Tesla Model 3 refresh comes to NA, Cybertruck defect, and more EV sale numbers
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Welcome to a new episode of the Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host, and as usual, I'm joined by Seth Winshaw. How are we doing today, Seth? I'm good. All right. I want to say a quick thank you to our sponsor for today's episode, Upway, a leading online e-bike provider carrying the broadest selection of brand new and certified pre-owned models. We're going to tell you a little bit more about their business later on the show. It's a very interesting business, so stay tuned for that. But

Let's jump into the news first. We have plenty to discuss. Obviously, the biggest news of the week. It's going to be good for us, Electric, because it just slashed the number of emails that I get per week by like 20%, probably, because people are always asking me, when is the new Model 3 Refresh coming to North America?

I don't know. Well, we had a pretty good idea last week. Last week, we told you we felt like it was soon. And sure enough, it was this January 9th. That was like Wednesday. Yeah, it was Wednesday.

Tesla officially started taking orders for the new Model 3 in North America and the deliveries are scheduled for this month. So it was pushed now to February, March, but it was January, February earlier this week. So I assume Tesla got a bunch of new orders from people that were waiting for the new version before they placed an order for the Model 3.

So in terms of the vehicle itself, we don't need to go into too much details here, obviously, because this is the same that we already extensively reported on when it launched in Europe and in Asia and other markets.

So now it's coming to North America. So the specs and the pricing and all that, that was what was more interesting, really. The pricing stayed the same for both the rear-wheel drive at $38,000 and the Model 3 Long Range. And the performance version is gone like it is in these other markets that I just mentioned. So this is...

Very little change compared to, again, the design is obviously updated and all that. But in terms of trims and pricing, it stayed the same. Even the range, which got a little bit better in Europe with the WLTP, stayed the same.

In North America, at least for the rear-wheel drive, the long range got a tiny little bump of eight miles, eight more miles of range, so a tiny little bump. So what we think happened here is that with all the changes to the, well, not big changes, but the changes with the EPA rules that we discussed last week that resulted in Tesla having its range reduced across its entire lineup, the new version of the Model 3,

is more efficient, more likely than not, just like the one in Europe, but the EPA change rules canceled that out for the rear-wheel drive and ends up with just a tiny little bit more range for the dual all-wheel drive long-range version.

So this is the logic here. One thing that I was curious about, the top speed dropped massively for both versions from 140 miles per hour to 125 miles per hour, which is still like more than you were likely to achieve because these are not like sports car or anything like that. But still, Tesla is likely going to reserve the higher speed.

top speed for the performance version that we expect to launch later this year. Why do you think the speed dropped so much? That's significant. Yeah. Battery? I'm not sure. I mean, the car is believed to be using new motors, but maybe it's just Tesla software locking things and making it a bigger difference in the upcoming performance version. I don't know. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it's not a deal breaker for anyone for the most part, like the top speed. So it's like a feature that aspect that you can play with without too much, without affecting cells too much. Maybe it affects Tesla's insurance. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. Though anyway, they can track if you, even if you, like, if you can get to that speed, Tesla will track if you actually use that capacity and then they will charge you more for their own insurance. Right.

Anyway, very welcome addition to the lineup in North America. It was creating some kind of limbo for like six months of like Model 3 sales. We know exactly what happened because we know a lot of people just didn't want to pull the trigger on a new Model 3 because they know that the Highland was coming. And Tesla, of course, being Tesla, they don't say anything about that. They just let it go. It's hard to say anything when...

your sales are going to go to zero, the Osborne effect. If you do say, hey, you know, whatever. They could have given a price drop,

You know, for the older version. That's the thing. So we didn't know. Like at first we thought maybe there's going to be a price increase too. So maybe that would encourage people to like go with the older version. It's not the most massive update too. Design wise, I do love it. Like I said it last summer when it first launched. But I do love the new design. I think it's a decent upgrade. But in terms of features inside the vehicle, like the backseat screen,

like unless you have a family and so that out like you that thing doesn't get that much use even if you do have a family like most of the time you're better off with an iPad in the backseat than you are with that thing um the ambient light is nice but it's not that big of a deal either the little efficiency boost is nice so even though the advertised range with the EPA is not

increase, we know that the efficiency is higher with this vehicle. So like for the most part, Tesla owners in America with the EPA range being the advertised range, you don't use that that much in your day to day driving. You have to go with how you know your car and the display range and all that. But now you know at least it's a little bit more efficient. So that's good. All right. Moving on from the Model 3, this story just came out today, the Cybertruck.

