Tesla hate goes biblical, BYD comes out swinging, Renault 5 Turbo 3E, and more
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And we are live for a new episode of Electric Podcast. I'm Fred Lambert, your host. And as you know, I'm joined by Seth Winchell. How are you doing, Seth? I'm good. All right. I'm...

I'm not at home right now. I went all the way up to Chicoutimi on north of Quebec. And next week, I'm also traveling to Las Vegas. So not on the usual studio for the podcast for the next two weeks, but we'll make it work. And we're still producing articles like crazy because right now, I mean, it's a crazy time, especially for covering Tesla. So we're going to

As usual, tell you the latest news about Tesla this week. And it was pretty crazy stuff. Then we're going to get into Tesla's biggest competitor globally, BYD. Came out swinging this week with a big charging upgrade and some news about rollout of new models in Europe.

The Renault 5 Turbo 3e was unveiled and this thing is a crazy hot hatch. We're going to get into that. And then a cheap electric pickup coming from Korea that we might see in other markets that could be interesting. All right. But first off, we'll give you...

the little update on the uh I use the I use the headline Tesla hate goes biblical it's a reference to a YouTube video that went viral this week from a guy I didn't know about called H react which is kind of a I guess kind of a business YouTuber and he did an amazing video on the Tesla situation right now kind of breaking it down for for the layman for people that are just not

aware like obviously on the podcast here you guys you get like weekly updates of what happened every week like more up-to-date so for someone like uh like you it might not be that the greatest post but it's something that you can send like if you want to give a someone a primer on uh on the situation and uh and that that post i think was supposed to yeah that was like last weekend so

It even became more through this week as things are getting crazy. You still have the protests, the peaceful protests, which are ramping up. This week, the people, the grassroots movement behind the protests,

They organized some kind of town hall meeting online, and there was a few celebrities in there, including Alex Winters. I've been involved in it since the beginning. It was one of the people who started the Tesla Takedown movement. There was even John Cusack was there. Is it John? Yeah, John Cusack, I think. Yeah, one of the famous people.

Yeah, and they basically are ramping up to have next week's going to be like the biggest week of Tesla protests, especially on March 29th. I think they're planning something huge. So all of this is peaceful protests, but separately you have the vandalism that's also ramping up like crazy. And obviously we condemn the vandalism. But this week in Las Vegas, there were a bunch of cars that were set on fire.

In Kansas, and arson was suspected, of course, in Kansas City, also two cyber trucks were on fire. Arson team was there, but they were still, last time I checked, they were still investigating the issue. So arson is suspected. And obviously with the current context,

it's very likely, but they couldn't confirm it either. And we know that Tesla vehicles can also catch on fire by themselves, but it's pretty rare. But Seth, this is kind of like if Tesla ever had like an issue with batteries catching on fire at a GM Chevy Bolt or Jaguar Hi-Tec, that would be like the best time ever for that to happen for them because they have a pretty good excuse for it.

Yeah, there's a reason for all the fires. Yeah, right now it's pretty obvious what it is. But with all the vandalism, and this is just two examples. In Hamilton in Ontario yesterday, I think, or the day before, on Wednesday, there were 80 vehicles that were damaged at this location. Eight zero, yeah. Over 80. And it was...

They punctured all the tires, they scratched the hoods and all that. That was like insane stuff. And obviously what we're seeing now is on the other side of these things,

Last week, it was Elon saying that it was the Democrats behind that, the AgBluePak and all that without any evidence whatsoever. And now things are ramping up. We had Trump saying that it should be characterized as domestic terrorism, any kind of violence against Tesla stores. And we're just talking about Tesla property here, of course. I haven't seen any violence against actual Tesla people yet. Thank God.

But yeah, they are. And they apparently did it. They made it domestic terrorism to do any kind of attacks, vandalism on Tesla property. And the attorney general announced that she filed charges against three people that were found to have been behind vandalism at Tesla stores in Colorado, in Oregon. And there was another one, too.

And now she says in her press release on that, she said that we will continue investigation that impose severe consequences on those involved in these attacks, including those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes. So she is alleging that there are people behind this. This is not individual trying to attack Tesla. She didn't supply any proof of that, of course. Trump also echoed her statement.

Her statement in an interview this week, she said the left is funding them again without any evidence whatsoever. It's Trump. Yes, I did. I know you saw that set even even tweeted out that he wants to send the Tesla vandals to El Salvador to the prison where he supposedly sent those gang members that weren't properly traveled at all. Right. So like way worse than the insurrectionists.

Yeah, I mean, they were pardoned, so a lot worse. I mean, I guess they did a few years in jail, but not even that. So Tesla would be worse to vandalize than the Capitol. That's what he's saying. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. They're not getting any power done since. Right. That makes sense. The hate around Tesla right now is all time high. Both illegal hate, like vandalism, not okay, shouldn't do that.

peaceful protests perfectly fine that's also an all-time high way higher way more important i would sit in the vandalism the vandalism is becoming a real issue i'm not gonna i'm not gonna deny it but i think for tesla i think tesla right now the biggest problem is those products imagine imagine these protests like they ramp up like we like the tesla takedown movement uh said they would like we expect them to basically and um

at the very end of the quarter the next two weeks when Tesla has to ramp up production like crazy you have giant picket lines around all the Tesla stores over the uh all over the US this is this is not an ideal situation for Tesla to say the least and uh it's just so interesting that things are swapping so much like for instance we posted on our social media a uh a guy rolled coal yeah on the protesters like

It's just such a weird... Everybody's switching teams all of a sudden. And it's just a very weird thing. All of a sudden, Tesla's aligned with the coal rollers. That's just such a weird... Everybody's switching teams. Yeah, not only that. The coal rollers used to roll coal...

