Tesla self-driving computer failure, Cybertruck issues, Honda/Nissan merger, and more
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We are live, everyone, for a new episode of The Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host, and as usual, I'm joined by Seth Winchow. How are you doing today, Seth? I'm good. All right. So plenty to talk about this week. We got a bunch of exclusive reports that we released throughout the week that I thought were really interesting. We have also a new Tesla Samai delivery to a customer, which was also very interesting.

We have a little bit of news on the Model Y Refresh going into production. A lot of people are excited about that one. Then we have a couple non-Tesla news that's really exciting, including we're going to talk a little bit about what it would look like if a merger between Honda and Nissan goes through, which is something that's actually been talked about. It's not exactly a done deal, but it's getting a little bit more serious. And we know that these two companies are not...

Exactly. Doing very well. So maybe them together can go through these tough times. Let's see. All right. Let's start with this was a big report this week. This is something that we have been hearing about for the last few weeks to a month, basically. A lot of failure with the brand new cars.

With the hardware for computer failing and everything that has to do with the computer, active safety features, obviously autopilot, full self-driving and all that, but also camera operations, including the backup camera, navigation, even things like range estimation are used at computer. So that

I mean, there's still a range estimation, but it's not as accurate because we reported that over the last few years. This has been increasing the range estimate a lot, improving the range estimates. So in the last few days and last week, I managed to get a few sources that

gave me a lot better idea of what's happening because I was starting to get a decent amount of complaints about this. People were like, hey, I don't see anyone report on this and everything. So now I can actually report on it because I have good sources on this and I have pretty good information. So apparently Tesla introduced earlier this year,

I'm trying to put it around July, it sounds like. Sometime this summer, Tesla released a new version of its hardware 4 or AI 4 computer. Internally, some people refer to it as the AI 4.1. So a slightly new version of that self-driving computer. And apparently, it's short-circuiting. It craps out.

Not exactly sure when it happens. I have one source that said that there is an indication that it might have to do with the low voltage battery during the camera calibration process. So it does appear to happen fairly early after people take delivery. And if you've taken the delivery of a Tesla vehicle these days, after you take delivery, if it's a very low mileage vehicle, it's just brand new.

It goes through a camera calibration process before you can activate the features related to full self-driving in autopilot. And during that process, some vehicles, and it looks like a decent number, cannot pinpoint exactly the number, but you look right now on the forums, on social media, on NHTSA's website, there's a ton of complaints about this.

And it should lead to a recall because the safety aspect to it is it's required since 2018, I think, to have a backup camera in a brand new car. And so if your backup camera doesn't work, it does require a safety recall. Obviously, there's also the active safety features are not working and all that. But this one is the more clearer issue.

And what's happening is like as these computer failures are happening over the last few months, Tesla has been replacing them. So I've heard of several new buyers that got delivery of the vehicle, computer didn't work. And it's not fun, obviously, to have this car for a while without all these features because like navigation, all that, it's just basic stuff for Tesla vehicle. Yeah.

So Tesla would schedule a replacement, a computer replacement. So that's the fix right now. They are apparently working on a software temporary patch to help with the issue. So that would probably reduce the rate of issue. But there might be a need to replace a lot of computers here. So that's a problem.

And now more recently, so another source also told me that Tesla service has been told to downplay any safety concern, even though, like I said, there is clear safety concern with that. And so that to make sure that people...

keep their cars like because they some people take delivery and then you know the computer crafts out and they're like yeah i don't want that car like it just the computer doesn't work navigation doesn't work nothing works on on the car and uh this still wants to make clear like oh there's no safety concern we're going to replace the computer soon just keep the car because obviously end of the quarter happening and all that this doesn't want to be sitting on inventory so

But the problem is like the failure rate, which is in the thousands, it looks like at this point, is putting pressure on Tesla service to replace that. And there is several, I got three owners that reached out to me that are in this situation right now. And all three said that Tesla is not taking their call in right now because there is a parts supply issue. So I assume that Tesla doesn't have enough supply.

of the previous version of the hardware for computer to replace cars right now. So they have to find another solution to the problem.

So this looks like a safe institution. Since I posted my article earlier this week, hundreds of people reached out to me about this problem. So it seems to be more wide-ranging. Also seems to be happening in other markets. Don't know about Asia, but people in Europe have also reached out to me with the same issue. So the computer has made it there also. Cybertruck, I haven't seen any reports of the Cybertruck being affected by this. Only Model 3, Model Y specifically, but...

That could also be a population issue. There's a lot more of them than the SX or Cybertruck. But yes, this appeared to be a significant issue. And no one is reporting on this. It's surprising. We are the only one that are reporting on that. But I would expect if NHTSA is allowed to keep doing a job in the next few months, I would expect a recall to happen. It's a big if.

It is a big, it was just crazy, crazy thing to say, right? It is a crazy thing to say. But just a few weeks ago, we reported on the Trump transition team having recommendation for NHTSA that would include not having to report accident involving advanced driver assist system, which Tesla has been the biggest reporter of that. So it does look like Elon is using its influence through the Trump administration on NHTSA

you know, getting some slack from Tesla. So I wouldn't be surprised like if this is a problem that they try to make go away, but it looks like a significant issue. And that's the thing here. There is no service bulletin about this. I had to have people inside Tesla reach out to me because this is a big enough problem within Tesla. They're like, hey, we don't like how Tesla is handling this issue and everything. So they have to go to the press with this.

rather than just do a service bulletin, which I would have had access to and I could tell you. Or some PR also. I could ask Tesla's side of the story on this, but no. So we'll keep track on that. We're probably going to have an update on that in the next few weeks. I would assume that a recall would come out of that.

