Tesla range exposed, Bolt EV making a comeback, Miata going electric, and more
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And we're live for a new episode of The Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host. And as usual, I'm joined by Seth Wintrom. How are you doing today, Seth? I'm good. All right, all right, all right.

This episode is brought to you by IAA Mobility Show 2023. It's coming back to Munich and we're going to be there. Seth, myself and Micah should be there too. So you can come say hi to us and come check out all the cool vehicles that they're going to have there. Apparently there's going to be a few cool EV unveilings as there usually is to this

Basically, the biggest European show now, a car show, I should say. It's running from September 5th to the 10th in the show notes right now. You can click the link and get yourself some tickets. All right, let's jump right into the news, starting with this report that came out this week from routers. And when it comes to routers...

In Tesla coverage, we had big issues over the last few years. They had very bad coverage of Tesla, very exclusive news that were very doubtful. However, I should note here, to be fair, the usual suspects, because there are usual suspects in terms of the reporters that publish these questionable reports. They're not behind this one, so we should approach this with a little bit more credibility than with other reporters' reports.

And obviously there's some background to it that we kind of, it makes sense. Yeah. And they use sources that, you know, work familiar with like Recurrent and SAE. So, you know, legitimate sources. And like, frankly, as a Tesla community, I think we all kind of know that Tesla is, I don't want to say gaming the system, although we did say gaming the system, but

they're very optimistic is how we usually put it in there. We're talking about range here. Right. Their mileage that their vehicles get compared to other EVs and not just, you know, there's some other EVs that are a little bit more optimistic than others and some are very pessimistic. Like Porsche with their Taycan said they'd only get 200 miles, but when that was tested, it actually got, you know, almost 300 miles. So it's just weird. Like it's kind of weird that

This isn't just standardized, and it's frankly the EPA's problem. The EPA should have their own test. They shouldn't take any input from Tesla or any of the other automakers. They should just say, give me the keys to the car, let's put it on a track, let's do a test, and then we'll have a number for you. But this report came out and said that Tesla was

going through the test and they were providing numbers that were optimistic and the EPA would come back with a slightly lower number and Tesla would be like, okay, that's fine. There was this one incident, I don't know if we talked about it in this story, but where the EPA said the Model S did not get 400 miles of range and Elon came back and said, well, our logs show that the door was open during the testing or they stepped out of the car and the air conditioning was on or something.

So there's all these like little things, but like, frankly, it's the EPA's job to just test the car. And, you know, the automaker can come back and say something like, hey, you know, you didn't you didn't do a test right or whatever. But frankly, it should be in their court. And and it doesn't sound like it is.

So the other automakers use a, you know, kind of a more conservative methodology. They use a 0.7 coefficient of like the best case scenario where Tesla uses a 0.8 coefficient. That's which makes a big difference. It doesn't sound like much, but like that, that can make it. And the goal here is obviously because there's,

Different types of range. There's the EPA range, which is the range that you can advertise. And that's not the same range that you show you in your car. It's not. So that's a big difference maker here. So it's all about just what you can advertise versus what you can do in the car. And this part in the report here that I thought was a little bit more damning is that

They couldn't confirm if Tesla was still doing that or if they stopped when they did because they only said that they were doing that when they had the Model S and the Roadster, which... A long time ago. Yeah, that's a long time ago. And it's almost like never ago too because they make it sound like when they had both the Roadster and the Model S or... Yeah, that never happened. Yeah, so probably when they meant they had only produced the Roadster and then now they were producing the Model S, so that wasn't an issue in the Model S. Anyway, what they said is that Tesla would show you...

something that will resemble the advertised range at first but one the batch one the state of charge of the battery pack would go below 50 then it would start showing you a more accurate and lower version of the range and that i can anecdotally confirm i've seen that especially in my mls i've seen that happen where uh like i have a ton of range and i'm just driving and then you

everything is going well and then boom i hit 50 and it starts going it starts being more accurate and like i lose the first 50 a lot faster than i lose the last 50 which makes no sense yeah and i think i remember something like that happening when i had a model s way back in the day um and then so the reality turns out to be so somebody like me who drives a lot of evs i have like very standard routes that i drive for instance we go to vermont

We have a place about 180 miles away from home. And I drive the Model Y to it. I've driven the Model X. I've driven the Model S to it. Every single Tesla out there I've driven to it. None of them make it in anywhere near 80 miles, 180 miles away.

range taken off but it's up a hill it's often cold there's there's reasons for it but uh mustang machi uh which has less official range than a tesla model y for instance uh will get there with way more miles left on it and that's because it has a huge battery it's like a 92 kilowatt hour battery versus tesla's 70 something kilowatt hour battery um but

Ford could probably say, using Tesla's metrics, that it has a 350-mile range car, but they don't do it. In reality... They're really good on them. I guess, but I feel like there should be one standard for everything. The EPA for gas mileage, I think it's one standard. I don't know. I don't know.

I think the EPA just needs to do their job, and that's make everything equal. We should note that Recurrent, who's been a past sponsor of our podcast here, they actually have data from cars. So they have some pretty really accurate numbers, and it's kind of damning. They don't see anything above 250 miles of range, even in the summertime, anywhere.

uh for a model y which is supposed to have 326 miles of range so that's 70 miles less now we should note like recurrence data isn't people on trips necessarily it's just people driving around so like you're driving around you're gunning it you're like you know you're heating the car like outside the house for no reason hypermiling for sure yeah you're not doing anything like traveling so

you know that's not that's not what a typical traveler may or may not get so there's that to consider but it's just you know it's the the mileage is so unrealistic compared to what tesla's numbers are so i think tesla needs to bring back their numbers and and to be fair i guess uh we did a story recently did a story um that tesla was dropping its numbers a little bit down to like 310 on all of its uh yeah

So I don't know. I think something's happening, but like it would just be better if like a third party organization, typically one governmental organization, if it's not the EPA, something else that would just take the car, do a test on it, come back and say, this is the mileage. And the same test would apply to all cars and there would be no kind of play there.

Yeah, that would be ideal, no doubt. Because we've been saying it for a long time. Range anxiety is not about how long of a range you get. It's about how accurate the range prediction is so that if you know where you're going, you know you can get there or you can't get there and you need to stop and charge at one point. As simple as that. It's not complicated at all. And so there was a lot of things in the report and you can go read Seth's summary. It's pretty detailed. But...

I was reading the media coverage around the Rotters report, and it seems like the main thing that people were sticking on is the team in Nevada that was diverting people, complaining about the range.

Did you get that? Yeah, we put that at the very end of my story. I'm like, oh yeah, this thing. The service department can't do anything about the range, so they should be diverting it. Why are they diverting it? Maybe that's not exactly right, but I feel like that was making something out of nothing. Yeah, I guess it's rather a description of it. It makes it sound like, have you ever seen the movie Boiler Room?