So the Cybertruck has been deliveries for over a month now, but for the most part, Tesla has been delivering to employees. There's been some deliveries to non-Tesla employee, just real customers, but they've been very far and few in between. Now we have a new one this week that was delivered to an actual customer that has nothing to do with Tesla.

And the fit and finish on the employee ones, we still got to see it just because those cars were highly photographed in the wild all the time. And you got to take a look at it and it looked pretty good. And now one of the first ones that we get to a customer looks awful, but awesome.

like awful this picture is here that you see is uh that's the top of the bed of the truck here and uh this is the rear side panel rear two-quarter panel from the the past the driver's side of things the first time i saw the picture someone sent me the picture i had to do a quick double take because i thought it was a door that was like slightly open

No, this is not a door. This is a body panel on the car that looks like it's basically peeling off the frame of the vehicle. Now, to be fair, the picture is very close to the rear of the truck. So it looks worse than it is. From that picture right now, it might look like it's an inch off. It might be more like half an inch off.

off at the worst part and then a quarter of an inch at the top. Still completely awful, but maybe not as bad as the picture makes it look.

And that's not the only one. This is the rear panel. It is pretty bad, the rear panel. And this is another one here with the door panel being completely off here by what looks like half an inch also. So just this is a $100,000 truck here. And honestly, it feels like they should have a layer of, you know, people are going to film these things. This is like the first ones that are going out. People are making the decision if they should get it or not.

They should have some kind of quality control over this. For $100,000, you could get a couple people to look at it. That's what makes no sense to me. How many people had to drop the ball to get that to a customer? Because it did get to a customer. So assurance quality at the...

at the factory didn't catch that or maybe it didn't happen there. Maybe it happened in transport or whatever, but it was delivered to the customer like that. So there has to be at least like 10 people at Tesla that could have stopped that and they didn't. So it shows a real problem here that is this okay delivering something like that? I would hope not. I would hope that Tesla doesn't think that it's okay. I would hope that this is an actual mistake. But still,

It's a bad example because like you said, Tesla knows that these early units are going to be highly photographed, highly videoed. They're going to be used by... Because Tesla doesn't provide review units to a lot. They just provide them to a few YouTubers and Motor Trend and Jay Leno. Well, Jay Leno is a YouTuber now, basically. Just a handful of people that they favor.

And everybody else has to find an owner that's going to loan it to them or rent it on Turo or something like that. So they know that those vehicles are going to be seen by everyone. And then they still deliver it like that. It's just such a bad look for Tesla. I truly don't get it. I truly don't get it. I heard a friend of the site, a former...

colleague of ours, Scott Buscemi. Yeah, he's got one on the way. Maybe we should head over. Is he still in Arizona? Or in LA? Last time, I thought he was in LA, but yeah, maybe he's in Arizona now. I don't know. Yeah, Scott is getting his, I think, this weekend. I think on Sunday or something like that. So yeah, if I could get to California right now, it would be nice. Maybe he'll do a video for us.

Yeah, he does great videos. He's a great videographer. All right, moving on from the Cybertruck. Tesla has updated its wrap business this week. So this is a new business from Tesla since late last year. They are starting to do their own factory, I shouldn't say factory made because I think those are made in the service centers, but they are

Tesla official wraps. They call it color paint protection film, more commonly known as wraps. So they launched in October and the main thing that stuck out to us was the price. It was very expensive. It started at $7,500 and went up to $8,000.

uh for the model 3 and model y now this has slashed the price across the entire selection now it's between five thousand seven hundred dollars and six thousand depending on the quote and the color and they added a new color this one here the satin abyss blue uh this is it on the model three and on the model y um it's a nice new like one of the thing that we noted too is like the colors that they're actually offering are not not too wild like you know

There was the rose gold, which is cool. You don't see that often on a car and it's a popular color in the tech world. And we know that a lot of techies love Tesla. So that made sense. But it's now sold out on the thing. So that's interesting. Maybe it was very popular. The other colors are more mild. You have a wrap that makes sense to like you can go a little bit wilder with it. But this is not doing that too much. But this satin blue is something you don't see that often. Satin abyss blue. Yeah, it looks good.

