yeah. And maybe the union got them to build the batteries stateside, which will allow them to get better tax credits as well. Yeah. I mean, you want a tax credit to be competitive. So it makes sense.

In terms of the GM deal, I don't know if there's anything really noteworthy here. Also, adding 1,000 battery jobs was part of the deal. That's part of it. I think adding all the Altium factories was part of the deal. Just before the deal, they went after that spring USM be planned in Tennessee. I think that's what did it. It wasn't long after the announcement that

They reached a deal. So, yeah.

we have a few more news items that we want to discuss here we have a great news we have the equinox pricing and a bunch of other things uh but uh if you guys have questions for us we're gonna have some time to answer your question i already see if you some question coming in from from facebook from youtube so wherever you're watching live you can put in the comment section a question about things that we're discussing today or different topics in the ev space you want us to cover real quick uh today you can just put the question right now when i get to it in just a few minutes

All right, the Chevy Equinox EV, one of the most important EVs that we thought was coming this year. Now it sounds it's more like coming next year, it sounds like. There's a bit of a delay. But still, nonetheless, the price point has been – all the price sheet has been released this week or –

Only the base price or all the price? No, only the base price? No, they got the launch price, which will be in the beginning of the year. And then by the end of the year, the base price version will come out. Okay. So the launch model will be available early next year. The 2RS forward wheel drive starts at basically $49,000. Is that what we were expecting? No, we were expecting a $30,000 one.

But not for the launch one. No, for the launch, we didn't know. Oh, but I mean, it is not the all-wheel drive one. So, yeah. But it is the long-range one at 219 miles.

So the Equinox is only going to have one battery for all the models. For all-wheel drive, it's just going to have the same battery for everything. So it's just not as a premium package for... Yeah, I mean, this one has the big color touchscreen. It's got the Super Cruise and adaptive cruise control. The base one's not going to have Super Cruise.

I don't think the base one is going to have supercruise. I think it's going to have a smaller display. It's not going to have the cool two-tone paint job. Probably it's not going to have automatic liftgate, all that, you know, the little stuff. Okay. Then if you want to have all-wheel drive, it goes up to $52,400. So that's a decent bump of $3,400. Yeah.

A little pricey, but then you think about the 7,500 back, then you're back down to 7,000, or sorry, 4,500. Sorry, 45,000, which is not terrible for an all-wheel drive SUV. You do have the Model Y out there that costs a lot less, which a lot of people are going to prefer, but it's still nice. I think the big news, though, is that the base price Equinox is going to come out by the end of the year.

And it's not going to hit the $30,000 mark that Mary Barrow was talking about. But $34,900 isn't bad, I guess, especially with 319 miles. Yes, that's the big kicker here. So even at $35,000, you're going to get the 300 mile range. Yeah, and that's still pretty solid. And then obviously you're going to be eligible for federal tax credit. So that's going to bring it down to in the $20,000 somewhere. So that's pretty good.

Yeah, so that's what we're looking for. And it's at the end of 2024. Yeah. Yeah. In the meantime, it's going to be a little bit rough, I think. I mean, I'm sure people, some people are going to be interested. But yeah, it doesn't compare to the Model Y in the US market with the federal tax rate. Not a good look.

Yeah, it's not priced competitively, I guess. And you get like 150 kilowatt DC charge. I mean, I'm always a little bit careful with that because the charging curve could be okay, but still it's 100 kilowatt behind Tesla here. Yeah, and I just feel like, you know, the Model Y is out there and costs a lot less than this. It's going to be hard to sell these, I think. Super Cruise is nice. Wireless charging, so I would assume that's phone wireless charging? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A bit confusing. All right. I mean, it's honestly not too bad of an announcement because with the inflation, I don't remember exactly when GM announced the original goal of $30,000 for the Equinox, but it was quite a bit ago. So we anticipated that with inflation, it wouldn't exactly hit that price point. $35,000, not too bad, especially with that range. Yep, not bad.

So VinFast is teasing us with the potential of launching this $20,000 VF3 electric car in the US. So this new vehicle here is something that we don't see a lot coming to America, coming to the North American market. I mean, I've seen plenty of these around here in Japan.

And for the most part, automakers that are building these electric vehicles, these smaller cars. You would put that in a key cars category? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. You're probably right. Yeah. No, no. You're definitely looking at this picture. So, yeah, they've been very reticent to launching these very small cars to North America because they think it wouldn't take off. Yeah.