The 90s movies about the Wolf of Wall Street. Wolf of Wall Street was kind of a remake of The Boiler Room, but with the story of... What's this...

the dumbass name, the Wolf of Wall Street, like Belford, Belford is his name. But this whole idea of like, you want to get the sucker, you want to sell the share of the sucker. They describe it like that in routers where like, oh, they shout when they get one of them to not get a service appointment over the range and things like that. So I guess that is kind of in bad taste.

If that's really what's happening in those cases, I guess that brought a lot of people's attention, but hopefully it, but I don't think it's going to do much. Honestly, I don't think Tesla cares now. Nope. Yeah. I mean, I think they need to kind of tone down their range numbers a little bit just to get them more realistic, but I mean, they don't need great range because they have a great supercharger network. That too. Yeah. There's the, the charging is, is a big part of this. Uh,

All right, moving on. We have some actual data now backing whether or not Musk's latest antiques, let's call them that, are negatively affected Tesla. So Bloomberg posted this quite extensive survey of 5,000 Model 3 owners. And they questioned them about a lot of things, but...

The first part of the survey focused primarily on Elon and this impact on the brand. And one of the questions was, well, out of those 5,000, so it's a big sample of owners. Out of those 5,000, they identified some of them. They didn't name how many that have sold their Model 3 or plan on selling it.

and for replacing it for another brand. So they're not upgrading to another Tesla. And they asked them the top reason why they are doing that. And the number one, surprisingly, was disapproval of Elon Musk. And at the same time, the second one was concerned about quality and service, which I think normally that's probably the number one reason for any brand that people just go away. And it's not necessarily...

bad look on the brand itself. Like we're talking about the people that are living away. Like if 99% of the people that keep their car are IP with a quality of service, then it's not necessarily bad. But as the reason for someone that is leaving, that's normally the top one. But the third one is on IP with Tesla's brand perception. So that's 17%. So you could basically add that to the disapproval of Elon Musk, which is at 21%. And you end up at almost half of the people quitting for...

perception reason like Musk and Tesla as a whole. So that's interesting. But to the point that I just mentioned, what we need to understand here is that that is a small percentage of people because in another question, the survey, they ask people if they will consider Tesla for their next car. And 87% of all three owners said yes.

So of that, of those, the 20% of the people that disapprove of the mosque, I think that's 20% of 13% of the entire people surveyed here. So it's one out of five people that are leaving the brand, which is in itself just basically one out of 10 people that are buying the car that are disapproval of the mosque. So I...

So the bright side for Elon is that it's not a major impact on the Tesla community itself, at least. Now, of course, you could add to that the people that didn't have a Tesla and were a potential buyer of Tesla. That number could be different and that could have a bigger impact. But...

On the bad side for Musk and for Tesla, now there's clear evidence that he has a negative impact on the brand with his latest antiques. I don't know how to call it. I think the main one is him expressing his political views, which in itself shouldn't be bad. People are allowed to express their political views, but there is...

Among leaders of large companies that are consumer-facing, there is this unwritten rule that you should shut the hell up about that stuff because it's divisive and you don't want to devise your consumer base. It's just like simple marketing, simple brand perception. So Elon has made it clear he doesn't care about that. He doesn't care at all.

But maybe this kind of data should need the board could this this kind of weapon that maybe if if he has some people around him left that are not yes men which we discussed that before but we have serious doubts about that.

But if he does, these people could try to approach him with that kind of data and show him like, yeah, I know you're having fun on Twitter and all that, but is that more important than Testa's mission? And if the answer to that is no, then maybe don't do that. And

And like we all have our political views or social views and everything. And you don't need to share that with people all the time like he does. It's strange. It's what's the word? Not zealous, but. Zealous. Yeah. Like it's starting to become in that realm. Right. Right. I don't think he wants to be a political pundit and he's going in that direction.

We have a quick update on the supercharger V4. So that's a, we've been just like trapping information as it's trickled down from the V4 because Tesla has never officially announced it. They officially announced a V3 when it came out. They had a press release that came out and all that and a video that went into the details.

V4, they actually installed some stations in Europe and they still haven't officially announced it. We talked a few weeks ago, they brought at the good...

Goodwood. Goodwood, that's right. The Goodwood show, they brought one, but it wasn't even a complete one. We could see that they had a place for a screen for it. But now in the new image release for this construction plan for the station in the UK, you can actually see the screen that's there. So now you see it. But as part of this question, we actually have the official power output.

which is listed at 350 kilowatts, so 100 kilowatt bump over the version 3. But that could be somewhat limited for this because we also saw the electrical ratings of one of the stations that was deployed, and it was rated at 1,000 volt, 615 amps, which would theoretically allow an output of up to 600 kilowatts.

So this might be limited for this station in particular, or there's another limitation. We don't know. Anyway, is there anything right now that goes over 350 on the car side? I think there's nothing, right? Not really, not officially. I mean, some GMC Hummers are saying like 360, 370 kilowatts on Electrify Americas, but nothing official. Yeah. Yeah.

And even that, that's probably for a few seconds and then you're back up to 350 and then it goes down pretty fast. All right. This is an interesting thing here. The numbers are coming out for the first half of the year in California. And for the first time in Q2, Tesla as a brand with only four vehicles available, they

has outsold Toyota in California. Toyota has been the leading brand in California for a long time. The Prius, people think about California Toyota and then the Prius and I was popular there. But honestly, it was the Camry, the Corolla, and more recently, the RAV4 has been the big leader in sales in California.

But now Tesla has taken over with a massive increase. And a lot of people thought that, um, Tesla might have already like saturated the market for its vehicles in California over the years. Cause it's, it's for a long time. It was its own market, not anymore. Uh, even though it's still obviously the Fremont factory is there and all that. The, um,

People thought that there would be a limit to how many cars that someone could deliver there. And last year with the big performance that they had in 2022, in the first half of the year, they had 90,000 vehicles. But California is a big market. There's a lot of people there. It's as big as, I don't know if the economy is bigger in Canada. I think it might be bigger in Canada. So a lot of people. Say that again? More populous than Canada.

Yeah. I mean, especially if you had the illegals, it's probably twice as big as Canada. Yeah. But officially as big as Canada and bigger than like Australia and same size as some European places. Yeah. I mean, Canada is 35 million, I think maybe less than that. So it's not that big. It's big. It's just the population. But yeah, yeah.

This quarter, last quarter, Tesla sold 69,000 vehicles in California to Toyota 67,000. And the percentage increase are interesting too. So Tesla was up 62% during the quarter and Toyota was down 8.3%. So because of the up on Tesla and the down on Toyota side, they were able to

to beat Toyota this quarter. They haven't beaten them for the year today just yet. Tesla is sitting at 123,000 units to Toyota's 133,000 units, but they're only 10,000 units away. So they could potentially outsell Toyota in California for the whole year. And obviously what's interesting about it is that

One of the main reasons Tesla is selling so well in California are the incentives, obviously, which are stronger there. But as a whole, California is a preview of what's going to happen in the whole rest of the U.S. as the incentive because it will become less relevant. And also there are incentives in the rest of the U.S. too. We've been talking about the federal tax credit all year. But even if you remove all the credit, as the cost of electric vehicles come down,

And the charging network is being deployed. And soon enough, like 99% of the people that buy vehicles will make no sense for them to not buy electric vehicles. And that's what we're seeing in California because that boost from Tesla has just brought up the BEV market share to 21.1% up from 16% last year. So that's a 5% increase in a year.

