Tesla discounts, Cybertruck in showrooms, Fisker Ocean, and more
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We're live for a new episode of The Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host. And as usual, I'm joined by Seth Wintraub, coming to us live from Vermont. How are you doing, Seth? I'm good.

Super. And we're going to have actually more than just us two on this podcast this week. So a special treat for you, the very elusive but very brilliant Jamie Dow is going to join us later on the show to talk a little bit about his experience with Fisker in the last – I don't know when he did that drive. It was last week, I think. No, no, no.

But the ocean and he got some time with the pear too. So he's going to give us his impression on those. If you haven't read his post about it already this week, I suggest you do because it's a lot more detailed than what he's going to have time to tell us today. But still, we're going to have a little treat at the end of the show. But

First off, we're going to join with Tesla News right after I let you know about our sponsor, VMAX. If you're looking for a high-quality e-scooter with superior performance, check out the new VX5, VX2 Pro, VX4, and the R40 and R55 i-Speed Race Scooter from VMAX. We're going to have a little bit more to say about all those beautiful models later on on the show.

But let's jump into the news this week, starting now by Tesla entering into domain trigger mode, domain levers and end of quarter push, end of the year push, really. And it's a strange end of the year for Tesla just because, you know,

Normally, the last quarter of the year is very good for sales for electric vehicles, especially now with the tax credit in place, because if you buy toward the end of the year, well, you have a lot quicker time to turn around the tax credit and get your money back.

That rather than if you buy in Q1 in a year, you won't get your money until a full year, basically. But in this case, it's a double-edged sword where you have that, but at the same time, you have the tax credit in the U.S. is going to turn into a point of sale.

tax credit next year, which is even quicker way to get your money. So you could literally buy a Tesla vehicle on January 1st and get that money the same day rather than wait for your tax return later on in the year. So it creates a very weird situation for Tesla. But as the automaker has done over the last year or so,

to create a demand when there's a situation like that, they cut prices. And we've been noticing this change in the last year also that Tesla is not just cutting prices on new orders, but there's a discrepancy now between new order prices and actually new inventory prices. Tesla sporadically put Zirec discount on new inventory vehicle, which is

a completely new approach from tesla because tesla you know muslims famously talked about like not wanting to do discounts in the past now it is doing them um

And now we're seeing them on Model 3 and Model Y new inventory in the U.S. and in Canada, too. In the U.S., it adds up to about a $3,000 discount compared to the new price. So you're basically way better off looking at new inventory than placing a new order because most likely than not, unless you have a very weird problem,

build that you're thinking about uh you're gonna find something pretty damn close to what you wanted to order in the new inventory and it's available right there so you have now like some some and those new inter-vehicle or like super low mileage sold as new so do you have access to the tax credit on it so for the model y you have you can grab some at like

$47,000 and then you have the $7,500 on top of it so it becomes like a vehicle in the $30,000 range again that is if you are eligible to tax credit not everyone is

But that's another thing too, that is like throwing a wrench into Tesla's plans with the tax credit. Everybody's plans, really. Yeah, yeah, you're right. Everybody's plan. Next year with the people that don't have the tax burden at the federal level, well, the point of sale kind of take care of that too. So some people are probably waiting for that. Maybe not for the Model Y, but for the Model 3, it's becoming cheap enough that you can have some people that don't have a $7,500 tax burden at the federal level. Yeah.

that could afford really this car, especially when you start counting the fuel savings. But at the same time, you kind of need to have that cash on hand because going with a loan is not cheap these days.

But we're also posting now there's another incentive on top of it with a new order. You get six months free of supercharging on Model 3 and Model Y. You don't even need the referral program, which was already in place before that. So if you use that, you get the six months free. Now everyone is getting six months free of supercharging, which is not bad.

A huge, extensive, honestly, unless you're like a super heavy, fast charging user. It might be worth a few hundred dollars, but most people like it's going to be like a few charges that they're going to get out of that. And that's going to be $100, $200 max. Cybertruck. Not too much Cybertruck news coming out this week.

Do you see the yellow, orange tint on the image? You see right now? It's just my screen. I think my screen is bugging out. I don't see it. It looks normal to me. You don't see it? Okay. It's my screen that's bugging out. Yeah. So two little quick tidbit of information. We saw the Cybertruck Protolite being driven into the ocean, literally, while at least on the beach. Here's the full video here. And I'm going to close. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

So Elon Musk has talked about before that he wants the Cybertruck to be able to float enough. That's a quote, enough to be able to cross rivers. And more specifically, he wanted the Cybertruck to be able to cross the little sea arm that goes across the South Texas from the Starbase to the South Padre Island. So I agree.

did the Google map on it, and it was like 1,000 feet. Yeah, 360 meter, 1,000 feet of a crossing, basically. Here you see the Cybertruck drive through the water. It's not that deep of a water on the beach. Pretty good. So some trucks still get stuck on that, like wet sand like that. So that alone is a bit impressive. But yeah, it looks like Tesla is intensively testing the scalability of crossing rivers with a Cybertruck. Now, I want to be very careful with that because...

And Ilona has talked about things like that with other Tesla vehicles all the way back to the Model S, that there's some floating capability. Like you said, we can use the wheels as thrusters in the water. Even it's act like a bolt for a little bit. But if you look at the warranty of Tesla vehicle, driving in anything more than a pool of water will, if there's damage, it would not be covered by the warranty. So, yeah.

Now, he's been pretty vocal, pretty clear about wanting the Cybertruck to have some floating capability and literally be able to cross river. If that's the case, there's a possibility that that will be reflected into the user manual and the warranty of the Tesla Cybertruck. Because otherwise, it's useless. Like you show that to people and...

It's, it's, it's, it's for, yeah. I mean, saltwater is particularly bad for steel, but I guess stainless steel is a little bit less bad for it. Yeah. But you know, salt, saltwater is horrible for batteries or, I mean, obviously they're, the box is going to be waterproof, but it's funny. Also I think BYD showed one of their vehicles going through the water this week. Oh, I missed that.

Yeah, I think Scooter did a post on that. And so, you know, obviously that was a response to this. It just it's just funny that, you know, Elon mentioned, you know, I would like the Cybertruck to behave briefly as a boat and then, you know, like and then as a submarine and then a coffin because, you know, that thing's going to sink eventually. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know what to think about that. This vehicle compared to other Tesla vehicles is meant for some off-roading at the very least. So it makes more sense that they would test the capability and they would ensure the capability. But I'll believe it when I see it on the warranty on the user manual and not Elon on Twitter.

I don't believe it'll be covered on the warranty if we're betting right now. Yeah. But at the same time, if someone were to test it and something happens and Tesla doesn't want to warranty it, a good lawyer could point to these tweets from Elon and all that. It could be an argument to be made.

