Tesla deliveries, Cybertruck sales shock, Rivian surprises, and more
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And we are live for the first electric podcast of 2025. I'm Fred Lambert, your host, and as usual, I'm joined by Seth Wintra. How are you doing today, Seth? I'm good. Feeling the new year? Feeling it. All right. So first show of the year is going to be a big one. Obviously, we're going to dive into all the latest Q4 numbers from EV companies and automakers, legacy automakers that also sell EVs.

throughout the show starting with Tesla the biggest EV automaker out there and also very interesting quarter for Tesla and then we're gonna dive into a little bit a few other things including the energy storage business for Tesla the cyber truck burning down which interesting thing it might not be the one that you think about right now you have to stay tuned for that and yeah and again look a little bit the two Chinese numbers too that I think are interesting

And then, as usual, we're going to take your guys' questions, your guys' comments, or the other topic in the EV world that you want us to discuss. You can put them in the comments section below, and we'll get to that a little bit later on. We already have a bunch of comments today. We have John who says, Roaster going to production 2025. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I don't think so. Every year it goes into production. All right. Let's start. We'll start with the Tesla numbers. So...

uh straight up let's just do the numbers model three model y came in at uh 471 000 units well just short of 72 472 000 units and other vehicles other models just this list

are rebel with the opacity of their breakdown of deliveries, came at 23,600 for a total of 495,572 units. So that's down from the consensus, the Wall Street consensus of 507,000 people were expecting, but that's not really the headline here. The headline is more because it is a new record. So like

people, most of the headlines are like, this is a bad quarter. It is a new record for Tesla by about 20,000 units or so. But the...

The disappointing thing is that it is short on Tesla's own guidance. And that's what's interesting because Tesla, if you haven't been following for a while, Tesla doesn't really release quarterly guidances. For the longest time, they used to back in the day. But for the longest time now and still since things have been going well for the company, Tesla has been simply guiding 50% increase in growth, 50% growth in deliveries every year with some years being down from that, some years being up.

Now, obviously, 2024, it wasn't going to be that. And Tesla was clear for that late last year. They were like, yeah, we don't think that we're going to get nowhere near 50% in 2024 because they called it a pause in growth. And we can get into why that happened. But

For the longest time, we weren't even sure that Tesla was able to be flat or grow in 2024. But then what happened is that at the last earnings, which was released in late October, so already a month into the quarter, Tesla said that they actually expect

to have slight growth in 2024, which basically resulted in a guidance for Tesla for the fourth quarter because you can subtract the deliveries from the first three quarter to the deliveries in 2023. And you end up with 515,000 vehicles in Q4. So it's an actual official guidance from the automaker. And I took that to heart because

I've been covering Tesla forever and I remember when Tesla was giving delivery guidance and they were pretty good at doing it. Why? Because they were doing it already like a month into the quarter. So you have, and Tesla prides itself on having the best visibility into its sales because they have the direct sale models, the most data in the industry. So they can tell you

pretty well how things are going for the quarter. If they're already a month into it, they already have a backlog. So I was like, you know what? I saw the consensus from the Wall Street that below the guidance, I saw Troy Teslike, who's one of the best analysts for that on Twitter,

We came in, I think at 501, if I remember correctly. I'm like, man, this is pretty low. I'm like, if Tesla has great visibility in it, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if they do it unless they drop the ball. And they dropped the ball they did because they came in way below that over 20,000 units or more because they were actually, you know, they were guiding growth. So that would assume like a little percent or something. So more than 20,000 units likely.

so instead now they are down for the full year a little bit more than one percent which is not massive obviously but now the tesla fans out there and especially tesla shareholders are scrambling to explain it saying like yeah the auto industry is down as a whole true but the ev industry is not down excluding tesla the ev industry is up in 2024 in a big way worldwide in china it's up

In Europe, it's up. In the US, I think the numbers are not fully in now, but it might be up too, excluding Tesla, obviously. Ford, I think, is up like 20% or something. People are up. Not Tesla, though. So there's room to be concerned. Also, Tesla is not growing its deliveries despite adding the Cybertruck to the lineup in 2024 for a full year because they started production in late 2023.

having the biggest discounts and incentives on its vehicle ever, having the threat of the tax credit going away even though there's a timing issue on that. It went away or has been reduced in some other markets including here in Quebec. It was reduced and it helped boost Tesla sales. So there's a lot of things that help Tesla in

in 2024, including its own discounts, including its own incentive, and a new vehicle to line up, and still it couldn't grow. So I think there's serious room for concern here. I think people should ask themselves why.

why this is happening. Things as simple as like Elon's political turn affecting the credibility of Tesla, affecting how Tesla is viewed is a very likely, you know, suspect here. Um,

Obviously, competition also is improving greatly, and we'll get into that competition in a moment, but this is something to be concerned about. The lease accounting has been up to, you know, it basically doubled on all of Tesla's vehicles.

which in the US, that's normal because the loopholes that comes with the lease, I can't think of the tax credit. So we're not too surprised here. And Tesla is still below most other EV automakers when it comes to lease, operating leases. So something to take into account to be fair. Yeah, so you see right there, you have little low production delivery numbers, sort of 1.8 million, which was last year. So Tesla went from

38% growth in 2023, which was still below the 50% guidance, to 1% decrease in growth in minus 1% decline in growth in 2024. I think it's objectively a bad year for Tesla even though people try to splice it one way or the other. Production is down too.

which is when you had a new vehicle to the lineup. Also, 2023, Tesla had production issues, was still feeling the tail end of the supply chain issue that came with the pandemic. They had to shut down Gigafactory Berlin for a while. There was a bunch of issues there which were not felt as much in 2024. Tesla had fully ramped up Berlin, fully ramped up Texas, trying to expand Shanghai,

There was a Model 3 switch off that affected the early part of 2024, but production was down two in the last quarter. So it's a weird situation, I think, for Tesla.

The silver lining, though, it is the deployment. This is a funny part. I actually had to remember, I was thinking, when did this actually start reporting deployment of energy storage with their quarterly release of production and deliveries of vehicles? Do you have an idea, Seth?

No idea. All right. Well, it, it, it, pure coincidence, it matches exactly when Tesla had a down quarter for the first time in a long time, which was Q1 2024. So Q1 2024, Tesla was, was down in vehicle deliveries and they reported their energy storage deployment for the first time through the, through the release because, you know, it was, it was a great quarter for that.

And since then, all year they've done that. And of course, the second quarter of 2024 was a huge one, 9.4 gigawatt hour. It went down a little bit last quarter, but still up crazy over here because it is a booming business for Tesla. And now a new record of 11 gigawatt hour, which is massive. So congrats to everyone involved. That's a crazy amount of energy storage dropping.