That's huge. Well, in the first half of a year, but the difference is a year. And it's interesting to look at HEVs and PHEV too, because they are flat. And if you look at the chart for BAV, it's going straight up. So I think it's clear that people are seeing

are seeing the the hd hybrids as uh more of a transitional technology and the battery electric vehicle is the future and people want they want the thing that's going to be there for a while not that transitional you know dipping your toe in electric propulsion type of uh category yeah i would also mention that uh uh rivian is is doing kind of nicely uh they're at 22

25 for the quarter, which is up a lot from 870 in the first quarter. But that's starting to get close to one of their competitors, Land Rover, which is at 2,900. It's kind of close to Volvo, which is at 3,500. So if Rivian continues to double year over year, they're going to also be kind of catching up to their

their competitors yeah i don't know if they're going to be able to keep doubling with just the r1s and r1t the the next generation vehicle are going to be important but but yeah i mean if you if you look uh hop 155 percent obviously last year in q2 it wasn't they didn't have the production capacity that they had now but uh yeah in the comparison to land rover probably is the best one it's very very much higher handle i don't know if uh

I don't have the other numbers here. All right, Tesla is bringing its tribal land loophole. And I wasn't sure about the word tribal, but apparently the Moigan Sun, the local land, that's what they call it. So I was calling it native land, but also that doesn't make that much sense either. But tribal land is apparently the correct word here.

So Tesla has been using this loophole in New Mexico for a few years where direct sales law ban direct sales from manufacturer to consumers of vehicles.

And because we've discussed this before, but it's because of outdated laws that try to protect the franchise dealership against the automakers, which makes no sense to apply those laws to automakers that never had a franchise dealership. But some franchise dealership associations specifically and dealerships bonding together have.

put pressure on the legislation to apply those laws to Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid, and all the other automakers that are trying to go direct to consumers. And they feel like they have the right to do so because they never gave anyone a franchise. So they're not competing against people that invested into their brand. And New York...

was the latest one a few months ago. Tesla has stores in New York and service centers in New York, but they are limited on the number of them because instead of getting the law changed, they had an exception built into it. But now they can expand more unless they do it on tribal land, which they did earlier this year. And Connecticut has been probably one of the toughest not to break yet. The older Tesla fans that have been following this story for a while will remember this.

Tesla's continuous effort at the legislative level to change things. And every time they were shut down by the local politicians, backed by the local association. I'm going to name them because they are a very hateful bunch. Connect Ticket Automotive Retailer Association. The SARA, if you remember them, they went...

above and beyond to their fight against Tesla's and direct sales. Back in the day, they had a website that would trash Tesla. They built an entire website that was like Stop Tesla. And it was just like a bunch of... They had Tesla crash on there and everything. It was just a hit job of a website. And then when Tesla, to make ways and to connect the kids, what they decided to do, they decided to launch this concept back then that they had of a Tesla gallery, which was...

Not a store, not a service center, so it doesn't infringe on the direct sales laws. And they add cars there. And all they would do is they would call it educate the public on it. So they would talk to the public about the cars.

All the features, which is not illegal to do, they would just not discuss pricing or buying a delivery and all that. They would have to go on the website after that and do that themselves and then order the car and take delivery in another state. That's what's been happening in Connecticut for years. But CARA, whatever, the CARAN of the Retailer Association, they went as far as sending...

What do they call it? Secret buyers? Is that the term? Yeah, secret shoppers. So the idea of secret shoppers is that they are shopping, they act as shoppers, but that's not their true intention. In that case, their intention was to make the Tesla staff talk about pricing so that they could shut them down after, which they did and saved. So now Tesla is bringing the tribal land loophole to...

to Connecticut. And they did it through a deal with the Mohegan Sun. So actually, even though I've never been in Connecticut in my life, I was familiar with the Mohegan Sun because it's the home of Bellator MMA. Well, maybe not the home, but one of the main places where they do MMA or they do their event. So it's kind of a middle of nowhere a little bit. Well, yeah. It's not in the middle of nowhere. I mean, Connecticut's a fairly... It's a small, yeah.

Yeah, so you can get there probably from anywhere in Connecticut within an hour, I guess. It's like in the east side of Connecticut. But there's no big town or city next to it. There's the Mohegan Sun, though, obviously, which is an attraction into itself. So I guess if you want to take delivery of your Tesla in...

connect to it you can make it like a trip out of it and you you go to the mohegan sun you go gambling a little go see a show go see a bellator event and then you pick up your tesla and you drive home sounds like a fun weekend yeah

I'm sure they have services to Moegenson to like drive people in. Like they have buses to come, to come there and everything. Most casinos that are, yeah, those casinos are kind of a, not in very popular area. They do that. So you can probably get, grab one of those for cheap and drive back with your Tesla. So yeah, they have a deal with them that they're going to build a showroom within the, so the Moegenson has this, it's like a giant complex that they have there with an arena and a,

And a casino, a hotel, tons of restaurants and all that. And shops. So one of the shops is going to be a Tesla shop. And they're talking about test drive, about delivery. And they are not talking about service center, which that is somewhat of a concern because part of it is the goal is to have service in Connecticut. Now there are thousands of Tesla owners in Connecticut that don't have service in the States, which is insane.

They are not saying that's going to be a service center just yet, but they did mention a deal between Tesla and the local tribe to educate, to train people to be technicians. So I would assume that the goal is eventually that. And they can do whatever they want on that tribal land so they can build a service center. I just don't know because of the distance and everything if it makes sense to have it there.

Because it's not like they can have a fleet of mobile technicians there because as soon as the mobile technician leaves the tribal land, they are technically criminals. I don't know about criminals, but it's illegal. That's kind of nuts, right? Well, there's a lot of layers and nuts on there. First of all, it shouldn't be illegal to sell cars, especially electric cars. Obviously, we shouldn't have taken all that land from

the native people here that so you just got like layers and layers and layers of bad stuff it goes way back yeah and the fact that uh the white people were nice enough to give some backup to them now enables tesla to get around this stupid loads the entire you're right the entire thing screwed up pretty bad right oh that's funny

I love how reparations take the form of like you can sell cigarettes for tax free and have a casino and we'll call it even I mean Mohing and Sunday looks like they ran with it though it's not a small reservation casino they have there it's like yeah but unfortunately it's like a few you know obviously goes to Native Americans but a few Native Americans are doing quite well and then like 98% of them are you know quite poor so it's yeah

all right moving on we're going to talk about this weird strange cyber truck with a ford f-150 wrap on it so it was first bought last weekend uh a picture leaked from a tesla shop with you this this cyber truck that you could see with this wrap job that makes it i say make it look like they try to make it look like a f-150 like well necessarily lightning but a ford pickup truck basically uh

It was spotted again yesterday or the day before that in Livermore, California. And it was on the back of another truck being transported around. And you could see the truck a lot better on those pictures. And we were kind of baffled by it. We don't know what the goal is. I mean, I guess the goal is this. What we're doing right now is to get to talk about it. I guess it's either that or maybe Tesla is kind of filming some content with it maybe for like some promotional videos.