For sure. All right. The other Cybertruck news this week that was interesting is that their car has shown up at showrooms. So when I reported that on the 28th, it was only two showrooms. But I noted that it might be more because we've seen a bunch of Cybertruck going all over the countries on trucks over the last week. And sure enough, since that article, it has now showed up at 11 stores and counting. It looks like and Elon said that it's going to stores all over America.

So this is a brand new strategy from Tesla. Normally before a production vehicle launch, we have not seen the vehicle at stores. I think it is very telling.

I think this is a demand incentive to the demand lever. We've noted before, closer to the original launch of the Cybertruck, obviously, that the Cybertruck was actually helpful for Tesla selling the rest of the lineup, the lineup that he could actually sell that was in production. To say the Cybertruck got a lot of attention, good or bad.

and just it brought interest into the Tesla brand in general it brought people into the stores and people are like hey these are the morons that threw a steel ball on that truck and made the news and you go in and you're like Model 3 is actually pretty good looking why? It starts at $35,000 wait a minute I don't have to pay gas anymore there's a lot of that that happened apparently and

Now Tesla looks for a second round of that, knowing that there's going to be a lot of attention on the Cybertruck this month with the launch at the end of the month. And they decided to capitalize on it by sending trucks to the showroom before the truck's even announced. So all these showrooms that you can see on the picture here, they're roped off. So the truck is completely roped off. It's like only Tesla people are around the truck and they can talk to people about it, the drivers.

They have some information, but apparently the information is literally limited to what's online already. They're not telling you any new information. Probably they don't know either. That's true. Yeah. And so don't go badger them in store about getting some new information about it. So also probably they just don't want people to peek too much into the interior, try to find new features that haven't been announced just yet.

but they're there and you can go for a little for a lot of people it's going to be the first time that you get to see one in person that you can like guarantee to see the cyber truck in person it wasn't displayed a few times at tesla events it wasn't displayed for a while at the peterson museum so if you were in la you you pay a peterson museum ticket and you guaranteed to see one but for the most part a lot of people just had to to like find one i know in uh when the

In Quebec, last weekend, a Cybertruck was spotted on the road in Quebec and all my friends were texting me like, "I want to see it in person." So you had to try to corner a prototype on the road to see it in person in a lot of places. Now, you have a dozen stores in the US where you can actually go see it in person in California, in Texas, in New York, all over the place really.

Yeah, it's surprising we haven't seen, you know, any of the stores like the, you know, some manager or cleaning crew after hours going inside it, getting some more footage. The other thing is, is it's very telling that it's it's, you know, walled off like, you

I think that has, like, they could lock the doors and have people touch the outside and stuff. But I think it's weird. But even getting into the window like that, I don't think they want that. Yeah, they don't want that. And it's kind of interesting that they don't want that because, like, what hasn't been seen that, you know, like, obviously you could go through the menu items and stuff. Yeah, I think that's one of them. Yeah.

I think just like the ranged article last weekend, last week that we discussed, I think they don't want that. People try to figure out the range based on the display. Yeah, they seem particularly upset about that one. Yeah. We've heard that some people were at their invite to the event revoked for sharing that video. We don't have that problem at the LightTrack.

Wait, didn't you get enough referrals to go? Yeah, by the time I tried to order one, it didn't work. At first, it was saying that there was some, but I kept trying to place my order for it because I specifically kept 30,000 points just for that. And it wouldn't let me buy it. And then it was completely gone within like an hour or so, a few hours. Oh, wow.

maybe we're on a blacklist or something yeah i was thinking is it like it looked like a bug to me but you never know yeah all right this is an interesting situation that's uh still developing in sweden uh there's a what looked like a pretty easy situation for tesla to squash a pretty easy union uh unionization effort to squash which this has done plenty of times in the past with uh bigger scarier unions

Now it is looking like one of the chances where Tesla could actually find themselves in trouble in Sweden. So we talked a little bit about that before. The service workers in Sweden, which is about 100 or so, 130 workers, wanted to unionize. And they went on strike. And Tesla, as usual, said, yeah, well, no. We don't want to sign any collective bargaining agreement anymore.

And there was not much happening with the negotiation. But what happened over the last few weeks, and it's been developing a lot, is that a bunch of other unions have been striking, not striking, but boycotting work related to Tesla.

in support for their service worker. Example, janitorial staff that Tesla hired separately, well, they wouldn't do their work at Tesla because in support of a service worker. The port workers at the port, if there was Tesla materials coming out, full cars, they wouldn't unload them because they are part of a union themselves. And even though they don't work directly for Tesla, they don't want to support Tesla amid the situation with the Tesla service workers.

Furthermore, now the big one this week is that and that might be like the straw that break the camel's back is that the post it's not actually the it's not like USPS. I think it's a completely separate company. It's not like a national company, but post Nord, which has the contract with the Swedish Transport Agency that issues license plates.

They have the contract to deliver them to people that buy new cars. They decided the workers are also unionized and in support, they decided when they get a plate to deliver for a Tesla owner, they won't do it. So that means that Tesla cannot fully deliver a new car if they don't have the new plate. So that is a pretty crippling one. And that's one that Elon actually commented on when someone posted the news on X.

IF Metal is the union that is behind, that is supporting the Tesla service workers. So they are the one like, it looks like they are the one organizing a lot of that, like getting those other unions to help. Elon said that this is insane. And the crazy part of this whole thing is that it looks like nothing is happening on the negotiating table because...

So Elon hasn't confirmed that himself, but apparently Tesla Sweden, which is the one that they're negotiating with the employees, said to the union that there's no point in negotiating because they were instructed by Elon Musk directly not to sign any collective agreement. So collective bargaining agreement. So what the union has said is like the last two weeks, there have been no negotiations at all because...

They were told that, so they were like, there's no point for us to go to negotiating the table if we cannot sign anything with you guys. So Inan has taken a very hard zealot stance that we're not even talking to you guys because we're never going to sign anything. And now the unions are mounting as much pressure as they can on top of straight up striking with the service workers. Yeah.

They have all these things that pile up. Now there's been another one also. Yeah, there's a supplier of Tesla in Sweden, a supplier that also is employing people that are in a union that they decided they won't supply Tesla anymore until they do sign a collective agreement. So now it could be impacting vehicles outside of Sweden because this is a supplier of Tesla parts.

So this is an interesting step. It could be an implication now beyond Sweden, which is interesting. But it will be interesting to see if Elon shows himself to be a little bit flexible now on that front because he has so far not shown himself to be flexible at all. Yeah, but I mean, the implications of giving in to the unions here are pretty big because if he shows or they show a sign of weakness, that'll empower...

theoretically other unions although i thought tesla in germany was kind of like i thought all german auto workers were in a union no no they didn't there's been an effort more recently to uh for ig metal similar to if metal uh to um to unionize the factory and there was a thousand worker that did a little protest apparently but i don't think they have signed an agreement just yet well anyway i mean obviously the united auto workers in the u.s are super into uh

getting Tesla unionized and Toyota and the other foreign automakers. Yes, since the big gains last month. If Tesla gives in in Sweden, it's going to be a bad sign for that. On Tesla's side, it might be a good sign for the world, but we'll see. Yeah.