I feel like they could have a hundred different wrap colors. Like it wouldn't be hard to ramp up that too. Yeah. Probably have a supplier and have plenty of choices. You can offer them all. Like it doesn't change anything. All right. This is an interesting story that kind of evolved throughout the week. Earlier this week, we noted that a bunch of test level threes were

Hertz's own platform for, they have their own platform to sell vehicles. So obviously the Hertz rents vehicle, but they update their fleet quite often. And after the cars are in

in their fleet for a few years. They generally sell it and they sell it themselves. And we saw some very good prices on the Model 3. It was going for as low as $17,000. You see these two 2021 Model 3 here, standard range plus for $17,000. And that's before tax credit because you

There's also now the new tax credit in the U.S. applied to used car for $4,000. $4,000. But do we know if Hertz counts as like a used car dealer?

I don't see why it wouldn't, honestly. But yeah, you should definitely ask your local arts representative if they can apply the tax credit for you. But even then, like $17,000 is still a good price too. Because you couldn't get a lot of Tesla having access to the used tax credit because one of the criteria to be eligible for the vehicle to be eligible, there's still some criteria on the buyer's side too.

in terms of income and whatnot. But on the car side, it was a cap of $25,000 and there's not a lot of used Tesla at $25,000. But Hertz had a ton of them, so it made some of the cheapest Tesla out there. Although obviously, important to know, why they are so cheap is because they are high mileage. A lot of these cars are between 60,000 and 100,000 miles over just two years.

And those are rental car miles, which are typically, if you've ever had a rental car, you know that you don't baby those things. Yeah. Most people, they don't take that much care to it. And like, yeah, so you need to take a close look. But it's still cool because a lot of people, like there's a lot of people that don't care about that that much. Like they don't care about how their car looks. Like they themselves like don't baby their car at all. And some people even prefer that, like not to have to worry about a ding on your car or something like that. They don't.

You don't have to worry about that. And so that is a way to get like a pretty cheap electric car that's going to save you probably thousands of dollars in fuel savings over the next few years. And they can take like a lot more mileage than that too for the most part. So it was a great opportunity. Now I just opened up their website though because these – let me share this page instead. The –

So now I'm filtering for the lowest price. Yeah. Now the lowest are now at $23,000. So I was striking it all week. And at first it was like $17,000 and then $19,000. And I think on Wednesday it was like $20,000. And now it's $23,000, the cheapest one. So all the cheapest car worldwide.

went away so you see that proves my point a lot of people the cheapest car were probably not just the one with the higher mileage because i see some with higher mileage now than the 17 000 one is probably the one that was the most beat up so a lot of people just don't care that don't care about that that much or they plan to fix it so some people are good with that they can they can fix those things so

Yeah, there's still a lot under $25,000, but not a lot. Like maybe a dozen cars. I'm thinking like, I don't know if people have teenagers, but like if you have a teenager, that might be a good car for a teenager. You can always set the valet mode on that. Not necessarily the valet mode, but you can put the speed limit on it at least. Can you lock the chill mode?

Like that would be nice. If you can lock the chill mode and lock the speed, top speed limit, because you can lock the top speed limit. Or I think you might be right. I think the value mode might do that automatically, those two. Either way. Yeah, you're right. Because it's still a super safe car. Yeah. So you don't feel bad putting your kids in that. And you don't feel bad too if they hit a curb or something because it's already pretty beat up. Yeah.

But yeah, so that happened earlier this week. We started these cars showing up. And then what we learned yesterday, Hertz filed with ACC ahead of the release of their earnings.

And they gave a few warnings in that filing ahead. And one of them was regarding the first sale of part of their EV fleet. So for those who don't remember, back in 2021, Hertz announced the electrification of its fleet, starting with 100,000 Tesla vehicles, Model 3s at first, and then they added a Model Y. And then since then, they made also a deal with Polestar and a few others where they're getting more cars. But the bulk of their fleet is Tesla vehicles.