Yeah, I feel like we're going to find out at some point what the hell they're doing. Yeah, I feel like Elon would have commented on it already if it was just to get it to talk about and everything. I think there might be more to it. Tesla might be filming some content, maybe like a

Maybe they do a tug of war again with the Cybertruck and an F-150. And then once the Cybertruck wins, they're like, the only thing that can beat a Cybertruck is a Cybertruck F-150 and something like that. That's good media right there. Yeah, I'm just bawling. You know, I actually talked to a Ford person because they were like, what the hell is going on here? And I was like, I have no idea. What do you know? And I was like, you should have Farley tweet out that...

at that you know like imitation is the sincerest form of flattery or you know something like that and they're like yeah we already pitched that it's not gonna happen like we're not we're not engaging yeah but uh they're aware of it and they're they're weirded out by it just as much as we are maybe there's the unveiling of the cyber truck and like you know there was some concern for

that Elon mentioned about Tesla having a cyber truck and it not being popular because of his radically different design from other pickup trucks. So maybe Elon goes, there's a joke. He goes, I mean, if you want it to look like a normal pickup truck, just put this wrap on it and voila. Yeah.

I don't know. Again, just spitballing. But this is a weird thing that it's around. So it's the latest Cybertruck that we've seen with a wrap on it. We've seen the other two with the different camouflage on, but more than two, but two different camouflage ones. And the speculation around it is either those are release candidates with the final design. The Tesla wants to hide the design as best as they could.

Or this is basically just Tesla testing out wraps on the Cybertrucks because wraps are going to be the only way that you can change the color of the truck and make it look different. And the stainless steel finish that literally every Cybertruck out there is going to have. And they plan to make over 200,000 of them a year. So you're going to see, and most of them are going to be for the US and Canadian market. So you're going to see a lot of those around. All right. Before moving on,

A quick word about IAA Mobility Show on the Munich Future of Mobility. Yeah, so we are again going to Munich for the IAA Mobility Show. We were there two years ago. We had a great time. There's a ton of new people

there it's not just cars like i think in the past it used to be called the frankfurt auto show obviously was in frankfurt they moved it to munich uh they got a lot of um protesters and stuff so uh they were like okay let's let's try to make this a little bit more uh walkable city friendly green friendly all the other stuff so they invited us and uh now it's now it's better but um

It's just a great show because they have all the cars and electric vehicles that you hope to see. But then they also have bikes specialized as one of the bigger sponsors. They have like whole just like monster rooms of hangers. Yeah, the hangers of the show floor that are dedicated to mobility like scooters and bikes and

electric bikes and all the other stuff so and what's even cooler is they have this testing area where you can just grab a bike or a weird like they have a bunch of velo mobiles and like little cars and all kinds of other stuff to test and then you can also test like you go there say you're thinking about getting an ev there's like 20 different evs you can test um i think we got our first look at the uh ionic five there maybe

And I know we got a crazy ride in the Mercedes EQS where they took us on the Autobahn. We went like, I don't know, fast as...

We have some videos of it. And then we got to try the level three autonomy from Mercedes. So just like tons of fun stuff to do there. If you're in the area or thinking of, if you have some free time in early September, it's worth going. And then Oktoberfest is directly after that. So maybe extend your stay a little bit, have some beer, enjoy yourself, but we'll be there. Grab some tickets shown. The links are in the show notes and hope to see you there.

All right. We're going to have a few more news to discuss before we jump into the comment section. If you guys want us to discuss something else about the community that we didn't touch today, you can put it in the comment section right now. Or if you have any questions for us, we can have some time to answer them so you can put them in the comment section right now.

Also, if you do enjoy the show, please give us a thumbs up, a like, a subscribe and all that good stuff. It takes a second to do and it helps the show more than you think. If you're listening on your podcast app right now, like on Apple podcast, you can give us a five star review that takes a second to do. It's free and it helps the show a ton. I'm serious. So if you do enjoy the show, you can do that. It's helpful.

Moving on, GM confirmed officially, they've been teasing it for a few months now, but they officially confirmed that they are bringing back the Chevy Bolt on the LCM platform. So even though the Chevy Bolt is technically going away at the end of the year with the current version, which is basically the same as it was since 2016, other than a few changes.

small changes. They announced earlier this year that they're going to kill it without saying that it's going to be something else. There was some pushback on that, including from people on this podcast. And now they confirmed it is coming back on the LTM platform. So Baltium, that's you, is that what they're calling it? That's what I'm calling it, yeah. Okay.

So you're the local Chevy expert here. Did they really reveal anything about it or did you just confirm it's coming, right? They released almost nothing about it except for this picture right here with the peeling off the sticker. I imagine it's going to be called something else like Bolt U or something. I don't know. We can't really tell what that next thing is going to be.

Maybe they dropped the EV. Now, do you need EV anymore for a car? All cars are going to be electric. And there's no Bolt not electric, too. And I guess the Bolt, at first, they put the EV to differentiate from the Volt because people were like, Bolt, Volt, what did you say? Bolt or Volt? Right, right. Which is dumb because no one was using the EV to talk about the Bolt, too. And now the Volt is gone. So I guess you just call it the Volt.

Yeah. Uh, but there is a letter after the beat, the bolt there. So I don't know what, what that's going to be. Oh, okay. I didn't, I didn't catch that teaser. Okay. Um, but so I did a post on five things that it needs. Obviously the easiest thing is the, uh, the fast max charging. Uh, like that's a no brainer. Sounds like it's confirmed already. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, uh, going to be Altium. So Altium's charged quite, quite fast and, uh,

GM said they're going to go to the next charger for all vehicles, 2015 or whatever, or sorry, 2025. So it's kind of a done deal, but it needs to get that. And then there's some other stuff like, you know, it could be all wheel drive as an option for people with snow, or it could be rear wheel drive, make it more of a hot hatch. I think that would be kind of cool. I think marketing wise, yeah,

GM needs to drop the idea that this is some way a SUV or CUV. It's a hatchback. Which is going to be easier to do once they have the Blazer and the Equinox and all that in their lineup. Yeah. So they have two other...

SUVs in the space. They don't need a third, so drop the BS. Also, I think maybe this decision came about. I don't know for this for sure, but it seems kind of interesting that the Volvo EX30 came out with almost the exact same specs as the Bolt, and people flipped their lid for that one, including myself. I thought that was going to be a really good car.