But VinFast told Automotive News that they actually are considering it at the $20,000 price point. You see the interior picture is not too bad. Do we have a spec on this? I don't think we have much. I mean, these are obviously city cars, so you don't expect that. They do hit highway speed, though. They do hit highway speed, but don't expect like a ton of range on this at a higher speed. Yeah.

Yeah, I would imagine it's pretty small battery, pretty low power. I've seen some of these, but not exactly these, but obviously that hasn't launched yet, but very similar looking gay cars around here. Yeah, I think, what is it, the Hustler or something? There's one that I really like. Yeah, like Jeep looking like this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I haven't seen the names. They haven't made them all electric yet. Actually, almost none of them are electric yet, but they will be.

Alright, so unfortunately we have some news this week that related to slowdown of EV outputs. We've been covering that over the last few weeks with the economy.

with the higher interest rates um some automakers are using that slowdown in demand for new cars and especially specifically new evs to slow down their ev effort uh volkswagen this week announced delays in their effort their fourth ev plant uh coming and they are blaming this luggage sale so

Where was this one? So they have three sites, including San Diego, so that's Germany, Spain, Valencia, and the most recent is St. Thomas, Ontario. Okay, so yeah, that's right. That was the Ontario plane coming. And now the VW CEO said that there is, for the time being, no business rationale for designing on further site based on that market condition, including the sluggish map on the BAB market in Europe. They are slowing down the...

the deployment of the next gigafactories. They are calling them gigafactories too. If I'm understanding, so these three that have been announced in Germany, in Spain, and in Canada are still moving forward, but they were about to announce a fourth one. There were some rumors of going to be in the US, but now they are basically putting that plan on hold, waiting for sales to come back up, which is something that we've been

warning automakers about because if you do that and then if the demand comes back the demand comes and they're not going to wait for you to build a new factory a new battery factory and a new car factory to produce your electric vehicles you're going to find yourself at the mercy of automakers that have volume ev production capacity and right now that's still mainly tesla

Yeah, you know what though? I saw a report from Cox Automotive at the end of last year that showed that the U.S. auto market, and I assume Europe and Asia are in the same boat, the EV market is still growing. It's up to like 8% of the entire U.S. market right now. And that's up from Q2 and up from Q1. So I think the EV market is still growing. I just think that...

you know, some of these brands aren't doing as well as they'd hoped. Like, you know, Tesla is obviously taking a lot of the air out of the room with their lower prices. And, uh, I think they're making some bad short-term decisions here. Yeah. I said to your point, we're seeing still strong demand for EVs is just, they are fewer buyers right now for new cars in general. And in general, yeah. Affects the specifically EVs. Um,

growth rate it doesn't affect it's still growing like you said it's just the growth rate has slowed down a bit um but it's still growing amid a very difficult new car market when you get seven percent interest rates uh on buying a new car you think twice about it again it's not everyone that have the abilities to just buy a car hard right these days

So same thing for Ford, specifically for the Mach-E production. So I don't know exactly what they said. So the sales fell 53% month over month. Month over month, you have to be careful though. So they announced that they're pulling back production, taking out some Mustang Mach-E production. They are not saying exactly the number, it sounds like.

No, they're not. That is the cost-automative report that you're referencing right now. So yeah, they're not going. Ford's CEO, John Lawler. What are they talking about? John Lawler is not the CEO of Ford as far as I know. A little bit of an answer. What happened to Farley? Yeah. So yeah, they announced that they are pulling back a little bit without announcing actual numbers. The inventory flow has been going up.

And they want to bring that down a little bit before they can release the throttle fully on the production of the Mackie. Yeah, well, there's the CFO. CFO, okay. Get the AI.

so this is interesting we talked about volkswagen slowing down we got about four was going down and on the other side of things was actually ramping up is toyota and when i when i heard that news this week i checked the numbers twice because they announced that they are injecting an extra eight billion dollars into their us ev plant factory um so that's

That's not the total investment. That's on top of an existing investment, which I think was... So it's bringing a total to $14 billion. Yeah, it's bringing a total now to $13.9 billion invested into that battery plant in North Carolina. So it's adding 3,000 jobs for a total of now 5,000 jobs at that plant. That plant is in construction right now.

for the first phase of production starting in 2025 and then adding more lines through 2030. I don't know. So that has to be the new production. I feel 30 gigawatt hour that was already announced. So I'm not sure if they announced an updated production capacity goal now that they have this extra cash on it. But obviously, this is very critical to Toyota's plan

In North America, and especially in the U.S., you need to have the batteries locally made in order to take advantage of the tax credit. I've seen Toyota in Japan last week with the Japan Mobility Show. Still some early concepts. Well, no, I shouldn't say early concepts. Some concept vehicles, but they look pretty advanced, especially the pickup truck. So I think that's obviously one of those that's going to come to North America. The...