All right, then we have some Cybertruck news here that's very interesting. So first, I have another exclusive report here. Tesla is buffing out Foundation Series Laser Edge badges to sell them off as regular trucks.

So Tesla has been stuck with some Cybertruck inventory, including Foundation Series inventories, which are $20,000 more expensive. And they come with badges that says it's a special edition Foundation Series and also a bunch of included features and accessories like full self-driving, which is worth $8,000. You have the...

Power share accessories that come with that, some credit for installations, a bunch of other things, a bunch of other accessories like that. And now that Tesla is delivering the non-fledgation series for $20,000 or less, it's harder to sell. And Tesla has been stuck with them in inventory. We found a few in the article there, their inventory. But we now have sources within Tesla that told us that the...

our work orders that are being filled right now with service centers and collision centers to go remove these badges. So you have the actual one that's etched on the stainless steel. So I think he's just going to literally like buff that out. And then there's the dash also that has a foundation series in it. So that one is probably a little bit more complicated. They might have to replace some part of the dash or the whole dash. I'm not so sure.

But then Tesla wants to then sell those as regular trucks, which should be a little bit easier. And they want to do that by the end of the quarter too. It's not clear how many of those are involved. I don't think it's that many. But there's also another thing going on with the Cybertruck right now, which is Tesla is modifying over 800, I think 840 or 950 Cybertrucks.

That have been built for the U.S. market. There's, you know, U.S. market and Canadian market are very similar, very close in term of regulation and all that. But there are a few things. I think one of them is like the seatbelts. I think you guys don't need to have the buttons red on the seatbelt and we do or vice versa, something like that.

It can be as dumb as that, or you need also some of the stickers need to be in French and English, things like that. But these 800 or so Cybertrucks were configured for the US market. And now Tesla is...

for the Canadian market. So they plan to move them from inventory in the US to Canadian inventory. And that also is putting a lot of pressure on Tesla service center, collision centers, because it's like something that normally they don't do. Now they have to do 800 of them quickly so that they can be sent to Canada and try to move them in Canada by the end of the year. Of course, Canada also doesn't. So we expect like Tesla to open up orders for a non-foundation in Canada soon so they can move that.

But that's a lot of things that are adding pressure on the service centers right now. And then the last Cybertruck stuff that I want to talk about this week, which we just released today, is that there's a new issue with the battery pack. So again, another exclusive based on some sources that told us that Tesla found a new issue, a cell dent issue.

Not exactly sure what they mean by that dent in the cell. So Elon has talked about recently about an issue with the 4680 that you're trying to avoid where the cell sort of collapsed on itself. So it might be that.

But they found a cell dent in some inventory Cybertruck battery packs, so not in consumer vehicle just yet. Like we said, Tesla has found itself with a decent amount of Cybertruck inventory. There appears to be some demand issues.

And now they need to replace those battery packs. So some of the trucks are being sent back all the way to Gigafactory Texas for that because of the issues with the capacity of service right now that I just mentioned. But yeah, Cybertruck seems to be not going too smoothly right now with the vehicle program.

Oh, yeah. This issue also doesn't have a service bulletin yet. But that might have to do with the fact that it was detected in inventory vehicles rather than consumer vehicles. So maybe there doesn't need to be a service issue there. But there's another issue with the high voltage battery in the Cybertruck that was in a service bulletin that was released last week that has to do with the harness, the battery harness.

ancillary harness, we call it, that apparently doesn't connect properly in some vehicles. So Tesla issued a service bulletin on that and they're going to have to replace that harness on some cyber trucks out there. So don't be surprised if you see that happening too. And don't be surprised if you see a recall for the cell dent issue. Although I don't know if they have to issue a recall if they catch them all in inventory and not in consumer vehicles. I don't see why they would.

Yeah. All right. So that was the bad news. Now some good news to cleanse the palate when it comes to Tesla a little bit. There was a new Tesla Samai delivery to, I don't know how you pronounce that, Saya? I have no idea. Probably. It's a big less than truckload company in the US, a trucking company, LTL.

that operates almost 5,000 trucks, I think. And they took deliveries of two Cybertrucks, two Tesla Semi recently. So that's good news because the Tesla Semi program is pretty hard to follow because originally unveiled in 2017, was supposed to go in production in 2020, or even 2019, I think even, then was delayed several times. Then a production version was unveiled in December 2022.

But then it was just only produced, that was two years ago at this point, and over the last two years, it was only produced in very low volume and mainly for Tesla itself and for its main customer partner, PepsiCo. So there hasn't been really any significant deliveries to other customers that we know of. So this one that was announced this week and confirmed also by...