Tesla vehicles because they hated Tesla right so you would think now that people are protesting Tesla they would be on the side of the people protesting Tesla but no they are rolling call on those protesters so it's like the whole world like flip upside down and yeah you you did found a post of uh someone on a on a Tesla uh shareholder board saying that he's he's on the side of the

Of the rolling coal guy that's just emitted a ton of emission, probably more emission than a Tesla vehicle would reduce over half its lifetime in the face of a bunch of people, which is also illegal. So crazy stuff.

And Tesla is filling the eat right now. There's no doubt about it. We don't have that many new numbers so far, but we have a few things because we won't get that much until the next month for the Q1 numbers and the March numbers. But we do have a good idea. For example, the used car prices at Tesla is falling right now at three times the rest of the rest of the market. So look at the CarGuru index.

In the last year, Tesla, over the last year, the market is down 2.6% for used car. Tesla is down 7.26%. In the last 90 days, which is a lot more like indicative of what happened with the more recent hate, let's say, the market is down 1.12% versus down 3.7% for Tesla. Last 30 days, Tesla is up 2%.

slightly 0.05, but that's with the market being up 0.3. So it's still a big difference. And then if we break things down by models, you get the idea that this is up in the last 30 days kind of weird because it's really just affectable X. Am I back? Looks like I'm back. Not sure about set, but yeah. Okay. Sorry about that, guys. I'm in a hotel right now. The Internet was pretty good, but it looks like it's not making live stream so far.

so only the mall x is up you have a better idea of like model three down four uh four percent in just 90 days model y 2.9 in 90 days uh cyber truck down all over 11 in the last 90 days 58 year over a year which is crazy but that's i mean a year ago people were still trying to like make a buck reselling the cyber truck so it's not surprising it's down by that much

so yeah the used car prices are going down fast and that's because the trade-ins are off the hook right now so people are trading the tester like crazy so supply higher supply lower demand um the price have to go down for people to move inventory so it's pretty bad but the most concerning of all that happened this week and it didn't get enough traction for people because people completely misreported this news

is that the Model Y, so all the Tesla fans right now are, and especially the shareholders, are holding on to the idea that the new Model Y is going to save the day. And because Model Y is the best-selling vehicle, it's the best-selling vehicle in the world. It was last year. So they're like, all right, now with the new refresh, it's going to be a bad quarter now, but then things are going to ramp up in the second half of the year, and it's going to be great. Probably

Problem is that we're not seeing strong demand for the YY right now. And China is the first market in which it launched. And China is the biggest EV market in the world, most important EV market. So the data coming from there is the most important one. And the one thing that we were looking at is...

Tesla has been having issues selling in China for the last year or so because of increased competition, had to introduce 0% interest financing rates. And this year they brought it back for the Model 3. They didn't for the Model Y because we assume they were enjoying a boost of demand with the backlog for shutting down the... for launching the new version of the vehicle, a few weeks without deliveries or just...

not deliveries, but they were only delivering the old version, the inventory that they had left moving on to the new one. And now we were so we were looking at when Tesla reintroduces the zero percent financing on the new model. Why? This is probably going to be a bad sign because that's when they are starting to run out of demand. The the exhausted the backlog that they had from the changeover. Personally, I mean, you know, I'm not very

optimistic about Tesla's demand in 2025. And I estimated this to not happen for another three or four months. But Tesla this week introduced zero percent financing on the Model Y rear-wheel drive. And this is where the people got confused because two things happened. Tesla introduced zero percent financing on Model Y rear-wheel drive, the new version, the new Model Y, because they still have, I think, a few non, the few old version.

And they increase the price of the all-wheel drive by $1,000, about 10,000 yen, which is equivalent to about $1,300 US. So a lot of Tesla fans hold on to that and they're like, hey, the demand is great. They even increase their price on the all-wheel drive. But this is nothing because you have to understand Tesla's market in China is about 90% real-wheel drive. Some estimates put it closer to 95%. So

Out of 10 cars that Tesla sold, out of 10 Model Y that Tesla sold in China, only one is an all-wheel drive. So what happens here is that obviously Tesla set up production for much higher rear-wheel drive production than all-wheel drive. However, with the new...

the new version you have a lot of people of like super tesla fans that always want the latest version and they want the top version of that new trim so they go with the all-wheel drive creates a little bit more of the man and especially if you have lower production so the the delivery timeline for the long range of all-wheel drive in china is six to ten weeks so obviously there's a pretty good diamond for that so they increase the price to squeeze a little bit more money out of the the customers but on the other end

the rear-wheel drive is most of the test of the vehicle that this is going to deliver and a zero percent financing is the equivalent of a two thousand dollar price reduction on the car that's how much that subsidized the new financing uh comparing to the rate which right now is like 4.5 so going from 4.5 to 0 is like 2 000 and it's normally a little bit more because

To be fair, Tesla didn't go all in with it. They still require you like a 30% deposit. So with the 30% deposit, normally it's smaller than that. So we put it at around $2,000. But if they go down to the regular 10% deposit, then it's going to be a $3,000 incentive. And this is confirmed by the fact that you still have a delivery timeline of two to four weeks for the rear-wheel drive in China. So this was obviously super bad news that wasn't digested well, I think, by the market.