We've been complaining for a while that they were a lagger in the industry, but slowly I think they're trying to turn around, be a little bit more open to BEVs because a lot of hybrids and a lot of hydrogen, unfortunately, that they're still stuck to. But we're seeing some good signs and obviously an extra $8 billion invested in batteries. Batteries eventually end up in BEVs and PHEVs, but we'll see if they're going to be a...

How's the mix is going to be between those two there? All right. I think we're ready to take some of you guys' questions. Yeah, you've got a few more minutes to get a question in because we're a little low on questions right now. Yes. All right, Jay Sands, can you go over the carrying capacity and bed of the truck? We're talking about the Cybertruck.

Any bed modifications with regard to size, shape, and add-ons? I did think we saw a picture of the truck that was kind of indented. The bed was indented a little bit, but I don't know if that was final or...

Pretty sure it was final. I'm pretty sure that was a release candidate they're referring to. So I don't know about modification to the bed. I mean, we've seen the bars, like the accessory bars that you can put on the sides and on top of... Well, yeah, you can put them both on each side, I guess, horizontally to the vehicle and on the other side too. So that's the only add-on that I can think of.

Size and shape, so Tesla confirms six feet. But like Seth just said, there's been some little concern about the size of it. So we don't know the exact width of the bed. But the sides are slanted. That looks like actually the bottom part of it might be a little bit smaller than we anticipated. But Tesla...

So obviously, Tesla hasn't talked about the cyber quad a lot lately. So we don't know if that's still the case. But originally, the goal was actually to be able to fit a full-size quad in the back of the pickup. So that would be a big indication here. If Tesla can achieve that again, that would be very good for the Cybertruck, I think, because obviously not that many people are carrying around quads. But if you're able to do that, you're able to do a bunch of other things too.

So yeah, six feet long, width unconfirmed so far. All right. This is kind of a general question. How many life cycles does the battery have? We're still talking about Cybertruck. What does it cost to replace the electric battery? And will the truck have level five automation? Oh boy.

Yeah. I mean, asking the big questions that we would all like to have the answers to. In terms of the batteries, well, we do know that Cybertruck is using the 4680 cells. Tesla has switched production to those lately at Geofactory Texas, which is why we don't see the Model Y with the 4680 cells being produced now. We know that those have been updated. We know

We know that Tesla hasn't quite achieved what they announced originally at the battery day with the 4680. They are getting closer, but they're not quite there. Originally, the goal was longevity, cost reduction, improvement in charging capacity. We do expect the improvement in charging capacity to be there since the Cybertruck is going to be also 800 volt truck. But again, that's just the top charge rate. We cannot focus too much on the top charge rate because it's the overall performance

charging cycle it's important so how many life cycle that i would assume uh cycles period that he's referring to like there's one life cycle of a battery uh but uh the site i mean it's in the thousand normally there are anything for yeah that's that's that's me with the cells and and

And then you have the battery pack, which has its own battery management system that can also manage that. And you don't necessarily charge fully and discharge fully. So there's a lot of different ways to manage that. Tesla has been pretty good in terms of battery longevity so far. And there's been improvement with the latest generation. So I wouldn't worry too much about that.

be more a bit more worried about like maybe what kind of range the vehicle gets and the charge rate and the charge cycle because obviously with the bigger with trucks you get their batch back bigger battery pack takes longer to charge so I would be more curious to see the first Cybertruck charging cycles to come out

I don't know if they're going to release that at the unveiling or we're going to have to wait for some real-world testing. And the level 5, I mean, level 5, the Cybertruck is going to come with the latest hardware, hardware 4 so far. But hardware 4 is actually going to be behind hardware 3 in terms of the software. So maybe Cybertruck is going to be behind the rest of the fleet in terms of hardware.

autonomous driving capability so that's something to keep in mind i think elon said something about hardware for always being about six months behind hardware 3 for for software all right uh spikes 43 question the f-150 tech package seems like a great bump and sweet spot of features with the heat pump

Are there any Rivian features incoming to compete with this and Cybertruck? The drivetrain seems outdated. He's referring to the Ford Lightning Flash, 320 mile range, high tech cabin, heat pump coming in at 70K.

