Tesla prices, controversial fatal Tesla crash, Rivian R2 teaser, and more
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We are live for a new episode of The Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host, and as usual, I'm joined by Seth Wintraub. How are you doing this week, Seth? I'm good.

All right. No sponsor for this week's episode. If you guys want to sponsor the Electric Podcast, one of the top 10 biggest automotives podcasts in the world, you can reach out to us through the show notes or info at electric.co, and we're going to get back to you. We have plenty to talk about this week. It was a very interesting week in the...

EV space. We're going to start with some Tesla news as we usually do. And then we're going to move on to some Rivian news, interesting Rivian news, GM news, and much more. And then at the end of the show, as we always do, because we're live, we're going to talk

on all the platform we're gonna take some questions from you guys so if you have any question for us you can put in the comment section right now we're gonna get to that in about uh 30 40 minutes or so and if you do enjoy the show you can always press the like button the share button the notification subscribe button all those things help the show tremendously help the stream so uh all right let's jump right in let's start with some tesla pricing news there was um

A price change, a price increase, which is pretty rare for Tesla these days, on the Model 3. And it's the brand new, well, newly launched Model 3 Refresh in North America. Obviously, it's not quite new in the rest of the world. It was launched last summer, but just last month in North America.

And over the last week or so, there's been two price increases on the Model 3. On the long-range version, the Model 3 rear-wheel drive is still the same price at $39,000. But it's up $1,500 on the long-range. Now it starts at $47,500.

And what makes this more interesting than anything else is the comparison to the Model Y because the Model Y has always been more expensive than the Model 3. It's a slightly bigger vehicle. But now it's basically the same price or cheaper than the Model 3. So the starting price of the Model Y long range is $48,000. So only a $500 difference if you place a new order on.

But nowadays, as you may know, you're better off buying the Model Y off new inventory because there's some significant discounts on them, sometimes up to $5,000 in discount. So that would make it $4,500 cheaper than a Model 3, which is pretty crazy. On top of that, our second news of the day is a new temporary discount on Model Y.

So this was launched this weekend by Tesla. And our assumption here is that it's probably related to – let me put my notification on silent. I forgot to do that. We're good to go now. So I assume that has to do with the Super Bowl. So that was launched this weekend, last weekend. Yeah.

which was super bowl weekend and as we previously reported on electric there were a lot of super bowl ads that were about electric vehicles and uh none of them were about tesla well no technically there was one about tesla but let's not get into that right now um it was not from tesla and it was not good for tesla or at least well any publicity is good publicity you could argue but anyway um

It was about, it was a GM ad, it was a Hyundai ad, Kia ad. It was basically an ad for aviator makers that focused on electric vehicles. And in the past, Tesla has figured out like, hey, this is actually pretty good for us because we own like more than half of the market in the US when it comes to electric vehicles. So when other people boost electric vehicles, it boosts us at the same time. And the Tesla has shared some data in the past that showed an optic, a giant optic in orders today.

following the Super Bowl over the last few previous years, especially since there have been a lot of EV ads at that event. So

And those are often combined with other automakers with additional discounts, obviously. So Tesla wants to probably capture some of that market. And they announced that the new Model Y rear-wheel drive and long-range all-wheel drive prices are reduced for delivery now, so that was last weekend, through February 29th. So this is the interesting part. So Tesla often has additional discounts. But for the end of the quarter, now it's just for the end of this month, which there's still March that goes to a quarter,

So if you get delivery by March 1st, by the end of this month, you get an extra $1,000 off. That's on top of already, like I said, significant discounts on inventory vehicle. So are you getting your Model Y? I haven't pulled the trigger just yet. What about you? I know you were also thinking about it. Yeah, just too much going on right now. Also, we've had our eyes on the Volvo EX30.

I like the size of that a little better. We have the Rivian for the big heavy hauling. But having a full self-driving transfer would be nice. Having the Tesla network for long distance travel would be nice. The Model Y is a good all-arounder. But yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I'm on the same spot. I don't know, especially... I'm sure we're going to get into it later on the podcast. But I find myself like...

i'm i'm very disappointed in some of the move that this has done lately and especially elon i'm not sure i even want to encourage a company anymore by buying their products at the same time but at the same time they're so good that's the thing like i was driving the mobile three yeah on wednesday my model three and the the windshield wipers

just started going like crazy for no reason. It was not raining, it was not snowing or anything. It just started going because the windshield, the automatic wipers just got awful. And I was thinking to myself, how good the Tesla vehicles have to be that I go through this nonsense, things like that. I have no business being in a $100,000 car. And

I still consider buying a new one because they're so good. Yet we put up with all this nonsense with them and the other wipers like the full self-driving not being real and all that.

yeah the ai wipers are are horrible and i don't know if the new ones are any better like is it like uh i don't know is is the new model wise uh the quality control a little bit better i don't think it would be i mean the cameras are a little better so because it is the same neural net the uh deep brain thing i don't know if deep brain is the most recent one anymore i'm not sure but um so yeah i i don't know

And if you did get a... Maybe the cameras a little bit, they take the rain better. I don't know. If you did get a Model Y, would you opt? If you had the opportunity, would you opt for a 4681 or would you hope to get the 26 or whatever? I would stick with the 2170 for now. And I don't think I would have the option anyway. I think Canada is getting the Fremont Swans right now. Right. Which are 2170.

All right, speaking of Model Y, and this is something we get asked about a lot. Tesla has confirmed to employees that there's no Model Y refresh. I'm using air quotes here because I think the wording is important when you take the words from Tesla on this. We get asked about...

Model Y refresh, when is it coming? There were two reports, one from Bloomberg and one from Rotters that said that they are coming this year. Reuters last year said coming out in 2024. Juniper is the code name, just like Highland was for the Model 3 refresh. And Bloomberg more recently said that they're planning to release the Model Y refresh in mid-2024, early Q3, if I remember correctly.