All right. Another bad news for Tesla this week. They had to recall every single Cybertruck they ever made. This, I'm going to pat myself on the back a little bit because we called it last week at Electrek. We had a report on this where we saw that it was a containment hold and it was not clear what was the containment hold exactly. But I found one message from a Tesla employee that said that it had to do with the Kent rail here. That's the trim that's over the windows next to the roof.

And it was falling off, basically. So it was a I wasn't sure it was going to be a recall because it's not necessarily dangerous in itself. But you can make the argument, obviously, that if it falls off while driving and it becomes an hazard on the road, then it is a safety issue. So they did have to to issue a recall here.

Now, the surprising thing is that they're recalling all Cybertruck made from November 13 to February 27, 2025. November 13, 2023, which was the start of production, to February 27, 2025. So it's all Cybertrucks basically ever made except for this month. But I think it looks like there's a shutdown production earlier this month because of this issue. And sure enough, in the...

Recall notice, they did say that they didn't have the recall notice was yesterday. They hadn't implemented the fix at the production level yet. That was supposed to be done today, I think. So now they're going to restart production with the correct fix. And by the way, the correct fix is today.

It's pretty sad. So this bulletproof Cybertruck with an exoskeleton and all that is indeed altogether. Like I reported in my post, there are brackets on there, but for the most part, it is an adhesive, so AKA glue. And the issue that they found is that in certain condition, probably in winter condition, in colder condition, the glue could deteriorate. And that's when the trim would start to fall off.

So the fix is a better glue. No, that's not true. It's a better glue and a rivet too. They're going to screw the trail part together so that it at least will never completely fall off.

I don't know if you remember I said but early in the Cybertruck rollout there was another recall for the accelerator pedal there was like an applique on the accelerator pedal that would fall off and uh and that was also the recall the fix was like let's just screw a screw right in the middle of that pedal and then it's going to stay in place so that's some uh high level engineering here from Tesla on the Cybertruck

But now here's the most interesting part of this whole thing. So now Tesla's going to recall all of them, fix that issue. It's going to take a while. It's going to put a load on service and everything. But Tesla disclosed how many Cybertruck they produced. So produced and delivered in the U.S. So there were a few in Canada and a few in Mexico, but very negligible volume. 46,096. 46,000 Cybertruck set. Now the craziest thing of them all is that

If you look at last year's deliveries and the few deliveries in 2023, it looks like Tesla produced, not even sold, is going to have produced in Q1 between 7,000 and 8,000 Cybertruck. That's lower than in Q4. That's lower than in Q3 of last year amid a full-on production ramp-up. Now, the craziest thing is that there are currently 5,000 Cybertruck in inventory at Tesla in the U.S.,

So that means they cannot move that truck at all. And then the curious thing about them all is that in Q1, Tesla Cybertruck gained access to the federal tax credit in the U.S. Tesla introduced fee supercharging on the foundation series and offered discounted financing to 2% financing on the truck.

All these, the 2% financing is a little bit more recent. I think that was last month. So that couldn't have had a great massive impact. But still, this is nuts. Like the Cybertruck is not selling at all. It's becoming a problem for Tesla. Yeah. And it was the biggest, they claimed it was the biggest selling pickup last year, right?

I mean, it was. It was because others are also not saying, well, we can end it that easily. But also Tesla was enjoying a giant backlog of reservation last year that is not completely exhausted. And now they cannot sell even looks like 5,000 a quarter, even though

They have a production capacity of 125,000. They said that they are ready for 250,000 a year. Elon said that he sees 500,000 a year. They're having issues selling 25,000 a year. It's nuts. I wonder what their hope is. Like, are people just going to get over the whole Elon issue at some point here? Everybody's just going to forget about it?

I mean, I think that even in all the best scenarios, like even like Elon leaves and all that, I don't see the Cybertruck being nowhere near its production capacity of actual volumes, purely from a spec and pricing issue. So I think that's a problem with that. But, you know, maybe they salvage it. Maybe they have a new generation of the product that gets a lot better and better.

and it still survives. But right now, I think most of the hotel makers at this point would have given up on it already. I think Elon is just not capable of giving up on something like that. It would be too much of a hit for him. And that brings us to our few next posts here right now.

The panic, like what I'm seeing from Tesla right now is panic. Things are not going well this quarter at all. It looks like Tesla's going to deliver about 250,000 vehicles this quarter, which is over 100,000 fewer than last quarter. It's less than in Q1 of last year. It's, I mean, Jonas, Adam Jonas said,

The biggest Tesla cheerleaders on Wall Street just slashed his delivery expectations for this year by 300,000 units. It's a whole quarter he slashed. It's crazy right now. And there's panic from Elon, I think, especially because Elon has half of his Tesla shares right now as collaterals on billions of dollars worth of loans. And if the stock goes too low,

uh he's gonna have a margin call he's gonna have to either refinance he's gonna have to sell this stock he's gonna have to do something and it's uh i don't think elon wants to do something about that so last week there was the trump ad at the white house which the smell of desperation right there but this week they ramp things up even more i mean their stock again crashed earlier this week it regained again because of the pumps that i'm just going to discuss right now and this this honestly this what i'm going to

talk to you right now it's sad that it's happening in the u.s like i'm very sorry for my friends in the u.s you included said uh it's like next level banana republic stuff and also it's crazy that i'm the one that led the reporting on this thing like we are we are uh a niche electric vehicle outlet i think this should be like a new york in the new york times or something so this week

