Tesla layoffs, all-in on Robotaxi, shareholders vote, and more
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And we are live, everyone, for a new episode of The Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host. And as usual, I'm joined by Seth Wincham. How are you doing today, Seth? I'm okay. All right.

We have a ton to talk about this week. Obviously, there was a lot of news, especially in the Tesla world. So what we're going to do, we're going to do a little kind of wave where we're going to discuss some of the cool Tesla stuff that happened this week or coolish Tesla stuff. Then we're going to get into the harder stuff that happened, a little bit more difficult stuff to talk about and everything, but stuff that's really important nonetheless.

And then we're going to talk a little bit, non-Tesla stuff, some cool things, some new cars, some new features. And then we're going to take your guys' comments as usual. So if you guys have any questions or anything like that, any subject in the EV world you want us to discuss, you can put them in the comments section right below. We are live on all your favorite platforms and we can take questions from pretty much everywhere. So you can put them in the comments right now. We'll get to it in 45 minutes, something like that.

All right, let's start with another leak on the Model 3 performance. Maybe Model 3 ludicrous, not exactly clear. That thing could launch any day now. We've been talking about it for a long time. The rumors right now is the 420, maybe 423, because the 23 is also when Tesla released the earnings. So it wouldn't be the first time that Tesla does earnings. And then one more thing to...

Soften the blow probably this quarter. Yeah, that's the vibe I'm getting. To probably release it like the day before and just talk about it. Yeah, or maybe the 420 is too tempting to get into. So 420 is tomorrow, right? Yeah, it's tomorrow. Okay.

But the leak this week is on Tesla's own website, actually. It kind of reminds me of the Rivian R2 leak from a few months ago in the configurator. We've seen things in the configurator for a few months now, reference the Model 3 performance. It looked like legacy code. It didn't look like new stuff. This was clearly new stuff. There's a bunch of things that Tesla listed on the website. And I think I should say thanks to the guys at the Tesla Motor Club's forum here that found it first.

So what are these things? All new adaptive damping powered by in-house software gives you enhanced body control without sacrificing daily usability or comfort. So it looks like Tesla has come up with a new, well, they talked about the new damping technology in the new Model 3 Island that was launched last year. So it looks like a version of that that's adapted both for like the performance that will come with the performance version, obviously, but also make it a nice ride when you're just, you know, doing your normal driving around.

Latest generation driving mode integrates adaptive suspension control with the performance optimized powertrain to deliver more response and fun behind the wheel. Okay, so it looks like maybe...

The sport mode for the steering is outdated and matches suspension to a greater degree. Sounds like something like that. Track mode V3, so you have a new version of track mode coming. All new seat design, so we've seen the new seats for the Model S Plaid launching earlier this month. We expect similar seats for the Model 3 Performance launching. Bespoke chassis and suspension all-in-one is tuned to provide intuitive, razor-sharp response to driver input.

Okay, so we know that the chassis has been updated with the performance version. Forged performance wheels also coming. Enhanced pedal feel, improved heat management, ensure consistent braking at all speeds and across a wide temperature range. Brake upgrades have been one of the main, if not the main, hardware upgrade that comes with the performance version Model 3. The lightweight carbon fiber decor and refined weave pattern is unique to Model 3 performance. That's nice.

And finally, there's no official acceleration numbers. There's been 3.3 on one website and one on another version, so 2.9. So we're not exactly sure. But it does say the all-new high-performance drive units deliver more than a combined 500 horsepower and 0.60 acceleration seconds. That's redacted. Welcome to the most powerful Model 3 ever. So this is going to be the most powerful Model 3 ever.

Exciting stuff. I think this is going to be a very popular car. I'm a multi-performance owner and I love that car. I think it's the most fun to drive. You're thinking about upgrade? I mean, it depends what I do pickup truck wise. If I do pickup truck, I think it might make sense to stay with the performance like a sedan. But

If I don't go with the pickup route, I think the Model Y would be a good compromise between the two. I don't know. I don't need more cars now. All right. You need fewer cars. Maybe trade some of those in. Yeah. I mean, my Model S right now is in the shop. It's getting a whole new suspension. So it's the first big repair I'm doing on my Model S now out of warranty.

2012 model s getting new suspension done uh so a bit of an investment on that front i think it's three thousand dollars in parts alone so yeah i just had a model y suspension front suspension redone so yeah do you know how much it cost you uh it wasn't it wasn't crazy it was like six hundred dollars there was there was like uh one part that was really yeah i mean air suspension is just so much more expensive right that's not a real problem

All right, Tesla teased a brand new software coming to mainly the newer Model S and S and Model 3 and Y 2022 and forward. So a lot of these upgrades are only for cars that have the AMD center stack computer. There's some things for those of us that don't have that too, but most of these upgrades are for 2022 onward.

So a big AI change, this little list of changes is Immersive Fullscreen Vehicle Controls when parked. So you see it in the screen here. So you can have this view when parked, which gives you access, like opening the front a little bit easier. Large playback controls and quick access to recent favorite and everything. So that's

Right down there. And then expendable autopilot driving visualization with a smaller map in the top right. So with this capacity to have this map on the top right here, when you're not in park, like you are in this screenshot right here, the visualization from FSD autopilot, instead of just being this section right here, goes all the way through the car with the map being at the top right here, which I think is pretty cool.

it's it's optional obviously you can still keep the smaller visualization and bigger maps if you like it but i'm always down for option all right so this is a little bit more of a controversial feature here the auto shift beta is being released with this update this is uh well this is only mentioning more snx uh 2021 and later so the refreshed version but technically the model uh new model y uh new model three will also get uh it could also get it because it's also

does have the drive gear stock removed. So yeah, this is what Tesla has been talking about for a while now, that it's going to be able to automate changing between drive reverse based on your surroundings. So that was the idea behind removing the stock, controversial idea. Now people have been stuck with scrolling on the screen to change the gears. And now you can have the option to doing autonomous diesel.