Um, we haven't heard anything specific from Rivian. Rivian has, um, a two motor configuration, which gets better mileage. They have actually a couple of two motor configurations. One gets much better mileage at the, at the cost of, uh, less acceleration and total power and towing capability. So Rivian doesn't have a heat pump? Uh, I don't shoot. I should know this, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Because, I mean, a Cybertruck is for sure going to have a heat pump at this point. Since Tesla introduced those in Model 3 a few years ago now, I would assume it's coming to all cars, all future cars, because it had a huge impact for the latest Model 3s.

And Model Y also have it. I guess the Rivian does not at this current time. I mean, that's a big deal for people up north. If you live in a cold weather area, this could be the difference maker. Yeah. So as far as drivetrain, Rivian doesn't have anything notable on the horizon. I mean, they actually went downmarket. Instead of having quad motors, these have dual motors.

But I guess, I mean, for me, I was like, maybe I'd rather have dual motors because they're not enabling things like the tank mode. So there's really no reason to have quad motors. I know there's some little tricks they do, torque vectoring and stuff. But I do like the F-150 flash package. That seems like, I mean, just for me, it seemed like the best of everything where you get good range, you get good technology and price point at 70K, which is really good.

Yeah, and it'll be interesting to see where the Cybertruck comes in on that. Let's move on here. An Exceder question. Do you know how Volvo is going to get the cost savings for the EX30? I'm assuming they mean cost down. I think the number one way they're going to do that is have it built in China by Zeker. That's...

kind of yeah the easy way has been volvo's moto lately i mean yeah owned by a chinese company so yeah and you know zekers is one of their sister brands um not sure how that works but uh nick mentioned casting and volvo has been investing in large form casting much like much like tesla so i don't know if the ex30 is going to be one that's going to feature it uh um

Because I know that there's a lot of back orders on those giant casting machines right now. There's a long lead time. But Volvo has announced that they're working on that. I don't know if they have the giant casting machine just yet, the Giga Presses.

Yeah, we did hear that the EX-30 is going to be also manufactured in Europe. I think there was a lot of demand, so that's going to happen. I really, really think they should make that thing in the U.S. as well. I think there's going to be a huge market for it. And obviously, it'll be interesting to see if we have to pay the tax on the ones coming in from Europe or...

I know we won't get the tax credit, but there's also a 27% tariff on ones coming from China. So it'll be interesting to see where the ones coming from the U.S. come from. Will they come from China or Europe? Or theoretically, they'll start making them here. Let's see. Carl Lenton...

Is this another vehicle for California and Oregon only or will it be available in other markets? What about other countries? I don't know what he's talking about there, perhaps. Maybe we're talking about the K-Car at that point. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if that one is limited to some markets. Yeah. I mean, VinFast, just generally speaking, a little sketchy at this point. There's been some quality issues and stuff like that.

All right, Mike the Car Geek, do you think Cybertruck will really ramp up slowly or is Elon holding back real volume forecast as a surprise for the delivery event? I think the former is much more likely, I think. Or at least it's better to expect a former and not to be disappointed. But no, I mean, Elon was pretty adamant that...

too temperate expectation with a Cybertruck. It's going to be hard and everything. And I think he has no reason to lie about that. I don't think he's trying to surprise. We're able to make a thousand a week at the launch event at the end of the month. I don't see that happening. I think that if you have a Cybertruck reservation right now, you need to think about soonest end of next year. I think that's a safe bet.

Yeah, depending on how early you got in and how close to Texas you live. Exactly. A bunch of other factories. If you're in Canada, probably like 2025 at this point. Right. Possibly related is Cybertruck an exoskeleton or not? I think the lines are a little blurred. Initially, it was supposed to be just steel on the outside, but we've seen some like traditional framed, you know, and kind of sheet metal over top of it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean...

The official definition of Exoskeleton, you have to have external panels that are structural. I mean, body panels are always somewhat structural, but you have to have part of the vehicle chassis that is exposed. I haven't seen that so far based on the bodies that we saw. Might be mistaken. I don't know. I haven't seen that. And we've seen internal frames in the build process. Yeah.