All right, next news. I mean, Jamie just joined in in the background for you guys. So he's not right here and we were going to bring him for the Fisker stuff, but actually it might be relevant to bring him now for this next piece of news because we're talking about the Roadster. And it was an interesting move down this week where Elon announced that Tesla is open sourcing all the design and engineering behind the original Roadster.

They released, I mean, the service manuals and all that were already available. They are available for all Tesla vehicles. So that's not new. So the only real new things that they release is some documents, some R&D documents that are portraying mostly to, I can show you here, the...

Battery monitoring board, HVAC controller, vehicle display system, diagnostic software. So it's the diagnostic software is obviously very useful, but the rest, it's like it's not that much. So it's not clear why they've done that exactly. I don't know if it's like a signal that they won't be servicing the Roadster in the future or if it's something where they want to help create some kind of replica parts market or not. But I would love to have Jamie's take on this. How are you doing, Jamie?

Hey, doing okay. Had a good Thanksgiving. Had some pie for breakfast today, which is always my favorite thing because I made too many pies. Yeah. So I think, honestly, I think the reason behind this is just because they don't want to service roadsters, you know, and if they put as much data as they happen to have out there, that the roadster community, which is, you know, significant and full of

technologically inclined people, um, can build something. Uh, you know, maybe we can reprogram the VDS system or something like that. They've already done a lot of cool stuff like, um, OVMS. There's this phone app that you can use to connect and control everything on a car from 2008 before that even happened, you know? So, uh, people have already done a lot of work, um, to do roadster mods and things like that. And, um,

I think it'll be cool to see if anyone can come up with anything out of this. Yeah. There's a couple of third parties that do that, like Uber motors and what's that outfit in Seattle that kind of, uh, it's, Oh geez. Wheeler and sons. No. What's his name? Um, sorry, I put you on the spot there. Uh, I've met the guy, uh, um,

And Medlock and Sons. That's his name. Carl Medlock. So basically, they're just handing it off to third parties. Sure. Yeah. And another cool thing is Tony Williams down in San Diego with Quick Charge QC Power has a Chottimo adapter for the Roadster.

which is kind of neat and weird. So you can actually fast charge a Roadster on a Chattamo, which of course there aren't any more of. You're barely any more of, but he does have a mod available. Well, what kind of, what kind of charging speed you get on that? I'm not sure what the charge speed is on it. 50 kilowatts is the usual Chattamo. Yeah. That's, I think that it'll do that. And the thing is it's a 53 kilowatt hour battery. So, you know, that's, yeah.

That's pretty nice. What kind of range do you still get on your Roadster right now? Well, I just charged it up today. I'm going to a Friendsgiving, and it's reading 160, I think, miles. I didn't give it a full charge, though. I can probably get it up to 170 or 180. Are you still on your original battery on that? Yeah, original battery. 15-year-old battery. Yeah, people talk about...

I don't have that many miles. I don't drive it that much. So 32,000 or so. Yeah. Still. But it's 15 years old. Yeah. Yeah. Mileage is definitely a bigger factor than age, but age is a significant factor as well. So probably second biggest. Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, we'll keep you on for the next few news item we want to discuss before we jump into your review of the Ocean and then the pair. Well, the pair is hands-on, not a review, but still valuable information. Yeah.

All right. Next piece of news, we want to discuss the congestion fee. This is a bit of a controversial issue. We talked about it a few last month, really, when Greens spotted the details on the beta of the app, on the Tesla app. But now it was officially launched. We have all the details. The main difference is the state of charge where the fees are.

start to get into play, 90% of 80%, and we also have the actual cost of it here. So the congestion fee will replace the idle fee where it applies, which the criteria are pretty simple. It's like the supercharger has a congestion fee, the supercharger is busy, and then your vehicle battery is already at or above their congestion fee. And the only thing that was announced in the U.S.,

And that the level is set as 90%, like I just said, and the fee is a dollar per minute. So basically, once you hit the 90% charge at a supercharger that has the fee, and apparently that's going to be shown on the screen when you arrive at the supercharger, or when you click on the supercharger in the map in the navigation system, and then you arrive there, and if you set your charge at more than 90%,

Once you get a 90%, you will be charged $1 a minute. And if you know, like the last 10% is a lot harder, a lot longer to get. So that might be like a few minutes that you have to, quite a few minutes that you have to stay there. But there's also a five-minute grace period. So I don't know exactly what that means. So that means like the first five minutes after you hit 90, you won't get charged. I assume that's what it would mean. Sounds right. He said it's 92%.

So you have $5 basically less if you want to get to 100%. So I've not charged a lot, 100% as supercharger, if ever, I think. Because normally you're better off if you're doing a long distance travel, you're better off not charging that last 10% and just

get to the next station instead at the lower set of charge you're going to charge faster so it to me it's not that big of a deal but i after writing that article i got quite a few people reaching out that were like upset about this especially folks that still have like the unlimited supercharging thing like where supercharger is supposed to be free at all time and the idle fee people i think were a lot

more understand understanding of the idle fee because it's when the car is idle it's not even charging so it's not a parking spot obviously it is a charging station so you should be charging when you're using it but this is actually while still charging i don't know what you guys think about this yeah i mean if you're trying to get to 100 like if you're for instance at a

If you're doing street parking and you need to charge up a gas station or if you're eating dinner. Anymore, I go to a charging station and it charges too fast. I'm not done eating

before I have to go back out and move the car. So what I used to do before this was just set it to 100, and then it would charge slowly, and I would get like 87% or something by the time we were done eating and go out to the car. But now this kind of dials that back a little bit. Yeah. I would even be at dinner. I'm the same way. Sorry. I would even be at dinner. It was already set at 90% or 80% or whatever, and then when I realized that, oh, shit.