We're going to have to wait and see on this. I'm going to have to test it to see how well it works. I'm a little bit skeptical as of now. Okay. Oh, yeah, this was interesting. Here you have a hands-free trunk that is for MOLA SNX refresh. Yeah? I don't get that. Like, what if you're just walking behind your trunk?

You need to stand still, Tesla says. You need to stand still behind your trunk. I don't know for how long with your phone key and the trunk will open on its own. I do have the same concern that probably there will be some misfire, I would assume. But I don't know. Let's see how it works.

Okay, now for all Tesla vehicles, there's been some other updates here with the native apps. So now we have Audible coming to the car. So that's coming to all cars. I think that's really nice. I do love Audible on longer road trip. I do use audiobooks.

I think that's pretty cool. And then an update to the native Spotify app is also coming with queues across vehicles and devices, they say. So you can push your queue if you're just walking around with your phone, listening to music, and you have a queue on. Looks like you can transfer that to the car too and have it in the car once you come driving. Very cool. Adjustable playback speeds are now also available. I have to assume that that's because of Spotify Podcast, right? Because you don't really want to change the playback speed on the...

on the music um i don't listen to that many podcasts on spotify but also i never i never change the speed of a podcast spotify also has audio books like a big thing for speed changing oh okay that's cool um you have this new sentry mode video preview now in the notification

So that's cool. You can directly see what's happening instead of getting a notification and like starting to panic what's happening. You can see right away, oh, it's probably nothing. Or in this case, this notification looks like there's something going on. Like M&M's, like checking out your car.

Oh, yeah. That was pretty good. An increase in regenerative braking on highways for the refreshed Model S and X. So these cars have been around for three years now, and they're getting an increase in regenerative braking. It's pretty cool. At high speed, your vehicle now allows for more regenerative braking, meaning more energy can return to the battery. Pretty simple.

Finally, Tesla brings something they call the feature called "Are we there yet?" for all the vehicles that have a rear screen, so new Model S and X, new Model 3s. You will now have access to the current trip details, time and temperature from the rear touch screen, so the kids won't have to ask you, "Are we there yet?" Tell them, look at the screen, it'll tell you if we're there yet.

So this is like I've seen some footage on X already. Looks like some employees have the update already. And Tesla called it a spring update. So I assume they're going to start pushing that very soon. Look outside and it looks like spring. All right. Now moving to the Lespawn stuff. Whoa, this one is not too big. Tesla did a little Cybertruck recall today.

Which, funny enough, it's giving us our first real data on to how many Cybertrucks Tesla has produced since December. Since December all the way through earlier this month because there was a stop sale for a few days.

because of this issue, which has to do with the accelerator pedal. So Tesla says on affected vehicle, when high force is applied to the pad on the accelerator pedal, the pad may dislodge, which may cause the pedal to become trapped in the interior trim above the pedal, which is obviously a big concern. The official NHTSA defect notice is listed as a sudden acceleration issue, which is a very controversial thing. But anyway,

So Tesla says that an unapproved change introduced lubricant, more specifically soap,

To aid in the component assembly on the pad onto the accelerator pedal, residual lubricant reduced the retention on the pad and the pedal. I don't know what you mean by unapproved change. Like someone on the production line just decided, let's start using soap and didn't tell anyone? That sounds like what they're saying. Yeah, on 4,000 Cybertruck? That's kind of a weird way to say it, like unapproved change. So anyway, Tesla is recalling every one of those trucks, 3,800...

uh 78 trucks this is it's not aware of any accident uh related to this issue uh some one single customer brought it to their attention in march 31st and then uh tesla's engineering team got on it in early april and uh this week they decided to do the recall but yeah it's the first time that we get an actual data point on how many cyber truck made just sort of 4 000 units which is not a bad ramp up it's about what we expected so far

And yeah, with the stop sale, probably they were able to make some improvements, some changes to production and get going with the production ramp now that the stop sale is done and they're starting deliveries again. All right, now we get into the top stuff. Now we get into the top stuff. So last weekend, we got a bunch of reports from Tesla employees saying that there was rumors within Tesla of some significant job cutting happening.

Big wave of layoff. Some people were talking about 20%, which looks to be true in some departments. It's indeed 20%. But more broadly, it's closer to 10%, just over 10%. About 15,000 employees are being let go. I think it's still happening to us. Some people are still being let go right now. So obviously, a sad time for Tesla. Sad time for Tesla employees. As usual, there's a lot of things happening here. So let's...

Let's first start by what Tesla is saying, what's happening, and our opinions on top of it. So first up, Tesla is... We posted the full... Elon sent an email to everyone, all Tesla employees discussing the issues. In short, if you take what Elon is saying, it's business as usual. It's something that Tesla has done five times already. Rapid growth in the headcount resulting in hiring inefficiencies.

which result in duplicate, what did they say exactly? Here, did they say? Yeah, rapid growth that has been duplication of role and job function in centenarias. So Tesla is just cleaning house because of that, removing this duplication of roles and job functions because they grew too fast.

Obviously, the timing is a little bit interesting when it comes to that front because the last quarter was awful for Tesla, very bad performance. So sometimes job layoffs comes after that, which goes against this narrative that Elon is pushing that it's because of inefficiency due to rapid growth.