Don't know if that's still true. Ian Smith, looking beyond Musk, who possibly are the potential contenders for the public face of spearheading the transition to electric vehicles? I mean, I guess we're talking about other car manufacturers like Rivian's RJ Scringe comes up sometimes. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if there's going to be like, do you really need like,

specific phases to do it. I don't know if it's that big of a deal to be honest. I think it's going to be a huge mix of automakers. Musk is taking a lot of the attention right now and rightfully so, because without Tesla, we wouldn't be nowhere near where we are right now with electrification. But exactly what we thought was going to happen, happened where slowly Tesla's market shares are being

taking over by other automakers. A lot slower than we actually, most people thought, I think. I don't think that people thought that Tesla would be at 50% still in the US and in the 20s and 30s in Europe and depending on the markets.

In China, they're a little bit lower. What is happening in China is probably what you're going to see other places. You're going to see some of those, like the BYDs and the NIO and Xpeng, all that. You're going to see equivalents to that or maybe specifically them too in other jurisdictions and other markets. And it's going to be a more fair mix in between that. So yeah, I mean, maybe like...

Doug Field maybe seems to be taking over Ford Blue. Is that the EV version of the electric division of Ford? Yeah. Is he the head of that? I thought he was just the technology guy. But yeah, I guess that's a big part of it. I think he's starting. Even public facing, he's starting to be. I saw some interviews lately and all that. So maybe that makes sense.

But yeah, RJ, obviously RJ is up there, but it's going to, I don't think it's going to be like one guy is going to like, Elon is obviously the one guy right now just because of how big Tesla is, but it's going to be a mixed problem.

All right. Brad Sloan, do you guys know if any company is going to produce a Tesla to CCS adapter? And is Tesla going to allow non-Tesla charge at its supercharger after the first of next year? We know Electron is already making that thing. Yeah. And we know that I think it's a British company, like a big British electronics manufacturer.

That got an actual contract for Tesla from Tesla to make a NACS. Technically, it's not the adapter. It's the NACS itself, the connector. But I wouldn't be surprised if that would include adapters too. Yeah. So, but what is Tesla going to allow non-Tesla charge at its supercharger after the first of next year?

But I mean, Tesla is already enabling that at the magic docs, the one with the magic docs. So I guess what he's saying is like, as soon as they have the adapter, can anyone go to any station? I think that's probably closer to, okay. With an adapter, Brad just added that. Yeah. Yeah.

So I don't know about the first of next year. They say that the adapter is coming in 2024. So I assume once they have the adapter, because you talked about Electron. Electron is the name here, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So like technically you could already get an adapter and then whenever Tesla is ready to open it, then you have it. It's just, yeah, that Electron has been announcing like, yeah, you're going to have access to all superchargers and everything like that. You have to be careful with that because at the end of the day, Tesla is still in control of whoever used their charging network.

And you need the official announcement for Tesla. It's like, okay, you can use it within an app there now. So we don't know exactly when that's going to happen, but it sounds like it's going to be 2024 at least. So maybe just not first of the year, but it is coming next year and it's going to be a big deal. I think to Tesla's credit, I think it's going to help

non-tesla evs more than anything like you it's going to make road trips a lot easier with those vehicles it's going to have a lot of values to uh vehicles with ccs right now it's going to be interesting superchargers are also going to be a lot crowded more crowded yeah yeah it's going to be interesting to see how tesla deals with that uh because especially deals with we just talked about like the chevy equinox though like gm was one of the first to get on board with uh with that deal and um

We think that Equinox could be a popular vehicle. Obviously, that's going to be more towards the end of the year and in 2025 because of the pricing situation. But a lot of those vehicles are capped at 150 kilowatts. So it's not as fast as the Model Y, Model 3. Obviously, that 250 is early in the system. But a lot of those charges, you don't charge fully. You can...

you can get people out of there quickly, have shorter charging sessions. So not only you had a lot of people to network, you had potentially slower charging vehicles in the network. It's going to be an interesting problem to solve.

I'm not exactly sure how Tesla is going to do. Well, I mean, not exactly sure at the same time. We reported just last week the congestion fee. That might be a part of that solution. It looks like Tesla is working on things to be ready to, like, if it's a mess and it could end up being a mess of a launch, they can smooth things out with things like that. So we'll see. It's going to be a fascinating change in the North American side of the industry.

But it looks like that's it for us this week. No more questions. So I appreciate every single one of you guys that tune in for the show this week. If you do enjoy the show, you can give us a like, a thumbs up, whatever it is on the app you're watching. If you're listening to the audio version of the podcast, you can give us a five-star rating. It's free to do. It takes a second and it helps the show a ton. We appreciate every single one of you that does it. And we're going to see you same time, same place next week. Have a good one.