All right. The other interesting thing in Tesla's release is the Cybertruck. Again, Tesla being super opaque. So we have to do some digging ourselves, some little math here and there and to try to figure out the Cybertruck sales. And, you know,

People like to call me a Tesla hater these days. Using n lines like Tesla Cybertruck sales are disastrous. But hear me out here. I think it is a perfectly fair headline. Let me explain to you why. So Tesla, again, bundles up Model S, X, Cybertruck, Tesla Semi into a single category of other vehicles, other models.

And so we don't have a clear idea of what it is, but we have a good sense of how many Model S and XL Tesla is doing with tracking them over the last few years, quarter to quarter, year over year comparison. And we estimate that Tesla delivered between 9,000 and 12,000 Cybertruck.

And I see a lot of our analysts, including Troy Teslike, which is within 1% of Tesla's, maybe within 1.5% of Tesla's delivery records this quarter. And he says it's closer to 9,000 in Q4. So,

Even if that's not right, what it means basically is that quarter to quarter from Q3 to Q4, Cybertruck sales were either flat or down, most likely down. Despite in Q4 Tesla switching from the foundation series to the non-foundation series, which is $20,000 less expensive.

having continued ramp-up production. And we know that production is not a problem at this point. There was a three-day shutdown of production in December. But regardless of that, there's a ton of inventory out there and there's a ton of incentives to put a ton of incentives to buy the Cybertruck in Q4. So it's not a production issue, it's a demand issue. And it resulted in being down despite releasing the cheaper vehicles.

Well, personally, I thought like, oh, my only hope for the Cybertruck is that the price is going to get cheaper. And especially next year with a single motor. Now, also, we have some good news on the tax credit front. So the dual motor Cybertruck has been added to the eligibility list from the IRS with a tax credit. Although for how long is obviously a real question. But now I'm like, all right.

How much cheaper Cybertruck is going to help it sell if this happened in Q4 where Tesla opens up Cybertruck to non-reservation older, launches the non-financier series for $20,000 cheaper and couldn't even sell as many of them as in Q3? It is wild. It is not going well for the Cybertruck. Regardless if it's going well or not,

I've been saying it for over a year now. I think Cybertruck was unquestionably a mistake. It resulted in what let's call a pause in between growth phases. It is a Cybertruck. The focus on the Cybertruck over the last few years, instead of a cheaper vehicle or more utilitarian, wide appeal vehicles, which was completely on Elon Musk,

This focus has created this growth because now Tesla's only vehicle being added to the lineup is the Cybertruck and it's just not selling. While the Model 3 program is falling, Model Y appears to be peaking based on the sales and Model S and X also not doing well. So there's room to be concerned right now. We have the biggest electric automaker in the world right now and the sales are peaking significantly.

While this was supposed to be a growth company at 50% rate per year, and I know Tesla fans, they just want to say, hey, the auto market is not doing well right now. I agree with you. But the EV market, excluding Tesla, is doing very well. So what's happening here? Anything on that side?

Yeah, it's just a good question. I mean, is it that Elon Musk is spending too much time on Twitter and the campaign trail and not doing enough work behind the scenes? The Model Y should have probably been upgraded already by now. That's its biggest seller. The Cybertruck is obviously polarizing, but you have to wonder if Elon wasn't such a polarizing figure

if uh there are people there are a lot of people who probably have decided against buying a tesla because of that um and that's a big problem like if if there was a normal board at tesla is there any chance that elon would still be there he evaluated like this little employee guidelines like

Dozens and dozens of times. Yeah, I mean, there's like tons of just different incidents where like a normal CEO would be gone in a second, like, you know, like coaching AI people for his own thing or, you know, taking, you know, NVIDIA stuff.

to his own thing. Like there's a lot of stuff that just would never have been tolerated. Threatening to move products to his private companies if he doesn't get 20% of the company. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just, there's just a ton of stuff now, hopefully like, you know, I hate to say this, but hopefully like this kind of downturn,

uh, kind of wakes, wakes, maybe some investors up, maybe wakes the board up. I know it feels unlikely. I mean, I, no, I share your hope with that. Like, I think, I think it's the only thing that can work. If, if,

If they feel it financially, it will work. The problem with it now is that the stock went down yesterday with that news, but now today it's way up on zero news whatsoever. And of course, all the usual suspects are like, hey, buy the dip on this. This means nothing. This means nothing. All these delivery numbers mean nothing. Buy the dip. Buy the dip.

It's like, no, it means something. So, I mean, if the Tesla stock would crash over it, because Tesla is supposed to be a growth stock and it's just not growing anymore. And Elon is relying on these false promises with full self-driving. And I mean, I don't want to say false promises on the robot because it could happen, but it's like certainly not on his timeline, I think. All these things, he's relying on that because the core business of Tesla is growing.

obviously not growing anymore. There's no doubt about it. And there should be concern about that. It's just like you said, for the investor base to wake up, I don't think the board can wake up without the investor base just slapping it in the face a bunch of times because they are completely either in Elon's pockets or they are in the kind of trends and they think it's some kind of infallible deity or something.

So it needs to happen, but unfortunately, I just don't see it happening right now because the stock is completely inflated over what I just said, over the shareholder base not really caring about the core business going away because they think FSD is around the corner. They think optimist is around the corner. They think these things and they think that's more valuable than what actually is paying the bills at Tesla. It's a real concern.

Yep. All right. Another real concern is cyber trucks burning down. Obviously, the one that made the headlines this week is the one in Las Vegas, the Trump Hotel that completely exploded.

And we're still learning a lot about this event. And I want to be careful the way I approach it because I think there's a lot of misinformation about it, especially coming from Elon and a bunch of other people. Because it's still being investigated as a potential terror attack. And I think that could be very likely. But there's also a lot of things coming out in the last day or so that points that it might not have been necessarily possible.

an attack uh just today i think they had an interview with the the turo renter can you imagine that you you rent your cyber truck on zero to a guy and it goes blowing up in front of the trump hotel it's pretty wild um the renter not the person who rented it from tour no the person who rented it for turo is dead he's the he's the one inside the inside the car yeah um so the things that we know for a fact now there were fireworks in the back of the truck

and camping equipment in the back of the truck including a gas canister and a barbecue uh so that you know those things if you were planning on exploding the vehicle and those things are in it yeah it does help exploding it but also it might have exploded for other reason and those things were in the truck because the guy said he was planning on going camping at the green canyon um

It's crazy. It's crazy. I'm just saying what I know. I'm not trying to make it sound like the truck exploded by itself. I don't think it did. Elon said that the battery is still intact. I think he's probably right if he says that. I mean, I don't trust things that Elon says these days at all, but that would be a tough thing to...

To lie about. Carl says he shot himself in the head. Yeah. So one of the other things that came out over the last day is that the driver, right before the explosion, shot himself in the head. Okay. But there was no detonation device discovered yet, as far as I'm aware. So, I mean, there is a chance that the shot...