So obviously this is the Osborne effect. It's not good for sales when you think that the refresh is coming and all that.

So Tesla is trying to counter that. And how they counter it is that they sent a note. Tesla does that sometimes. This time it's coming from Teslascope. Sent a note to Tesla's employees about talking points regarding a specific subject. Because Tesla employees at the cell level, they're not being told that much. They don't actually know what's coming, what's not coming, and all that. Tesla keeps that very secret. But now Tesla saw it as a big enough problem with these reports that they wanted to clarify.

I read the note here. We heard your feedback that some customers are waiting to place their Model Y order as they anticipate a refresh similar to Model 3. It is important that we communicate transparently that there is no refresh to Model Y launching this year. All right. What does that mean? What does that mean? So obviously, Tesla has had issue with the word refresh in the past. Elon said that Tesla doesn't do any refresh. They have a tendency to release refresh.

upgrades to their vehicle programs as they are ready for manufacturing. So Tesla can update the Model 3, Model Y several times throughout the year without even announcing it, without doing anything to emphasize it.

that is in contrast to other automakers we use the the model year approach so model year is a weird thing because we just talked last week about the taiken 2025 when we were early in 2024 because it's actually going to launch like mid-year or early summer or something like that so but that's when they do a switch over to a new model year and that's where they introduce changes to the vehicle now test doesn't do that they just

do it whenever it's ready however in more recent year with the we had example with the mall s the mall x uh and more recently the mold three this had had a tendency in more recent years to bundle a bunch of changes together making it a bigger change than one uh go and those have been called refresh and they are in line with what the industry is doing just not on a regular model year timeline like the rest of the industry

So it's possible that Tesla is still planning some significant changes to Model Y this year. It just won't call it a refresh like this note is saying. So it doesn't mean that those reports are completely wrong, though they could be. I'm just putting it out there because we know how Tesla operates and they might just be trying to squash the Osborne effect here and not being completely transparent.

Yeah, I mean, when you change the design, like the front end of it, the car so, you know, significantly, it's hard to not like call that a refresh. And I think that's what Reuters and Bloomberg are talking about. And it would be weird if Tesla, you know, in June or July, I mean, the fact that they're ending these promos, these Model Y promos at the end of March, to me is kind of like, well, what's at the end of the March? I mean, I know it's the end of the quarter, but like,

The demand's not going to, you know, blow up in April, is it? I mean, I guess it's spring, so people are buying more cars, but I don't know. It seems kind of weird. Yeah, I mean, it would be weird if Tesla is communicating that right now in like literally weeks away, there's a significant upgrade. But I do get your point, but...

And since Tesla even refreshed similar to Model 3, I assume that maybe Tesla could at least confirm that you might not expect the ambient lightning and the new front bumper, the more aggressive front bumper.

Because Model 3 and Model Y have very similar bumper, like a little enlarge obviously from Model Y, but they used to have, I should say, a similar bumper. So it maybe makes sense to introduce like similar change. So this should at least confirm that, I would think. But like there's a few like technology, like the new frequency damper technology.

It's like absorption technology, things like that, that could make sense too. If you introduce that in the Model 3, it could make sense to make that in the Model Y also. Yeah.

small changes that improve the quality of driving a lot without being called a refresh. Just to introduce that in Model Y, I wouldn't call that a refresh. Do you think Model Y will come out in Europe or Asia before it comes out in the US? It seems like that's the deal. Oh, that's a good point, though, because this note was communicated through North American salespeople. So that's a good point. Maybe they do still launch a Model Y. That would be hard, though, because that would...

Obviously, the news would come to North America that there's a new Model Y and will make sales a lot harder in North America if it's not launched here and it's like the Model 3. Exactly what happened on Model 3 last year where the Model 3 sales dropped significantly. Right, and that's why they're so robust right now.

Yes, but it's not a bad thing for Tesla because Model 3 was already so much of a smaller product than Model Y. All right. Model Y sales in North America being affected by that would be very harsh unless Tesla can do more price cuts, obviously, because price cuts always trumps everything else in terms of diamond creation. But I don't know how much more room Tesla has. Like I said, the Model Y is now less expensive than Model 3 for the all-wheel drive version, obviously. Yeah.

All right, this was a big piece of news for the first half of the week. The image is gone on this. Okay, that's probably a little bug with our new image thing that we rolled up. All right, so this is a very terrible situation, horrible crash that happened two years ago. And it just came out in the news this week. The Washington Post did an entire report on the crash.

that involved a Tesla employee, a recruiter in Colorado named Hans von Hohen and his friend Eric Rositer. How do you pronounce that? I have no idea. Hans von Hohen and Eric Rositer, maybe. Rositer. My best guess. All right. So

Because now there's a lot of speculation, a lot of theories around this crash and everything. So I'll go through what the Washington Post said, what Tesla Elon said, and then we can make up our mind from that. First of all, there's a lot of talk. Why is this coming out right now? Two years later, this is a hit piece from the Washington Post article.

The reason it's coming out two years after the crash is there was a lengthy investigation that came after the crash. And now the investigation is done and the family is talking. And that is why this is coming out now. So there's no conspiracy behind that. The crash happened in May 2022.

uh, Hoane and his friend, we'll go with Hans and Eric. Hans was a recruiter at Tesla and his friend Eric went golfing outside of Denver, Colorado, and they set out in the Tesla Model 3 of Hans. The Tesla Model 3 for sure had FSD beta, but Hans bought FSD beta for sure.

May 2022, Quinside, just after the wider release of FSD beta, if you remember, it's around this time that I got it. You still had to have a decent safety score back then, but most people had it, especially Tesla employees. Now, you did have to request it.

But we know for a fact, based on Washington Post, Hans bought it. We also know from friends and family that he was showing the FSD Beta to his friends. At least he was claiming that it was a FSD Beta. Could potentially have been confused with enhanced autopilot, potentially. But he was telling people this is full self-driving Beta and he was showing it to them.