Dan Priestley was in charge of the program at Tesla. He confirmed that these had been in operation for more than a month now, these two trucks that Saya has. And the interesting thing here is that in a test of the trucks earlier this year, Saya executive Patrick Sugar, that's a cool name. It should be an executive at PepsiCo, not Saya. He said that with the test that they had this year, they confirmed an efficiency of 1.73 kilowatt hour per mile.

So it's really cool to see people outside Tesla confirming this. We had DHL earlier this year that also had a test with a truck and said that they had an efficiency of 1.72, so very close. And then separately, Tesla said that they are now seeing closer to 1.6 kilowatt per mile, but that's Tesla, not the customer separately. So this is...

This is interesting. If you can get, especially this comment here that talks about it, if you can get the cheap off-peak rates of electricity charges at night, you get basically a 90% reduction in fuel costs. Obviously, 4 cents per kilowatt hour is very cheap electricity, but it is possible to get that in some places, even with solar. If you can power this vehicle with solar batteries,

You can slash your energy costs or your fuel costs. You know, people say I'm a Tesla hater and all that, but I'm really excited about the Tesla Semi program. It is, since the Model 2 or the $25,000 Tesla has been dead or killed by Elon, like this is by far the vehicle program I'm most excited about. And I do think that if Tesla survives this, you know, crazy period with Elon going off to his bunkers and...

I think the test of somebody is going to be a big success. If, you know, it's a big if. You're not excited about the Roadster program? Yeah. I'm not excited by ghosts. I'm excited by fairy tales.

All right. Now, and then going back to the not so good news when you're running a Tesla, we're going on like a good news, bad news thing. The sales in Europe are just not going well. And I think it's important to look into the details here because I've heard a lot about, especially now that the stock went up 100%.

People are just claiming victory. Like, oh, yeah. You see, like, now people are seeing the fundamentals and Tesla is doing is like, eh, there's not much has changed lately when it comes to that. On the contrary, like, the data that we're getting is pretty bad. I think the stock is rising because of...

perceive expected collusion between Elon and the Trump administration helping Tesla. And that's a big hiff. And I don't understand all that. Like, I don't understand the logic behind all that stuff. I think I see very little value in the,

successful. The only value I see is Tesla's legal issues maybe being lesser under Trump administration and deregulation. Okay, I can see that. That is definitely helping Tesla. Is that a good thing though? No, I don't think it is. I think if Tesla does something that is outside the law, it should be prosecuted for it like any other company. But anyway,

The actual data is not good. And from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, so all the data I'm going to mention going forward is from them. And they have all their data now from all the way to November for the year. And we can see now that Tesla is down 13.7% this year. It was down 28% in November. So very bad November for them.

And what I see a lot of people that are going against this, that say that this is not a big deal, is that they say, oh, the entire EV market in Europe. By the way, when I say Europe here, it's not the European Union. I'm talking about Europe, Scandinavian countries, and the UK too. Is that, oh, the entire EV market is down. It's not down. It's Tesla that is down. If you look at the actual data...

So Tesla delivered 10,000 fewer vehicles last month than it did in 2023, November. Year-to-date, they delivered 282,000 vehicles compared to 327,000 vehicles during the same period last year. So that's down almost 14%. And despite slashing prices,

especially on the Model Y, and also having ramped up completely production in Berlin. Like, 2023 was a harder year for production in Berlin. So now I haven't heard about that much problem in 2024, but still. So you look at that, Tesla is down 13%. The BEV sales in Europe, in the same European countries, are down 1.4%.

So big difference here. And then if you remove Tesla and you just look at the non-Tesla BEV, it's up 1.3%. So it's really, Europe right now, the EV market in Europe has a Tesla problem, not a BEV sell problem. Like Tesla sell is way down. Now, to be fair, it's two markets that are very difficult right now. It's France and Germany that our BEV sells are down 24% and 21%, 22% basically, respectively. Yeah.

Overall, the market share is still doing a lot better than the US. You have at 15% for BEV only. You had PHEV with that. You have up to 22% and then hybrids on top of it. You're at the vast majority of the market now. So it's slowing down, but still growing and growing.

It's still way ahead of the U.S. market. I think those are the things to keep in mind. And why I think this is worrying for Tesla is like what we saw in France and in Germany, you know, economy is not doing perfectly too, but you can say that to the U.S.,

The thing is they removed some incentives that are slowing down and Tesla had to compensate with the lower prices, but that didn't compensate enough because in Europe, electric vehicles have high competition beyond Tesla too. Now in the US, Tesla always had a bigger market share.

And as of the last few years, has been enjoying the new tax credit that has helped the EV market a lot. Now, this is going away supposedly in the US next year, sometimes next year. Trump has been very clear about that. Elon has been okay with it. So I think we might see something similar happening in the US next year. I could see Tesla's current lineup go down in deliveries by 15%, 20%.

Something like that. I think it's very likely, just like we're seeing here. I think it's going to be worse, obviously. Then obviously there's the new vehicles that are coming out that should help. But I don't know how much they will help and how much they will cannibalize the other vehicles. Because I think they're going to be closer to Model 3 and Model Y than Model 3 and Model Y or closer to Model S and X. What do you think about that, Sarah? It's hard to say. We don't have data until we have data, right? Yeah. Yeah.