So they confirm in that SEC filing that they are selling 20,000 electric vehicles out of their fleet. And the reason for it is...

They say that it's – well, I mean, the reason for it is the normal reason. Like they need to update their fleet after a certain period of time and everything. What was the news item in there is that they said that – I'm quoting here. The company expects to reinvest a portion of these proceeds from the sale of EVs into the purchase of internal combustion engine vehicle to meet customer demand.

So this is surprising because obviously we thought, okay, this is Hertz, 100,000 vehicles. They start updating their fleet to electric vehicles. And then when they sell some, they're going to just reinvest into new electric vehicles and whatnot. And this is going to be a new great way to accelerate EV adoption to that. But no, they say that they are...

going back to ice to a certain degree. So they said a portion of those proceed, uh, going to internal combustion engine. They didn't say all, uh, they didn't say how much, but a portion, uh,

So obviously we think this is a bit short-sighted. I think Hertz is more... Hertz is hurt. It's hurt that what happened with their Tesla fleet because they had like very unfortunate timing with their Tesla fleet. They started buying the Tesla vehicles at the highest price in 2021, 2022. And then Tesla started...

slashing the prices like crazy in a company like Hertz on the financial basis, on their bottom line, on their financial report, the

they rely on keeping a high value of the fleet so that that's what makes them look good financially as a public company and when tesla started stashing prices the hundred thousand test of vehicles they had started being worth a lot less and that's not good in terms of like financing their fleet and all that so in fact that's why that's that's why they announced that in their acc filing because they said that the company expect to recognize uh about

245 million dollars in incremental net depreciation expenses related to the sale of their electric vehicles so obviously this is all this let's follow they're not the only one in that that situation we talked about too about autonomy which is a great company that does uh ev subscription so the you can see it's like renting but it's it's

It's a complete deal with the insurance and all that. And you can go to a month-to-month basis. So it's a cool thing if you don't want to. It's a cheap way to get into new vehicles without a big investment. And they also rely entirely on keeping a high value of their fleet. And obviously, Tesla heard that a lot over the last year and a half or so. You just wondered though, like, okay, so obviously we believe that that decision was short-sighted.

But you just wonder, like, aren't these guys saying, well, we can buy a Tesla for almost half the price what we paid last time. Like, why not just, like, get, like, we're selling our Teslas at a, you know, at a loss, at more than what we thought we were going to lose. But we can buy them new again. Like, we can refresh the fleet for such a much lower price than we had anticipated that I feel like,

That should offset the price. So, you know, theoretically, these guys, you know, once they refresh the fleet, they break even. But it doesn't seem like that is the long-term thinking there.

Yeah, obviously you'd think like now's the time, like go ahead and buy you some Teslas. But yeah, apparently not. They did claim that it was like a dumb end thing. They say, oh, no, customers are asking for ICE cars, which I don't. I mean, I'd like to see the data on that. Right. Well, I mean, in the middle of the US, there's not a lot of EVs, so people don't have familiarity. Yeah.

You know, I think perhaps they're scared. Like some people were scared of, you know, like, where am I going to plug in? You know, that kind of stuff.

But yeah, for me, it's like a no brainer. Like I would never. Yeah. But now you have so many Tesla owners and so many EVs owners on the market too that, and when we travel by plane, we don't, you don't bring your cars with you. And when you get to another place and you need to rent a car, you just disappear. It's like if you put your head down because of your hat, you disappear. My invisibility cloak. Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah.

All right. We're going to have a few more news items to discuss, but before we want to say a quick word about our sponsor for this week's episode, Upway.

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Yes, thank you. It looks like they got a nice shipment of Gazelle bike here, which is a very nice brand of e-bikes. Wow, and those are really inexpensive. That's like half the price you usually see. Yeah, generally pretty expensive. Yeah.

All right. We have a few more news items to discuss, but then we're going to get into the comment section. So if you guys have any questions for us about any stories that we discussed today or any other stories in the EV world that you would want or take on it or you have any questions, you can put them in the comment section right now. So you can go on there on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook. We're live everywhere. But before we do, let's look at a few. We had a more...