His friend Eric, on the way to the golf course, said that Hans was using it and even that he had to correct it a few times and it made Eric uneasy. But Hans said it's normal. It's the new technology and sometimes you have to correct it if it's swerving away and all that. They get to the golf course. They play 21 holes. And as you do on the golf course... Sorry.

You drank. They drank. They drank some decent amount, apparently enough to blow at 0.28% alcohol level in the blood, which is three times the legal limit.

Which you should never, like let's put that clear. Because I've been accused this week of justifying drunk driving, which is like anyone suggesting that as either malicious or as very little reading comprehension. But you should never get behind the wheel after drinking any significant amount of alcohol, obviously.

Now, Eric said that, well, because you also shouldn't get in a car with someone who has drunk a significant amount of alcohol. Eric said that when they set back to drive home that day, he didn't see Hans as being drunk, being impaired with alcohol. He obviously knew that he was drinking. But, you know, sometimes you think, I'm fine. I'm not justifying it. I'm just saying that was illogic. But he was also drinking quite a bit.

Yeah, the boat. He obviously is the one who blew 0.28. His friend never blew, unfortunately. They set out to drive. On their way back, they hit a tree. The car caught on fire. Eric was able to escape. Went back to try to help Hans. A tree was blocking the driver's door. Hans couldn't escape.

And he was screaming inside the vehicle as he caught on fire. Horrible experience for both of them, I would assume. And the autopsy determined that the cause of death was smoke asphyxiation and thermal damage to his body. And very sorry for him and his loved ones and family. Now...

for the fact of the the case again the autopsy proved that he was drunk during the thing so obviously he's responsible for the crash you cannot get behind the wheel of being drunk now right after the crash when what launched this long investigation and all that right after the crash eric told the first responder that uh hans was using a full self-driving on the way back

He never really said that full self-driving was the cause of the crash. He said he was using it. So obviously this launched an investigation into it. And now where things get really weird is that normally Tesla always comes back right away. It was like, we have the data logs, here's what happened. The car was not on.

self-driving on autopilot or anything like that or it was but the guy was not paying attention and whatever there's a lot of things for a big part of the years of the electric that i've been reporting on that stuff i've been believing tesla a lot based on the logs however i've changed uh my opinion on that uh because i've seen now a few occasions where tesla would say that um

the crash was not on autopilot or not on FSD Beta because seconds before the crash, the FSD Beta disengaged, for example. And we've seen that. I've been driving on FSD Beta and it's telling me, "Take control, take control, take control," because I cannot handle the situation now and then you take control, but there's a crash. It's like, who's responsible there? Obviously, you should always be paying attention. And if you are paying attention, you should have the opportunity to take control in time.

I can see, though, certain scenario where you cannot, even if you're using the system properly, you're not impaired and everything. Obviously, in this case, he was drunk, so it's unlikely that he would have been able to successfully control the situation if that's what happened. But now, in this case, there's not even any logs.

Tesla says that, well, first of all, the car completely burned down so the police cannot recover. There's now like a kind of a black box type system like you see in airplanes. They weren't able to recover that. However, Tesla has always been able to release logs or at least their own interpretation of the logs because the car will beam the logs at all time through cellular network. Tesla says that in this case, the car didn't do that.

It's possible that's because it was in the mountains, so it's where there's no good signal. So that might be it. All right. So now that's what we have. We have witness saying that the car was a witness, which again, eyewitness are not perfect, far from perfect, especially if they're impaired. But we have a witness that said that Hans was using FSD when he died, was using FSD on the drive there too.

We have friends and family. We have his own wife, widow, that said that Hans was regularly using FSD Beta and she didn't like it. And she used the Model 3 too and didn't use it because she didn't like it. But Hans was a fervent defender of the system. Now, Tesla also...

They didn't tell to the police that we don't know if he was using any ADS system at the time of that. So the police had to do their own investigation into the incident. And again, they determined that he was responsible because he was drunk, but the

still wanted to do. The way that they said it is that the Colorado State Police determined that the annexation was the main factor behind the incident, but they also conducted an investigation into the possible role of the self-driving and ADS into it.

Ultimately, the State Patrol Sergeant Robert Maddison, given the crash dynamics and how the vehicle drew off the hold with no evidence of sudden maneuver, that fits with the driver assistance features. So the police itself said that they cannot rule out this, but they can also confirm it because they don't have access to the log. And they talked to Tesla, and Tesla apparently told the police that they couldn't confirm either way. Now, two years later, and after the Washington Post posted their article,

Elon came out and said that the car didn't have full self-driving beta. Sorry, his exact word where the car didn't download FSD beta. Let me see here.

Obviously, the great people at Tesla owners, Silicon Valley, said that I was a liar spreading fake news and all that and that Elon responded to that. It was not on FSD, the software, unfortunately, never been downloaded. I say unfortunately because the accident probably would not have happened if FSD had been engaged, which is a fact.

stupid thing to say from Elon. Can we, can we stop there for a second? Yeah, go ahead. So let's just get the facts of this story straight. So Reuter, or sorry, uh, the Washington post got a statement from his, uh, widow from the guy who was driving the Tesla employee. That was the passenger. And you know, the employee was the passenger was not an employee. The driver was an employee. Um,

Everybody said it was FSD. This is a Tesla employee who loves to play around with Tesla, loves the technology, and somehow were to believe that he did not have FSD. Even though he had purchased FSD, he was given an opportunity to upgrade to FSD. He just never downloaded it.