Also, you look at who's being let go, and it looks like it's a little bit more than that. So it's not just the bottom-down employees. It's also the executives that have, I shouldn't say let go. We cannot confirm they let go. Even Tesla cannot confirm that they're letting go. But Drew Baglino, Tesla's most senior engineer, basically, SVP of engineering for energy. Vegas.

The biggest, like we've seen him as the de facto CTO since JBLF basically, left the company this week. We also had Roman Patel, who was the Vice President of Business Development and Policies, also left this week.

They're both glowing things to say about Tesla and everything, obviously, but we don't know exactly what happened. Elon also said good things about them, but I'm hearing things that make it sound like they might have been fired. Obviously, I want to be clear, we cannot confirm it, but we are hearing things on that front. Elon has been cleaning house. I mean, the timing seems... Yeah, the timing is kind of obvious. They're like, hey, let's retire at the same hour as...

Yeah. Also, one thing that also people took notice is that this happened like in the middle of the night, Sunday to Monday. And right when the notice was sent out and everyone's account was being locked out, Roman and Drew both had Tesla badges on X, got their badges removed. So that happened really quick.

So that's also a concern. And on that front, so Tesla is getting a lot of criticism right now for how it handled the layoffs. And a lot of it, I think, is fair criticism. We've heard from people that were first day employees on Monday coming into work.

getting their little badges a little like scan RFD whatever thingy to get inside thing not working and be like oh shit they forgot to activate it or whatever like the whatever it's not working and then when they get to finally get to IT to say hey what's happening my car is not working they're like sorry you're not working here anymore and they're like this is my first day like yep yeah goodbye welcome to Tesla yeah welcome to Tesla so I have a I have a very controversial thought that just popped into my head go ahead

Go ahead. What if Elon got rid of Drew to make it harder to get rid of Elon? You know what I mean? So, you know, Elon's kind of setting the stage for this. Like, hey, if you don't give me $50 billion, I'm going to walk. And it's a lot harder for Elon to walk if there's like not Drew Baglino waiting to take, you know, take care of stuff.

You're not the first one who brought this idea. It is something that's been going around, so it's not that controversial. Obviously, we cannot confirm it. There's nothing that points to that exactly. I heard from a lot of Tesla employees or former Tesla employees this week, obviously, when there's big rounds of layoffs right now like that, people tend to want to talk to journalists. And the insights I'm getting inside Tesla is like,

Drew was in charge of a few programs that weren't going super well at Tesla. And a lot of the people involved with those programs were let go. And Drew also officially resigned. So some people are obviously being offered the opportunity to resign rather than being let go. Actually, that's something common in big jobs like that. So I'm not saying that is the case with Drew. I don't know for a fact. Couldn't confirm it. But it is possible because some of his direct reports were also removed.

But what I'm hearing from those same people is that who's running Tesla right now is not Elon, it wasn't Drew, it's Tom Zhu. He's the one running Tesla right now. That's what was very consistent from people that left Tesla were telling me. Since he was brought from China to Texas to run the Gigafactory programs, to run basically Tesla's automotive business, he's been the de facto CEO at Tesla. And Elon has become what someone has told me is a

Pigeon CEO, a CEO that comes in, shits on everyone, and then leaves. That was a direct quote, by the way. And a lot of people are saying, oh, this is just a bitter person that just got fired saying that.

Honestly, I guess I understand why people assume that. This person in question was not bitter whatsoever. This person seemed perfectly fine with what was happening. They weren't satisfied with their period at Tesla, obviously. They thought that the company was not being run optimally. I can agree with that, but they were not bitter for having let go. They already had interviews lined up. They are based in Austin, Texas, which is a booming town. They were not very concerned about their own

employment situation. But they had strong feelings about Elon and his managerial attitude. Yeah, I heard a lot of things this week. I talked to a lot of people. I heard a lot of things. I heard the Glass House stuff.

And that Elon was supposedly looking to build like that stuff was all true, apparently, even though Elon was like, where's the house? Where's the house? You remember? If that story is true, then where's the house? Dude, it sounds like the house didn't happen. That's not the point. Anyway.

I heard that. I heard about the tunnel that the Boring Company is building underneath the Gigafactory Texas. And everyone is like, why? Why are they doing that? No one really understood the logic behind that. It's basically Tesla paying a few million dollars to the Boring Company to build a useless tunnel underneath the factory when they could do it above ground and be perfectly fine.

Anyway, a lot of weird things like that. But yeah, it's very sorry to see about 15,000 Tesla employees being let go. It's going to be rough for a few months, if not a few years in the service department, sales department. A lot of the virtual advisors have been let go, if not the entire departments in some places. So the people that would manage the buying experience, manage the service experience for people, they would do it remotely. So yeah,

A lot of them have been let go, and that would put a lot more pressure on other Tesla employees, a bigger workload. So be aware of that when dealing with Tesla employees in the coming months because they're going to have a hard job. But yeah, what we learned a little bit more, too, is from those job layoffs. Oh, I had the Tesla Samar that I put in the wrong place here.

Let's do that real quick. One quick good news of the Tesla Semi this week, it's being used by more than Tesla and PepsiCo. A company called Martin Brouwer, or MB, it's apparently a very large logistic company operating in the restaurant supply chain, recently confirmed that they had two Tesla Semi trucks on the pilot program. Wow.

that's kind of big news it's like was just tesla and pepsico now it's also martin brower and they say that the vehicle uh performed well beyond expectation and now they're considering considering them for electrifying their fleet which involves hundreds of trucks so good news on that front

But yeah, we learned a few very interesting things amid the layoffs and all that. First off, the NV9. NV9 for New Vehicle 9. So if you count all Tesla vehicles, actually the ninth one technically that is being unveiled. You can count like the new roadster. Anyway, so we learned about this. A lot of people call it the Model 2, the $25,000 Tesla. We'll call it NV9 going forward. I think it's a little better.