Trump's U.S. Commerce Secretary went on Fox News and recommended people buy Tesla stocks, saying it's never going to be this low. You should buy Tesla stock right now. That alone is the weirdest thing I've ever seen. I did my research. I couldn't find another single company.

uh example of a sitting us commerce secretary publicly recommending a specific stock from a company never happened before this is the first time but now the context around the first time is the most important thing here and that's why my expertise in this like being following this close closely like help but

I think there should be bigger news because we're talking about our word. Look, Nick, here, if you don't know him, he's a billionaire. He's the guy behind Ken Turf Insurance, which is a big investment bank in the U.S. And he's a Tesla investor.

In 2022, the firm started investing in Tesla. A little bit, nothing too crazy, but they ramped things up a lot last year, increased the investment a ton. They shaved it up a little bit at the end of the year with the big ramp up after the election, made a pretty penny, a few hundred mils, I think. We're pretty close to that. But they still hold over $300 million in Tesla stocks. And now that's the thing. Lutnik also is close to Elon. Elon was pushing for Lutnik to be...

Treasury Secretary, Secretary of the Treasury, which is like the highest economical position you can have in the U.S. He tweeted after the election when they were discussing the cabinet. My view, what's that abbreviation? F-W-Y-W? For what it's worth.

For what it's worth, OK. Yeah, well, nothing. It's worth nothing. My view for what it's worth is Besant is a business as usual choice, whereas Howard Lutnick will actually enact change. Business as usual is driving America bankrupt. So we need change one way or the other. Now, Trump didn't go with Lutnick. He did go with Besant.

another billionaire. But he still, Musk still managed to get Lutnik the Secretary of Commerce role, which is the second biggest like, going to be called role in the US. So, Lutnik is close to Iran.

So Lutnik is invested in Tesla through Cantor. Now, here's the thing. Lutnik, after being appointed earlier this year, did say that he's going to divest from his firm, from Cantor. But he says he's going to do that within 90 days. And we're still within the 90 days. But I've seen no evidence that he has yet divested from the stock. It looks like he still holds over a billion dollars worth of Cantor stock and Cantor's old Tesla stock. So this is...

Completely inappropriate. Not only do you have the sitting U.S. Commerce Secretary recommending a specific stock, which you should never do, that specific stock is linked to the fortune of Elon Musk, who is the biggest political donator, donor of the guy that appointed Lutnik. And Lutnik owns stock in Tesla. It's like mind-blowing.

Yeah, they're breaking so many like barriers like at once that it's hard to even like point like they're breaking faster than you can even point at them. It's a just it's just a big grab right now. Like just money grab. Oh, yeah, it's pump and dump all the way all the way.

So obviously this is a pump. And by the way, even if Lutnik started to divest already, which I've seen no evidence of, his son is now the head of the firm. So it doesn't change anything. But

well yeah i i was now i found this photo so i was just i couldn't find a photo of nick with with elon and then i i found a video online of uh of them getting into a plane or maybe uh an helicopter not sure and then i freeze framed it just at that moment at pure luck it was perfect uh yeah so there was that

And then out of nowhere, Elon himself went all in on the pump yesterday. So it was late at night. I was getting ready to go to bed. And then I see Tesla is going live on X. And I go to no announcement whatsoever. It's called an all-ends meeting. I'm like, an all-ends meeting? I know that Tesla has held all-ends meetings in the past, but never publicly. And it's...

It was late, of course, like it took like an hour, but an hour later, Elon came live and started doing the all ends meeting. And I mean, the best comments on all of this, so I did the live blog of it, but that's not the live blog post, that's the follow up post I did. Yeah.

Our own Jamie Dow Electric called it. This is AI video trained on Elon video from 10 years ago, basically. It was like classic Elon, just all the hitting is main talking points.

You know, the thing he says that all the shareholders meeting, so Tesla is going to be the biggest company in the world. Several order magnitude bigger than the next one. It's full self-driving coming imminently. You're going to be a shipper and have your fleet of vehicle. Now you're going to be a shipper and have your fleet of robots too. The Optimus robot is going to be the biggest product ever by a wide margin.

All the other stuff that were used from Elon without just the overly optimistic timeline and everything. But then that's when the pump started to literally ask Tesla shareholders, not Tesla shareholders, Tesla employees, because it's all in meetings. That's for employees normally. But since it was live streamed publicly, you have to say that he was also talking to the public here. He said, hang on to your shares.