According to Elon and now people like – my first response is like red flags everywhere with Elon. Then we have Rohan Patel was the government affair official at Tesla that –

basically parroted what Elon said after the fact. And people say, "Now it's official, it's from Tesla." And it's like, "Yeah, but he's saying the same thing that Elon is saying." You did add a little bit, Patel did add a little bit on one thing. You did add this, because there was a really weird thing is that Tesla, in the Washington Post, Washington Post talked to NHTSA, and NHTSA confirmed that Tesla reported that crash as related to ADS system as they have to to NHTSA.

So now the question is, why do they report that if they say that they cannot even confirm if any ADS system were involved, FSD beta or otherwise?

Then Patel confirmed that they reported it because they received information. There was a complaint that ADS systems were involved in this crash. They believe that the complaint is not fair, but because there is one, they reported it to NHTSA, which is weird. Again, NHTSA said that they cannot confirm whether FSD Beta or any ADS system were involved in the crash. So these are all these different things coming up. My main thing is that

The guy definitely bought it because Tesla, the Washington Post saw in the Tesla account that the FSD was both listed as included and active. The active part is the one that I don't see any active thing in my own account. So I don't know where they got that exactly because active will mean that it's on the car.

And then even they got, he still got an email recently. I'm talking about Hans here. Still got an email from Tesla Marketing asking him to transfer his FSD beta to a new car. So how do you have FSD and it's not on your car? Like there's no way to own FSD and not have it be on your car. Yeah. Yeah. You can buy FSD beta. You can buy the FSD package. And if you don't click the request button inside your car, you won't have it.

You won't have FSD beta. You still have like the features that are involved with FSD, just not the city street driving and intersection. Um, but I mean the profile of this guy, like super nerdy, he's, you know, he's driving on FF, you know, according to wife and, and travel partner, uh,

He's geeky. He's a Tesla employee. There's just no way he didn't have FSD in his car. Like, there's just no way. I can't imagine, you know, if he's driving around city streets, like, that's not autopilot.

i don't know i just it's hard for me to like i can't square this there's some road on which you could activate and enhance autopilot without fsd but i don't i don't know if that's the case of the specific like mountain roads and at the end of the day so i can i can definitely see another thing i should make clear before i say that

Friends and family have no reason to lie. There's not going to be any lawsuit. The family tried to get a lawsuit going. No lawyers in the world wanted to touch it for good reason. The guy was drunk, was intoxicated. He's going to be found responsible for this accident no matter what. So there's no money at play. There's no money to be made. You can maybe make the crazy conspiracy theory that

tesla shorts or whatever or financing them i don't know whatever but it would be a stretch there's no evidence whatsoever for that so there is no they have no reason to lie his wife two friends interviewed by the washington post plus the witness also his friend that was there all said that he was showing up people what he called full self-driving in his car to people around town

They all said it. So I can agree that there's a very slight possibility that all these people, including the employee himself, confuse Enhanced Autopilot with FSD.

That would be its own problem in itself, by the way, if Tesla employees cannot tell the difference. You have a problem right there. I find that highly likely, especially considering the timing of the release of FSD beta, especially considering how widespread people knew how to get FSD beta. You had to have a high safety score. You had to have a request button on and all that. That's it. It was as simple as that.

it would be extremely unlikely that he didn't drive it. So I think Elon is either lying or Tesla has made an error where they don't have on the server side the right data on this, which is far from a stretch. Like you could have the wrong information and the car actually got a FSD beta. Not only that, I know people

that were able to sideload FSD Beta. I tested FSD Beta in Canada before it was ever available in Canada. - So you're saying that the downloaded word is the keyword in Elon's rebuttal. - Exactly, so this is important. Also note that Elon says that without ever saying, we know that he bought it, but he never actually downloaded it. So he's not even bringing that up.

He's being very careful with his words there. Yeah. Also, why is he saying that now and not saying that two years before to the police and saying it's weird? Because the police were still investigating whether FSDB was on. They said that they cannot rule it out. It makes no sense to me.

And at the core of it, at the beginning, like people I see, Mr. Turkey Neck here saying that the crash was a year ago. The post article was biased in my opinion, but online both documents were very drunk. This should obviate other blame from the accident. Some would apply to any ICE accident. That's not the right take on this at all, Mr. Turkey Neck. Before Elon got involved and possibly lied or shared some misinformation on this thing, he

This story was about a problem with being overconfident in Tesla's ADS system, whether it's autopilot or full self-driving beta.

it's a real problem i mean set i'm sure you had this experience before i had it a dozen time where you talk about fsd beta like i have fsd on your car with someone you like you explain how it works and like one of the first thing if not the first thing they say is like cool now you can drive drunk and the car will drive you home and things like this is the number one thing that they say with

Maybe like, oh, you can fall asleep and get to your destination. And then you have to give the full speech of like, no, you can't do that. You're still responsible for the car. You have to keep your hand on the steering wheel. Be ready to click control all the time. And Tesla will not take responsibility for a crash. So there is this issue of people being overconfident of full self-driving beta and autopilot.

So in this case here, you could make the possible argument that Hans had a whole day of day drinking and playing golf and was so confident in FSD Beta that he decided to get into his car after drinking and he thought it would be no problem driving home and then crashed. Like, this sounds very likely to me, more likely than Elon's, oh, unfortunately, this accident would have never happened if you had FSD Beta on, which is a wild thing to say. I agree.

Now the story is not that anymore though. The story is not that anymore. The story is like, is Elon and Tesla lying about this? Are they hiding things? Are they getting this wrong? It's like, what's happening? Because the evidence points to there was FSD involved, or at least it was Enhanced Autopilot involved. So that's what I like from the Tesla fans that attacked me on this. It's like, shut up, Fred. You don't know what I'm talking about. Maybe you had Enhanced Autopilot on. Well, that going on.

Yeah. I mean, I know the only argument you can say then is like, because now, in answer to the pilot, and FSD is the same thing, by the way, they've merged the stack. Back then, it was not the case. But still, it was a Tesla ADS system that trashed the car, apparently, or at least couldn't save the car. Yeah. And then there's the other Tesla folks who are like, well, if he was drunk, he could have just swerved, took over or whatever. So I agree. It's just...