I'm going to, if we're going to finish charging before I finish, I would use the app to, to increase it right there. And like that would give me the time save. Yeah. Yep. Same thing. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't really mind this too much. I feel like it, it takes a long time to get to 90% anyway, because you know, it'll get to 80% pretty quick, but that next 10% takes a while. And then

Uh, whenever I'm supercharging, it's usually on a road trip or something. Uh, in which case there is a bit of an incentive to get up and get out and start going. So I'm not sitting around for a long time. Yeah. And this isn't going to be everywhere. So like theoretically, this is only going to be where like superchargers are full or getting full. So, you know, getting people to move along. Yeah. I don't, I don't mind this. I feel like most places that in that institute something like a congestion fee, like, uh,

For example, city centers in Europe, they have these congestion fees where, you know, you have to pay more money if there's too many cars around. It's like they get protests immediately, but they're also extremely effective. This is a relatively low cost. Well, I mean, a dollar per minute is quite a chunk, but, you know, it's not really going to kill people if you go a few minutes over and yet...

uh, it will definitely make sure that people don't just sit there hogging a supercharger all day long and blocking it for several people, you know? Yeah. And we also have to note that the timing of this is coming at the same time as Tesla is opening the supercharger to non Tesla EVs. And Tesla has a lot less control on, on the charging session time for those because they don't have as much data on how long it takes to charge a,

tycan for example the last 10 and they can't send you a text message either yeah that's a good point yeah maybe they should be a system for that there could be a notification in the app okay and the one but that that's oh yeah no yeah you're right because you have to use a tesla app yeah for non-tesla so yeah they could be sending you a message through that yeah yeah because that that's uh definitely a big difference maker

All right, guys, you want to do the read? Yeah, we have a few more news items. Let's talk a little bit about VMAX before moving on. All right, today's episode is sponsored by VMAX Mobility Inc., one of Europe's largest leading e-scooter brands. The brand was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Switzerland. After eight years of growth in Europe, VMAX e-scooters are now available in North America. VMAX UL certified e-scooters offer exceptional performance and reliability with a motor battery controller system

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Visit vmax-escooters.us and use the promo code vmaxelectrek for an exclusive offer for a limited time. Thanks again for vmax for sponsoring and hit up the link in our show notes. Yes, thank you, vmax. All right, next piece of news that we want to discuss with you guys is a quick one here. You know what I'm talking about?

Tesla possibly investing in XAI. So a few weeks ago, we talked about this weird situation that Elon had with OpenAI, Tesla's AI effort, and then XAI, because originally he officially removed himself from OpenAI because of a conflict of interest between Tesla and OpenAI, because he believed that Tesla was making money

AI inferred that was bigger than just self-driving. He even at one point mentioned that he believed that Tesla could contribute to AGI, artificial general intelligence.

So then I gave, so sounds good for Tesla investors. Elon's going to focus the AI effort at Tesla instead of spending his time with OpenAI. I kept saying that Tesla has the biggest, the best AI team in the world. But then out of nowhere, he starts his own AI startup called XAI.

And even starts recruiting from Tesla's team of AI researcher. But he did say at first, oh, don't worry, Tesla's going to benefit from XAI. And what we learned, the first benefit, if you can call it that, is that the Grok, which is the first product out of XAI, which is a...

language model it's basically some kind of AI assistant it's going to be integrated into Tesla vehicles we have yet to see that but there was indication of that in the beta version of Grok I think that's how you pronounce it right Grok I've only seen it written I've never heard anyone say it and yeah so now the second thing that just came out is that Elon said that he's going to suggest to the Tesla board to invest in

XAI, which creates even more shenanigans between all of Elance's companies. It did say that Twitter or XCorp now it's called, are going to own 25% of XAI.

And now it's not exactly clear how Tesla is going to fit into that picture, what kind of percentage, if any, they're going to get into the ground floor of XAI. But it does muddy the water in terms of like, so Elon sold his Tesla stocks to buy Twitter. And then now, obviously, that affected the stock negatively directly through selling billions of dollars worth of share, but also indirectly through Elon's

having making a mess of the whole Twitter acquisition to start with affecting the brand and all that and now Tesla somehow is going to get involved into X directly or indirectly however you want to call it through a partnership with XAI and

So we have this whole situation to unload basically. So I don't know if you guys have any thoughts on that. Yeah, I mean, I have a lot of thoughts on it. First of all, if I'm a Tesla investor and I am a little bit, both through mutual funds and I've held onto some shares over the long term, I'm a little pissed, right? Like Elon's been selling, like Tesla's got the best AI in the world and Tesla's going to do AGI and

built in. And now he started a company outside of Tesla and he's taking all of the Tesla employees out of there, like supposedly like the best in the world are moving out of Tesla. So like your Tesla investment is now outside of the company. And then Tesla wants or Elon saying that, hey, Tesla is going to spend money at XAI and

And theoretically, XAI is spending money at Twitter for their Grok language model. They're supposedly using the data and I'm assuming that's not free. They're going to have to pay for that. So in a way, Tesla is giving a lot of money to Twitter through this XAI intermediary.

it all sounds like shenanigans to me. Like I w if I was Tesla's board and you know, it Tesla's board is like a bunch of Elon's friends and his family. So I don't know if that's going to mean anything, but, uh, I don't think I would be okay with that. I think I would be a little pissed that even asked for it and even more pissed that a bunch of Tesla employees are going to XAI. Yeah. And I think this is nothing new for Elon Musk run companies. You know, there's a lot of, uh,

Right. Right. Right.

Yeah, it's a great word. I love using it whenever possible. And this is a great use case. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's a waste of $44 billion to chase nothing or, well, to chase...

I'll keep that off the podcast. It's for free speech. It's for free speech. Yeah. Oh, sure. Yes, of course. The free speech of a specific set of people. Anyway, yeah, he's just, you know, he's definitely been distracted with things that are not really benefiting his companies, I think. And right now, you know, AI is the tech buzzword. Everyone's got to pretend they're getting in on it, whether they are or not.

you know, pretend that they have baby AGI when their car drives about as well as a baby. You know, so I don't know what all this is about, but I feel like I would prefer that not to happen and that Tesla, you know, build cars and do what it's supposed to do and have, have the right team for building cars and for doing AI as it pertains to self-driving. But, but all this other stuff, you know,

Twitter AI in cars, that doesn't sound like anything I want to have happening. Yeah, that makes sense. It should make sense to, well, I know I will talk about self-driving and AI. I didn't add that to the post because I posted actually after writing the podcast post. But Elon just confirmed that V12 FSD is moving from engineering testing to Tesla employee testing.

which is normally the last step before going to the customer beta fleet, which is not really a real... Everyone is beta right now, so all the customers are going to get it roughly around the same time. So he's basically indicating to us that he's going to keep his promise of getting us a V12 before the end of the year, even though that promise has shifted because as of a few months ago, the promise was actually tested to achieve...

true full self-driving by the end of the year. Now it's getting V12, which he said that V12 is not going to be better. So it's going to be out of the better. But he never even said what that means, being out of better. Does it mean that you don't

The driver doesn't have responsibility anymore. Tesla taking the responsibility. You don't have to monitor the system. You can get your hands off. You can go to sleep. Like, what does that mean? By the way, I don't think it means any of that. So don't take no for an answer to that. I'm just like, what does it mean to be out of beta? But V12, for those not aware, the biggest change in V12 is neural nets end-to-end, which means like right now the neural nets are for the computer perception part of it, the image recognition.

But when it's time to input vehicle control, that's hard coded by engineers. So based on we get that information while you do that. Now it's the neural net. So it's the AI that actually takes those decisions based on training. And the idea behind that is that now you can train it over time to get better with more data coming in.