And, you know, it's got to be like the engineers at Chevy had to be like, hey, we have this car already. We've had it for like six years. We just haven't done any good marketing for it. So why don't we continue to build this car and compete against this thing that seems like everybody loves? And, you know, it's a Volvo brand, which is probably a little bit different. And but it's going to be made in China, which will be interesting. The Bolt will be.

you know obviously made in or likely made in the u.s maybe uh maybe in mexico i don't know yeah um and then why not yeah canada of course and then uh things like carplay android auto obviously gm made the what some would say boneheaded decision to take carplay and android auto out of the their evs starting next year um i think they're gonna have to backpedal on that it just seems like

Like, even if you don't believe that they need to do that, or if you believe that they don't need to do that, a lot of people won't buy a car that doesn't have CarPlay, Android Auto, that isn't a Tesla or Rivian. So why not just put it in there? And if your software is so good, GM, like people will use it like over CarPlay and Android Auto. Yeah. So just give them the choice.

Yeah, I haven't been in a GM car in a moment now, so I don't know. I have a clear idea of their user interface, but from what I remember, it's just stuck in the 90s, basically. Yeah. You have, unless they say that because they have something coming out that's insane, but are you going to put all your chips on that? Yeah.

No, basically what they're saying, they're saying, hey, we're going to beat Google and Apple at software. Like, no, you're not. Like, I would say even Tesla and Rivian haven't beat Google and Apple in their software. Like, you can do more with a good CarPlay or Android Auto wireless system than you can often with those things. And then I think there was one last thing, but I can't remember what it was. If you scroll down a little bit. Come on. I'm giving you three guests.

it's a good one it's your best one it's your best one it's the one it's the one that's gonna that would have the big is the one less likely to happen but the one that would have the biggest impact man oh the dealers oh and i was gonna add something to that that's so crazy um so yeah by the way people said wrote this article like two a day and a half ago i got a lot going on man going to going to japan soon a lot of stuff um

Yeah, but the dealers, like one of the pain points is obviously that. I think Ford's doing a good job with dealers. So take some notes from Ford. DC fast chargers make EVs a separate side of the business. And then...

Pricing to the pricing structure that I tried to force pricing on the dealers. But that's so hard to do. Right. Like, how do you do it? I don't know. Figure it out. Like, there's got to be a way. And by the way, you're also proving like the dealers are proving why they shouldn't exist. Because, you know, they're just adding a layer of gouge to your pricing.

At the same time, we see they shouldn't exist. They made themselves into something that shouldn't exist. But we have to remember, too, the reason they exist is because automakers needed them and they needed – they couldn't support automakers.

with service and sales and deliveries, this giant expansion that they thought it wasn't possible really, like what Tesla did and expand like that. And you could argue that it's not perfect where Tesla figured they'd be need a lot more and their deliveries are growing a lot faster than the number of service centers and shops.

But they are the ones that invested into building their service network for them. It's just that since then, probably because of those direct sales laws, they sort of sat on that original investment. They're like, all right, we have you now, automakers, because you needed us. We were there when you needed us. And now we reap the rewards and take advantage of consumers in the meantime.

Yeah, I don't know the quick answer to that, but they really could do a lot better. And I will say, so I've been to a Chevy dealer three times for bolts. One was six years ago with my original Chevy bolt. That was pretty bad. I went to...

Over the phone, I dealt with a dealer to get my mom a bolt. That was probably the worst one. And then locally here in New York where they're selling a lot of bolts, I had a pretty good experience. They're not all bad. Yeah, they're not all bad. But they're not consistent at all, so you can have a great experience in one place and not a terrible one in the other place.

So a quick one here on the tease, a new electric sports car coming later this year. So we have a teaser image here, but we don't have a lot of details on it. It was confirmed to CAR in Britain, but apparently it is coming to the North American market under the Acura brand. So maybe you're going to get some kind of...

Acura electric supercar coming which would be surprising like an NSX or something that would be quite something surprising a bit from Honda which has been kind of a lagger in the electric space like most of their Japanese automaker peers but switching from whatever small EV portfolio they have now to kind of an ION supercar would be interesting

Or maybe just a smaller sports car, less expensive. No, no. This is interesting. Volkswagen took a stake in Xpeng in China, and they plan to develop two electric vehicles with them. So Xpeng has been known...

At first, they were known as the Tesla copycat because they literally copied everything Tesla, including their website and their software, and hired Autopilot. Tesla is in a lawsuit with an engineer that Xpeng hired that Tesla claims stole the Autopilot source code. And then the founder of Xpeng even confirmed that...

based all of the company on Tesla and the fact that Tesla opened their patents and everything. So it's interesting that Volkswagen wants to get involved with them. Not because they're bad or anything like that, but because Volkswagen has been the one providing the technology, like the Ford deal that they have in Europe, like where they build the MEB for Ford. And now it sounds like it's going to be the other way around here in China with Xpeng as being the base. However,

other than somehow tesla which i know we barely know how they did it um we have to partner with a local company in china to do it so it's not that surprising but in this case here did they mention an actual joint venture or because i did the hundreds they're investing hundreds of million dollars in the company itself taking like a five percent stake in it i imagine uh

They say they're going to supplement their MEB platform in China with a new Xpeng partner. Yeah, I imagine it sounds like Xpeng would produce vehicles under the Volkswagen brand or something new. Yeah, the cooperation is going to be between Volkswagen and its existing joint venture, which is with FAW.

Yeah, and there was some talk that Volkswagen was losing some market share in China. So maybe this will boost it a little bit. I mean, consolidation in the auto industry is nothing new. It happened a lot before EVs. But it's interesting when those deals are literally about EVs, like in the case of Xpeng. And electric Mazda Miata. Finally. When I say that, do I get some people excited? I'm pretty sure I do. But...

Calm yourself a little bit here because we're talking about an electrified Mazda Miata. So what kind of automakers in 2023 use the term electrified again, which means nothing. Like it could mean a hybrid, could mean a plug-in hybrid, could be battery electric vehicles. We don't know. So Mazda confirmed that the next generation of the Miata MX-5, which is, I think MX-5 is what they call it in Europe, I think maybe. I don't know.

will come in 2026 and will be electrified. Now, the only thing that's getting us a little hopeful, because Mazda has been nothing in terms of electric, but I mean, they have the compliance card that they've been selling, but that's about it, is that 2026, would you be planning to launch an electrified non-battery electric vehicle in 2026? No. Yeah. So it is a little bit worrying that they use that term again.

But at the same time, it's like if you're launching a new generation Miata in 2026, it has to be electric, doesn't it? I mean, from my standpoint, yeah. Obviously, they're on a different time scale over there in Japan. But, you know, maybe by saying electrified, you cover a couple of bases. Maybe they'll have an EV version, a hybrid. I don't know. I don't know. When they say electrified, it usually means like they're going to do something really stupid.