He said, hang on to your shares to your employees and the public. Just has, and that's why I wrote an article on this. It's like, it's because it's pretty bold to say that to your employees as your board members and your top executive, including your CFO is just dumping shares. We, we showed a little chart here that, uh,

all the shares that were dumped just over the last three months. So that's almost over $150 million over the last three months from four board members and Taneja, the chief financial officer here, are dumping shares. But employees, little employees that barely make $50,000 a year or so, you hold on to your few shares because they're going to be worth a lot. But even Elon had to admit, okay, to be honest, I don't know within, let's say,

six to 12 months. I don't know what's going to happen with the share, but long term, it's going to be good. Long term, it's going to be good. Of course, he says that just as Tesla is about to report. We still have a month for the earnings, but in a few weeks, we're going to have the delivery report. The worst deliveries that Tesla ever had in

10 or 12 quarters, something like that. I'm talking about over three years. Tesla going back in time three years in delivery, the company that was growing at 50% a year, going back three years behind is crazy stuff. We were just talking about it for the podcast, but there's a direct correlation between this and Enron, whereas the chairperson for Enron, right before the quarter...

where everything blew up for Enron in 2002, I mean. He held the all-ends meeting with employees just before the earnings and said that you should, not only you should hang on to your stock, you should buy more because everything is looking good. Everything is looking great. We're going to be the biggest company in the world. Everything that Elon did last night, he did 23 years ago. It's scary stuff. And at the same time this week,

The Financial Times came out with a report alleging that the $1.4 billion is missing in Tesla's assets report.

And that's the same journalist that broke the Wirecard story that's like poking at Tesla's financial right now. So, you know, the company went bankrupt or I don't know if it's exactly bankruptcy or insolvency or something like that. But in Europe, it's a bit different. But just a few years ago, now he's poking at Tesla stuff. So it should be interesting. But yeah, the...

desperation is palpable right now. I can really feel it. All right, we have a few more posts to discuss and then we're gonna jump into you guys' comments. I see plenty of comments going live right now, but I didn't read it as they go live because I've been pretty animated. But if you guys have any comments for us, any questions, you can put them in the comment section below and I'll get to them in a few minutes.

If you do enjoy the show, please give us a thumbs up, a like, whatever it is on the app right now because we're multi-streaming. That helps a ton. If you're listening to the podcast app right now, if you can give us a five-star rating, the podcast, it helps a ton. Every week, we get attacked with zero-star. Well, I don't think you can do zero-star, but one-star ratings from these Elon fanatics that just hate us for plainly reporting facts, by the way. And yeah.

And you already say that we talk too much about politics, about Elon. I do think that

especially in North America where Tesla is by far the biggest EV company. It is the biggest story in the world right now, the brand destruction of Tesla that's brought by Elon Musk. I think it is the biggest story by far. And I can tell you it is because we report on everything on Electrek and we see what people are reading and people are interested in that stuff. So I think it's interesting. We're going to keep talking about it on the podcast until it changes. And we hope it changes because we don't hate Tesla at Electrek. We don't hate Tesla. We hate what's happening with Tesla, which is completely different.

But anyway, let's move on to BYD. Before we move on. Yeah. One sec. Yeah, sure. Go ahead. What is the best case scenario? Let's talk about this just real quickly. Like my thing is like, all right, the stock tanks. The board is forced to make a move, get rid of Elon. That also will tank the stock because half the people that own stock would

So you're talking about the stock just going right into the ground. And then Tesla gets built back up, built back up. You know, maybe Elon sells all his shares or is forced to divest or something like that. And then Tesla, you know, they have enough money in the bank to keep going and they, their stock isn't worth much, but they can continue, you know, maybe they're not as focused on Optimus or maybe they're not as focused on, you know, AI stuff, but,

They're still making cars. What is the outcome that we want to see or think that's going to happen? I think you got a pretty good handle on it there. The only way that Tesla survives as a legitimate company, keeps growing, because I think growth has gone with Elon. So Elon needs to go.

And then, yes, if Elon goes, the only way for that to happen is for the stock to crash. Right. The board to be removed. And so the question is then what happens with Tesla when the stock crash and Elon is removed? Like you said, Elon most likely sells the stocks.

And that will further reduce Tesla's valuation. But the valuation is the valuation. It doesn't really matter more. So Tesla still has like $37 billion if they haven't cooked the books, because obviously the Financial Times now is pointing towards Tesla cooking the books. So if they are not cooking the books, they are sitting on $37 billion, very little debt. They're not in a bad position.

Of course, there's a lot of other issues that we discussed before, like the situation with the liability when it comes to full self-driving. So the hardware three, probably the hardware four, there's going to be some compensation that's going to happen there. I doubt that Tesla is going to get away with just...

We're just reimbursing people that bought FSD. I think there's going to be a lot of lawsuits going on. So that's going to affect Tesla's position also. But if they really have $37 billion and they can maybe trill down some assets, some production capacity, some people are going to get fired most likely. Unfortunately, we don't like to see that. I think you can start turning things around from there.

Of course, it depends on the leadership. So you're going to have what leadership do you have now? A lot of people left at Tesla right now, I think, are problematic because they are either yes men for Elon Musk or they actually agree with his clearly inefficient way of running the business because Tesla is losing sales like crazy. Volumes are going down. They only launched a single vehicle in the last five years and the Cybertrucks, which doesn't sell. So

It's not looking good on that front. But you asked for the ideal scenario. Ideal scenario would be that and then strong management comes in. Maybe some of the people that were let go in the last few years come back. That would be great. We always talk about JB's trouble. We don't know his clear position on Tesla right now, but yeah.