We've heard a few months ago that it was canceled or scrapped by a warder's report.

And Elon then denied that rotors report saying that, well, he didn't deny it specifically. He just said the rotors are liars in response to it, which a lot of people saw it as a full denied at the Model 2 program or NV9 program is dead. We were a little bit skeptical about the denial. Like we're not a big fan of rotors reporting on Tesla. We've caught them do some very shady things, but yeah,

I felt like the way that Elon denied it, I felt like, oh, there may be a little bit more to the story. And he's just like sticking on the fact that they're saying that the program is canceled or scrapped while it might just be like pause or postpone. But if you're not spending any resources on a program, it might as well be canceled for now, really. What we learned this week is that the report was true, right?

Maybe not cancel, but definitely postponed, definitely no resources being spent on it. So Tesla was doing an expansion of Gigafactory Texas, according to sources, specifically for the NV9 program. And this whole expansion has been completely canceled.

And now they are focusing those resources on the south expansion for the big data center that Tesla is building there, which has been linked to Robotaxi. It's going to be a giant data center with NVIDIA computing power to train the current self-driving effort, but also specifically the Robotaxi that Tesla plans to unveil August 8th. So for all purposes right now, the NV9 program is dead until further notice.

which is a big concern because a lot of the analysts that build models around Tesla are basing them on

the NV9, the $25,000 Tesla ramping capacity, ramping deliveries for Tesla. Now Elon is bidding the whole house on the Rebel Taxi instead with this data center and with the Rebel Taxi on V-Link August 8, which was accelerated right after the program was announced to be canceled. So that's very interesting too. But what I'm hearing internally is that there's a lot of concern about this data center being ready in time. So with the cancellation or postponing of the NV9 program,

the focus was on the expansion for the data center instead. And, um,

That program was already behind, but Elon accelerated it with these new resources to August 20th, apparently. Tesla is looking to get that up and running, turn on the data center August 20th, a few weeks after the robo-taxi on the E-Link. So this is something that is expected to accelerate the training of the self-driving program, but it's going to come after the robo-taxi. And even that date is also being put into question, especially with Austin's wet months coming in. So it's not great.

So at least like, did you see this community note here on X? At least they say that this Rupert Rittle is false according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk. So it's not just, it's false. But I'm sure you click on the actual article and the router has probably already included the fact that Elon denied it. So it's not really that useful. So yeah, I basically made the argument now that Elon is betting Tesla on the Robotaxi because...

If the robot taxi doesn't work, if the self-driving is not solved, which there's been plenty of delays on that front, Tesla is looking at maybe at least three years of very little to no growth in deliveries. There is a real chance right now that Tesla slowed down delivery, like reduced delivery in 2024 versus 2023. Already down Q1 versus Q1 last year. And now production going down.

In Gigafactory Shanghai, it's not looking good. And then if you have no new high-volume vehicle programs coming to market,

for years because the NV9 is put aside. Now you can say that the Robotaxi is going to be a cheaper vehicle too, but the Robotaxi doesn't have a steering wheel. It's completely useless if you don't solve self-driving. So Elon is basically betting Tesla on self-driving technology, which is a wild, wild bet based on the current missed timelines on that program. Yeah, current and like the last, what, six years, seven, eight years. Yes.

And it's not only that Tesla can achieve it, it's that the government will let them do it. I mean, I guess the governments are letting Waymo and V-Crews go around, so...

yeah I mean making any bet that requires a regulatory approval is a very risky there's no about it there's this idea that you know because like you said Wemo already did it Cruz already did it so at the very least Tesla could use itself driving technology to release something similar to that but even but Elon has always put that aside like not even like never been in the plans that like he's always like poo-pooed this

approach of way more like not just on the lidar side of things and everything but on the geofence service like he's always been like a level five or nothing basically which is already a pipe dream like i think i think tesla has two set of sites on level four not level five but it's uh it's gonna be a weird few months at this maybe even years maybe in the years yeah

So now the real weird thing is that these layoffs happen on Monday, Tuesday. We start learning a lot more about these layoffs. And then a day later, Tesla's board, a day after letting go of 15,000 people, Tesla's board asked shareholders to approve, again, Elon's $55 billion payday.

A little tone deaf, I think. A little tone deaf? I mean, if I was one of these employees being let go right now, you know, being so happy to work for Tesla, like being part of the mission and everything, and then being told, you let go, you have two weeks of pay, and Elon is going to get $55 billion. Not just Elon's going to get $55 billion, but like Tesla's board pleading with shareholders for Elon to get his money. So if you're not aware...

This is regarding the $55 billion 2018 CEO compensation package that was approved by 73% of shareholders, but was rescinded by a judge in Delaware earlier this year due to governance issues at Tesla, where they believe that

The board misrepresented to shareholders the plan by not specifically saying how it came about and how it was approved by non-independent shareholders, board members, people that had personal financial dealings with Elon, people that were friends with Elon.

And that they didn't really question the need for the plan, meaning that Elon was already extremely invested with Tesla. His interests were already aligned with shareholders. And they just sort of came up with this idea of like 6%, giving an extra 6% of the company to Elon if he grew the company to $600 billion, which he did.

or at least contributed to it. Not anymore. So yeah, really quickly, like if they re-approve that tranche system and he hasn't, like right now, the company's worth less than half a billion, does he still get that like,

I think technically there was some criteria on like you need to be over this market cap for a certain number of trading days. So I think technically Tesla already fulfilled all the requirements for every one of those trenches.