So there's hope that V12 is going to improve a lot faster than previous versions because before that, the neural nets were improving just...

on the vision sides of things. And I'm a little bit awful on that front because I've always said that when it comes to full self-driving, the thing that impressed me the most with Tesla is the vision part. The car seems to be able to recognize its environment fairly well based on the visualization that you get on the screen. It looks like Tesla understands where the road is, where you can drive, where you cannot drive.

where the cars are, where the pedestrians are, the cyclists too, more recently have been doing well on that, motorcyclists also. But it's the decision-making, Jamie just said it, it's drive like a baby. I've been a little bit more gracious on that front. I've been seeing a 13-year-old that's just learning how to drive and sometimes does hard drugs too. Yeah.

Yeah, the drunk teenagers. Yeah, drunk or hard drugs is definitely relaxed. So maybe now they upgrade it to instead of doing heroin on the days, doing crystal meth a little bit. It's actually a little bit more active when doing it. They switched the drugs. Yeah, they switched the drugs. Maybe it's a 14-year-old now instead of a 13-year-old, but still not even driving age. But really, I'm sure that V12 is going to bring improvement.

improvements and it's most likely gonna also bring a higher a faster rate of improvements but really what I want to know is what's the plan exactly to actually deliver on the promise like so what's what's gonna be the plan with the regulators but like showing the data

We should try to talk to people that were behind the Mercedes thing. Ask them about the actual regulatory process to get that level three. I know that Tesla doesn't want to do level three, but I have an intuition that Tesla is going to begrudgingly end up doing a level three because that's going to be the only thing that's going to be somewhat easy to get approved. I don't know. It's just an intuition that I have.

Yeah. Also, I would say that this beta has taken a long time. I don't know if it's just it feels like it, but like this, this version, I know it's, you know, a big step change. It seems like it's been months. Usually these things come, you know, a couple weeks to a month at a time.

I think the idea behind that with this one is like, I don't think Tesla wanted to spend too much time upgrading V11. And they were like very focusing on V12, but also like fixing any type of bug in V11. So I think they were balancing the two, like let's make sure that we get V11 at a stable level. Because it's a one step forward, two step back type of thing sometimes. Yeah.

And then at the same time, they were working on V12, which is kind of a new model entirely. So I don't know. It's a weird one. Yeah. All right. We got a few more news items to discuss, but I forgot to tell you guys, if you want to ask us questions, you can put them in the comment section right now. I think we have a problem with Facebook today. Like we don't have as many people watching and commenting right now because I think we're not on Facebook for some reason. But if you're on YouTube, you can put in a comment section right now. You can ask us a question about whether what we are discussing today is

or any kind of a subject in the EV world that you want us to discuss. And if you have any question for Jamie on the ocean and the pair, that would be the time to ask before the end of the show so that he can answer it to you guys live.

Before we move to the ocean, a quick note. There was an interesting report from Goldman Sachs striking battery prices. They track battery pack prices, though, not battery sell. I thought it was an interesting approach here because I put a grain of salt on the old thing because I think battery sell prices will be a little bit easier to track. Battery packs, there's a lot more variant, a lot more different things that people do. The pack part of...

of is not as big as the cell part obviously but I think it's the more the one that varies the most depending on how like a leaf factory pack for example without active um cooling and eating that could cost a fraction of a pack from Tesla example not accounting for the the cell price but anyway

So we've seen a clear trend over the years of battery prices going down, but that changed in 2022, 2023 due to inflation and the price of, especially the price of specific metals like lithium that shot up like crazy. Nickel also with the war in Ukraine, there was a giant spike in nickel.

But these have stabilized lately. And now in 2023, we've seen a reduction versus the 2022 prices based on this Gumbel-Sack report. And now they track a giant, they predict a giant decrease in price in 2024, going down to $120 per kilowatt hour, which...

oh some big sounds here i don't know why um and then uh after that it's gonna slow down the the rate of the uh price drop but still a little bit all the way down to the tracking it uh to be at 80 dollars per kilowatt hour in 2028 which is uh insane to me because i think right now like the price per kilowatt hour for the cell is offering around a hundred dollars per kilowatt hour so they think that that's gonna go down and also battery pack level going down

uh for them yeah i'm not yeah go ahead jimmy i'm i'm not hugely surprised by the drop in uh prices because lithium was went up like three or four x or something like that uh in 2022 and i think literally everybody involved in the lithium in the metals industry was like oh yeah this is gonna go down this is just like a a bump in the road and then it did

So, you know, this huge drop in battery prices this year and next year, it just seems like it's it was obviously going to happen because there was just a really short term increase. Yeah, I mean, we see so lithium is most in the cathode, I think.

if I'm not mistaken. And you see that the cattle pricing here is one of the big difference going from 2023 to 2024. So obviously the price drop that you just mentioned already happened, but that's always reflected into the actual overall cost just because of pricing agreement between the mining companies and the companies that process the lithium and the companies that actually sell you the cell and whatnot.

All these things take time to actually factor into overall pack level cost, which is what we're discussing here. And I think if I recall correctly, a bunch of experts have said that gas cars and electric cars reach price parity when the pack goes below $100 per kilowatt hour. I thought it was cell level, but I think you might be right. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah.

I think that whole price parity thing is a weird conversation anyway. Cause like, if you look at the Tesla model three right now or the Chevy bolt, like Chevy bolts already under 20 grand after credits, the Tesla model three, you can lease for $329 a month. Like,

Those are very competitive prices versus any gas car that's comparable. So it's like, I just think the conversation of price parity and battery packs is so important.

I don't know. It's boring to me. Just look at the Tesla Model 3, look at a BMW 3 Series and see which one you like better and then buy the Model 3 because it's a better car. To your point, with the pack level prices, so right now, 2023, they put them about $150 per kilowatt hour. Well, that's the average. So some of them are going to be much lower than that. Some of them are much higher than that. So yeah, there's probably plenty of them that are already at cost parity for cars.

if you have an exactly comparable gas model, which is rarely, if ever, the case. I think it's my power rolls right now are making like a crazy sound. Like a venting sound like crazy. It's weird. And are they on? Yeah, check it out. I didn't even... I lost power earlier today for a second.

No, they say they're 85%. That'd be cool if power went out everywhere in your neighborhood and we were just podcasting through it. That happens all the time. Not podcasting, but it happens all the time just in general. In the winter here, we lose a lot of power just for a small period of time. It's weird. Tiny little brownouts. But Powerwalls have been great for that.

All right, so you recently had the chance to test drive the Fisker Ocean.

I did. So we're getting a lot of people ask us about that vehicle. And we always just sit and I respond based on what we know, based on the spec and everything. But you have actual experience inside the car. So I know if you guys have read the post about it, and if you haven't, you should because it's a very extensive post. But give us like the short version of it with your experience, your general impression of the car.