So that would be, I think, the ideal situation. But, you know, I don't know. We are following this. Even us, we're following this as closely as we can. And it's so hard to predict what's going to happen next. Yeah. But let's jump into BYD. That also hurt us a little bit this week because they unveiled their new Super E platform. It's a new 800. Sorry, I keep saying 800 volts. That's always been the limit for the last few years. But it's actually a 1,000-volt system capable of 1,000-kilowatt charging.

So that's absolutely nuts. They're talking about adding 400 kilometers of range in five minutes. And this is not a political, it's not a concept. They unveiled that this week with a demonstration with the vehicles, with the new platform in it. It's next level stuff. I mean, we're talking about peak 800 volt before, 350 kilowatts. There was some 500 kilowatts that was unveiled, Tesla unveiled the...

v4 supercharger cabinets that are going to be deployed in q3 so that's coming but you know that's coming but the id is already there with something even better so it's very impressive stuff um and on third of the rollout on that so they have the first one in shenzhen right now that they use for the uh demonstration yeah 400 kilometers in five minutes that's 240 49 miles on the range

They plan to launch that in the new handheld and tang-held models in China. So I think those are the top-of-the-line BYDs. I'm not familiar with all BYDs brands. I have quite a few. And they plan to roll out, as part of their plan, to deploy 4,000 ultra-fast charging stations in China. Impressive stuff. It's interesting that they have such even, like, 1,000 amps, 1,000 watts, or 1,000 volts, a million watts. Yeah.

Yeah, it's getting to scary level. And that's faster than fill up a gas station. Yeah, five minutes. The other thing with BYD, so BYD, that's at the top of the line stuff. They have some very impressive top of the line stuff, but they are more known for their high volume, low end stuff. And they're bringing their cheapest vehicle now to Europe. So in China, it's known as the Seagull.

But for some reason, they're pretty smart and they figured out that seagull might not fare as well as a name in Europe. You know, seagulls are, you know, they're not bad birds or anything like that, but they're not the top of the line birds. When I tell you bird, seagull is not the first bird that comes to your mind. So if you are an eagle in the U.S., you're going to be an eagle probably. Yeah.

I think seagulls are called flying rats in the beach communities here. Yeah. Yeah. It's like you're not going to name your car a pigeon or something. It just doesn't make sense. So they are relaunching it as the Dolphin Surf in China. Sorry, not in China, in Europe. And, you know, this is like a decent car. So the specs in China, you see, starting at 69,000 yuan, which is less than $10,000, 190 miles of range, 205 kilometers, CLT.

WLTC, so it's not, you know, WLTC is going to be a little bit lower than that, but not that much. Then you have the version for 252 miles of range at over 400 kilometers. This one is $12,000. The equipment looks crazy. Now this is coming to Europe, but the price is going to be a little bit higher. This is the interior too. Like the interior looks like pretty sleek for like a $10,000 car. Not bad. Yeah.

But again, it's not going to be $10,000. The expectation would be equivalent. Oh, that's pounds, 20,000 pounds or $26,000, which compares, you know, it's a little bit cheaper than the Citroën EC. A little bit more expensive than the Dacia Spring. But the Dacia Spring honestly looks like cheaper than the BYD.

yeah and 10 inch infotainment system in there it's a little bit smaller than the id3 uh it's gonna have a smart driving system though i'm sure there's gonna be some limitation in europe for it there's different rules there very chevy bolt like yeah a little bit smaller i think too but not that much more wheels and stuff and the seagull itself is already available in brazil mexico colombia chile in the philippines outside of china of course so now it's going to be also europe and have

China and those countries. All right, two more news articles, and then we're going to jump into the comments section. Renault unveiled the Renault 5 Turbo 3e electric hot hatch. And this thing looks insane. And it's not just a concept. It's something that's going to come to market in 2027, though it's going to be limited production, so 1980 units. I think it's a reference to when the Renault 5 came out, I would assume, because that's...

a play on the old core. So we have some pictures here. So the image looks very concept-y, but apparently, you know, it's going to come close to that because you can still see the old shape, some old trims of the Renault 5 on there, on the Classic. Obviously, some much more aggressive bumper situation here and air intake on the side. We're talking in terms of specs that they released so far.

540 horsepower 400 kilowatt system it's uh it's not exactly light at 3 200 pounds and 1450 kilograms they're talking at 060 times under three seconds so it's a legit on hatch with a top speed 162 miles per hour 270 kilometers an hour uh it's uh did we talk about range already did they unveil the range because

I don't think they're going to go too big of a batch pack. I don't think they talk about the range just yet. It's a 70 kilowatt hour for about 250 miles of range, 400 kilometers for the double guilty. 250 kilowatt charging, so that's really good too on the 800 volt system. Yeah. Although 250 miles WLTP, a little low. Yeah, but it's a very sporty vehicle. The interior looks sick. You have a legit handbrake there too. You have a cage inside. Yeah.

And so that's like, basically, because we have already a hot hatch, though bigger, honestly, with the Ioniq 5N, which is more palatable to like the public. Let's say this is more for like people that want to actually race this. But yeah, it's going to be probably much more expensive since it's very limited with less than 2,000 units. Yeah.

Yeah, finally, I want to discuss this because I think this is interesting for some people because it's kind of a new segment of pickup trucks, of electric pickup trucks that we haven't seen electrified yet other than in China. But this one is coming from Korea. So it's a cheap pickup truck coming from Korea from KGM Musso.