I might be selling the chicken before counting them or whatever the expression is, but they are going to be built on the same platform, which wasn't the case for SM3 and X and Y. So I do believe they're going to be much closer both in spec features and in price also. That's my worry here. I don't know how much it can save Tesla next year, especially in the US and Europe. And the competition in China is pretty crazy too.

It also feels like the Model Y, they've been leaning too heavily on that. And there's Model Ys everywhere. And like how many Model Ys can you until people are just sick of them, you know? Well, of course, there's a refresh coming. But at the same time, people that are relying on that, I'm like, yeah, Model 3 had a refresh, you know, less than two years ago. And it's not doing great. Like it's...

the Model Y is still more popular than the Model 3 after the refresh. I know it's a different segment and everything and it's a more popular segment, but it's like it didn't really, you know, help the Model 3 that much. And I don't know how much a new Model Y program is going to help it. I don't know. All right. Well, I mean, I have seen a lot of Cybertrucks around. In New York? Vermont. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I say a lot. I've seen like three of them, but they're very noticeable. Yeah, they're hard to miss. All right. Speaking of the Malawi refresh, there was some reports coming out of China this week that the Juniper Malawi refresh is coming soon.

Early January, the production shift quite fast to the new version. All the same rumors that we talked about before. Well, it's not really rumors anymore because there were some leaks, but the new headlights, the new front bumper, closer to Model 3, the new version of Model 3, the light bar in the back that links the taillights, the new different badge, the ambient lighting inside, a little bit cleaner interior.

All that stuff. No stock on the steering wheel. Obviously, that's a pro or a con depending on what you think. All right. Last piece of Tesla news. I'm not holding my breath here. I saw this job posting and I decided to make an article about it just to steer the pot a little bit. Maybe someone thinks it's a good idea at Tesla and goes for it with it. But there was a new job listing posted at Tesla for Tesla.

A vehicle communication manager. And there is some line in the description that points to, you know, some level of at least of PR. You know, if you haven't been following Tesla, they don't have a PR department since 2020. They dissolved it. Elon said that PR department only amounts to manipulating public opinion.

And he said he didn't need it at the time. We said, all right, well, what happens if we have a question for you, if the media have a question for Tesla? And he literally told us, send it to me instead. Send it to me through X or Twitter at the time. And funny enough, he blocked both my personal account and the electric account we were committing to him.

with it shortly after that. So, yeah. Yeah. It's just sending mixed signal here. All right. So this vehicle communication manager says you will be responsible, I'm quoting this layer, for managing all external data communication relating to vehicle programs and coordinating efforts with external media. Yeah.

This includes closely collaborating with technical staff on vehicle metrics, managing external vehicle data to achieve consistency and accuracy, improving website content, and enabling external media access to access products. So they're talking here about... So we have to be careful here because even though Tesla did dismantle the PR department...

For a while, at least, there were people still involved in getting cars to a very select few media that Tesla likes, namely Motor Trend.

Jay Leno and Marques Brownlee, even though Marques fell from the graces lately with Tesla because he's been a little bit critical of FSD. He's not that critical. You don't have to say much to upset the Tesla fan base. He was being a straight shooter. Yeah. Which nobody likes. Not in the Tesla community, though. Or at least the Tesla shareholder community. Yeah.

So that was run by actually a former Tesla PR team member that has since left earlier this year during the layoff. He wasn't part of the layoff. I think he left on his own accord following the layoffs. That's what he said. Anyway, so there was some of that that was outside of an actual like real PR department that you can actually send an email to and say, hey, what's up with that? Can you give me your side of the story?

I don't know that this is going to come back from this. I'm not saying it will. I have my doubt, especially specifically for a vehicle communication manager. So it's basically a product thing. You know, Tesla had product people in the PR department and they had like company business people that you can reach out to that were very useful. And I just, I don't like Elon's thing that PR is just about manipulating public opinion.

If you can direct them to do that, then they will for sure. So I think that shows more where Elon's mind is at when it comes to that stuff than what a PR department does.

Because I think we had our issues with the SSPR department over the years. Seth and I can tell you stories about that. But for the most part, they were trying to make sure that accurate information about Tesla was out there in the public. That was what they were striving for. And we had...

And articles that we weren't exactly sure about, we had sources and things like that. And we could reach out to them and they were like, yeah, that's not true. And then they show us exactly why it's not true. And I'm like, okay, well, we'll drop that. And I know that they did that with hundreds, if not thousands of other reports. So they were, I think it's fair to say that the information about Tesla in the media was more accurate when Tesla had a PR department since they haven't.

Obviously, I'm not holding my breath here with this thing coming back because Ilana has been pretty clear about the media being worthless and he thinks it's dead and all that. And he thinks like citizen journalism now is the future, which I'm all for citizen journalism, but I think there's a lot of issues there and I don't think the community note is enough to avoid those issues.

So what this could be, could also just be someone to manage some kind of press fleet to get some people behind the cars, which would be good too, I think. Like auto reporters have a tough time getting into Tesla vehicles. They have to rent them themselves. They have to buy one and sell it after or things like that. So it's not an ideal situation. It is very useful to have access to a press fleet. And I hope that Tesla gets that.