There's that one vehicle that doesn't have batteries but has an electric motor and the gas just runs a generator that powers... I think that's a Nissan or something. But when I hear electrified, I think of Kakamani, stuff like that. Yeah. So, I don't know. ePower, I think it was called. Nissan ePower. Right. Anyway, it's coming, hopefully. Because, I mean, they still have time, technically, because...

There's nothing else in the all-electric market right now that is a two-door sports car that is fully electric. And it's not a supercar. It's not a $100,000 plus vehicle. Because the Miata, that's what people like about it. It starts under $30,000. Yeah. Does it still start under $30,000 now in this day and age, though, where the average new car sales price is like $48,000? I don't know. But...

There is the Binnie Cooper, I guess, the two-door, but that's not a car. Yeah, but it's not really a sports car. They would like to think that they're a sports car. Yeah. All right. Like the Miata, like you say, Miata, and then what's the BMW that they have too? The Z1 or whatever. Yeah, Z4, I think. And then there's like some smart cars out there. Yeah, there should be more. And obviously Tesla...

has their roadster, but that's going to be a $250,000. Right. All right. So Ford had a earnings call this week. And I think today actually, and what are your thoughts on comments from Ford that EV adoption is slower than expected and,

I would say probably maybe slower than expected for Ford, not for everybody else. And also within the current macroeconomic context too, that affects all car sales, including electric ones. So I don't think that's... I think it's a good excuse right now for an automaker like Ford, which is having some difficulty transitioning.

they are using that as an excuse. And Farley was kind of open about it. It was like, this is kind of good for us that it's slow because we're losing money on those cars. So it was like, if this can be slower until like the next generation stuff is coming where we can make some money on them, we're fine with it. So yeah, they're going to lose like, I think 2.5, even more on billion on the, on their electric division this year. Yeah.

Which is less than what Rivian is going to use this year. True. Perspective, that's interesting. All right. AI says, couple of anecdotal evidence. I know someone who votes Democratic and is very concerned about climate change, but yet unwilling to spend their money to buy an electric car as it is deemed too expensive. Well, that's normal. That's normal. Yeah. Yeah.

Unless they're buying, they say that and then they buy a $40,000, $50,000 car from another brand. To put it in perspective, are you someone who buys a new car? Are you in that bracket or type of person that buys new cars?

If you're in that bracket, yes, you're most likely going to want to go electric. But if you're not, if you're buying a used car, which is most people, then yes, your choice are extremely limited if you want to go electric. So it makes sense for them to have this kind of reaction.

Yeah, so they continue also driving around neighborhoods. Somebody has a climate action now sign, but notice they just bought a new ICE car. Okay, well, that's... Yeah, that's not good. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you're in the place maybe where you get your electricity from fossil fuel, it's not as bad. But at the same time, if they have a house or something, they might as well invest in solar. It's financially viable now. All right. Rene Poulet.

says, do you see Tesla selling an OS operating system for EVs? The reason I say that is that Jim Farley explained how it was impossible for them because each supplier has its own software control. I don't see that specifically, particularly because Ford hired away one of Tesla's main tech people not too long ago in 2008.

Well, I think he mentioned Farley as an example here, but I think he's talking about the broader market as a whole. I mean, I don't know. It's kind of hard to shimmy somebody else's OS into your vehicles. I mean, there is Android Auto now. Like the actual OS of Android Auto, not the...

So what's the Android's CarPlay thing? It's like Android for automotive. It's the worst naming situation. But Apple now has its own too. It's not launching just yet, but it's coming next year, I think. So yeah, I mean, I can see Tesla getting into that business too, honestly. It would actually make sense, but do you really want one of your competitors to own your OS and your car? I feel like that would be a suicide wish. Yeah, definitely. But then...

It looks like the door is slowly opening with the supercharger network, one major OEM talking about FSD. It's not impossible that you see some automakers maybe just relying on their manufacturing capability and just giving that. I'm pretty sure that the plan A for all of them is like, let's own the software. But then when plan A fails every year for 10 years, you have to go to plan B.

So I think maybe Tesla could be some people's plan B, some automaker's plan B. All right. Now we're talking about range. The range on my Model Y performance is about 15 less percent than stated. They should rate all of these at 70 miles per hour. I mean, not everybody drives 70 miles per hour. Not everybody. That's why they just need to have one standard. Figure out what it is. Maybe it is a 70 mile per hour thing. You know, just drive it around a track at 70 miles per hour. And when it stops, that's the that's the range.

I don't know what it is, but it should just be equal for everybody. All right. AI is back. I feel like unless government officially bans ICE cars, it will be a very slow go on a voluntary basis and the earth is sizzling. Hopefully it becomes so obvious to people. I think once your buddies and your parents and your kids get EVs and you drive them around, it's kind of like, maybe I should just get one of these. Better in every way.

I don't know. What do you think? Yeah, there's going to be some mold out like that. Yeah, those people are going to die off too. I mean, kids aren't buying internal combustion engine vehicles, I don't think. I mean, and to his point, there are some government doing that already, but I think their timeline are all longer than just the consumer mind shift. Right. All right. This container ship EV fire is very suspicious. I know Jamie did a story on that. Do we have anything? No.

I mean, from what I understand from Jamie's story is that there was some misreporting at first about what the Coast Guard said about the fire that led some media outlets to believe that the fire started with the electric vehicles. But my understanding is that this container ship is mostly, like a vast majority of them is gasoline vehicles and then a few EVs.

And the Coast Guard said something that Billy, the people were, the fire started with AVs, but apparently we don't know that at all right now. So I don't know. Maybe it did, maybe it did not. Yeah, there'll be a post-mortem on it at some point. And maybe we'll find out. I mean, when the whole thing's just on fire, it's hard to tell where it started.

Crimson Decade talking about range. This is why I won't buy any Tesla EV without a 500 mile range like the Cybertruck, which we don't know if it'll have a 500 mile range. Doubtful with the aerodynamics of that thing.

since I'll get something over 300 real miles, I guess he's saying. Personally, you don't even need 300 miles. So maybe, Crimson, you have some kind of driving habits that require you to drive 300 miles every day, but I somehow doubt it. Yeah, we've talked about that a lot. All right. Thanks for the disclaimer about Reuters reporter and EV coverage. I thought that was a fair article. Why not use the percent and not the estimated range?

That is not gamed right. Yeah, I mean, that would be a thing. But I don't think percentage solves range anxiety. Like, if you have 32% of your battery and you have 100 miles to drive, like, you're just got to do a lot of math there. Like, I don't know if that's going to help people.

I mean, what are your thoughts on that? I don't understand what Spikes is saying here. Maybe that would work for some people. But yeah, I think you just... Personally, I would always want to see the mileage left.