I don't know. I feel like it's a bad look. I feel like you can find out if he had FSD or not. And I feel like that I've been racking my brain up. And it's like, I do believe the witness and the family more than I believe Elon and Tesla at this point, because I know they've been misleading with logs and things like that in the past. So they could, they could definitely do that here, but I cannot find an exact way that you could confirm, confirm it outside of Tesla. Right.

Maybe if we can get access to the computer, but apparently it was completely burned down. Because I know we had people do forensic analysis of computers before after a crash. What about the app on his phone? I guess he probably lost his phone too in the accident. I mean, he still has... They have access to the account. Right. Anyway...

Anyway, it's a terrible look. But there is a problem with being overconfident in FSD beta, and I hope that people keep that in mind because it is a dangerous technology. And my take on it is that I do believe that if you're being as vigilant, if not more vigilant when driving FSD beta than normal driving, it is safer. I do believe that. As soon as you become a tiny little bit less vigilant, it is more dangerous.

Yeah, and that's not more relaxing or doesn't make driving easier. It makes it more difficult. And there's not, Elon is not out there with a problem of overconfidence if he's saying, if you had a FSD, which you probably had, or at least an enhanced autopilot in this case,

the feature will not fail. Furthermore, even if your car was capable of FSD beta but didn't add it on, you're supposed to at least to have all the safety, the active safety features are supposed to still be on and all the time and help you prevent these crashes. Didn't do it in this case. Now, I know maybe... Here, let me introduce you a possible scenario here too. He's driving impaired on FSD beta or enhanced autopilot.

The car does something funky. He tries to correct it. Instead of slamming on the brakes, he slammed on the accelerator, crashed into a tree. Yeah. Possibility two. Here's another last thing. Andrew McDonald in the comments says, there are a few ways to get cut out of FSD in 2022. If he had three strikes, it would have been disabled. So another counter...

you know a theory is that maybe he had fsd and then he lost it and then crashed into a tree drunk i don't know this time fsd was only active for city streets not on the highway i think he was on kind of yeah it was not on the highway no so that's not and uh this tree strike so unless maybe like the strike happened like mid-drive last strike and then he didn't have fsd and

You know, though, even if you're dead drunk, you would know that you lost the FSD for that drive. Because even if it's not three strikes, like if you get a strike, like if you get like you ignore three alerts on a drive, they remove it to you. And you know when they remove it, it's insane the sound and alerts that you get. So it happened to me once, not on FSD, though, on autopilot. Like it kept giving me some weird alerts and telling me like,

you know like if you're on the long drive it's it's annoying like yeah now you have to to stop to to get it back it's so dumb but the turk and i said i cannot absolutely none for his excuse but there's no excuse for driving in any case no one is excusing that like that that's the case like the test of fans and elon fans have been using all week like stop giving excuse for drunk driving no one is no like if you think that the take from this whole thing is like don't drive drunk you're completely missing the point like that's not the point it's overconfidence in

for FSD, whether impaired or not. And now it might be, Phelan is lying about this thing. Let's talk about the world's largest supercharger. Yeah, let's move on to something a little bit more fun.

So we learned from Mr. Marco RP, who's like an internet slur that looks into construction permits for a new supercharger, found that Tesla is planning a new world's largest supercharger in Kern County in California. This is where Bakersfield is, Kern County.

So it's between LA and the Bay Area. It's actually pretty close to the Kettleman City Supercharger, which was at least very recently the largest supercharger in the world. This new one here is going to be over 160 supercharger stalls, making it the new largest in the world. But there's other interesting things about it. First of all, if you look at the plans here, all these stalls on the right here, 16 of them are pulled through charging stalls.

So this is great if you are towing in a Model Y or now a Cybertruck or now basically any electric vehicles capable of towing because...

By the time that these launch, they will likely be open to other EVs too. And the pull-through stalls are great for when you're towing because you don't have to unhitch your trailer to use them. So that's awesome. Well, you see all these other stalls too. Also, it's over 150 of them. And they all have solar canopies over them. So probably...

probably a few megawatt of power, I would assume, of that size. And there's also a battery. There's a microgrid, they call it. So it's solar and batteries, which is going to be great to shave a peak power demand at the charging station, which is what...

increase greatly the cost of operating a charging station is that when you have several EVs charging at the same time, it draws a lot from the grid and the grid charges you more for that peak output. So if you can have a more... And charging is normally not stable because you have a lot of people using it at the same time, so you have no one using it at the same time. So the demand is fluctuating a lot. But if you have batteries, you can shave that peak a little bit and then you can make it a lot more stable.

So that will reduce the cost of it a lot. So this is probably a glimpse at like what future large charging stations are going to look like. A lot of stations, several pull-through stations, solar and batteries all together. Pretty cool. Pretty cool. Moving on. Oh yeah, we have some Cybertruck news. So we've seen a lot of report this week from Auto News Media about the Cybertruck already rustic.

So I decided to take a look, make sure what this is about. This is stainless steel shouldn't be rusting. Well, in fact, stainless steel does rust just a lot less than regular steel. And it's still open to rust. Tesla confirms it in their user manual.

This list says that you should immensely remove corrosive substances such as grease, oil, bird's dropping, tree resin, dead insect, tar spots, road salt, industrial foulout, etc. in the owner's manual. Road salt? Yeah. Oh, jeez. Yeah. No, it's not great. But it's bad on every car to be fair.

So what happened is that you had several brand new Cybertruck owners reporting spots like that coming up on the car. And in particular, you had one Cybertruck owner going by Raksar on the Cybertruck Soldiers Club that there were some of these spots as he took delivery of the Cybertruck.