He shot himself in the head and that led to something in the back of the truck exploding and that was the explosion. That could be it too. Because the other things too is like people obviously the connection that they made was the Trump Hotel. So the cyber truck, Elon, the Trump Hotel, Trump, and the explosion and the fact that it was a very sad terror attack.

just a few hours before or i don't know the timing exactly in new orleans too so people thought all right this is another attack uh but now the family of the of the driver of the the cyber truck came out saying that he voted for trump in november he was a big trump supporter he was a military veteran that uh was uh you know in support of trump a right winger so there's

I think Elon was way too quick to call this an attack. And he said that like, he laughed at like, if you want to attack someone, you don't use a cyber truck because they actually help contain the explosion and things like that. That is wild. That is wild stuff.

We should wait, learn more about this thing before calling this guy a terrorist. It might be very well a situation where this guy was extremely depressed, wanted to go kill himself at the Green Canyon. And then he arrived at the Trump Hotel or something and he was like, I can't take it anymore and shot himself in the head. And then car exploded for whatever reason in the back. It might be that too. I'm not saying I know it's that. It might have been that. I don't know.

So moving on from that, that incident took away from a real, very likely battery fire, according to the local fire authorities in Atlanta. So this happened just a few hours before the Las Vegas explosion of the Cybertruck in a Tesla parking lot in North Decatur, Georgia, just near Atlanta. A Cybertruck in the Tesla lot, column fire. And

and the local authorities here here's some pictures of the aftermath here so the interior is completely burned down so it's actually similar to what elon described even though the it's the the fire have affected more of the bottom of the vehicle here so the battery is most likely involved too like the tires the tires were not as bad on the uh the the vegas one

And the local news reported that the fire authorities believe that the battery pack started the fire, but it's still under investigation. So this happened on the 31st, early morning and night. So we don't have that much details just yet.

But we've seen a bunch of other cyber trucks catch on fire over the last few months. There was the one where the few teenagers were in there and died, unfortunately, very tragic. There was a couple of them in Mexico for some reason, even though there's not that many cyber trucks in Mexico. But all of those, though, were after crashes. And we like to point out that even though electric vehicles can catch on fire, they statistically speaking don't catch on fire at a higher rate than gasoline-powered vehicles.

However, most gasoline vehicle when it catches on fire, it's either like a very old vehicle that has mechanical issues or it's after a crash. Similarly with electric vehicles, after a crash, if it's a high impact crash, you have lithium ion batteries in there, it can happen just like it can happen with a tank of gas in your car. However, when an electric vehicle catches on fire,

While it's not doing anything, where there's no impact going on, it is more concerning. It needs to be investigated. The source needs to be found in order to make electric vehicles safer. Same thing happened with the Bolt EV, for example. We had to investigate that for like half a year before the recall happened. And why I'm a little bit concerned here, even though I cannot link the two events officially together, we've been reporting over the last few days or a few weeks that

that Tesla is not recalling, cannot say recall because they have not issued a recall or even a service bulletin on this, but we have obtained information within Tesla that shows that Tesla has found a cell dent issue within the Cybertruck battery pack and it started replacing battery pack, including the ones that are sitting at its slots, bringing them back to service center and even Gigafactory Austin to replace the battery packs.

So I have no proof that the sell-down issue can lead to a fire, so I'm not saying it does. But the fact that you have some cyber trucks sitting out there catching on fire and we have this known issue, it could be concerning. It's something to keep an eye on for Tesla. Again, they have not issued a service bulletin on this or a recall just yet. But something to keep an eye on. All right, Rivian today released their delivery numbers.

Last time I checked, the stock was up like 20% on this. So you can assume it's good. And they were definitely... I just lost the page for some reason. So we're talking about the Q4 production of 12,727 units, deliveries of 14,183 units. So the guidance for the whole year was between 50,500 to 52,000.

So at $51,579, they came to the higher end of that guidance and people took that very positively. I think the main reason is that there was this step back last quarter. Last quarter, deliveries were down, production was down. And in Q2, there was also the changeover from the next generation vehicle. The tail end of that was failed in Q3. And also, there was a supply chain issue that was reported in Q3.

So one, in their statement, Rivian said that the supply chain, the part shortage on the R1 RCV platform is no longer a constraint. And that's their words. So that helped the perception of the Q4. But also, I think after the Q3 setback, Rivian reiterated that they still think they have a real shot at

achieving positive gross margin on their vehicle in Q4. And now the fact that they did deliver on the higher end of their guidance in Q4 kind of reinforced that. I'm not saying that it's going to happen, but it reinforced it. Obviously, to be fair, I would mention that I believe that Rivian is going to

recognize a lot of ZF credits in Q4 that's going to help their gross margin. So it's not just... I would hope that they're going to break that down for us so that we can track more their actual COGS and how it improves in Q4, because that was the real goal of the next generation R1s. It's to reduce costs.

And we were impressed because if they do achieve that and reduce costs, they have not caught on performance. They have not caught on quality. We were very impressed by the next-gen R1. So looking forward to the results, which are coming February 20th. So we still have a good month and a half before that. All right. We're going to move to GM Ford.

delivery result. I have not read that just yet. I had to bring back my lucid hair this afternoon when we released those reports. So I'm going to find out about them at the same time as you guys. And then we're going to have a little more time to talk to you guys. So if you have questions, if you have other topics you want us to discuss in the EV World right now, you can put them in the comment section below when I get to it in a moment. All right. GM

surges to become America's number two EV sellers as SUVs and trucks roll out. So they claimed the second position from Ford because I think Ford was number two and then they claimed it. All right. GM sold 43,982 electric vehicles in the US in the final three months of 2024, up 125% versus last year. So that's impressive.

December was GM's second straight month with over 15,000 EV sales. That's good too. Equinox achieved 18,000 units in Q4, 28,000 units in total in 2024. So obviously the ramp up at the end of the year was significant. They sold more than half in the last quarter.

And that's almost a half of all GM sales is in Equinox. So Equinox is kind of like the bolt. It's like the big seller. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we're going to talk a bit about a prologue later too, which is also kind of a GM product sold on their own. That's also doing well. I think it's going better than Equinox actually. Yeah.

it's funny because everybody loves the prologue because it's an equinox with carplay and that's what everybody wants and the honda logo on it that's basically it right um all right the lyric i just saw a beautiful lyric on my way back from from lucid earlier um lyric is at 8 000 units in q4 28 000 units told last year whoa okay

The Blazer and Silverado EV. Blazer is at just short of 8,000 and Silverado EV at 2,000 units in Q4. Okay. Do we have a full year on that? I would like to have a full year on the Silverado. No. If someone knows it, can put it in the comment section. I'd be curious to know the full year on the Silverado. Blazer not bad at Q4 at 8,000 units too. GMC Armor EV. That has been ramped up too. So EV 5,000 units that's just in Q4. That's a lot of money. Yeah.