So KGM mobility or just KGM, they are already an established brand in Korea for their rugged four by four SUVs and pickup trucks. But now they are going electric with the KGM Musso EV and a big success. They already launched it. They are sold out already for the first year of production, 2,200 units in just two weeks. And, um,

And it's interesting because, I mean, let's start with the, before I go into the specs, because people are going to, the specs are not great, but it's the pricing that's important. So it's $48,000,001, which is the equivalent of $32,800. And that's the starting price for the launch edition, I think, because the actual price is going to be around, oh, no, that's with incentive. So it's the starting price of the vehicle. Okay. So for $32,800, that's like a third of a Cybertruck. Like it's half the price of the base Lightning, I think. So it's pretty cheap.

what you get is an 86.6 kilowatt hour battery pack okay lfp interestingly they're doing lfp which makes sense of the price 250 miles of range 400 kilometers so again not bad for 32 000 here 200 kilowatt charging again not crazy but not bad vehicle to load we'd like to see that yeah um

The base one is going to be forward-wheel drive, 152-kilowatt front motor, 200 horses. But you can have it in all-wheel drive, 400 horses. So obviously, you're kind of going to want a four-wheel drive with that if you want to do anything meaningful with the vehicle. Because with that, you get 4,000 pounds, 1.8 ton of towing capacity. Again, not 10,000, 11,000 like a Cybertruck or a Lightning, but still...

for 32 000 there's there's a lot you can do with that so i thought i thought it was interesting because obviously they're not talking about launching it outside of korea just yet but they might because first of all it is in korea so there's no like you can you could launch it in the in europe north america especially in canada for example a lot cheaper than in china because you don't have the crazy tariffs on them so i thought this was interesting this is like a new uh

a new market segment of pickup trucks, of electric pickup truck that could be interesting. And it looks pretty good too. Yeah. All right. Let's look at the comment section. Quite a few comments. Still some time to put one in there if you guys want to. Starting with Carl in San Diego. Trump threatened on his BS social media platform that he, I think that was the 10 people to,

Was it Nicaragua? No. El Salvador? El Salvador, yeah. Terrorism charges are not going to work. It's just vandalism. No person has been threatened, hurt, or even been around to be hurt when this vandalism happened. So far, let's be careful with that, people. It's still violence. What they're doing, throwing Molotov cocktail and all that. One guy, actually it was a woman, I think, one person shot at the

Yeah, it was the Oregon store. There were no one inside. Correct. But still, it's like it's not great. And all of that is not as efficient as just peaceful protests and boycotts. All right. Speculator says, has anyone been able to obtain a copy of the agreement that other companies signed with Tesla to obtain access to the superchargers that support CCS one? I don't think that. But I heard that it was like a very simple 10 page, 10 pager that.

everyone signed. It was very simple and very straightforward. All right. Elon's bogus all hands employee meeting was garbage, repeating tired lines of unlimited abundance, zero contrition for ruining Tesla's reputation. All right, question. GM has struggled with their software initially. Is GM software now stable? Do you have a lot of features?

I'm actually going to drive tomorrow a GMC Sierra EV for a week. So I will be able to report back on that. Yeah, it's a big one. That's nice. Yeah. Have you driven a GM in a while? Yeah, not recently, no. So I cannot comment on that. I'm supposed to drive one this summer. This summer I'm supposed to have access to a few. They're building up their fleet in Montreal for the press. Oh, good.

it's no longer a good thing that all the automakers have accepted nax to get access to superchargers until other manufacturers build our reverse charging network musk nearly has a monopoly not not quite so simple um you know there's adapters and and it's an official standard now so it's out of the hands of tesla it's in the heads of sae it's standardized anyone can build it so no i disagree with that like no i disagree with it i think i think it's fine

All right. Question. At what point does the Tesla board not be held responsible accountable for breach of duty? The company is cratering and cannot be ignored. The board should not be getting millions of dollars for this fire, Elon. It's hard to say. Everything happening at Tesla is kind of impressive. Yeah. I think I might have lost Fred there. Yeah. There's already lawsuits happening. Yeah. I'm back. All right.

Carl in San Diego question, do we have any details about the extent of reworking the Cybertruck needs to create blind fasteners where there were no fasteners before? It seems challenging to pull off. Is that in relation to the recall or is that something else? It sounds like it, but I don't know the extent of it. It's going to be a pretty big job with 46,000 units, but I don't know how much work hours are needed for each one.

Carl agrees about the access to Tesla chargers and the move to NACs. People can't rely on that supposed superior network if Tesla goes under. What a massive mistake. Yeah, I don't know that Tesla's going to go under. It's not a supposed superior network, though. It's not a supposed superior network. It is a superior network. In North America, it is. In Europe, they have some great stuff. In North America, not as much. And, you know, that's not necessarily Tesla's fault.

So we cannot blame everything on Tesla. Others need to step up. It's as simple as that. So nothing's stopping them for stepping up. All right. In 2024, Ford sold approximately 732,000 units of the F-Series. I think that's in comparison to the Cybertruck we were talking about earlier. Obviously, most of those were gas. It's hard to reconcile my desire. Skeptic says it's hard to reconcile my desire to see EVs flourish with my desire to see Tesla fail.