EV sales numbers came out. So we covered a lot of that last week, but some companies are a little bit late in releasing the numbers, especially when it's a new year. So now we have Volkswagen. So VW released their numbers and VW global in the US is not a

Very big player, but globally, I think they are third behind Tesla's and BYD in terms of overall BEV volume. And they announced that they had a nice 21.1% growth in all electric vehicle sales with 300,994...

EVs delivered in 2023. They noted things like the ID.4 doing well in Germany, 30,000 in Germany alone. In the US, 38,000. That's crazy. They're almost selling as many ID.4 in Germany as they do in the US, which is obviously a much bigger market in terms of vehicles. 75,000 ID.3s in China alone. Wow.

That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. China loves the ID three. That's nice. And yeah, obviously we were waiting for a lot more vehicles coming out of Volkswagen electric vehicles, obviously in the, in the next few years. Um, and the ID buzz gets launched in the U S uh, at the end of this year, I believe. So that'll be, which one you said the ID buzz. Oh yeah. The, the third row, uh, I guess the bus, uh,

Yeah, we don't have the European numbers for that. No, not on there.

It's probably not super big right now, but yeah, that's a big one. And obviously the real large volume from Volkswagen, which is kind of the premium, like it's the lower range of the premium segment, it's the ID, I think they changed the name a bunch of times, the ID to all, I think now it's called, the cheaper vehicle, electric vehicle. So that's going to be the big one that's going to elevate Volkswagen's global volume in terms of electric vehicles.

All right. Porsche, which is part of Volkswagen or owns Volkswagen. It's always like a little bit murky on that front. But they also released their numbers. And Porsche is obviously completely reliant on the Taycan in terms of all electric vehicles. Still, when did the Taycan first launch? Like 2019 or something? Yeah, it was one of the first ones. Yeah, it's like four years. Macan is supposed to be coming out this year, but it's been really delayed.

Well, it was supposed to be coming out three years ago. Right. And now it's because you drove the Mac-N, so it's coming soon now, right? Right. I mean, it's a 2024 model here, so it has to be any time now. But I did see a range review of it, but it's still a prototype.

I don't know. I'm a little bit worried about that thing because those things did not seem ready to go. Yeah. And they have the Boxster EVs that they've been texting forever, which also would be a very interesting addition because there's nothing else on the market that can be convertible, small sports car, etc.

and uh but not for for now it's all the taiken but taiken is still doing well so the taiken is up uh 17 in 2023 versus 2022 decent for a vehicle that's been on the market for a little bit uh over 40 000 units it's um that's nice it's uh it's it's i think it's still the second it's the second biggest vehicle in the lineup

In terms of size, I think the Macan and the Cayenne are both bigger. Oh, yeah. Of course, SUVs. SUVs.

Yeah, but still, I still don't get it. All the success that Porsche had with the Taycan, I feel like I would be just chomping at the bits to release my next EV, especially the Macan. And you see the success of the Model Y and the Macan can get some of that on the higher side of the market. Everything is there now.

for Porsche and they have the stats in their back to back that up with the Taycan and then nope they're just sitting on it for a while they're not sitting on it I mean the PPE platform has been kind of a train wreck VW is kind of doing the software on that thing and apparently they're just really really late and really bad and Porsche wants to like pull out of the whole like hey we're part of VW they just want to do their own thing

So we'll see how that goes. Yeah. If that's really the reason for the delay, I can't blame them to want to pull out because not a good look. All right. Polestar also released their numbers. And it was kind of a tough year for the Swedish brand that spun out of Volvo. They were down in Q4. Let me try to... We really need to do some charts when we talk about numbers. Yeah.

They delivered a total of 54,600 vehicles in 2023, which is up from 2022. Okay, we don't have the 2022 numbers in there. But yeah, the thing was in Q4, they were down to 12,800 cars, which is down from the Q4 of last year, which is a bad look. Yeah, I wonder if the...

strategy of spinning out Polestar was something that they should have done because it seems like Volvo is doing a pretty good job of doing EVs on their own and Polestar as a lesser known brand which you know there used to be a Volvo Polestar vehicle so people still think of Volvo's

I don't know if there's that much differentiation, like in particular, like the Polestar 3 versus the Volvo EX90. Like the EX90 just seems like a more compelling vehicle, even though it's the same hardware underneath. The EX90 has, you know, just it's a boxier look. It's not quite as sleek. But, you know, with it having a third row, having, you know, all that LiDAR stuff on it, it kind of feels like,

You know, Volvo is not giving Polestar a lot of room to, like, maneuver because all their cars are really, you know, they're sporty, but they're also, you know, very safe. And then, of course, the EX30, everybody's really excited about. Polestar doesn't have their version of that. You know, that's not coming out. So, you know, Volvo seems in a lot better shape than Polestar is right now. Yeah, that's all fair points. But at the same time, how many, like...