So they're all going to be approved automatically, I think. And I think you can also exercise them, some of them at least, because there was a holding period for them, but I think the holding period might be up to date for some of these trenches at least. So you could potentially exercise some of them.

But yeah, so the judge was like, why did you take... How did you come up with 6% of the company extra when the last CEO compensation plan you did was 4%? Why give an extra 2% when...

when the first one was actually successful too. How did you come about the 2%? And then that's when the whole deal fell apart because they did the interviews with the board members and how they came about this plan. And everyone was like, yeah, I mean, it's basically Elon that came up with the plan and his lawyer. And his lawyer was this personal divorce lawyer that was also the general counsel at Tesla that would go between the two parties and that sometimes he didn't know who he was working for because he was Elon's lawyer, but he was also...

There's no cons. It's such a mess, this whole thing, that the judge was like, you know what? Let's get the shareholders to vote on it again, but with this information this time. And the real problem now is that the board clearly has not got the message. Or Elon hasn't got the message and he's not communicating to the board because obviously it looks like the board is just doing Elon's bidding. But they basically...

They did include the decision of the judge and the proxy at the very end. So maybe some shareholders are going to be going through it because of it. So kudos on that. But for the most part, Tesla is bidding on...

shareholders not reading the judge decision, just reading their part of the proxy. And now this new website called supportteslavalue.com. So Tesla's board decided to launch this new website to convince shareholders to re-approve Elon's competition plan to protect your investment in Tesla's future, which is kind of funny.

Again, the whole website kind of missed the point completely of the actual ruling of the judge. It focused on the package being aligned with stockholder interests, which, again,

The judge went over that and agreed that it was aligned with interest. It's just why that big of a package, even though his interest was already aligned with shareholders. So that's fine. The real cross of the issue here is this. So that's the only place where Tesla addressed the robustness

of the process to get this plan together, where they say that they spent six months of careful analysis, ongoing discussion. They had an independent advisor. They did 15 calls with institutional shareholders, hundreds of hours of designing.

elon and kimball recused from the board and they had 15 meetings over the board so they mentioned all of that like we took it seriously basically but if you read the judge decision and the judges again had testimonies for all these people emails document and everything and it just didn't look as robust as what this list planning there here uh i put some excerpt from the decision here as a counter argument to this website if you want to look at it but in short really

it's such a weird situation because, you know, obviously it's happening after the layoffs too and everything, but there's a few different ways you can look at this. And one is that in the ideal world, Tesla shareholders would like get into a time machine and go back to 2018 and vote on this package again with the knowledge that

of the judge decision on how it came about and how Tesla's board members were not independent and all that. And then placed their vote again. It was approved at 73% last time. Maybe it still passed. Maybe it doesn't pass. Maybe it passed with a lower majority. Maybe it passed with a bigger majority. I don't know. But...

The judge decision was correct because it looked at if one shareholder was not aware of this situation and they just based their decision on test as proxy, test as proxy was misleading and therefore the vote doesn't work. It's as simple as that.

Now, obviously, it's not exactly how people are going to vote because there's no time machine. People will vote with the knowledge of what happened in the last year.

six years since this plan was put in place. They will sort of use it as a vote of confidence for Elon and the board at large. So it's completely different now. It's not just about the compensation package, which I know can be frustrating for some Elon fans. It's like, I did the work, you should get paid and everything. I get that. It's just that Elon is not listening to shareholders. The board is not listening to shareholders.

The board is not reining in Elon. So shareholders are going to use the only tools that they have at their disposal.

that they can have to address this issue and that's voting. And that's an opportunity to vote and to show like your disagreement or agreement with Elon. So your support or your lack of support for him. And I think that's how people are going to vote. And we just reported today, we talked to Leo Kuguan, who is the largest retail shareholders at Tesla. He owns 27 million shares of Tesla.

We reported on him a few times before that he's been frustrated with Tesla and Elon lately, especially Tesla's board. And he told me that he's going to vote against the compensation package and he's going to go vote against the two Tesla directors that are up for re-election, which happened to be Kimball, Elon's brother, and James Murdoch, the former 21st Century Fox CEO that is a close friend to Elon apparently.

he's one shareholders he owns a lot of shares he owns more share than some institutional shareholders he's bigger than tiro now which tiro price which was a early big investor in tesla yields more than them obviously vanguard and blackrock are still the decision makers uh but that's what things get interesting like right now if elon does recuse himself you basically have 50 50 institutional shareholders 50 percent uh retail shareholders

Now, on the institutional front, it's a wild card because a lot of them do depend on advisory service firms for voting. And last time, a lot of these firms were not on board with that package. So the institutional shareholders that follow these firms will likely vote against it again. It's not all of them, but it might be a significant part of the shares being voted against it.

So, but again, even if most of the institutional shareholders do approve, it's not enough to get the thing approved. They're going to need a significant portion of the retail investors to get on board, which is probably why Tesla is getting nervous right now and launching that website and everything. On the institutional side, it's way harder to get an idea of what's happening. But honestly, outside of X, I'm seeing a lot of people

voting no on the comp package. Obviously, Leo is voting no. We ran a poll on Electrek, which I know you're going to say it's biased, but still looks like about 70% are saying no. On Reddit, someone posted my article on the votes. And I went into the comments. There were like 500 comments. And to my surprise, most of them were no, were voting no. Which is never at it.