All right, we're going to move on from Tesla news. We have a few news items to discuss and then we're going to jump into the comment section. So if you guys have any questions for us, you can put them in the comment section right now. We're going to get to them in about 15, 20 minutes or so. So stay tuned for that. Also, if you do enjoy the podcast, you can give us a like, hit the like button. It takes a second to do. It's free and it helps the show more than you think. Also, when you do leave a comment on the videos too, on the live streaming, it helps with the algorithm and all that.

All right, Rivian. This was an interesting report this week. So Rivian apparently made a secret, quote unquote, deal with UAW, with the big autoworker union in North America. And the deal is apparently to create a path for UAW to enter its plant in normal Illinois, which it has tried to do in the past.

unsuccessfully, much like Tesla in Fremont and now other plants in the US too. But the deal apparently now sets a kind of track for UAW to represent workers at Rivian, but only once Rivian becomes profitable, which I think is an interesting compromise.

Yeah, that is interesting. And like how profitable for how long? Like I get the idea and I think it's good on both sides. Yeah, because if UAW comes in right now, it probably would be the bad thing, right? Right. Because they would like use their same deal that they have with other automakers that are profitable, right?

Because normally that's what they do. They're like, hey, these guys get that. You should get that. And like, let's, you know, all our workers get the same thing, right? Is that how it works? I don't understand why it's just not profit sharing. Like the UAW fights for higher wages, which is good, I guess, if you're obviously if you're a worker, but like that could also push the company into losing money. But if you're doing profit sharing, then the company profits, the workers get some of that. Stockholders get some of that.

bonuses to executives, whatever. So everybody's kind of incentivized to profitable. I don't know why that's not the case. It should be a standard. It should be a standard. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know why either. It makes a ton of sense. And UAW, obviously, it's more than just the remuneration, the revenue, the employee salaries and all that. It's also...

safety regulations that they try to enforce. It's a work-life balance and all that. Honestly, Tesla always talk about when they go against the UAW, they always talk about stock option. They always talk about money and all that. But

I think Tesla's biggest problem with it is they like to work their workers. They like to work them hard. I think that's the biggest fear that they have. They think that if you enter union rules, it's not going to work as well. All right, we have the Cadillac Vistek. Don't like the name, but I'm not mad at the vehicle. This new electric SUV that's entering the Cadillac EV lineup.

We have a much better idea of the pricing situation here. Let me, I think I saw that. We posted a little, yeah, here. So with all the different trims here, which I'm not too familiar with the trims, but it starts with the luxury trim. It starts with luxury. You know you have a luxury vehicle when the base trim is called luxury.

$79,000 is the price, the starting price. Then you have the sport version that goes at $79,200, basically closer to 80. But then there's a big jump after that. The premium is $93,000. So premium is better than luxury set. Good to know.

And then you have the Platinum that is $98,000. I didn't look into too much what are the difference between these two. I don't think the range or anything like that. I think it's the same. Yeah, it's standard all-wheel drive, 102 kilowatt-hour battery pack, 200 miles of range. So it probably has to do more with the packages. So the luxury and premium tech,

Includes 33-inch infotainment, driver display clusters, 8-inch HVAC control screen. So if you gave somebody those four words, the names of the luxury, whatever, and you gave them the price points, how many people would have luxury being $78, sport being $79, premium being $93, and platinum being $90?

I almost feel like none of those are right. Premium makes sense. Premium has to be a premium over something else. I feel like it cannot be the first. Okay. But sports, yeah. I would like to know the difference between the sports and the luxury because it has to be just maybe a set of wheels or something because it's not a big difference.

Yeah, so that was based on the report from Car and Driver. So I think they just found those pricing. It's not all the official like trims have been released. So we might have a better report on that in the near future.

All right, this was interesting news that came out this week. So there is a serious talk apparently based on Nikkei, the big publication in Japan that Honda and Nissan, two giant Japanese automakers, are seriously considering now a merger, some kind of merger together. Yeah.

So what's Mitsubishi has to do? I know that they are with Nissan. But Nissan also has that group that they were in with... I think they're out of it now, but Nissan... Has a 24% stake in it. Okay. And apparently they are... It would be involved in that merger. Okay. Because wasn't there that Carlos Gozan thing? Wasn't that like Nissan...

It was mainly Renault? Renault, yeah. And Mitsubishi. Yeah. Or something. But yeah, this might be the way because I know they've both been struggling with their EV. They are both seen as lagger even though Nissan had to leave. But since then, it's the area and that's it other than the Chinese and Japanese markets. Yeah.

They've got like a van, the NB2000. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And you're up to that. That made it to Europe. So it's very limited. And on the same thing, you have the Prologue. Now that's doing pretty good in the US, but that's a GM vehicle. Yeah. So it's such a weird situation that they have. They both have interesting stuff, but it's just no clear direction when it comes to etching vehicles. Even though I did...

see a lot of cool stuff from Nissan when I went in Japan. I don't know if I can even talk about that though. It's been so weird. Nissan brought me to Japan, which was an awesome trip. Saw some cool things, but I wasn't allowed to talk about most of the things that I saw. So I don't want to get into the details, but if they survive, I can tell you that if they survive, there's some cool stuff coming in the electric vehicle stuff. I mean,

Yeah, it kind of feels like when Sears and Kmart merged. Jesus. You have a high hopes at it? No. I mean, you know, like it's not a good thing. They're both like not doing well. It's not a good sign that things are going well. And Joe in the comments brings up a good point. The Prologue is the best-selling GM-built EV. And the reason it's so popular is it's like everybody loves Prologue.

the, what is it called? The GM built EV, but it has CarPlay and Android Auto because it's a Honda. They're basically getting like a Blazer or a Equinox. Equinox. Altium. But with Apple CarPlay. Yeah. Yeah. GM has been weird with that. I don't know. I don't know what they're thinking. Well, if they're selling them through Honda, why not?