How many EVs does Volvo deliver? Because 54,000 is nothing. That's true. I don't know what Volvo's stats are offhand. I don't know if we posted the Volvo numbers just yet. I don't think I saw them. Well, obviously, the Polestar 3 is still going to be a thing where volumes are going to grow when it launches later this year. And then the Polestar 4 just arrived in China. And it's expected in the next few months in Europe and the US where it's going to start at around $60,000. Wow.

So still inexpensive vehicles, but it should help the sales also. All right. One last piece of news before we jump into your comment section. So put your question right now in there when I get to it in a second.

Lucid also released a number, and obviously Lucid had a very, very tough year. Lucid announced that they delivered 1,734 vehicles during the last three months of 2023, which is up from the last quarter, the third quarter, which was 1,400. But it is down from Q4 2022. So that's not what you expect from a growth startup like that, a company that's just starting to ramp up.

their vehicle production going down year over year is a very bad look. So obviously it's send Lucid stock crashing at a new low, which I don't know about that that much because we kind of knew it was coming. They had adjusted down their production for the year last quarter. So we knew that it was going to be a bad quarter, but it still hit the

the stock price pretty bad. They also slashed their pricing to try to sell the vehicle. I mean, we talked about this a lot, but Lucid,

kind of shut themselves in the foot when they focus on launching the air first versus the gravity. They very much need the gravity in order to achieve a large enough volume production in order to start to increase their gross margin and hopefully be profitable. But right now, they're not quite there. What is the anticipated... When is the gravity going to kind of start hitting...

numbers that are meaningful? Well, I would assume later this year, but at the same time, like meaningful. They deliver less than 2,000 vehicles a quarter right now. So I would hope that the Gravity alone can beat that by the end of the year. And then maybe next year we'll start seeing a little bit more healthy operation from Lucid. But even that, I think that's an optimistic look at the company, I think.

I don't know. We've been saying like, I wouldn't be surprised if we see some EV startup go under in 2024. I think Lucid would be at the top of the list unless they just get saved by the Saudis maybe. Or bought by Apple? We haven't heard much about the Apple car project in a while though. Is that them? Yeah.

No, I think people are still talking about it. I don't know. Every once in a while, we get a leak that Hyundai is going to build cars for Apple or something. They were approached. So I don't know. Yeah, we saw that quite a few times. I would prefer Apple to go to a company like Lucid than Hyundai, especially if they buy them. Just because we know Hyundai can build some nice EVs. Hyundai doesn't need Apple.

Apple would need Hyundai. Lucid definitely needs Apple. And Apple needs Lucid to some degree. They don't have the expertise, even though they're not making them profitably. But Apple could come in and use its supply chain experience and cost-cutting experience and just go in there and try to do something. I don't know. Do we know? Does Apple have a strong opinion on the Saudis? Yeah.

I don't know. I couldn't tell you. Because maybe they just wouldn't want to get into business with that. Well, I mean, maybe the Saudis want to get out of the EV business.

they just sell their whole state i'm sure they'd be okay with that yeah but also like i mean yeah but there's like there's a factory now inside i saw their episode even if you sell the stock i mean you're still you're still in bed with that i guess i don't know unless they just give up on that factory i don't know that's interesting i didn't think about that but that is a good point all right should we go to comments yeah yeah let's do it let's do it all right john pinky

What do we know about German gigapart supply ship diverted to Cape of Good Hope? So I believe that's because of the pirates. I think that's because the German Tesla factory is going to shut down for a couple of weeks. I think that's what he's getting at there. We talked about this earlier, I think. Yeah, we don't think that it's a Tesla supply ship that's been...