The Tesla Motors subreddit, like the one, the big one, not the real Tesla, which is the Tesla Q, you could argue. But anyway, so I don't know. I think it could be like real tight. I think it's going to be tighter than 73% for sure. So I don't know. I agree. I think it's going to be tight. But I think Tesla's IR team is probably reaching out to Vanguard, BlackRock, and the others saying,

look, Elon may quit if you guys don't vote. And you think your stock is going down now? If Elon quits, stock is going to drop below 100, whatever. And your constituents or basically your investors are going to be pretty pissed that you made the decision to drop the stock. And they'll probably call the people out who the big people out who voted no or something. I don't know if they can even do that if it's blind or whatever. But

I imagine that Tesla's IR team is really pounding BlackRock, Vanguard, and the other big ones to get those votes because that's where the money is best well spent. Putting up a dinky website or whatever to convince retail investors is something, but it's not as important. But I think some of them already are locked in into these ISS services where they have to follow them, though.

So I think some of them, like they might listen to Tesla, but they're like, you look, whatever the ISIS firm recommends, we're going to, we're not going to go with it. So, but I do still believe that you're right, that Tesla is doing some of that lobbying right now.

And I don't know if they are using this threat that Elon would be leaving, but I know that a lot of Tesla shareholders are using that on X right now. They're all saying Tesla, Elon's going to leave if they vote no and everything, which Elon has not said that. In the litigation process at the court, he was asked about that. Was there any possibility that you were leaving if you didn't get that package? And Elon said,

Clearly said no. He said, I'm committed to life with Tesla. That wouldn't have changed anything, which I think that weighed into the judge decision to now is like if the board knew that it's like, why do you give him 6% of the company extra if he already has 20% and you don't need it? Like, so a lot of these things you have to be careful with.

So I think there's a lot of fear mongering about Elon leaving. I don't know that he would leave if he doesn't get the package. First of all, what does that mean he leaves? Does it mean he sells his shares? That would definitely affect the stock. If he just leaves the role of CEO, for example, and just become like a chair member or whatever, I don't think the stock would crash.

The only way I think he crashed if he leaves is if he leaves and he sells. If he leaves and he sells, then yes, the stock will crash. But his own stock will also crash. He cannot sell 15%, 18% of the company in one go and be done with it. It's going to take time and it's going to trash the stock and crash his own company.

uh fortune at the same time so i don't know if it's a smart idea also it would be like you would be quitting on tesla you would like leave tesla behind which i i think would be difficult for him to do just morally speaking i think yeah all right we're gonna move on from tesla stuff and then we're gonna take you guys questions so we have like four more news items to discuss and then we can get to uh your question in a few minutes uh first off we got the unveiling of the gm energy uh bi-directional vehicle to home chargers you can see them right here

So we get some pricing information, some availability information. So you have the hardware here. It costs $7,300. It consists of the GM Energy Power Shift Charger, which is $1,700. The GM Energy V2, sorry, enablement kit.

I think that's this year, which is $5,600. And so that's $7,300. Hardware cost is before installation and taxes. So you can expect a good, I don't think you're going to get away with less than $10,000 for this installed. They are partnering with Qmerit on that.

Now, a Powerwall is $1,100, so it's still more expensive. And you do get 200 kilowatt hour of energy capacity rather than this. Yeah, an absurd amount. Yeah. And that's why they say weeks. I mean, like we've talked about this before, the Chevy or the Hummer EV, the Chevy Silverado, and soon we'll talk about the GMC Sierra, all have this over 200 kilowatt hour battery pack.

which you know like seems kind of absurd if you're you're towing long distances i guess it makes sense but uh you're carrying around an absurd amount of weight but that weight is you know if you're trying to back up a home having that much battery power does come in hand so i i would like to see these things come down in prices a little bit still but yeah there's a good value overall

yeah and you could always uh you know there's a 240 plug in the back you could always 240 right into your generator plug and and have kind of a you know it's not going to be an automatic flip over like this thing but yeah it'll pack up your home just as well and last just as long yeah the capacity the energy capacity is still there uh all right we get a new lucid air grand touring which is the longest range version of the um of the lucid air

And now it gets 516 miles of range, which is wild. Lucida has been betting on a very long-range vehicle, and the Grand Touring is the epitome of that. So the new version...

so i need to do it we need to do an electric cannonball run with the lucid yeah it would be it would be the best one as long as the chargers work right and the grand touring starts at 110 000 which is not too bad it gets a 12.5 percent price cut from 125 so you you can get

the longest range ev for uh just over a hundred thousand dollars so the new lineup now is the pure the cheapest at seventy thousand dollars uh which get 419 miles of range then you get the touring for eight thousand dollar more 411 miles of range the grand touring 110 516 and then you have the ridiculous sapphire at 250 000 for

427 miles of range, but the range is not really the selling point for the Sapphire. It's the insane speed. And I think Scooter just released his video of the test drive of it. If you want to go check that out on the YouTube channel. Of course, wait until the podcast is done. I don't want to see anybody leave right now. That would be rude, guys. But after the show is done, go check out his video of it.

All right. The Lotus is making a comeback in the electric vehicle world with the Eletre. I don't think I've heard anyone say it out loud. I've only seen it written down.

LHRA, you think? LHRA, I don't know. LHRA Hyper SUV. They just opened the orders in America, North America, with a nice little starting price and specs. So it starts at $107,000. I'm not really familiar with Lotus pricing. I don't know if it's expensive for them, if it's in line with their other vehicles. I mean, Lotus isn't really Lotus anymore. They got bought by a Chinese company. It's just a badge. But...