All right. So this is interesting. Like NIO is now confirming that they are coming with their new Envo. So NIO is the Chinese EV company that has a bunch of other brands. Envo and the Firefly, I think one that is coming out soon too. But Envo is their new cheaper brand, a little bit less luxury. That they are confirmed is coming to Europe.

Europe in early 2025. And more specifically too, I think they confirmed the UK is going to be the first market, if I'm not mistaken. It looks a little bit like what a redesigned Model Y would look like. You're not wrong on that. They do frame it as a Model Y competitor, that's for sure. They've talked about Norway, Germany, and the Netherlands. I don't know if that's their existing lineup that's there. Yeah.

Yeah, the UK is going to be the first market for the Envo. Okay. Yeah, that's what I thought. And yeah, if you look at the pricing, so this is the Chinese pricing of the Envo, but the base one starts at $21,000. And we're talking about this here. This is the, I think this is the L60. So this is a good looking car here.

20 000 and that's with a 60 kilowatt hour battery pack i think too wow yeah um yeah 241 miles of range without the cltc though that's not going to be the wltp in the uk but you know it's still going to be way over 250 probably closer to 300 uh so that's really good and then you have an 85 kilowatt hour batch pack version that costs 33 000 in china in china

And that will get probably close to 400 miles of range. Yeah, it's way cheaper than, you know, you can compare the range actually. So compared to all-wheel drive long range, get 427 miles of range in China with the CLTC. And this gets over 20, almost 30 more miles of range for $7,000 less.

So they're going to be able to eat some of those tariffs. But I just see those tariffs. But since the UK is not part of the EU anymore, do they have the same tariffs on China? I don't think so. Yeah. Yeah. That's something to work looking into. Because I would assume that that's probably why they are launching in the UK first. All right. Let's jump into the comments section. All right.

All right. I'm trying to get the Devo E-Pod MSF project off the ground. Pun intended. Look it up. All right. We'll have to take a look. Carl in San Diego. Replacing those computer modules will chew out a lot of their margin on already discounted low demand cars. Any estimates about cost per car, including service time?

No, no, no, no. I mean, the service time is not long, though. That's for sure. Computer swap is very quick. Now, I don't know, like, is it the total loss, the computer that they're replacing? Or are they able to refurbish them? Like, I don't know. All of that is too early to tell. Yeah.

Also, it's not like all vehicles are failing, but the root cause hasn't been identified yet. So maybe they will need to replace them all. I don't know. But it looks like a high percentage of them need to be, I mean, a significant percentage of them needs to be replaced since the one that they were built since July. Although I want to say there's a few people, two people that reached out to me that they took delivery before July and say that they have the same problem.

It's all hardware for though. Yes, yes, yes. All hardware for. All right. All right. Joe says the NHTSA thing is wild. Literally today, my accountant said, who knows if there will even be an IRS to enforce tax code next year. Yeah. The government's going to be a little bit strange for a while, I think. Yeah. I wonder if our government's going to be like, hit me on Twitter. You know, like that's going to be how the IRS works, you know, like.

I mean, the president is literally going out there saying that Canada should be the 51st state of the union. It's like, dude, what are you talking about? I think he secretly works for the Quebec independence movement. Like that would, that would help it. If it keeps going like that, that will help the Quebec independence movement. So Jalopnik picked up the. Oh yeah. Did he credit me? I'm sure it was a big fat GC link. Nice. What's the deal with the cells in the chain?

Chains and battery packs. We were talking about the dent. Yeah, I mean, I know that dents can sometimes refer to some kind of a process that happens with the lithium in the electrolyte that creates some issues that affect the performance of the battery and it kills the battery, the cell faster. Or it can actually mean a dent effect.

in the cell that makes it problematic, like a physical dent. And like I said, Elon did reference an issue that they were trying to avoid with the 4680 format is the cell collapsing on itself. So it can be any of these issues. All right. Every big tech company is essentially a monopoly in their business segment. Do you think Tesla should and will be a monopoly in EVs? No and no. Yeah.

But I think that's what Elon envisions in North America for Tesla. Yeah. And also, I think a lot of the things that he said have the full self-driving. He seems to think that only Tesla will reach full self-driving. With Waymo out there doing it already, it's obviously with geolocate barriers and lots of hardware issues.

Um, but the way, the way Elon and Tesla talk about full self-driving, it's like, we're the only ones who are going to get there and it's going to be worth 200,000, even if everybody else has it just doesn't, doesn't quite make sense. All right. How are the new packs and cyber trucks being replaced? So early the demand has dropped off the cliff and these bad news don't help.