And that a Tesla advisor told him that this is normal and that it needs to be buffed out. It happens in the rain. So it's a little bit more complicated than that, obviously. The main theory right now, no one knows exactly what's happening, but the main theory is that this is an environmental factor. It's debris basically on the vehicle and those debris make the rust on the stainless steel. So yes, the Cybertruck is rusting with debris on it.

The fix is pretty easy, really, is that you need to clean it. You need to keep it clean, like any truck, which is fair, obviously. But it does play a bit against this idea that this is a super rugged truck, like you don't care if people dig it with the door or something like that.

Yeah, but still you need-- there's some care to it. There's some maintenance to it. So a lot of people that have had this issue have been using the clay bar. They've been like rolling the clay bar on this thing and apparently that removes a lot of these debris without affecting the stainless steel and then you can buff it out the rust on it. So the fix is relatively easy. Keep your car clean. But yeah, it is rusting if you have debris on it and then it's exposed to water.

The issue doesn't seem to be especially widespread, obviously. A lot of people did mention though that if you have it like on delivery, it might be rail dust.

Because some people said that it might be like Tesla actually screwing up in the factory and then there's like pieces of metal in the factory that hangs on the truck, which is not impossible, obviously. But most likely, and you often have that on cars that get on trains, is the trains have metal wheels on metal tracks and that produce fine particles of metals that get on the car. So it's very common. Normally, they clean it right away when they get it. But if it wasn't clean properly for long enough and there was water...

between then and delivery, you might have these issues. All right, last night, still on the Cybertruck, Tesla offered to accelerate the delivery timeline for Cybertruck reservation holders through the referral program. So Tesla offered to redeem referral credit to accelerate Cybertruck delivery. So if you have a Cybertruck delivery and you want the foundation series, all-wheel drive, other cyber base, you could get paid 30,000 credits

which is the equivalent of three

car purchase being referred or 30 demo drives. And then you buy this award and you get your car, your cyber truck within 45 days instead of waiting. So you get to bypass all this reservation, all those 2 million reservation if you get that. Now, it was put in the middle of the night and it sold out within a few hours. So it's not available anymore. But this seems to say, if you miss your chance to claim, check back later, additional accelerated deliveries. So it sounds like...

Tesla will bring back this award. That's a bit controversial. The people will say, "Ah, it's not fair. I put my reservation on the first day and Tesla still hasn't reached out for me to convert my reservation into an order." We've been saying this for years, ever since the Model Y, Model S really.

the Tesla reservation process doesn't really matter. It doesn't really keep your place in line. I mean, Seti, did you reserve the Cybertruck on the first day? I did, but somewhere down the line, I canceled my order. Oh, you canceled it. I think when I got my Rivian, probably. Yeah. I know plenty of Thursday people that never got an invite to convert. All right.

Moving on. There was a new update this week that had an interesting thing about more accurate range prediction. So Tesla last year, we noted that Tesla has made a lot of improvement on that, adding crosswind, headwinds, humidity, ambient temperature, tire pressures and all that into their calculation to get a better range prediction, more accurate one, which I think is the most important thing in curbing range anxiety over longer range. You want to get into the car,

put your destination navigation system and tells you exactly what range you get to get there so that way you know you're going to be able to get there and you know what you need there you need do you need to charge there you or can you go to your next destination from there

Simple as that. Now, one thing, I thought they were doing that already, but the battery age as a factor. So they say in the release note, your estimated battery range now incorporates additional characteristics related to the battery aging over time.

so i don't know like obviously the capacity i would think this already knows like your battery lose capacity over time so i think they would know that but maybe tesla because tesla obviously has a ton of data so now they have more data on this on the aging batteries so maybe they know now that if a battery is a little bit as a certain age maybe other factors become more important so they can like change on multiplicators on certain factors based on battery age

i would assume it's that i assume it's not the actual like battery degradation because uh i would be shocked if this is not using that already but it's still interesting uh another thing in the same update this now gives you a time on battery preconditioning when you go to supercharge station so if you enter a supercharger in the destination of your navigation system

At a certain time, Tesla start preconditioning the batteries. Now, if you're going to a supercharger that's very far away, so like if you have like an hour or two hours to drive, that's not really a problem. Tesla will start the preconditioning in time to be ready to get there. However, if for some reason, like the battery is already lower and you get into your car and you just now enter a supercharger that's like 10, 15, 20 minutes away, now your car will tell you, well, in fact, like you...

We need that much time to get the battery to where we need to be to have optimal charging. So that's good to know so that it will arrange the charging in function of that. So it makes sense.

We have a few more news items to discuss before we jump into the comment section. So if you guys, I know we already answered a few questions that were like directly related to what we're talking live. But if you guys have more questions for us, you can put them in the comment section right now. And we're going to get to it in like 5-10 minutes max. All right. So Stellantis finally adopts next Tesla's design connector for North America.

They were the last major automaker to do so. And it's the first time that we have a different announcement for this. So every other automaker, the announcement was the same, basically, is that we're going to adopt NACs in North America. We will put them in new vehicles starting in 2025. And before that, we made a deal with Tesla to supply adapters, CCS to NACs adapters to our existing owners.

So that they can access the supercharger network, which is like basically the carrot that Tesla was using to convince all those automakers to get on board. It's like, we'll give you access to our supercharger network, which is going to help your EV sales, going to help your existing EV owners a lot. But...

So there's none of that with Stenlandis. In Stenlandis' own announcement, first of all, they don't call it NAX. So obviously, they don't have to. And they don't even have to have a deal with Tesla to adopt NAX because the SAE has made it an official standard now. And I guess the official standard name now is J3400. J3400. That's the new charging connector standard. Rolls off the tongue. Sorry? Rolls off the tongue. Yeah. From SAE.