Some of the same. I mean, I know they still have some design stuff in England. They have the same design aesthetic that they had. Mm-hmm.

So that's for the base model, 110, which comes with a 112-kilowatt battery pack, just like the Eletria R. Also, both all-wheel drive, but the difference is the overall power. So you go from 450 kilowatts, 603 horsepower, to 675 kilowatts and 905 horsepower. You almost have 1,000 horsepower in that thing. So that brings your acceleration from 4.5 to 2.95 in the Eletria R.

In terms of range, you do lose some. So that's WLTP. Okay, so we still have WLTP even though this is the North American launch.

304 to 354 so i assume that has to do with maybe a wheels option on the electric and the electric r is 254 to 280 so that power does come with significantly less range but still 250 and more uh for for the even this the short shortest range version of the uh of the suv first deliveries in north america are expected in q4 of this year

Another new vehicle launched this week, the GMC 2024 Siela EV Denali Edition 1. That's quite a mouthful, but...

It is the, well, the Edition 1 is always the first version of the model, the fully equipped one that GMC launched on a new vehicle. It was the same thing for the Hummer. Now with the Denali Edition 1, you have the same giant battery pack. You have 440 miles of range.

10% increase over what was previously reported. They have the mobile power source thing with a 10.2 kilowatt of power in the back, which is going to match with the energy system that we talked about.

So 10,000 pounds of towing, 1,450 pounds of payload, and also an increase of what was previously announced. So it's good on GM to deliver over what was promised, unlike the Cybertruck. In max power mode, it's got 750 horsepower, 0 to 60 in 4.5 seconds for a giant truck like that. It's crazy. It had the four-wheel steering, crab walk, just like the Hummer.

What else? What else? 16.8 inch diagonal center screen, a Bose system, and a price of $100,000, basically. Yeah, it's a little pricey. Perfect. Obviously, this is a fully equipped version of the vehicle. There's going to be a less optioned out version that's going to come out soon at cheaper prices.

All right. Still staying in the expensive vehicle. Maserati is launching its tri-motor Grand Cabrio Folgore. Hey, they're making it hard on me with the names. I know. They're making up all these new names. Folgore convertible. So that's nice. We haven't had a lot of convertible in the electric vehicle space. Maserati, the Italian automaker, is coming up with one. A four-seater. That's a good looking car. Yeah. I like the bronze color, too.

So it's the soft top convertible? Rose gold almost. Yeah, it's the soft top convertible. Okay. All right. Do we have some specs in there? All right. 92.5 kilowatt hour battery pack, 83 kilowatt hour usable. Jeez. Almost 10 kilowatt hour of buffer. That's crazy.

270 kilowatt DC fast charging, not bad. 100 kilometers, 62 miles in 55 minutes. That doesn't mean anything. 20% to 80% charge in 18 minutes. Okay, that's better. I do like to have the 10 to 80, but it's still pretty good. What else do we have? So on the WLTP, we have 419 kilometers, 260 miles, up to 447 kilometers, 278 miles.

So yeah, that's probably because of the giant buffer. I'm sure they could get that car over 300 miles if they had a five kilowatt buffer instead of nine something. It's crazy. You have a lot of decent power in there. You have three, 300. No. Okay, that's...

that's three times three thousand three hundred is not yeah it's not 560 or 610 total okay i'm gonna have to look that up because it looks like a quick mistake here probably that makes more sense 560 kilowatt of max power 610 with max boost i think that that's still a lot of power yeah you have a look here with the the roof on zero to sixteen two point eight seconds yeah that makes sense with that kind of power

uh 800 volt system all-wheel drive powertrain of course that's true three motors that makes sense you know i don't think i've ever been in a miserati really yeah uh i know i have at least one i haven't heard good things in terms of like service and reliability and all that yeah maybe they can uh change that with their electric vehicles they can yeah yeah exactly

All right. There's a lot of other specs you can discuss, but you can check out the Scooter article on it. He was able to go check it out in Italy earlier this month. A lot more details on it. All right. Let's jump into the comments section. We're almost an hour in. All right. Jonathan Root, Tesla voting on Elon's comp package is terrible timing when you have dropping deliveries, dropping profits, and mass layoffs.

Yeah, the timing could not be worse for Elon because like I said, it's not really just about the come package. A lot of shareholders are going to approach it as a vote of confidence for him. And when the stock is doing terrible, delivery is doing terrible last quarters, the profits for sure will be affected for it. And then the mass layoff, it's like, ugh. Yeah. I mean, if anything, they should have probably done this a lot earlier, but right now. Anyway.

Uh, I strongly suspect that Tesla shift robo taxi means that cars sold to date will never achieve level five autonomy. I kind of feel that way too. New hardware and computer for robo taxi will work at least as well as Waymo. A lot of statements there. Yeah. I mean, I agree with a lot of what Mr. Graham is saying here. Um,

i do have some concern like you see with this new update for example this this new spring update that this don't build and like a lot of the features are only for the amd cars i know it's not the same computer as a self-driving computer but still like you see we cannot get like a new user interface but we'll get self-driving okay

It's a hard sell for a lot of people. There's things like that. And then obviously you have the robot taxi, which is going to be purpose-built from it. So, all right, why do you need to build a purpose-built robot taxi if all the cars on the road are supposed to work as a robot taxi? Contradicting things here. Yep.

All right. Watch LIDAR come to RoboTaxi. Wouldn't that be fun if it brought back LIDAR? I doubt it. I doubt that. Yeah, Elon's a little bit stubborn to let that happen.