attacked by pirates or rebels or whatever you want to call them

But because of other ships being attacked, there's been a lot of ships that have been diverted and now it's created some kind of backlog, I think, in the canal. And that is what is delaying a bunch of other companies, including, I think, Volvo this week also announced that they are shutting down production in Europe because of that. So, yeah, Tesla is just stuck in that right now and they expect a two-week delays in some critical parts. That's why they need to stop production, basically.

all right sylvan blanger so the old new cars are still in the showroom should get a price drop so he's referring to the model threes there um what do we know about the model threes that are just still around like have we looked at like the uh the the i guess the they wouldn't be used they would be new but yeah they are a new inventory so yeah there are some old

old design Tesla Model 3 in inventory. They're not heavily discounted. We know Tesla started discounting new inventory vehicle versus new order over the last few years. So they still apply. I don't see like a massive discount over that, but there is one. So you can look for that. And maybe, yeah, maybe an actual like showroom model, you do get some tiny bit of an extra discount on that too. So maybe now that gets a bit exponential with the whole design. I don't know.

you would have to check with your local tesla dealers for that all right uh dan over stay if anyone from tesla is listening they're scrambling to make sure your buddy gets a cyber truck that's been through quality control you would think but uh you know even like uh youtubers like mkbhd uh often get teslas that are not in great uh quality control shape that's been the big uh

complain about Tesla it has improved over the last few years though like we know it the Model Y was not like the Model Y launch especially these are problems especially in the early production but so Model 3 launch was bad with quality control obviously Model Y was a little better we expected Cybertruck to be a little better maybe or maybe

Maybe not due to because of the nature of the design, it's a completely different body panel with stainless steel. Maybe they would still have issue on that.

We're not attacking Tesla like, oh, every truck needs to be perfect and all that. It's just we don't understand. It doesn't make sense for Tesla to deliver a truck like that to the customer with such clear defect. I'm not talking about little body panel gap that are not super aligned, little difference. But Elon was talking about micron precision, Lego level quality control options.

on the Cybertruck and now they're delivering it with where the body panel is literally peeling off the frame. Like this, this is a problem. And I know I posted it on Twitter and of course, like don't go to Twitter for, for Tesla criticism, obviously, but,

Tesla fans are all sweeping this under the rug. It's just Tesla haters commenting on this. It's early in the production process and all that, especially it's early. I wouldn't say if Tesla was in the end of quarter delivery rush where they don't have times to do quality control at the delivery center and all that. And they're just trying to get all the cars out by the end of the quarter so it looks good on their balance sheet.

We're talking about early in 2024, still slow, still early in the production ramp of the Cybertruck. They're not delivering thousands of units yet. They know that every single unit that gets delivered is going to get a lot of attention. Might as well make sure that you're delivering some good-looking cars, but apparently not.

Yeah, it's weird that they can't get that sorted out. All right. Andrew Higgins says, the problems with EVs from LinkedIn, Andrew Higgins, the problems with EVs far exceeded residual value. A significant problem came not only from the customers, but Hertz facilities having issues with getting access to DC fast charging. This included problems with transformer availability and capacity on feeder lines near airports. Really? Yeah.

I mean, I guess that makes sense. I always wonder, like, how fast a rental car gets turned over. Like, how long is it in the, you know, like, does it need to be, like, hours or can it be overnight? Like, because, you know, level two charges aren't too hard to come by. They could, you know, have a bank of those.

pretty easily. But if they want to turn these over in an hour, get them detailed and get it in somebody else's hand and not store them, then that becomes problematic because they're all coming in pretty much empty of power. So they got to do a lot of charging.

Yeah, that's a good point. At the same time, you could have like two employees like going, doing runs at superchargers, which are pretty common these days. So there are solutions to that. But yeah, I mean, to Andrew's point and to yours, like about the turnover time, it would make sense to have faster charging at the location. And yeah, a DC fast charging station is not easy to deploy. That's a point I didn't consider. Yeah.

But you would think that now they have two years of experience with the EVs and they have deployed that and now you want to utilize those new assets and keep growing your EV fleet. So I don't know. Yeah, I'm surprised they decided to cut back. I think the smarter move would probably be just to level off.