So, Stenlantis announcement says that instead of NAX, and then they say that they would be in select battery electric vehicle models launching in North America for 2026. So, maybe not all of them, sounds like. And also, there's no mention of the supercharger network. There's no mention of a deal with Tesla. Instead, Stenlantis is promoting Iona. Is that how you pronounce that network? Iona? Yeah. Yeah. Iona. Automaker network.

So that was announced last year. It's a big new charging network coming to North America in partnership with BMW, GM, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, and Mercedes-Benz. All of those automakers have also announced next adoption and are J3400.

and deals with Tesla to access a supercharger network, just not Stellantis. So now it doesn't mean that Stellantis won't have access, that Stellantis EV drivers won't have access to a supercharger network. There's just no deal with Tesla right now. And you need to deal with Tesla right now unless you're using the Magic Dock supercharger, which is only a few of them. So unless Tesla just opened all of them to NACs, there's no deal with Stellantis for now.

Rivian has released a teaser for the R2 launching next month in just a few weeks on March 7. So this is the image right here. So basically confirming that they're going to have their now, this is part of the Rivian brand right now, these two headlights with the bar, the headlight bar and the two oval red headlights.

We cannot know that this is the pattern that we reported on before that could give us an idea of the R2 also. Obviously, with the front end, we don't know if this is going to be a SUV or a pickup truck or are they going to be both available? It's not clear. There was also this new image that we just posted, I think. Yep. So we got a few images. Apparently, Rivian's doing a photo shoot in downtown L.A.,

And here's one, if you're watching, it looks like there's a cover being taken off of it. I mean, these are all taken from a Hi-Rise, so you got the iPhone 25X Zoom optical thing. But you can kind of see it's a similar shape as a typical Ravine. The interesting things are the charge port is actually in the back of this thing versus the front driver's side. So it's in the

the back passenger side. So that'll be interesting. I don't know if that's good or bad for superchargers. I guess it's, you know, if you're not towing as much, you also can see the silver trim is gone. So it's like a black trim around the edges. And obviously, yeah, obviously it's smaller. It's got different hubcaps as well or wheels.

It looks great. It's tough to say that it's smaller really. To me, obviously I'm not as familiar with the R1S as you are since you see one every day but I could easily confuse it for an R1S. Yeah. I only know that it's smaller because I know that it's smaller. I can't tell from the picture.

Um, I, the charge port is weird to me. Like, uh, I don't quite, I mean, I have my issues with the charge port. It's not necessarily the placement, but like, it seems like super over engineered, especially with the, uh, the snow and ice up here. But, um, the, it's interesting that they're putting in the back. So like, if you're towing, like that's going to present a problem.

So maybe this is not for towing. Maybe this vehicle is not a towing vehicle or not primarily a towing vehicle. But since then, even then, at least put it in the driver's side. Right. You can pull it to a supercharger. Most cars are on the driver's side. Right. Superchargers should be on the driver's side. Yeah. I agree. That's a weird call on their part. I don't know what the idea is. Yeah. I'm not a fan of that. No. We'll find out soon.

Yes. And then we have one last one. Oh, yeah. Super Cruise. So for Super Cruise fans, big news this week. They are almost doubling the map of highways and roads where you can enable Super Cruise, which is a true hands-free driving. It's not a level three hands-free. All right. It's not like you have to pay attention. Yeah, you have to pay attention. You don't have to have your hands on the wheel.

Right. And they have eye tracking. So on the steering wheel, there's actually sensors. And if your eyes are off the road for too long, it starts freaking out. And just like Tesla's and Ford's Blue Cruise, it is, I would say, a better experience than Tesla's because you don't have to put pressure on the wheel. You don't even have to have your hands on the wheel as long as you're looking straight ahead.

And I think people who have like both, like, I think people like this, the Super Cruise better just because of the less amount of, you know, physical, like pushing the wheel to the side. And Tesla's even gotten like they've gotten naggier and naggier with their with their updates. So, you know, Super Cruise is still just like being a passenger.

And it's so bad when it's not nice outside like right now in Quebec. I was driving back from Quebec City earlier this week.

And it was a little bit slushy outside and my car got dirty. And I kept getting alerts on the highway that like one of the camera was partially blocked and everything. And like, they don't give you the alert. One is like, I'm not going to stop. Like, I'm going to keep driving right now. Stop giving me the alert, telling me I know. Leave it there. Leave it the alert. But instead what they do is like every like,

two or three minutes, it keeps popping up and screaming at me. And I have the dual mode on, so the alert is not as strong, but it's still strong. It's like when you're listening to a podcast or something like that, it's so annoying. So yeah, but the big difference with Super Cruise 2 is that it requires mapping. So obviously you need to map.

Yeah. And you're limited by your mapping, but they had already 400,000 miles of mapping in North America, and now they almost doubled it to 750. So you see the map there. That was the old map, new map. Yeah, they're getting smaller highways, not just interstates. They're state highways now. Yeah. It's beneficial. It looks very well covered at this point. Yeah. It can go all the way around Gaspésie in Quebec, it looks like. Yeah.

Well, you already could, but actually Canada has been a lot, the Northeast, like Ontario and South of Quebec has been improved a lot, looks like with this update. Yeah. I would even say like in the Edmonton area, it's better than like the Dakotas. Yeah.

There's not that many cars, though, with Super Cruise. Electric cars? I mean, GM doesn't make that many electric cars, so that's the problem. I was talking about the models, but I think the Bolt EUV doesn't have it. Bolt EUV has it. The Lyric has it. The Hummer EV has it. Silverado has it. Yeah, it's in some places.

All right, let's jump into the comments section. All right, Kirk says, I hear you can get a Model Y under $30,000 in some states. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess the base version is like, what, $43,000? $43,000, brand new, no new inventory incentive. Right. So you can get probably $3,000 or $4,000 of inventory incentive.

So yeah, it's 43,000. So remove the 7,500, you add 35. You can probably find a two or three extensive easy on new inventory. So yeah.