All right, Jonathan Root, Cybertruck is recalled because soap was applied to the accelerator pedal. What does that mean? We talked about that a little bit earlier. Yeah. We don't know exactly what it meant, but sounds like somebody. Well, it's sort of like a cover, like a little, like very thin cover that's on top of the pedal that slides off.

So it makes sense that with soap, like someone didn't think of it, that's just the, it applies easier with the soap, but then it doesn't stick as much and it'd be problematic. So it sounds like this is happening. This is what happened. What's weird is like they decided to do that and it was unapproved apparently. So that's a weird thing to say. All right. Micr R with emojis says, not weird, it's a process. I guess that we're talking about the cyber truck. Yeah.

I guess it's a process, not a great one. Tunnel at GigaTaxis goes to the new end of the line building across the freeway. I wonder who's going to dig a tunnel. I wonder who they outsource the tunnel digging to. Probably not a company owned by the CEO. I would be shocked. I would not be shocked. Anyway, Zapod Bebo Brox, I don't know if that's his real name, Elon does not want to make drivable Model 2.

Yeah, so a lot of people have been saying that, like the NV9 is just a robo-taxi with a steering wheel. So it's basically the same program and all that. That's not what I'm hearing internally. Internally, it might be true. That might be true. But what I'm hearing internally is that there was a specific expansion at Gigafactory Nevada for NV2, and that has been canceled. So that's what Rotter is reporting on. That's what we were able to confirm this week.

So that's why they use the word cancel. I didn't go as far as using the word cancel because you could just postpone. But that expansion is not being worked on anymore. Focus has been shifted to the data center instead.

I mean, it's just semantics at that point, right? Even if they did cancel, they're not going to throw away all the work they did on it. They're going to keep that stuff. So it's the same, whatever. But to Zavok's point, is that like, okay, so if the Model 2 was just a robot taxi with a steering wheel, well, they can still do that if they have to.

which i guess but it's going to be behind if you were just focusing on the model 2 or nv9 rather than the robotaxi yeah

All right. Step whatever. Do you guys think Tesla has the votes to approve another $50 billion pay package from us? We talked about this quite a bit. We're not sure. I think it's going to be tight. Real tight. It's going to be tight. It's going to be interesting. It's always interesting with Tesla. It's going to be like the referendum in 95 in Quebec, like 49-51, something like that. Yeah.

uh micro r says could be osborne issue i think he's referring to a model two maybe taking money away from the model threes possibly uh what do you think next week's tesla bear or bull oh i mean the bears are gonna be happy next week there's no doubt about it it's gonna be a bad quarter like these delivery don't you think that's priced in already so that's the big question is it priced in so

I think all of it depends on how Tesla, Elon, how the board discuss these issues. And I just don't see Elon handling it very well. I think Elon has some issues right now, some very real ones. And I don't know that he will be approaching the situation correctly. It's just my guess. And that will...

that will result in more than the the price in right now reduction in the stock price i would think okay uh is elon leaving tesla really a bad thing it would open the door for tesla to start focusing on designing and building great cars so again there's two things that is like with elon leaving doesn't happen and is it good or bad for tesla if he if he leaves those are two things i don't i don't see him necessarily leaving if the vote doesn't go through

And if he does leave, again, if it's bad for Tesla, the stock and Tesla company are two different things, obviously. For the stock, I think it's only bad if he sells at the same time, which I also don't know if that would be happening. For the company, he's a part-time CEO at this point. If it means we bring in a full-time CEO that's good...

I think that's a plus for Tesla to have a full-time CEO. That's always a Tesla that's much more aware of everything that's happening in Tesla that, uh, can fix issues that spend their time there. That spends, um, a lot of efforts and passion there. Um, I think that's a positive, uh, moving on, uh,

talk within the community. Simply being a car company doesn't justify Tesla's valuation. They need someone like Elon to move beyond cars. I think that's probably right. If they got a more traditional CEO, the company would be

probably valued more like a traditional well they don't have to take a car ceo too they can take like a taxi or something like that because i do agree with elon that tesla is you know has some interesting potential and some other programs and then vehicles but i don't know that elon is the only one that can move them beyond cars i don't see that all right uh agree valuation is too high uh and we were talking about lotus the geely owns lotus the chinese company

Hey, guys, why aren't there any BEBs with 200 plus mile battery range equipped with a mild ICE hybrid for long trips? The EV holdouts in the U.S. market would eat this up. What was the last car that was like that? I'm trying to think. The BMW i3 with the range extender, I guess. Yeah, I guess that would be it. But even that didn't have 200 miles of range, did it?

Now it's like 100, maybe 100. Yeah, 100-something. Yeah, it's not something that's really popular on that because when you say a mild ICE hybrids, yeah, I mean, even the mild ones are still significant addition to your powertrain in terms of volume and weight. So to have that with a batch pack big enough to get 200-plus miles of range, I'm not sure that's ever been done, to be honest with you.

100 miles, yes. 200 miles, no, not really. Yeah. All right. Last thing, Andrew McDonald says, "The boring company is the tunneling company Elon owns that will be doing the tunnel in Texas." I don't know if our sarcasm made it through the- Yeah. Yeah. That was a joke, Andrew. We clearly know who's going to get paid to dig that very useful tunnel.

All right. That's us for this week, everyone. I appreciate every single one of you that's been watching, that's been commenting. Thank you very much. If you do enjoy the show, you can give us a thumbs up, a like, a subscribe. All those things are free to do. They take a second and they help the show a ton. So I appreciate when you do it. If you can give us a five-star review also on your podcast app, that also helps a lot. Free to do. Helps the show. Thank you very much, guys. We're going to see you same place, same time next week. Bye-bye.