Yeah, I mean, we've seen some similar things. Like Ryan from the kilowatts, like says, like his Cybertruck was in service like a bunch of times and now Tesla even bought it back. And for Tesla to buy back a car, you know, Seth and I were old school enough with the Tesla world to remember Elon saying, you're not satisfied within 30 days, we'll buy it back. No problem. Like no issues. Like that was the early Model S days and all that. And Tesla was real about that. Like they really did that back in the day.

Not anymore. Now it's like you took delivery, you sign here, you're stuck with it. So if Tesla is doing some buyback, and they are apparently, I've seen three people in the last few weeks that did the buybacks, is that there are serious issues with the truck. All right. USA is shuffling off our most dangerous unwanted Tesla cyber truck to Canada as a Canadian saying goes. Sorry. Sorry.

Yeah. Honestly, when I saw that, I was surprised. I was like, how are they selling it? To be fair, right now, even though it's super expensive in Canada, Cybertruck, it's a good deal because they have not updated the pricing since the 15% increase in the degradation in the Canadian dollars versus the US. So there is some deal to be had there, but it was already expensive. So I don't know about that.

You think there's a chance Tesla won't survive? LOL, that tells us all we need to know. I don't think we said that Tesla is not going to survive. I didn't say they're not going to survive. I said they are having some tough time right now. We're seeing the early days of some tough time coming. And I do believe that Tesla is facing significant legal risk.

With everything they've said around self-driving, saying that all cars since 2016 are going to be capable of doing that, I think that was not true. And I think that Tesla is going to face a reckoning for that at some point. I think they might buy themselves a few years, thanks to Elon investing $250 million in the Trump presidency. But yeah, I think there's a few tough years coming.

for Tesla. And I think they will survive no matter what, but in what form, it might not be this giant, almost monopoly in the EV world in North America. All right, let's go on. This is just a pleasure for Musk as President Elon Musk, as he signed up for that being CEO of three or four companies. It is a weird scene. Yeah.

Joseph Burdick says, do you see any innovation on the horizon for residential solar? Panels are 20 cents per watt, but installed systems are two to $5 per watt with high labor, rapid shutdown, et cetera. Seems right for a solution 50% can't afford. You know, I've actually thought about this a lot because I feel like those numbers are really like indicative of, you know, an opportunity. And there's some things out there like rollout solar and plug-in solar where you just have

You buy a solar panel and you plug it into your outlet and it sends electricity into your outlet, which is like a huge no-no as far as electricians are concerned, but it works. And you can kind of sell it as like a off-grid solution and get away with it. But, you know, you do need to have an electrician kind of connect everything up. Those people are not cheap. There's not really a way to do it without having some expensive installers involved.

You don't want your roof to have leaks. You don't want the thing to blow off during a storm. So those are problems to be solved. But I agree. There's opportunity there. I think there's opportunities, maybe like some prefabricated –

You know, panels already put together that you just have, they're already on the mount or something and you have a custom truck with, you know, a crane that can rapidly like put them on top and you just have to. But all of these have trade-offs though. It's like you said, like you need to make sure you don't have leaks. You need to make sure that it's safe at the electrical level. So these things like you cannot go over, you cannot cheap out on. Yeah.

But I think there might also be some opportunities at the legislative level and building codes and

And things like that, that do make things more complicated at the utility level too, in terms of getting utility approval to turn on the system. That also slow things down a lot. Yeah, I think there's room for improvement there. But, you know, like you said, like Joe just said, the cost of the hardware is very cheap. So...

If you can install it yourself or find someone to install it that is competent, that is not too expensive, it is still a very good solution to go solar for your home. It still makes a ton of sense. All right. Carl in San Diego says, Enron was at the top of the world until we finally realized that they were lying about their accounting and it collapsed very quickly. Tesla is a house of cards with looming lawsuits and much toxicity.

I don't know if that's the case. Yeah, I mean, in the last year or two, I've made friends with some Tesla Q people and I'm not one of them. Like I said, I don't think Tesla is going bankrupt anytime soon. And they've talked to me a lot about what they say, like they think that Tesla is. Some of these Tesla Q people literally think that Tesla is cooking the numbers. I have not seen significant evidence of that.

There are things that have been weird, like the decrease in costs last quarter after Tesla warned of a potential increase a quarter before that is quite surprising, especially after like this, like there's things that are weird, but there's no evidence whatsoever. So I'm an evidence-based guy. Like I can tell you Tesla has diamond issues. Like that's, there's,

clear evidence of that, this has them in issues. There's clear evidence that Tesla is not the leader in self-driving. They're the leader in vision-based ADS system. I can give them that. But there's not that much value in that in term of what Elon is claiming is going to be the biggest value creation of all time and appreciating assets and all that. Those, I think, were lies.

Simple as that. So I think if you want to compare Tesla to Enron, you're better off instead of going with cooking the books, which there might be some of that. I just haven't seen the evidence. If you have the evidence, show it to me. But it's more about lying to sell the products with the self-driving stuff. I think that we have clear evidence of that.

Welcome to America, Fred51. That would make your winter getaways a little easier. Yeah, that's true. I'll just have to sing the Pledge of Allegiance every morning and all that. Yeah, we do that. We all do that, right? All right. As I'm 21 miles away from picking up a new Model 3, I still have my plaid, but we'll see three and a half hours from home.