Yeah, I mean, it's I know it's a long post. And the funny thing is, I cut like two entire sections. It's still 3700 words. And I feel like I could have gone further. But yeah, it's interesting because, you know, in terms of specs, in terms of price, it's a really a

attractive, um, setup. You know, it's a good, good sized car for people who like SUVs, which I'm a small car guy, but, um, this, this fits in sort of the, uh, Range Rover sport territory, like that size and that look.

And it's really tall, which I know a lot of people like to sit up tall. I used to be one of the people who likes to sit up tall. And it really does give you a great presence on the road. It looks good. I showed it at a car show. That picture right now on the screen is at a small car show. Not a lot of people were out because it was raining. And people seem to like it. You know, everyone thought it was a pretty attractive vehicle.

Uh, but when you get down into the software and the drive experience, I just don't think it's all there yet. Um, it, it really does feel like the car needs a little more time to bake. Um, cause the software is just not that great. Um, it, it's really, uh, choppy right now. Uh,

And, you know, using the maps doesn't quite work very well and everything. So the organization of the software is fine. It's just the performance is not very good. And then I think that also applies to a lot of the drive experience. A lot of stuff just felt kind of loose. The accelerator wasn't as responsive as I'd like. I think that was an intentional mistake.

decision by them. But because, you know, one thing with electric cars is when you have a passenger and you really jump on the accelerator and it's a very quickly responding accelerator that can make the passengers a little bit sick. So a lot of manufacturers add a little bit of a delay there to kind of ease in. But

With the Ocean, no matter what drive mode I was in, the Earth, Hyper, or Fun mode, Earth, Fun, and Hyper in that order, no matter which one, it was just really kind of slow. And then this video that you're showing right now, which is showing up a little bit choppy if you look at the post, it's smoother, is showing one of the fun features they have. They have these taco trays, right?

uh, which you can, you know, eat on. It's like a, like a airline armrest tray. Uh, and you can put your, you know, your food on there. You can watch a video while you're doing it on the, um, the front screen, which you can put into Hollywood mode, which turns it sideways so that it's like YouTube landscape format.

So, yeah, it's got some neat stuff like that. The California mode where all the windows open. Can you drive also like that? You can drive with the... You can't drive with it horizontal. And that's something that a lot of people ask, too. I actually think it looks better horizontal. It should just stay horizontal all the time. Yeah, because you saw the navigation on it, too, on the left side and everything. Yeah, exactly. But as soon as you put it into drive,

it'll go back or it won't let you put it into drive and then you press it twice and it'll let you put it into drive and it'll automatically put it back. And I think that's an optional feature. It's on the extreme trim. I don't think the sport trim will have that. But yeah, they said that the vertical screen, apparently, you know, the important information is more within your field of view when you glance over, which I think is true, but

They could have just taken the whole screen and put it horizontal and kind of lifted it up a little bit so it was closer into the field of view. There it is comparing to a Model Y. The Model Y seems like it has a little bit easier cargo space to load things into. Definitely a bigger opening for sure.

much bigger opening, lower load floor, and it has more space in the area underneath the load floor. You know, that little secret compartment. There's a bigger secret compartment under there. The ocean seems like it would have a taller cargo area. And I think it kind of does because it's a boxier shape. But

the opening aperture, there's like a cowling there so that the opening aperture isn't actually larger. So, uh, it would be hard to, to put things, uh, into the vehicle. I think it's 26 inches tall. I don't know. I measured it with measuring tape, so it might not have been exactly right anyway. Yeah. So it's, uh, I think it's a vehicle that just needs a little more time. Uh, I don't,

I don't want to call it bad or great. I want to say that it's something that definitely could become better in the next year or so. So I was thinking, obviously Fisker with his previous startup had some issues with manufacturing, engineering part of things. And this time around, people are

were a lot more hopeful with magna being involved in the manufacturing so does it and now you come out and you say like it's a great car but the software uh is a big issue right now almost sounds like magna was so efficient in bringing that car to production uh that it was too fast for fisker's own engineering team which i assume was in charge of software that they could not be ready for it and

That doesn't sound like that big of a problem. Like you said in your post, most of these things can be fixed with software updates. But at the same time, it's not that hopeful, the situation with the part that Fisker was the one responsible of didn't deliver on is a little bit worrying to me.

Yeah, no, it's there. It is a little bit worrying for sure. But the nice thing is Magna Magna made a car that that seems to work, you know. And one thing you don't want is you don't want to have hardware problems because hardware problems are hard to fix. Software problems in traditional automakers are just as hard to fix. But in, you know, us new age EV startups, yeah.

uh they're a lot easier to fix and i've been through this before with with cars that had uh incomplete software you know with the early model 3 and with early model s uh they did get better you know uh and i think that's that's worth recognizing here um there are a few problems i think that that either fisker won't fix or can't fix um it is

pretty inefficient, at least in practice. I got way less range and way less efficiency than I expected to get. Part of that is because I was driving in hyper mode, but I wasn't slamming the accelerator. I drove in hyper mode because earth mode was bad. It's just so laggy. The throttle is... I just couldn't drive it. I couldn't deal with it. That's with the X3 model, too. Yeah, but...

The earth mode is like the eco mode and they put a big old delay in the pedal and all that stuff. I think their choices to make it more, more efficient. We're not necessarily the right choices because they just sort of limit the drive experience. So over 135 miles on this, you average 533 watt hours per mile, which is for a vehicle of that size. It's pretty bad. Yeah. That's what I get on a Rivian. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. It's, I mean, it, it, it should be more efficient than that. Uh, it is still an SUV, a big boxy SUV, but, uh, it, you know, it's the size of a model Y, so it really shouldn't, um, be that inefficient, even though the model Y lies about its efficiency. Uh,

all right so if anyone that has not read the post you should check it out jamie has a ton of information including a bunch of lists of every specific issues that you had with the software so i think it's a it's a good if if you're someone that is interested in uh in the ocean you won't be like necessarily i won't i don't want an ocean after that post but at least you will go into it knowing exactly uh what kind of issue to expect

And then if you are someone that's confident that Fisker will fix those issues, then you should feel pretty good about getting into an ocean. The only thing I would add to that is like, financially speaking, Fisker is not in awesome health. Right. So you have to factor in a potential benchmark.

And I'm not saying that they are about to get bankrupt, but it's trending that way. No doubt they're going to need to raise more money. So they probably can raise more money. So you're good at that. But like how much time you can do that. Obviously, the same things were said about Tesla back in the day and look at them now. But it is still there's you cannot ignore that there's a percentage risk of that happening. So you have to factor that in. Yeah, I will say two quick things on that. Yeah, go for one.