Huge ones a lot. Yeah. Just short of 14,000 in 2024, up 331%. Well, I think this year they released the cheaper version at 80,000 too. I think it's the first year for that. So that helped a lot.

um and then also they have the Escalade EVs 670 units but I think those came out more at the end of the year too and 1400 Sierra pickup trucks the Sierra I'm keep hearing some great things you know you've tried it too yeah it's a great vehicle it's huge all right so full year full year GM is at 114 000 EVs up 50 from 2023.

So obviously, when we say the EV market is up other than Tesla, it's a lot easier to be up 50% on 70,000 units than it is on, I don't know how many units Tesla sell in the US. We won't know until exactly next year, but it's in the hundreds of thousands. They said that their EV market share is now 12% in the fourth quarter. It is improving. All right, now let's check out Ford, which apparently lost its second place crown.

you can call that um everyone forgets the person in single place but uh they're doing well too so i i anyway i skimmed the numbers earlier so forged total us cell uh rose 8.8 percent in q4 okay that well that's that's told that's not ev cells right well yeah uh let me see we cells

Okay, EV sales for the, so that's going to be the whole year, a whole year. Well, electrified vehicles, I don't like that. Electrified vehicle includes like the plug-ins, hybrid, 285,000. So that's not it because GM was at 114. If they're second place, that doesn't work.

Full electric, the Mustang Mach-E. The lineup for full electric is Mustang Mach-E, Lightning and E-Transit. So let's focus on that. The company sold a record of 30,176 EVs in the fourth quarter or up 16% year over year for a total of 97,864 in 2024. So it's a decent amount less than GM. So GM did really good.

The Mackie in the fourth quarter sold just a little bit more than 16,000 units for a full year of 51,744 units, up 27% over a year. So Mackie is still doing well. And then the F-150 Lightning,

I slipped a little bit this quarter at 10,000 units, but you know, it probably outsold the Cybertruck. More likely than not, it also the Cybertruck in Q4 in the US. No, it definitely outsold the Cybertruck because Tesla's numbers also include Canada and Mexico too. So yeah, it's definitely, the Lightning definitely outsold the Cybertruck. Total year, 33,500. So Tesla definitely outsold them total for the whole year, but not in Q4.

It's up 38% year over year. So Lightning is still gaining some momentum, but we talked about that last week a little bit, but we think the next-gen platform coming out next year is going to be the more complete electric pickup truck from Ford. The e-transit not doing bad, 64% up in 2024, 12,000 units. So everything is up in Q4 except the Lightning, but everything is way up.

as you can see here on the right side for um for the full year so even in the US like the EV market outside of Tesla doing very well and then the under Prologue like we uh talked about earlier uh the uh you know the little order of the of the equinox reach a total of over 33 000 units in 2024 so

Did we remember what we said about the Equinox? It was a little bit lower than that. It was like 28,000. 28,000. And the Prologue was only available since March. So it wasn't even a full year production. So it is popular. And it sold almost 8,000 units in December alone. We've seen a really big ramp up recently.

and it is kind of a gma vehicle so you know gm can i mean i think it's fully gm like even the low you know the logo is the only thing that is honda so technically if you add the prologue to gm stole they do be uh no they already beat the ford but he beat them by almost like 50 000 units more than 50 000 units impressive it's funny that it it has carplay and android auto and the equinox doesn't like it

and people love it like it's a real difference maker and then if we look at the koreans so hyundai and kia they're also having a time to look uh 24 what are we looking at even term of actual numbers uh okay that's their 800 000 units in the us that's total for the year evs ev9 ev9 uh

22,089 last year in the US. I'd be curious to look at the Canadian numbers because I'm starting to see a ton of them here. EV6 is just short of 28,000 units in 2024. Not bad either. IONIQ 5, 44,000 units last

increase of 31 from 2023 but the the 2024 model year was was a significant but not a giant refresh but performance-wise uh feature-wise it was it was a big update so uh it makes sense that it's up that much all right um do we have their total numbers percentage-wise up no and again I think like I want to make this clear like all the other EVs other than Tesla are doing very well in term of

percentage increase just not comparable in terms of deliveries to Model 3 and Model Y but it's getting closer to Model 3s now. We have some good news for the ID.4 it looks like VW finally has a fix on the recall that happened earlier this year so production and sales are starting back up in Tennessee so you can expect to see a little bit more VW ID.4s around soon

do we have the sales numbers on those i mean i i think they were they stopped sales for almost a quarter right yeah yes it's not doing very well but oh you might no it's probably down for the full year but and uh looking at the chinese the chinese was doing we're doing very well obviously but we uh wanted to talk a little bit about uh chami xiaomi chan chami because they came out of nowhere and uh it's it's one of the most beautiful ramp up a production of evs i've ever seen

They sold 135,000 EVs in 2024, first year of production.

And it's well-received EV. I mean, it looks like kind of a mix between the Model 3 and the Taycan to me. It's like, it's a beautiful car. And now they released their expectation for 2025, you know, their second full-year production. They target 300,000 EVs. And they plan to do that because they have now the SUV version of the SU7 and the YU7, it's called.

And that obviously, India have ambitions to bring that elsewhere than China, not the US, unfortunately. But ramping up 135,000 EVs in the first year, 200,000 in the second year. I don't want to go back to Tesla a lot, but what I'm saying that the competition is coming hot, especially in China. It's extremely hot. And Tesla's biggest market in China. If Tesla doesn't do well in China, it's problematic.

I'm really concerned about that company at this point. I think 2025 is going to be a very, very competitive year. And you also have the Xpeng CEO that came out this week that says that starting this month in January, he believes that there's going to be a new price war in the EV market that's going to launch in China that's going to make things a little bit crazier.

I love to see it. I'm jealous of the Chinese market right now. Give me another price war. If you market here, the price wars are great for consumers. It would be fun to see. All right, let's jump into the comments section. All right. We got a lot of comments before we even started. John Belillo says, how will Germany labor increase in November affect ER opinion requested?

Yeah, I mean, so we had the delivery numbers this quarter for Tesla. I think you're talking about Tesla here because Tesla did increase the salaries of their workers at this Gigafactory Berlin in November. So this question is specifically about Tesla.

And we have an idea of the revenue from those numbers, but the earnings are coming up at the end of the month. And that is the interesting one here because, you know, like Rivian, I think this is where we're going to recognize a lot of ZEV credit in Q4, which is going to help the earnings. But there is...

increasing COGS, including this increase in labor in Germany. And also there's a decrease in APR and the average price of the vehicles because of all the incentive. The entire Q4 was like zero financing for a lot of vehicles. There was...

In the US, it's not as bad because it was linked to the FSD. So that counters each other a little bit. But there was also the direct discount. There was the increase on the referral program. That's like another $500, $600 per vehicle. There's a lot of things that's going to hurt their earnings this week. I'm not a financial analyst. I'm not going to make a prediction or anything like that. And also, honestly, I'm starting to get a little bit concerned about the books at this point.