All right. Good luck with that. Yeah. I'm thinking about the new Model 3. Just probably get the autopilot working. But the autopilot is working pretty well. All right. No, I think that...

Comment section kind of went off the edge of here. We have some X commenters. Should automakers offer to install home charging to help drive up more sales or is the poor grid of local areas might not appeal to this being done? Well, it's not about the grid. Most charging is done at night when the grid is underutilized.

But some automakers have offered through third-party companies to install chargers. Ford's currently got something. GM had something. Dealers often have things too. The dealers of automakers, yeah.

They often have like, you know, electrician that they know about that is good, that they can recommend. So there's a lot of things in place. There's a lot of sort of incentives at the States. And I don't know about the federal level in the US, but in Canada, I think there is some too. So it's not that difficult to get home charger installed these days.

Depending on your situation, of course, if your electric box is very far from your garage or your... Yeah. I mean, some people do it themselves. It's really not rocket science. Yeah.

Every company cooks the numbers, but it's mostly for tax purposes. I don't think that really has anything to do with it. Anton says FSD 13.2.1 looks pretty incredible from what I've seen so far and to think it will only get better from here. When do you think it will become a selling point for normal people choosing a vehicle? FSD 13.2.1, is that what I have? No. Did you get that? No, I don't think I have that one. Okay.

Yeah, it's, you know, I've seen some impressive stuff. The data that's coming in right now is not great still. Actually, it's worse than I thought it was going to be. So...

But I think it's already a selling point to some people. I think some people are really impressed by it and they're like, yeah, I want that for $100 a month or $8,000, a little bit harder. I wouldn't really like to know the take rate on it at this point. But I do think for some people, it is a selling point. And it's different than it was before too, like...

Buying FSD right now is a lot different than Tesla selling FSD for the last eight years at this point and telling people that it's going to be ready by next year. Now it's like a running gag at this point. So it's a different purchase than it used to be. And sure, it's going to get better, but Anton, it's not just need to get better, it needs to...

deliver on its promise to be unsupervised. And that's where things get a lot more sketchy. A lot of very serious people in this industry, in the self-driving world, don't believe that Tesla can get to unsupervised with any of the current hardware delivered. And I think they do have some good points. I'm not saying that they are right necessarily, but I know for sure that hardware 3 vehicles are not going to get unsupervised self-driving. They have serious doubt about hardware 4.

So, yeah, it's not clear-cut. And it's getting better and it's improving for sure, though. All right. California has required solar for all new houses for years. That is a change that other states and countries should make. Is that true? I thought California just required the ability or something to put solar on. Yeah, I don't think that's true exactly. Maybe new construction. It would make sense, but the thing is...

you can have a new construction that doesn't make sense to have solar. You have trees around that blocks the sun. Not everything works with solar. And not all houses need to have solar on them. There's community solar, there's utility scale solar. You don't need to have solar. If you can and it makes sense financially, you should. But I think it would be crazy to mandate solar on every house.

Cyber says, just a comment. I was recently pretty surprised to see zero EVs and electric scooters when visiting Mexico. A lot of smaller fuel efficient cars and scooters. Yeah, Mexico is a little bit behind. I feel like a lot of Latin America is behind.

focused on fuel efficiency rather than EVs. Well, it's an infrastructure issue. If you've been some places in Mexico, they have already created issues. So having electric vehicles on top of it, not ideal. But there are some. I know that the last time I was in Cancun,

I, the arts at the Cancun airport, I had a bunch of Teslas there. Uh, I know that Tesla was planning supercharger in the corridor between Cancun and Tulum. I don't know if it has been done yet, but I know they were planning to, um,

Yeah, I mean, it's not – there are some. There's been plenty of Cybertrucks there. There's a Cybertruck crash, like a crazy Cybertruck crash every week there. It's crazy. I don't know what's happening with the Cybertruck in Mexico, but they keep crashing. I don't know what's that about because there cannot be that many. Yet, there's a new accident every week. All right. Comments are kind of going downhill here. Yeah.

Somebody asks, says, is radar back on all the new Teslas now or only on X and S? The Wall Street Journal investigation into autopilot crashes, which I think you probably read, confirmed my concerns about camera only FSD. And they say, is the radar back on all new Tesla now?

I don't think there's radar on any Teslas. There was a lot of rumors that it was coming back now on the SNX. I don't remember what happened with that, though. I need to go back to it. That was like a year or two ago. But Elon has been pretty – well, Elon has been clear of vision only, but he did tell us two years ago

in a DM that it does believe that radar adds to the equation, but it needs to be a high definition radar. That's right. I remember that. And we do know that Tesla has been working with a specific RB, I think, at one point. But I don't know if it actually came to production vehicles. I know that they were working on it. They had test vehicles with radar in 2021, 2022, things like that. But I don't know if it actually came to production.

All right, well, we did a full hour with you guys. It was awesome. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please give us a like, a thumbs up, a subscribe, all that stuff. It helps the show more than you think. It takes a second to do and it's free. Everything is free. And I hope you guys have a great weekend. I hope you have a great holiday. And we'll see you next week for the last show of 2024. I hope you join us. Have a good one. Bye-bye.