I think a lot of people are having that issue right now. Yeah, but we don't want to see Tesla fail. We want to see it succeed. Yes. Yeah, you want to see it succeed. And I think, Scott, if you want EVs to flourish, you also want Tesla to succeed. You just don't want it to succeed under Elon, but I don't think you even need that. I think if you want Tesla to succeed, you need Elon out. That's more of the question. Right.

All right. Moving on. F-150 Lightning specifically sold 33,000 units in 2024. And what was the Cybertruck in 2024? Do we have numbers on that? I think 30, 38, something like that. Yeah. 36, 38 maybe. All right. Speculora Tesla doesn't have any monopoly on NAX chargers. All right. So this is what we're saying. Others have them and are building more and don't sweat supporting Tesla by using their NAX chargers. EV charging is zero profit business.

It has been in the past. Yeah. All right. Yeah, that's a Cybertruck's comparison. SEC insider trading crimes only counted when there was a rule of law. We no longer have that. You're right, Fred. Trump's government is a banana republic. And then Asa says, I thought Tesla had started making a profit on charging. I'm concerned about the other EVs switching to NAX, and most of that is Tesla outside of a few states. All right. Let's move on.

I don't think that's a big concern, to be honest. Right. All right. At best, Tesla is around break even with charging. Yeah, I think that's kind of the goal is to be break even for now. But perhaps one of the reasons of standardizing on NAX was to get higher value charging from other manufacturers, because when when a Ford F-150 charges at a Tesla station, it pays more than that Tesla does. All right. Let's move on from charging.

All right. Sorry about the conversations here. Adam Wilcox says, I wish I could Ford an R2. I think a lot of people are thinking about Rivian right about now. It's still next year. Yeah. And they start pretty low. All right. People with a CCS car who have a NAX adapter and can supercharge are in the best spot for fast charging. The few Tesla owners with CCS adapters are in a similarly good spot. As long as you can do both, that's the way. That's fair.

at least for the moment the current handful of non-teslas with nax really should give up their own give their owners an adapter so they can charge at ccs yeah still still having ccs would be probably good the time being uh if they cook the books you have a bunch of abandoned factories i don't know if that's how that would shake out yeah if the if the if they did yeah if they did but we it's not clear yet

All right. For people who will claim Tesla's sales slump is part of the larger trend today, Geely reported a 92% increase in sales of NEVs, that's neighborhood electric vehicles, and tripling of profit. No, not in China. In China, NEVs is new energy vehicles. Oh, new energy. Okay. New energy vehicles. Okay.

So it's mainly battery electric plug-in hybrids. But yeah, I mean, in China, in Europe, and still in the U.S., it's still growing. So yeah, it's not the market trend. It's the Tesla trend. GMA dude says EV charging stations are going to be an outdated paradigm. Most charging is going to be done at a residence store while shopping, friends resident. People are still stuck in the gas station model.

Sort of agree with that. Like most people are going to charge at home or whatever, but for long trips, you still need, obviously, fast chargers along highways and stuff. And then, of course, people who don't have home charging that as well. Let's move on from charging. The Trump administration is going to save Tesla and turn the planet from climate change. Turn the planet from climate change. Elon will promise to do better and everyone will love everybody. And we all live happily ever after.

some rose-colored glasses you have there. Thank you. Tesla was an innovation 20 years ago. BYD should focus on the next EV car as the current EV cars go through maturity of the technology. All right. Gigawatt charging is abusive. I think we have a little bit of a lot going on right now. We keep talking over each other, so yeah, yeah.

I'll let you go. Go ahead. All right. Gigawatt charging is abusive to the local grid, just not responsible model for charging. The uncertainty of electricity demand actually wastes more power. Same problem with tankless electric water heaters. I think the idea is that smooths out as the more more you add to that. And of course, batteries can help smooth that out as well.

Look five years from now when EVs can go 600 miles and on long trips where you are going to stop and charge, not a charging station. You still need a charging station if you're going over 600 miles. And I don't think that's where cars are going. 600 miles is way too much to be carrying around. The original R5 Turbo and Turbo 2 had mid-engine, so rear seat was deleted. If this R5 Turbo 3e loses the rear seat just to make it race-like,

Yeah, I think it's just extra weight that takes out. The Chinese are going to kick our butt. Oh, yeah, the cage. The Chinese are going to kick our butt because the ignorance that permeates the U.S. culture today kind of feels like that with our redonkulous banana republic. The tariffs on China are a joke. Only 14 percent of exports go to the U.S., so 86 percent of Chinese exports are not affected by tariffs.

The tariffs on China and other places are taxed on U.S. citizens, not named countries. So Americans pay the tariffs on stuff from China, Mexico and Canada. Yeah, that's all kind of true. You cannot boot Elon from Tesla and call protests a success. Tesla must fail to defang Musk as he is using all that wealth as an ole arc to undermine democracy. Yes, that's also it would be a nice bonus if Tesla stock goes down quite a bit.

And then Skeptic also agrees new energy vehicles is NEV. That's all the comments. All right.

All right. Well, thank you, everyone, for listening to the Electric Podcast this week. We appreciate your time. If you did enjoy the show, please give us a thumbs up, a like, everything. We appreciate it when you do. It's free to do. It takes a second. And we're going to see you same time, same place next week. I'm going to be in Las Vegas testing out the new Audi. So I'm excited by that. And Seth's going to come out with the Sierra EV Denali. So we're going to both be testing some pretty high-end vehicle next week. All right. See you then. Bye-bye.