Last quarter, a few weeks into the quarter, Tesla guided an increase in COGS. And then out of nowhere, they surprised it like, "Oh, it was actually a decrease in COGS." It's like, "What? You're supposed to have good visibility into that and know that." And then Tesla had a big beat on earnings and it came from that COGS reduction. I was like, "Ugh."

you know i always i fought the tesla q people for years and years and years with that stuff but you know i'm not in enough saying that the the books are cooked but i'm saying that this was that that announcement was like oh what how did that happen if if there's uh another one this quarter i would be extremely shocked because for the reason i just mentioned

All right. Happy New Year to Electric Brian. Yes. And skeptic saying, assuming we'll get juicy Cybertruck and Rivian sales talk today. Yes. Hope it was juicy enough for you. What are you looking forward most this year and what are you dreading most? Leaning question. It's, I mean, dreading most in the US. I want to see the exact plan for the phase out, if there are even going to be a phase out of the...

Tax credit in the US, it's going to be the big factor this year for the US EV market. I know some people think that based on IRS rules and all that, there's a chance that it could live on for the whole year and might only be removed next year. I don't know. Again, I'm not a tax expert, so I don't know. So I have a little bit of hope for that. So that would actually result probably in a record year in 2025-2025.

for ev sales because people will rush to get it before the end of the year so so that would help um so there's still a little bit of hope but you know going forward that's that that's not the uh so that's both what i'm dreading and what i'm looking forward to at the same time it's a double answer any cars i mean obviously uh we're you know the ev

Sorry, EX30 from Volvo, which is coming out right now. Any other cars? I mean, Model Y. Yeah, I'm on the Tesla beat. The Tesla is the company I cover the most. I like Trek. We have other people that cover the other brands. So yeah, the Model Y, I'm not...

super excited about because we have a pretty good idea what it's going to be based on the Model 3 too. Model 3 aesthetically I think was a big update. Feature-wise, nothing crazy. You remember I should talk about that too because we talked about the podcast a lot because I was looking to upgrade this month. It didn't happen and that's purely Tesla's fault. Tesla was supposed to send me my trade-in estimate

I ordered a car, ordered a Model Y, but then throughout this whole thing, I wasn't even sure I was going to go with a Model Y. I might have gone with a Model 3 instead, but then I needed my trade-in estimate. And at first, Tesla was responding to me and was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll get you the estimate. They said one picture that I sent of one side of the car was not

appropriate for them so they asked me for another one i send the other one and then they stopped answering of course that was in the last two weeks of the quarter which always insane but they kept sending me like automated messages to like hey book your delivery book your delivery book your delivery i was like i want to know how much you're going to give me for my car like give me give me the official list of my car and then they they would never answer and they would just send me automated messages take your delivery take your delivery

until the 31st 31st a real person reached out to me and they were they were like hey are you still interested in getting your car right now today they said today and I'm like sure how much are you giving me for my car uh cannot tell you that no response cannot tell you no okay that's helpful crazy crazy stuff like

I think Tesla has serious issues right now with these things. I'm not blaming the workers at Tesla for this. I'm sure they're super short staffed. They're being worked like crazy. End of the year, always difficult, but this year probably crazier because technically a record delivery in sales, but with shorter staff.

With a bunch of different programs running at once, it probably was insane. So now I'm thinking, do I wait for the Model Y refresh? I was really interested with the Model 3 long-range all-drive.

Because I love the Model 3 that I have right now, the way it drives. And, you know, it would drive similarly even better. But, you know, the main thing, I would be happy with the Model 3 right now if it had like just a tiny little bit more range because in the winter it gets rough. So I think it has that with the new Model 3. And quieter too. I was just driving the Lucid Air for a week.

And that thing is just, it's smooth. It's a lot smoother than a Model 3 for sure. It's not as fun to drive, obviously, because it's heavier. It's not as nimble. But most people don't drive that necessarily because it's fun and drive that because it's a smooth, relaxed drive. Relaxed, also accelerate like crazy, but still.

It's quiet. Just dead quiet. That's luxury for me. And I know that the new Model 3 is a lot more quiet. So I was looking for that. So maybe I still do that or wait for the Model Y. Maybe I wait for the Model Y and then do that. I don't know. I think they're still going to be discounting Q1 too. So I'm not too worried about that. I would say at this point, you might as well wait for Juniper. Although it might be quite a while. It hasn't even hit Shanghai yet.

Rumors right now is Chinese New Year. Makes sense. That's a good time to refit or whatever. So...

I would also encourage you to drive a Model Y because it sucks compared to a Model 3. I mean, I've driven the Model Y before, not the new version, obviously. But yeah, that's the only thing that's keeping me away from the Model Y. You saying that and other people saying that too. It's not as fun to drive. I mean, you can't put a lot in the back, though. That's the thing. You can't put a bike in there for most people.

And I've been caught a few times. I have it for years now and I have a pretty good idea of what I can fit in my car. And there was a few times that I'm thinking, I can fit that in my car. And then, no. I'm like, shut up. That's annoying. It would have been cool on the refresh of the Model 3. They made it a hatchback or something. But then, you know. Why buy a Model Y? Yeah.

Yeah, no, I get it. So other cars to think about, you know, the Hyundai IONIQ 7, the third row thing is kind of cool. I definitely want to check that out. I saw an IONIQ 5N in the wild for the first time today. Yeah? It looked cool. Almost ran into a Kia Sorento, though, but that was not its fault. That was the fault of the Kia Sorento. Okay. And...

What we are not going to see in 2025 is the Roadster going into production. It would be great though, Andrew. I agree it would be, but not going to happen. I don't even think the Roadster is showing up in the Tesla cars of the future thing. I think that it's fully bullshit. I mean, there's a way to get to the page on the website, but it's not the easiest way. And I mean, Elon said it's going to be unveiled this year. It's going to go to production. Mm-hmm.

What Elon says these days, especially his credibility in my eyes has been in a downfall for a while. But the last week, oh my God, the last two weeks, I couldn't even believe it. Backing the AFD in Germany, which I had to do a deep dive on that and see how crazy that is to back that. And in the UK now too. And then in the UK, Tommy Robinson guy, I remember...

i already had a vague idea of him but i had to do my research again just to make sure is like going on a campaign to get that guy released guy that pled guilty by the way is a wild thing to do like did he don't do any research on that guy like just the number of arrests that you had like violence uh fraud and uh now more lately like misinformation than contempt of court uh

not a good guy like at all like a clear fascist Islamophobe all that and Elon is straight up out there you know and that with him like backing an Islamophobe like that like crazy and his daughter saying that he's Islamophobe and he's like Arabic is like the language of the enemy and all that I'm like

Yeah, I wonder like, I mean, there's plenty of Muslim backers of Tesla. Employers, employees at Tesla. Like that's got to be rough. Yeah, it's not fun at all. It's an ugly situation. You know, I have some friends, Muslim friends, they have Teslas. Like, that's not good. Yeah. All right. Let's see. Oh, yeah. Andrew also mentions if Tesla had built a normal traditional looking truck, it would have sold like crazy. Yeah.