I think that's what makes the most sense to me. Yeah, and something we didn't talk about, that Tesla actually knows probably better than any other automaker how much real range you have. If you map to somewhere, it will tell you

In my experience, it's been incredibly accurate how far you're going to get. And it's never as much as the battery meter says. So you use that energy app. It knows like hills and altitudes and curves and all that, you know, weather. Yeah, they need to match that to your battery after that. It needs to work together. But he's right for that, though, for the percentage of that.

takes care of that discrepancy. I have the percentage of my battery showing and then I have what my navigation system is saying. Let me get back in here. Are you guys planning to come fully charged live in Vancouver in September? I don't know when that is. I don't think so. We get a lot of emails from them and I don't know if I read all of them. Sorry about that. If they want to send us plane tickets, Fred will go.

Actually, Vancouver is a lovely place. Yeah, I loved it there. I'm sure it's going to be a great show. I'm literally completely on the other side of the country.

The 300-word report on Tesla range initially started with a customer complaining, and that customer ended up understanding and agreeing with Tesla. Big storm and a glass of water. Yeah, I have to agree that part of that report had a lot of comments from Tesla owners, and a lot of them made no sense. They were like, oh, my range is going down. It's like, well, are you driving the car right now? It's like, yeah, but it makes sense it's going down.

Yeah. And the driver they were talking about in particular was getting 150 miles out of his like 300. But he was driving at like 90. You know, he was driving quite fast and it was like below freezing. So like that's just what happens. Like that's reality. And so, you know, I think finally when he was like, OK, let me ask around. And oh, yeah, that seems right. People need to find that sweet spot when it comes to speed.

Cause it makes a difference. I like to drive at like 119 kilometers an hour. I'm not sure exactly what it is in miles, but I, I see a giant difference when I'm like a nine, 119 and 110. Like that's, and 110 is here in, in, in Quebec, it's still 10 over the speed limit, but we have like a weird thing where like, you think it's kind of okay to drive 20 over the speed limit. Right. Dumb thing. Um,

Yeah, it's weird because my neighbor, for instance, got his Tesla and he was driving it with a roof rack in the winter at like 70 miles per hour. And he's like, something's broken. And I was like, why? And he's like, I can't get 300 miles out of this thing. I'm like, I'm amazed you got to where you were going, let alone anything. Because you put all those things on there, it's not going to go well.

All right. If we do go to the Vancouver, what is it? The Vancouver Electric could make it an event with the Tesla Clubs, Ontario, Quebec. I think maybe Rene's confusing it. It's not a hard event. We don't have any event. Yeah, it's not a hard event. It's a fully charged event.

But yeah, like if we're – I don't even know when it is. I know we're going to be at IAA in September. Yeah. I don't know. We have a lot of things coming up towards the end of the year. I'm going to Japan. There's a lot of studies going to Japan next month. I'm going to Japan in November or October. I don't know.

Yeah, and we hear that there's going to be another event in Germany in October. So busy times. Jonathan Root, while I won't sell my Tesla because of Elon, I won't buy another. Well, that's the same. That goes into the same category that we're talking about. That's based on that survey. All right. Tesla sales in California may be due part to incentives, but the exorbitant price of gasoline is a major disincentive to purchase an ICE vehicle. That's a good point.

Quite expensive in California to drive ICE. If Tesla made misleading claims about their car's range and Tesla customers are expecting the range on their car they spend money on, I think it's valid to criticize the diversion team. We talked about it, I guess. Yes, however, electricity sales are also double or more depending on time and region. And if the area offers nighttime charging plans, some places pay 30 to 40 cents per kilowatt, not 14 cents like the Midwest.

Yeah, places like where I live, charging at night is almost free compared to the daytime charging. So it really pans out for EV owners. Perhaps the goal is to illustrate the F-150 and Cybertruck are the same size. Are they? They're relatively similar. Yeah, they're pretty close, but maybe, I don't know.

Alright, question. Does Tesla monkeying with their range indicator lead to unnecessary range anxiety for their owners just so drivers can feel good looking at big number when finally charged? So, like I said, when you're a Tesla owner for a while, you don't even look at the battery meter anymore. You look at that app and you plug in where you're going and it'll give you a pretty good idea. The Maps and the Energy app will be a much better use. And then

But I think to answer his question, it's not – I mean, that might be the result of it, but the goal of Tesla was not to make them feel good when they look at the number. It was to advertise that number. To sell a car. Yeah. Good news, Fred. Canada's population recently passed 40 million. Well, we have a lot of immigration in the last two years too. So like, it's sure not babies growing that fast. Yeah.

but it's good that there might be more people in Canada. We have space for it. We have plenty of space. Yeah, you have a lot of space, especially if you like the cold. All right, Rich Teer, people concerned about range anxiety, set your battery display to percent and don't worry about it again. Like I said, that's great, but if you've got 200 miles to go, the percentage isn't going to help. I mean, it can help if you want to do a lot of math in your head, but...

Most people don't. There's a Tesla service center in Milford, Connecticut, pretty much on the other side of the state from Mohegan Sun. Yeah, that's right on the New York border. I don't know how they got away with that or whatever. Yeah, I wasn't aware. Maybe if they just do service. Yeah, maybe it's just service. But I know that the Mount Kisco Tesla place does a lot of business with Connecticut people. That's kind of over the border. Yeah.

Yeah, it's so silly because some of the first Tesla superchargers were in Connecticut as well on the East Coast. Connecticut is kind of on board with EV stuff, but that dealer thing is really a pain. Infinity Boy says, VW bought a piece of Xpeng. We talked about that. Is this how slow-moving legacy automakers, Honda, Toyota, will navigate their transition into EVs, sit back and buy an established startup? Who's next? NIO? I mean, I guess it could be there. NIO?

I haven't been following them on the stock markets, but I think they're expensive a bit. You have to look at these startups, I don't know if you can call them startups anymore, but these EV companies and look at their market cap and sometimes they are bigger than some of those legacy automakers. So it's not merger maybe, but not an acquisition.

All right, moving on. Your thoughts on seven auto giants unite to build a universal network? I just realized that we didn't talk about that. Yeah, we probably should talk about that. I don't know. When I pull up all the articles for the show to discuss, I go through literally all the articles that we wrote this week and I put the one that is significant. And this one, I mean, if I have seen it, I would have put it. I must have scrolled way past it. But yeah, it's...

Am I still here? You're back. Yeah, I lied for a second. It's BMW, GM, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes and Stenland, all partnering together to build a North American network of charging station. 30,000, I think was the number. Where is the number?

At least 30,000 new... Sorry? 30,000, right? Yeah. New chargers. So that's not station, that's chargers. And they're talking about both NAX and NCCS. That's not going to happen. It's going to be NACS. Yeah. Unless they're building... Probably, but I mean, in that group...

Only GM and Mercedes have officially announced. Oh, really? Yeah. BMW, Honda, Hyundai.