And then wait till you have some more capacity for that kind of stuff. Or move EVs to places where charging actually is better. I just think overall EVs are going to be a better situation. Anyway. Mm-hmm.

Bela Balankumar, the whole rental business may have to go through a revolution. In fact, with constant technological changes in EV will be just one of those challenges. I was thinking like Turo is the Airbnb of rental cars and that's becoming way more popular. I do wonder if the old rental car business is ripe for disruption here. No, I think Turo is already...

an interesting solution. I don't know. I think Bilal has more to say. It would be more attractive for everyone, not just for car rental businesses, if the EV companies can provide the cars for lease and completely bandaged, including recalling when it's due for an upgrade, just like how aircraft companies lease their aircrafts to airline companies. Do they? I didn't know that. Yeah, I think

Yeah, often. But, you know, I kind of feel like that's a different model. Like I feel like rental car companies kind of, you know, they had their inventory and that's part of their asset. I think, you know, Tesla probably could have gotten into the, you know, bought some, you know, airport real estate and had their own rental car company and people could have rented Teslas right from Tesla. But, you know.

Especially since they own everything. They have already their own sales business and all that. So yeah, that would make sense. They can even do with the Tsuru model and whatnot. But yeah, there's room, like you said, there's room to be disruptive there. All right. Sylvain again, Porsche, they can't sell too much EVs. They won't get any money for maintenance. Well, their dealers won't get any money for maintenance. Maybe they are getting some pushback on that front.

I mean, dealers just around the globe are problematic there because of that. How about the VinFast EV pickup announced at CES? I believe Scooter covered that one, right? Yeah, I didn't include it because I thought it was like a bit too concept-y. Like it's not...

it's not one of their vehicles ready for, for production or anything like that. It was like limited in range to, if I'm not mistaken, it was like super, I don't know what's the actual use case for that is, or if it's just like, because it's a concept that it's limited in range. I'm not, I'm not so sure, but, uh, it's interesting. I mean, Vinfast is, uh, becoming a bigger player fast, not to pun unintended, but, uh,

I'm still a little bit skeptical about the company.

Yeah, and I have to say, from Micah's post on small pickup trucks, there's an insane demand that isn't being fulfilled for smaller pickup trucks. So maybe there is something there. How small are we talking here? Because Micah, when he talks about small pickup trucks, he's thinking... Well, not the clown car ones. Are we talking about Maverick, Ford Maverick small pickup trucks? Are we talking about Micah's Chinese pickup trucks?

Somewhere in between that, maybe. I kind of like those things, but maybe not that particular one. Yeah, but you cannot get them on the roads from most places. That's what's so annoying. Apple buys Lucid from Saudi. That would be a great prediction to come true. Save that clip, okay? Is he saying that we are the real Alex Jones? I'm not sure. And then our final comment is Hertz is run by schmucks.

I mean, it wasn't their best week, that's for sure. I don't know if I would go that far, but I was not impressed by their foresight. Wasn't Mark Fields running Hurts? No, no, no. I don't think he's been running it for a bit. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I think he's gone now. Maybe that was one of his decisions that the new people are like,

Screw that guy. Was he the one running it when they did announce the 100,000th purchase? I feel like I remember him being part of it. But I think it was already being transitioned out or something like that, even at that time. Yeah, it was like temporary or something. Yeah, I think it was just there for like a temporary or something like that.

We have also Juan Sandoval that says, Hey guys, what year Model Y in the used market to watch out for? I'm in Toronto looking at one with 27,000 kilometers for $53,000. It's a long range Model Y.

I mean, Model Y was always pretty solid. Do you have a 2020 or 2021? I have a 2020. It had the crazy panel gaps, but other than that, it's been pretty solid. Yeah. I mean, 2021, only 27,000 kilometers on it, which is just below average for a two-year model. 53,000 Canadian pesos. It's not bad. It doesn't seem like a bad deal, though.

I was looking at them a little while last year. I just couldn't pull the trigger because of all these...

different like oh free supercharging on this and transfer your FSD on that I was like I didn't know what to do exactly so I'm sticking with my Model 3 which still runs very nicely but I could use a tiny little ground clearance would be nice just a tiny little bit more especially with like all the snow we're getting right now in Quebec but yeah it's still still a great car all right

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