I mean, would I have sold more? The design is not the only issue with this Cybertruck. I went on...

a little bit of rent on that on Twitter yesterday. I posted a bunch of electric comments. Our commenters are so funny. But the price was a big deal also, is a big deal. And the range is also a big deal. If you look at the million reservation that Tesla had, we have a bunch of tallies that broke down

which models that the reservation holders wanted. And the dual motor and tri-motor were like head to head. Of course, the tri-motor was way less expensive than it was like $70,000 instead of $100,000. Huge difference, no doubt.

But it also was quoted at over 500 miles of range. And Tesla is now quoting it at 300 miles of range. 200 miles difference and $30,000 more expensive. That is the true thing that affected it. Even people that, myself included, that was not a fan of the design of the truck, it's like,

uh you're gonna sell me a 70 000 truck with 500 plus miles range i'm buying it i don't care how it looks it could have been designed by homer simpson i don't i don't give a about it like give it give me the truck so uh that the fact that the they didn't do that it's like and there are trucks that are getting like like silverado ev like a big battery pack and all that like getting like close to that kind of range uh they're a little bit more expensive to that obviously so

It's the combination of the two, the more expensive and the miss on the range plus obviously the design didn't help. I agree. And it's like the Cybertruck is so obviously a Tesla, whereas if it looked more like a Silverado or F-150 or even a Rivian, it wouldn't have been such a...

a stark thing you see on the street. So like if somebody sees you driving a Cybertruck, they know you're kind of like Elon. Yeah. And that links back to the controversy around Elon. It's like now driving a Cybertruck is kind of like I'm with Elon, which I don't agree with that necessarily. If I drive a Ford, it doesn't mean that I agree with everything that Jim Farley says. For sure. So the same thing works with that. It's just...

that the way that Elon is politically, and he's also the richest man in the world, also owns a significant part of Tesla, unlike Farley, for example. I don't think that Farley owns nowhere near 13% of Ford, I would assume. So there's other aspects to it, obviously. All right. Mike the Car Geek says, earnings call on January 29th. What huge announcement does Elon make to boost expectations? You know, this one is interesting because

You know, now we are less than six months away from Tesla releasing unsupervised full self-driving in California and Texas, according to Elon. That's what he said. The most recent. Yeah. So now this call...

And I don't think that's happening. Or if that, maybe in Texas in a very like limited fashion, Geofence services a la Waymo to compete with Waymo in Austin because Waymo is launching in Austin. So maybe something like that, but not in a consumer vehicle. I'd be shocked if that happens, unless there's a giant exponential improvement in FSD over the next few months, which we've been expecting based on what Elon said for years and it just never happens. So I don't see that happening.

So maybe that Elon is going to have a tougher time making kind of like huge, crazy announcement now at the earnings call because he might actually have to temper things when it comes to that.

John Lynch says Tesla does not geofence, do your homework. I know they don't do that. I'm saying that to launch a service with FSD unsupervised right now, it would have to be something geofence like Waymo. That's what I'm saying. And I agree that it would be a change in direction for Tesla. I'm saying that they would need to do that because no regulator would approve

unsupervised self-driving with the current performance it has right now. That's a fact. Tesla will need teleoperation, which we know that they're working on. And teleoperation and geofence often go together, John, so do your homework. All right. Moving on. Oh yeah. So as far as the earnings announcement, is there something else maybe? The AI, yeah, robots.

The robots, the AI stuff. The robots can now do breakdancing. Yeah. All right. Tesla needs an intervention from a leader focused on survival. At this rate, the federal government will be asked to bail them out to save their stupid charging network. Well, I don't think it's that bad. I don't think it's survival mode. I think it's, I mean, the stock, if the shareholder would recognize that growth is bad,

gone, the stock would be destroyed and that would probably trigger some movement at the leadership level. It's running on delusion right now. So I don't expect that to happen anytime soon.

like if you're a tesla shoulder still and you're backing elon still like you have to have crazy blinder on like i i see them like i've i've been around these guys for a long time i was a big enon backer a big tesla backer and you have him promoting neo-nazi people right now you have him promoting fascists and i'm not just talking about trump here like you know people have issues calling trump a fascist and that

Tommy Robinson is an alt-right fascist. I think he even calls himself a fascist. Yeah, he promoted it for years and years. He's been part of parties that he called fascist, neo-fascist, whatever you want to call it. And Elon launched a campaign this week to release this guy who pled guilty to contempt of court after he lied about the situation regarding a kid being attacked in school.

It's wild stuff. It's crazy stuff. So if you're like, oh, this is still my guy. Elon Musk, after things like that, is like, you have to agree that Elon has real issues right now. I don't know exactly where it's coming from. You know, plenty of theories out there. Like, you know, maybe he's just trying to be controversial and that's what gets him Twitter engagement and that's what...

after. That's the only thing keeping Twitter alive right now. Twitter without engagement dating and manufactured controversies and all that, it closed doors. There's still some value in Twitter. I still find some value in it, but it's like 1% of what's happening on there. You cannot survive with 1%. You need all that crazy stuff. I do think he believes his own bullshit, though, to a certain degree. You cannot do that. You cannot...

sell your credibility like that, especially if you're a billionaire. Why would you sell your credibility for Twitter? Makes no sense to me. All right. Skeptic says, "I'm not saying it's fair, but you can't buy a Cybertruck without looking like a D-bag. That's not going to help sales." Hard to argue. I mean, D-bag is a big market. That's true. And it does the Venn diagram of pick truck owners. And anyway.

A midsize pickup with a traditional body structure would rock. Yeah, I keep on saying like, my God, why doesn't Ford make an EV Maverick? The Cybertruck was supposed to be 5% smaller. That 5% would have made a big difference, I think. I think the Cybertruck would have sold better at just a 5% smaller too. Yeah, and I really think, I mean, Ford's already got a hybrid Maverick. Like, why not make a plug-in hybrid? It just frustrates the hell out of me that I can't buy a Maverick EV.

All right, Elon alienated a good portion of Tesla's customer base with his Trump alliances. I think that goes without saying. Tesla's not even addressing the basic problems of people not being able to get out of a burning car with a manual latch putting under the plastic tabs. Yeah, but the guy was shot in the head. Well, I don't think he refers just to that specific instances. Yeah, I mean, there's been some, there's some value to that complaint, I think. I think there could be. But the thing is, the automakers always say like, well, yeah, you have to read the manual.

If you know it, it's not that difficult to access it. It's just people don't know their cars very well. It's not only a photo. Yeah, and maybe you're not in the back. Maybe you're giving a ride to somebody when it catches on fire. Like, hey, I didn't read the manual of this car that I'm sitting in the back of. It's got to be hard. It is a legit complaint, though.