They say they're making money on the cars that they make. They are. They are. Deposits of gross margin. They report deposits of gross margin. Yeah. That is good. And number two, um,

The experience of owning an early car, if that's the kind of thing that you like, you know, it is kind of it was kind of fun to be like an early Model 3 owner or to be there in the early Model S days where you really could just talk to the company and be like, hey, I want to fix this. And they'd be like, OK, cool. Well, we'll put that feature in and we'll name it after you. You know, like if you're that kind of person, maybe this is the right time. But definitely take a test drive and see if you can. Yeah, that's not bad. Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, when you're on the street, people will be like, what the hell is that thing? Yeah, we got I got stopped. So just I had it for a day and everywhere I was going, people were looking at it. It's not that conspicuous of a vehicle, but a lot of people were like, what's that new car or oh, that's the new fixer fisker. I had, you know, several people stop me and say the same thing. And I wasn't even out for that long. So.

And then the other one that you got to see is the Pear, which is the smaller, cheaper model that is going to follow the ocean relatively soon, I think, right? 2025.

Well, you know, that's what they say. But hey, they got Fisker. They got the ocean out pretty quick, too. So it's entirely possible. And this is a much improved version compared to the one that I saw just months ago where I didn't get to sit in it, but I did kind of glance through the window at the interior or someone opened the door and I looked in and wasn't supposed to. But yeah, it was great. It felt great. It feels very sort of EX30 or Chevy Bolt like in terms of being like

a smaller, you know, cheap workhorse vehicle. That's just still, uh, cute and fun and usable. And, um, I was very impressed. And it's funny cause I, I wrote home, uh, with a couple of the other journalists. Um, and they were saying the same thing. They were like, Hey, is it,

Is anyone else more excited about the pair than the Ocean? So I think we all were very impressed by it. Of course, it's still a prototype, but yeah, it looked pretty cool. Sorry, I was trying to mute it at the same time, and then the screen jumped out. It's not responding. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Got it. Yeah, this video function that we have on the side is not the best. Yeah.

Well, I think my computer and or my screen is also like screwing up right now. So I'm going to stay away from the videos. Away from the video, yeah. Yeah, the picture is a bit of the interior here. So what's that right here? Is that the instrument cluster? It almost looks like it's flat to the dash.

Yeah, so that's just a prototype so far. That's not the actual thing. But they say they're going to make the cluster look like that, where it's in the dash instead of on a screen off of it. And I think that's really cool. It's still a screen. Yeah, but it's not going to be like a separate screen. It's going to be sort of a lit up...

sort of semi-transparent plastic, I think that they're going to use. Okay. I don't know. It, it looks really neat, but it's still a prototype. So we'll have to see how it turns out. Um, yeah, exactly. Uh, so it, it was painted on for us, but, uh, I want to see how that turns out. Cause it seems like a really neat design to me. I really like that sort of as a compromise between the, the Spartan dash, which I like, I like the Spartan dash and the, um,

And having the information there, which of course is useful to have. And then you still have, it's a five seater. You have a little storage space in the back here.

Five-seater, they say there's going to be a six-seat with a bench seat in front where they're going to take out the center console and have a six-seat option. That's interesting. I haven't seen that. I don't think any car has that. The Cybertruck was supposed to, and then they took it out. Right. Yeah, because the center console is not actually a console. It's just an armrest. There's a little bit of space underneath it. And then they have this Houdini door in the back, which is...

over engineered and honestly unnecessary um it looks what does it do again i remember them showing it at the uh fisker day but uh yeah so it's like the ocean uh rear window where the rear window rolls down but then also the rest of the door rolls down into the body vehicle yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna try the video real quick we'll see if it works i don't know if i had it has audio on there okay yeah

Yeah, so this is it going up. So basically you don't have... Can you just open it normally too? Or is that the only way to open it? No, it only goes up and down. There's no like... So you don't have that secret space that we just discussed in the ocean and then another line. Right, because the door is going to fold down in there. Which, that's the problem. It's going to be a mechanical problem. You know what I mean? Like...

I don't see how that's easier to repair or easier to make work than a just a regular old door with those, you know, air air pumps in them.

And then it's also going to have a frunk that Fisker is calling a fruit because he wants to be something other than what Tesla calls it. And it's going to be like a drawer in the front, but we didn't get any pictures of that. But they say that that's going to have they're going to be able to put climate controls in there in case like delivery people want to use it for pizzas or something, which would be kind of neat.

but also sort of unnecessary. Like they already have bags for that. So why? That's true. All right. The last piece of news that we're going to discuss real quick. Um, we've been there, but I see we have a few comments right now, but not that many. And I'm sure it's because of that Facebook thing that happened. But, uh, if you guys have any questions, people are also just doing family stuff because of Thanksgiving. Yeah. Yeah. We do have a fewer live viewers than we usually do, but, uh,

Anyway, if you guys have any questions, we have just two minutes to put them in before we move on. But you have some time. So we've been discussing in the last few weeks the crews being in kind of a shambles with first, well, first the accidents happened. And then they got their permits revoked from the California DMV, stop operation California, then stop operation, what?

Sorry, when I say operation, I mean actual test driving on the road. I stopped operation everywhere last few weeks.

And obviously, when things like that happen, you would expect some heads to roll at some point. And now it's happening with Kyle Lott, which is the original co-founder of the company and was made CEO even through the transition with GM. And now is gone. He quits. So this is the latest development in the saga that is Cruise.

There was also a thing last week that we didn't talk about, but I think GM sort of like now took completely over Cruise. It was like its separate entity and now it's become like an actual division of GM, which I don't know how much that makes a difference because GM was like the majority owner already of it. I know there was like an outside investor, like the giant Japanese fund, that thing. Yeah.

SoftBank was an investor. SoftBank doesn't have the best track record. No, they like huge investments and they don't always pay off. They made a ton on Alibaba and I think since then they've been over. They did WeWork and that was not great. That's a flop. Seth, we can look at a few questions we have here and then that's going to be it. All right.

First question, Dan Overstay, Tesla's big hammer that they could use to prevent unionization was their stock option offer. They could withdraw. Isn't as valuable as it was years ago. Stock stagnation could hurt them these days. Thoughts on that?

The other thing is they don't have to not give stock options to you. There's no reason that union employees can't get stock options. They say that, but that's just you saying that you don't want to do it. It's literally like them saying, we're going to take away bathrooms. They shouldn't do that, but they can. I think that comes from Elon's head. There's a clear...

demarcation between owners and unions. It's either adversarial or you're with us or without us. And if it's a union, you're not with us. So why would you be an investor? Which is obviously the thing that hits in his head because there's plenty of unions that work

I mean, in the US, we have less of a story of that, but other places in the world, there's been a more harmonious relationship between unions. And I say that right now, we have a giant strike right now. All public workers are striking. But it happened. Yeah. There are also companies that are employee coops where the employees are the owners. So it's not like a thing that can't happen. But to Dan's point, though,

Yeah, I mean, the stock stagnation is a weapon that the union can use now amid the situation. It's like, all right, if you guys were counting on your stock option as a significant part of your compensation, and now it's not anymore, there's no... I mean, it could still be like a 10X at Tesla, but if there is, it's probably going to be the long term compared to what it was before. So...