Kia, Kia, Hyundai, we see the same system like this. So, yeah, I mean, I would assume that that was in the works too before the wave of NAX. So maybe with the announcement this week, they just like, oh, they had it in NAX, but they are still internally discussing like, maybe you're right. And by the end of it, when this thing actually starts being deployed, it's going to be just NAX.

Anyway, it's good news. It's more charging station. I just wish it would have happened sooner because you literally have seven giant companies partnering together to build something Tesla has right now. Maybe they don't have 30,000 chargers in North America, but pretty close. They're not that far off. And they started doing it 10 years ago. So they have a 10-year lead on charging.

Also like in the past, joint ventures don't seem to work terribly well. Like everybody's got, you know, committees. And so I hope what they do is spin off a company and give them some autonomy, I guess a little bit like Electrify America by Volkswagen. I also thought it was interesting, like Volkswagen's obviously not part of it because they have Electrify America, but Ford's not part of it either. Yeah, Ford's not part of it. That was an interesting one. But yeah, more chargers, better, always. Yeah.

All right. Which OEM do you think is in talks with Tesla to license their software? Did we talk about this last time? I feel like we did. Well, specifically the software, the full self-driving. I suggested potentially Ford, but Seth wasn't sure. I kind of feel like they've gotten a head start, but we'll never know. That's my dad. Huh? That's my dad.

Oh, nice. Was not a Roro ship versus a container ship?

uh yeah i think that means he's a logistic guy so he's talking about like the the kind of the ship that is burning right now if it was uh i think it's roll on roll off ship so if you just drive up the car on it yeah that's right that's a good point that probably makes a difference if uh yeah you have to drive the car on them or if they just park inside container ship i know i know i don't know the answer to that but all the people are in the comments right now are discussing it like there's apparently a

new information coming today from the shipping company that there was actually more EVs that were previously reported. Previously, it was like 3,000 cars and only like a few dozen of them were EVs. Now, it says as many as 500 of them were EVs. Oh, wow. They were going to Egypt or something? I don't know where they were going. All right. Well, hey, Mr. Lambert. All right. He's a big fan of yours. Awesome. Sylvian says percent only works when you use the GPS with a destination.

Yeah, it's a lot of, like, miles or kilometers is the easiest thing to kind of gauge. All right, Matthew Fay, the ship actually had almost 500 EVs on it. Okay, that's what you just said. They heard somebody broadcast that the fire started near one. That is from today. All right, we got lots of...

That's such a weird thing to say, too. It's a near one, but if it's a near and not in it, then it's definitely not it. That's, that's, Nikola said that. No, they said that a car drove by, so they probably set it on fire. Right. It was a little bit worse than that. All right. Tyler Hillary says, could you please do an article shaming Tesla?

into their releasing their vehicle safety statistics. They are two quarters behind again, and I don't think they've ever released them regularly. Well, they released them regularly for two years maybe, and then they started sometimes releasing, some other times not, and then back releasing them. So I'm not sure what's happening here. I could potentially do that, Tyler. That might be a good idea because I've been pushing for Tesla to release more data for a long time on the vehicle safety statistics.

The thing is that I've trashed that data too, saying it's not good data. So maybe not a great way to approach this. But at the same time, I said also it's the best we have. So if we don't even have that at all, and the only way this is good, that data, is because you cannot take that data and compare it to other data because it's so bad compared to the rest. But what you can do is track that data over time and see if it is improving or if it's going down. And now if Tesla is not releasing it,

It is a red flag. Yes. Tesla has been known to release good news and not bad news. Sweep things under the rug. Right. I think most of them will want to use CCS chargers as they will have made those with the cars before 2025. Yeah, so we're talking about the big EV charger consortium will probably...

It's kind of like chat mode now. You put one out for somebody. I don't know. Yeah. It would be interesting to see if they decide, no, we go CCS. Because most of them are not on board with NAX just yet officially. I mean, maybe that's why they're doing it. They're trying to be...

I mean, it kind of would make sense, to be honest, on a competitive, like obviously not for the consumer, I'm not saying that, but on a competitive basis, it would make sense. Why? Because Tesla has already confirmed compatibility with the CCS for CCS vehicle to go on NACs.

For NACs to CCS, it's not as easy right now. I mean, there's adapters out there, but it's not as fluid. So if you stay CCS, you build that CCS network, then the CCS car kind of gain a little bit of an advantage of using adapters to go on the NACs, but they might be their own CCS.

Yeah, and I guess you're also like you have some negotiating power with Tesla. Yeah. And say like, well, if you guys want to charge on our network, we got to be able to charge on your network. Yeah. Yeah, there's value to that. But anyway, it's more chargers overall at least. Yep. So whatever bad that if they do go with different standards, whatever bad that is, it is being countered. But in fact, there's just more chargers. Yep. All right, Mr. Turkey Neck, what do you think about Geely's small pickup? Will it come to North America? Yeah.

Geely obviously makes their vehicles mostly in China. So if it's coming to the U.S., it's already not going to be able to get the big EV tax credit, $7,500. And then also it gets slapped with another 27% tariff. So...

That said, there are zero good small pickups EVs out here. It doesn't look bad. I've seen it. It doesn't look bad. I know they plan on exporting it outside of China. They confirmed it, but I don't think they are talking about the North American market for all the reasons that Seth just said. I wouldn't bet on it, but they are coming. I'm sure that those...

These other automakers that are being late to the electric pickup parties are going to want to enter it with something that's not available right now, like maybe like a Nissan or even a Toyota. Like Toyota has a somewhat decent market share in a pickup market in the U.S. And Nissan too, for a fact. I mean, I don't know them in bar, but I see them around. So maybe they're going to want to use that approach to kind of save face a little bit in the market.

All right. Robert Nothnagel says, question, could NACS actually support vehicle to X? I think we've established that it will do that. And then Thomas Rowe says, I think the issue is as much the software as the plug. CCS versus NACS. I have a Tesla, but when using CCS with an adapter, it's still crapshoot if it will start versus plug and go.

Yeah, there's more to go wrong. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's not the ideal solution, but that's why Tesla has convinced all those automakers to adopt it, implement it in their vehicles rather than go with the adapter part. Sorry, but the adapter part is still going to be used in the meantime.

I mean, and we're in a transition, an old period right now, obviously, which gives such a big advantage to Tesla, honestly. It's wild. You can see the automakers that have gone on board. They were like, all right, Tesla has already 60% of the market right now. So,

and we are having issues like just scrapping a little bit more market shares from that. So let's just do it now. And yes, the next few years is going to be difficult. But after that, at least we're going to be on the same playing field as Tesla. So I applaud those automakers. I think they're doing the right choice here. But in the meantime, it makes like...

I would have a tough time buying a car right now that's not NACs. I just don't think it makes a ton of sense. I'm actually not too worried about it. Obviously, the Chevy Bolt, I don't charge that thing anywhere anyway. But the Rivian, when the NACs adapter comes out, I will probably get one. But for now, it works fine. There's plenty of chargers where I need to go. Not a big concern.

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