All right, Carlton saying, the real sheets of the LFP Model 3 don't even have that latch pull. That should be it. And it's a recall to put one in. Has there ever been a car battery fire involving an LFP-equipped EV? Do we know about that? Seems like they should have a major talking point for marketing EVs or batteries that aren't susceptible to runway fires.

I mean, we don't see like Tesla Model 3, Model Y fires that much these days, to be honest with you. Yeah. I think it's been a while. With either type. Yeah. All right. Carl's got a wild prediction for 2025. I predict Rivian, Aptera, Nissan, Honda merger. At least it will be acquired by Ford. GM will declare a part shortage to stop the bleeding from the large battery pickups.

Okay. Skeptic LFPs also burn long and hard. The ignition point is different. The early reports that LFPs are fireproof are mostly hype. We haven't seen one, though. Oh, I've seen videos of LFPs being punctured without igniting so that they were far long. Yeah, but that's true. It's hard to ignite an LFP cell. All variants of GM's Blazer, Polo Log, Lyric, Blazer EV, etc. are added up. Where does it rank in model sales? I mean, you could almost add the Equinox to the Blazer. It's not that different of a car in the...

So, and then the Lyric is actually a Blazer too. Oh yeah. The Lyric all black looks kind of badass. Like I saw it today. Like I was like, man, this is a good looking car all black. Yeah. And Cadillac's got two more cars we're going to look at in February. So I'm excited about that.

All right. Happy New Year, everyone. So I mentioned before that I bought a Model 3 Performance. I'm also waiting for delivery of Ford Maverick all-wheel drive hybrid. The interesting thing is that on Ford forums, I noticed that I also have a Model 3. I wonder how many Tesla owners are going for the hybrid truck because they don't want to spend more than $34,000. It is so cheap, the Maverick, for what it is. It's impressive. Yeah. It's surprising that it's not easier to...

to make an ev version yeah i mean it doesn't do as much truck things that like some of the bigger trucks obviously but it's not that far off of of a cyber truck for for a third of the price it's impressive all right we're talking about puerto rico power outage uh you know obviously tesla and other battery backups are helpful there um but unfortunately politics and corruption is terrible so

Yeah, we've heard a lot of that from Puerto Rico. It's hard to get the money to the right places, unfortunately. Spikes43 says, I know somebody got the MAP hybrid. I'm holding out hope for the next generation F-150. That's also something we should hear a lot about in 2025. So hopefully Ford has that.

Tesla should really up their delivery quality. Owners expecting issues and then having an immediate service ticket a month out isn't a great customer experience. I want to address that real quick because I'm working on a follow-up article on my R4.1 thing since I reported on that. And I'm really disappointed that not more people are reporting on this issue because it is a big issue and a lot of customers have reached out to me. And I'm trying to get an idea now of the wait time to get your new computer

Because I had some people that reached out to me and they said they were being quoted February. And now the brand new car is sitting without a working computer very well and having some serious issues. Obviously, all the features don't work, but also they are getting a 5% degradation per day when the car is not parked. 5% every day.

So people that cannot plug in all the time are kind of screwed because a few days and they can be out of power. It's a really big issue. So if you are, I know a lot of our listeners and readers bought a car in the last few months and they are in this situation. If you can reach out to me and tell me when Tesla is telling you that you're going to get your new computer, I would like to get an average on that because

It looks like it's months at times. And some consumers or some buyers are very concerned too because they are afraid that it might also result in a faster degradation of their battery period. So they have their brand new car that's getting affected like a faster wear on the vehicle. And I cannot confirm that, but I would share the concern if it was them. So yeah, if you are in this situation, you can reach out to me at fred.electric.co.

All right. We took delivery of ID Buzz on Christmas Eve. Best large family vehicle since the Mercedes R-Class. Dealers are getting them everywhere. Don't pay adjusted market value. Buying one is possible without paying that BS. Six seaters, cordons, chairs is the way to go. Loving it so far. You know, I saw a car carrier semi with a bunch of ID Buzz's. That's quite a sight.

Yeah. So they are definitely hitting the dealerships now. I guess that was coming up from Tennessee. Oh, no, I think they actually make them in Germany still. But hopefully VW gets the message like, hey, this is a big product. Make them in Tennessee. Like you get all the advantages. They've already kind of missed the boat on that. But frustrating that VW hasn't like really, you know, that's an iconic vehicle. It could be big. Yeah.

Bernie Sanders noted that 30% of new tech workers in the USA are H1Bs. He's calling for review oversight. Has he reached out to you, Fred, to learn more about whistleblowers at Tesla regarding layoffs, H1B? Has Bernie reached out to you? Have you talked to Bernie? I haven't talked to Bernie in a while. No, I love Bernie, though. He's a good guy. Yeah, that was a report that I had last week. Yeah, it's a bunch of Tesla workers that said, like, because when Elon went crazy with the HB1, like, and he...

He got a few of his newfound friends on the right pretty upset about that one. I'm not familiar with the visa system in the US, but I was looking into it and then a bunch of my sources at Tesla and former Tesla people too that were laid off earlier this year reached out to me and they're like, "Yeah, some of the people that were laid off earlier this year have been replaced."

I'm sure it's legal the way that Tesla does it. Like, it's not exactly like, oh, this American guy is let go and then they bring out someone on an HB1 visa for this specific job. It's more like a different job, but it turns out just happens that you end up with the same responsibility at the end of the day. It's something like that, obviously. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's the same thing. But my main thing that, you know, from my discussions with those people,

was that what they see as the problem is like they see people at Tesla not working exactly the way that they were a few years ago when everybody was about the mission. And Elon likes to work his worker like 60, 80 hours a week. For him, that's normal. And when people don't do that, you don't like them. And

That was something that people would do willingly when they do it for the mission. But with Elon's shift lately and the focus on FSD, rather than growing the EV business, rather than accelerating the EV adoption, backing Trump, backing the removal of the incentives, all of that, you're like, is Tesla really about the mission anymore? There's real concern about that. And it's harder if you don't have a mission statement like that to go for. It's harder to give your whole life to Tesla. Yeah.

it's a little bit easier if tesla is the sponsor of your visa and you know the the work in uh people like to point out oh we have laws in place for that you cannot it's not gonna it's not like uh what is what is the word like indented servitude uh no indentured servitude and then indentured for sure it's not like there's a lot of people criticize the h-1b visa for being close to that and um

They say we have rules in place for that and everything. I'm sure there is. But at the core of it, the way it works, from my listening for those people, Tesla and other companies, they use agencies that, you know, have linked to other countries. India is a very popular one for that because they have great school programs there and it's cheap. So, yeah, they produce a lot of great engineers and all that. And the...