Yeah, they can use that as a weapon. It's like, I'm about to get some good working condition and 401k and all that instead. None of that they don't get. And that has always buoyed Tesla's argument of like, we pay more than everybody else does. Well, the reason is because you're counting stock options and the stock options went up a thousand percent. And if they don't go up a thousand percent, then that changes the calculus. Yeah.

At the same time, you have to admit that there's something cool about some. There have to be some production workers at Tesla that became millionaires from that, which is a pretty cool idea. Yeah. I mean, retail employees. Yeah. We know a few. Tyler. All right. Tyler Hilliard says, in my opinion, for this to be fair, and I think we're talking about the idle fees. Yeah, the congestion fees.

Yeah, congestion fees. It should only charge if the station is actually full, not just determined busy. Yeah, I guess it's a gray area because you don't want people staying at a place that could turn into a full place. Yeah, and they didn't specify that exactly. They just say it is busy and it has congestion fees. So yeah, Tyler might have a point there.

All right. We have a big anti-union guy, David WS, saying Tesla should not give in to any union. All right. Mr. Turkey Neck brings up a good point. Do any of you guys have a comment before Ford and GM backing off previously announced production numbers, release dates, budgets, new manufacturing operations, et cetera? And why is this happening at the present? Yeah. I mean, we've talked, you know, kind of back channel about like this being a really like

I don't know, short sighted, like a really short sighted move by both Ford and GM. And I mean, like when you think about it,

Tesla dropping its prices quite a bit may have been the catalyst for this because the Blazer SS and the Equinox aren't going to be super competitive against the Model Y. The Mach-E is not as competitive against the Model Y that costs $20,000 less than it did this year last time or whatever. So,

you know i don't know if this is tesla's low prices or what but like this is very short-sighted yep i you know i had a conversation with um he is communications manager at the la auto show and they're one of the few companies that hasn't done this that has said no we're going to keep building and um he said that he thinks it's a uh sort of a litmus test for whether people are actually paying attention to the numbers or just reading headlines

whether people think that electric car sales have gone down or are having trouble. Because if you look at all the sales numbers, everything year over year is up about the same amount year over year as it was last year and the previous year, you know, COVID notwithstanding, because there's been a lot of

fluctuations due to that. I think just the fact that there's so many more models out now, you're seeing a lot of models competing for the same amount of buyers. You're also seeing the effect of interest rates, the effect of Tesla price cuts, the effect of

you know, the Model 3 Highland coming out, the effect of the new tax credits changing in the middle, in the beginning of the year, the effect of everyone switching to NAX and maybe people want to put off a year for NAX. There's just so many different things happening right now in the electric car market that anyone who says, oh, you know, people don't want as many electric cars as we thought they would is just not paying attention. And anyone who doesn't invest now

Three years from now, they're going to be screwed. I think everything you said is correct. And then you add to that also in the U.S. market, the tax credit. It was the first year of the reform tax credit. And there was a lot of weird things that happened, like the Model 3. We don't even know how the LFP got the tax credit. There's a lot of things that are just making the market messy right now. And then next year, also the point of sales coming into play, that also changed things. So as...

A few of these things will straighten themselves out over time. And I think the second half of 2024, especially if we can get the interest rates down, I think things are going to start to look a lot more like we've been expecting things to look for a while, at least at Electra since we've been pretty gung-ho about EVs taking over. And even then, we're still up 50% since last year. Yeah. I mean, what do you expect? Yeah.

I don't know what the numbers needed to say. I mean, for me, it felt like they didn't feel like they had competitive offerings against what Tesla was. That's the point. Like the F-150 Lightning, for example, that's a good point. They thought they were first to market with Rivian also, but I don't think a lot of people took Rivian as seriously as they should. But they were like, we're the first, I guess, automakers with that. But the F-150 Lightning is a great vehicle, but...

I think the real F-150 Lightning is the next one coming. That's the real one. There's some drawbacks to this one. It makes sense that they are not sending $150,000 a year like they were supposed to. And it's $20,000 more than they said it was going to be. Yeah, like a lot of those vehicles that were announced. All right, we have a question about the Fisker. Yeah, Dan Overstay again. Fisker Ocean looks like it has a narrow passenger compartment for the wide wheel wells.

Wide wheel stance it has. Why give up passenger room if the wheelbase is so wide? So I'll tell you, I didn't sit in it with five adults. I only had it for one night and I was just kind of trying to figure out what I could do. It's been a busy week. But yeah,

It felt pretty large inside. You know, there was lots of headroom, lots of legroom. The one thing I noticed is that I had two larger passengers and they said that the seat seemed a little narrower than they thought. Like the passenger seat seemed a little narrower. So anyone who has a really wide seat,

uh perhaps will uh notice that i did not notice that uh myself because i drive a roadster yeah so yeah in an suv but yeah i do remember seeing the seats and they look narrow to me uh for an issue not not like hugely narrow but just a little old you know an inch or two less wide than uh

than people might otherwise think but then in terms of the rear i don't i didn't sit three across on the rear but um everything felt tall and and long so plenty of room for the heads and the legs

All right. So let's just close it out here. Sylvia says not a lot of people were on maybe because they didn't get any notifications or reminder. Yeah, something weird is going on with the – Yeah, I looked up a notification. I also didn't get a YouTube notification. So he's right. Something bad happened. I'm going to have to look it up. Still about 70 or so of you here. We appreciate you watching live. All right.

There's a question about Xiaomi, Huawei, and Fox SoundPlay in the 2030 auto landscape. I mean, it's a little bit early to tell. There are clearly...

very busy there. They're huge companies. They have great technology. Foxconn seems to be the more serious player in the three. It looks like they're going to do some kind of... What they do with the phones, really, where they don't have their own brand, but they're going to manufacture for others, like Magna, for example. Yeah, I was just thinking that. For them to become a serious player. Foxconn supposedly is going to be doing the pair.

Oh, did I say magnet? Okay. I didn't say it. Great. I mix it up a little bit in the articles. Yeah. Foxconn supposedly is going to be building the pair and in the US. Oh, interesting. Their factory. Yeah. So that's, you know, if that works out, that's a big deal. Yeah. All right. Yeah.

I'll take it. All right. Dan Overstays, a Jamie fan. Jamie should be on every week. He brings a lot to the live stream. We'll try to get you on as much as possible. Yeah, every time you do a review. Yeah. I mean...

The show is not too early. Yes, Cybertruck next week. He's right. So it's the 30th. It's going to be a Thursday. So we're going to be on basically the next day on Friday. Next Friday, we're going to have probably the most of the show is going to be talking about the Cybertruck event. So stay tuned for that. We appreciate every single one of you that's been watching.

If you do enjoy the show, please give us a thumbs up, a like, a subscribe. If you're listening only on the podcast app, you can give us a five-star review. That helps a lot. Free to do. Takes a second. It helps the show more than you can think. And we're going to see you same place, same time next week. Have a good one, guys.