You're already at $32,000. Then if your state has an incentive on top of that, which is common for like New York, California, Colorado. Yeah, you can get that thing for $30,000 right now, which is pretty nice. All right. Skeeter Magoo says, I'd love to see someone finally make a device to e-hybridize regular cars like an electric wheel or something cheap and easy.

There are actually, I think it's like college groups or small startups that are working on electric wheels that you can put on cars and then they charge by regenerating and stuff. So that's kind of cool. I'm not a fan of that though. Putting like motors, batteries. I mean, not the batteries, but motors in the wheel. Like your wheels, like I don't know about you, but when I drive my car, like the roads are not great and the wheels take a beating. I don't want my motor in my wheel. I want my wheel to be able to take a beating.

All right. Hypothetical from Dan Overstay. Question for Fred. If you could transfer your Roadster referral credits into a free all-wheel drive Cybertruck, would you take it? Cyber Beast, maybe? At least give me a Cyber Beast. But we're still talking like a half or a third of the value. So it would be a hard...

I guess if Tesla gives up on the Roadster, which at some point they should, if they're not going to make it, just tell us at one point. It's like six years late at this point. Then, yeah, I would be open to an alternative, but I would prefer a Roadster.

Obviously, Founders Roadster, they're valued at $300,000 and the Cybertruck is like $120,000. What if they just gave you a $300,000 Tesla gift card? Yeah, I would not complain about that. Yeah, I would also do that if anybody in the Tesla referral program is listening. We are down. We talked about Turkey Neck on the

Earlier about the crash. Question, is there a chance this could have been mixing up City Streets Beta with FSD that existed for years before the actual FSD Beta came out? City Streets Beta, I forgot about that. Well, I mean, it was still part of FSD. Like everything that was part of FSD is still FSD. It's not FSD Beta, sure. Like FSD Beta is very much like the FSD Beta program.

but these are features that were part of FSD. So it would be the same thing. Like, I don't, I don't see how that would be like misconstrued or anything. Yeah. Unless you're talking about like the intersection thing that they introduced, like where intersection like was part of it. But even then, like, it doesn't sound like this would be involved because he didn't crash at an intersection. He crashed on the road, on the mountain road. Tesla breathalyzer update coming. Yeah.

That would be cool. They could actually use AI and the cameras to give you a sobriety test. I mean, that would not like it's it would be sad if we start. Everyone needs a fertilizer inside their car. But I always thought that, you know, a court, I don't know if it's like that in every jurisdiction, but for like a repeat offender of drunk driving, you

the court can enforce that you pay for a system in your car that you have to blow before you can even drive the car. I mean, I've never looked up this system, but if they are efficient, it's a great solution if they are efficient. If you can also obviously confirm that this is the driver and you're not asking some random on the street to blow it for you. But I guess that there would be ways to enforce that too with some kind of like...

face detection like like your friends can do face detection i don't know if you've heard this uh urban legend but there's this hilarious uh just i don't know a meme or whatever about a guy it was like a marine uh captured a raccoon so that he would that he could blow into his thing i mean it does sound like an urban legend but it is an hilarious one that was hilarious

Anyway, back to the questions. Too many possibilities about the fatal FSD. Can we leave it to the authorities and Tesla to sort it out? Well, we did. That's the whole story. That's what came out. We let it happen and now the story came out and that's how it came out. What do you want me to tell you?

I wonder if there's a sect of cyber owners trying to patina their trucks and let it rust on purpose. That would be interesting. Kind of like a Mad Max. I'm not familiar with the term patina, though. I think that's like make them look older. Correct me if I'm wrong. Question. Do Autopilot and FSDB exist side by side in the vehicle, and how different are the actual commands? That's a good question. No. Well, not if you have FSDB active.

When you do activate now on highway or in city street, it's FSD beta because it's the same stack now. So if you activate it in city street, you use FSD beta. And then when you go on the highway, you use FSD beta. So autopilot is not a thing anymore, I guess, if you have FSD beta. Yeah.

I don't know if that makes sense. All right. Real quick comment. BYD is the killer out there, out of sight. They're coming on strong. Another one. Shouldn't Stellantis enter into a signed agreement to get an account with Tesla if they want to access their supercharger network? No, their owners have to. Their owners simply have to download the app if they want to use the magic charger one.

But yeah, for the non-magic one and for the upcoming adapter, that's the other thing. Mr. Turkey Neck asked about Super Cruise. I was actually talking to a friend of mine who's got a Bolt EUV with Super Cruise, and

We were talking about like you get Super Cruise for three years when you buy the car, but after that it's kind of up in the air and they don't tell you how much it is. And he was saying it would be smart for them to do it by the mile. So like every mile that you use Super Cruise, it costs 10 cents or something. That way, you know, they're charging you very little, but you're getting some utility, you know, every, you know, whatever. Yeah.

I feel like that's not a bad... Because you might be in a situation where there's road you drive off to and on that doesn't have supercruise and then you pay the monthly payment and then you pay it for nothing. Yeah, I mean, if you're just paying by the month or in general, it's not equal. But if you're actually getting utility out of it, maybe...

Maybe that's something. I don't know. Anyway, I looked up patina real quick. It's kind of like the tarnish that happens to copper on roofs and, you know, the Statue of Liberty is green because of that tarnish. So that's what they're thinking.

Okay, well, that was it for this week's episode of The Electric Podcast. I hope you learned interesting things like what patina means, but obviously more about electric vehicles and all the news that came out this week. I appreciate every single one of you that tuned in to the show. If you do enjoy the show, you can give us a like or subscribe. All these things are free to do. It takes a second. It helps the show more than you think. If you're listening on your podcast app right now, if you can give us a

five-star review only if you enjoyed the show, obviously. But a five-star review helps the show be promoted on those apps a lot more. And we appreciate it when you do it. All right. That's it for us. We're going to see you same time, same place next week. Have a safe weekend.