They work them really hard and there is like, yeah, we have a bunch of them more coming, like a bunch of them, they're graduating and they want the visas and all that. So there's a threat of being replaced and also just simply people from other countries like India are more used to working harder because they have a six-day work week there. So that helps too, obviously. But it does put pressure on the US job market.

And I posted this article because I think it was good context within Elon, like going crazy on the H-1B visa and like...

saying F you to people that were fighting him on it on the right, saying that he's going to die on this and all that, saying that him, the reason that he is in the US and other people that build Tesla and SpaceX in the US is because of the H-1B visa when he didn't even come to the US on the H-1B visa. He came on a student visa. Like, what are you talking about? Not only that, your home brother

admitted that you and him were illegal immigrants during your Zip2 startup. As far as I know, Elon never had a work visa before that. He tried to work at a company like Netscape. He tried to work at an internet company in the 90s before starting Zip2. Didn't get the job.

Probably because of that, probably because he didn't have a visa and he didn't want to pay for it. He didn't want to do it. And then he started Zip2 illegally, apparently. And then once they got an investment, their investors are like, yeah, we should probably fix that.

That's according to his own brother, who's a board member at Tesla, by the way. So there's real concern about Elon. You cannot take what he says seriously anymore. He lies. He's a liar. All right, moving on. Spike43 says, I agree they could use this downturn to improve delivery experience and sales outreach. That's a great point. Like, hey, you're not growing. Why not fix the other stuff that you need fixing?

Instead of copping costs instead. And he also mentions, I'm excited about the charging infrastructure. That's a good point. I was thinking about that. IANA just opened its first station. I met the CEO of IANA down at the, I forget how you pronounce it. Lapterra? No, it's a charging thing from Italy.

um but anyway i met met him seems like a pretty interesting guy and looks like they're gonna iona's gonna have a pretty nice network flying j is opening stations pretty rapidly and charge providers are generally stepping up their game that's a good point 2025 might be a good year for charging infrastructure been a couple years since i had a bad charging experience that was the fault of the charge point operator

Dan overstayed, my wife bought a Lucid, so I kept her Model S instead of buying a pickup truck. That hatchback is so useful. What did you think of the hatchback on the Lucid? So the opening is problematic. I just realized my laptop is not charging for some reason.

it's plugged in that's weird i just have like five percent power but anyway uh we'll see you soon uh the opening is indeed not ideal i agree with it so you have to think about how you get things in but i ever once it is in there's plenty of room like the it's so deep like their power trains are so small

So the underneath, it's flat, so you have room for flat things. But if you open the front and the back trunk underneath, it's massive. So there's plenty of room, but the opening is problematic. I'm not going to lie. All right. Moving on. Elon's new brand is criminal. He sees the best outcome when he partners in crime. That's debatable, I guess, maybe. Hey, guys. I have a 2018 Model 3 and looking to buy a new car. Really would like your thoughts on Rivian versus Tesla.

I think you need to open up your market a little bit more. Yeah, I mean, especially if you go Rivian, you're going to go bigger, a lot bigger. There's no Rivian that's comparable to a Model 3 right now. So I don't know. I would look at a BMW i4. That's a nice vehicle. A lot of people really like those EQE, EQS from Mercedes. If you're looking at a $60,000, $70,000 car,

You know, like a nice Ioniq 5 or, you know, a Genesis if you want a better car. A lot of good options out there. I mean, Rivian's great for pickup. All right. Musk's image is tanking fast. Dave A really went off Tesla, but will miss FSD. There is a Rivian software innovation. Seems really slow. Dave A, I know exactly what you're saying about that. I have a Tesla with full self-driving. It really does help.

uh especially those like long evening things where getting kind of sleepy um and but i would say i also have a rivian and rivian is nowhere close in terms of full self-driving i was on the interstate the other day coming down from albany to the new york city area and there was some old painted lines from construction and the rivian like took the like old construction lines and basically crossed like two lanes of traffic i was like holy crap this is like really bad

So Rivian is not even close to anything in full self-driving. I mean, I would go to Mercedes or Ford, Blue Cruise, even GM Super Cruise is going to be a little bit better than Rivian right now. Rivian's got the hardware, they just don't have the software. The new hardware suite is impressive on the next-gen Rivian. But like you said, they just haven't caught up on the software just yet. Yeah.

All right. Tom, if Elon and Trump have their falling out, will Elon move out of Mar-a-Lago? And into the White House? Yeah. But a lot of people have good points about that where technically, if he becomes an official government employee at Doge, whatever you want to call it, the new department,

Can he really just still be CEO at Tesla? It makes no sense. All right. I'm just going to keep going here because we're running out of time. Which legacy automaker can you see compete with a cheap Chinese car? Maybe Hyundai Kia? Maybe GM? I don't know.

It's hard to imagine, to be honest with you. In China, no one. Tesla is the only one that had good success with the Holy Home factory and all that. Tesla did extremely well with that. That's why Elon Musk is a globalist and pro-China. There's no doubt about it because he made that happen. But

So in China, you can forget it. Outside of China, yeah, probably legacy to makers. I would agree like Hyundai, Kia, they're doing well on that front. He says every dealer here in Denver is absolutely flooded with inventory. I think it would just be Tesla and Chinese EVs in 10 years. I don't think other players will survive except for niche areas.

uh it'll be interesting to see uh i own a 2024 model 3 all-wheel drive no complaints i gotta say though i'm liking what i've seen with the full star four that's interesting i'm not supposed to drive that next month oh yeah yeah we get to hear uh if money were no issue at all i think i'd be driving a buzz too um yeah it's not cheap it's not cheap and also like the range is pretty mediocre especially for like a trip vehicle

and when i drove it the only thing i didn't like is the windshield or the view on the which is like a little bit low yeah so sometimes like if you're at the first of the stoplight like you're like you have to like do that look it's not like you all right uh stop by the ribbon factory in normal illinois last week that's a company with a mission that's more than just words on a tweet okay that's true i agree i agree uh

has anyone researched detailed elon's path from student visa to citizenship wikipedia makes it sound like he just magically became a citizen by choice which is not an option in the u.s there have been some documentaries about it it sounds like it was illegal but covered up nicely so yeah i'm sure i mean there's a famous interview with him and his brother when his brother admits it yeah and elon like he's like he's like yeah right

all right albatronics say that's what i meant make the characters and are good people that's why the iona ceo was at the albatronics thing that's a good thing we have the commenters they know more of the mess sometimes you forget a word you forget a thing like they are honest i appreciate you mike the car geek well he's a car geek so he should know

That's it for us this week. That's it for the first show of 2025. We have 51 more of these shows coming up this year. We love it when you join us. We love it when you hit the subscribe button, when you hit the like button, when you leave a comment down there. All these things are free to do, but they help more than you think. So we appreciate when you do it. And yeah, that's it for this week. We're going to see you same time, same place next week. Have a good one. Be safe out there.