Trump victory's impact on EV market, TSLA surges, new Ioniq 5, and more
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We are live for a new episode of The Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host, and as usual, I'm joined by Seth Wintraub. How are you doing today, Seth? I'm good.

All right. Thank you to our sponsor for this week's episode, Allset Auto, North America's leader in paint protection and restyling, offering colored wraps, paint protection, window tint, ceramic coatings, and more exclusively for electric vehicles. We're going to have a little bit more to say about them around the show, but you also have a link in the show notes to get all the location where they do this paint protection and colored wraps. All right.

So, obviously, the thing that dominated the news this week is a little thing happened back south of the border for me in your little space of the world set. You guys did it again. You looked at the orange man as your great leader. It's an impressive bit for us. We're kind of heading on our way to idiocracy quite quickly, it feels like. Yeah, I mean, Mike Judge, we were watching some of the clips from the movie.

on the election night i'm like this is not a movie like this is this is not a science it's a documentary it's a documentary it's a prophecy it's it's really happening i mean all right we're not gonna get too political in the weed of it and how it happened like we can everyone has their theories on that a lot of it has to do with misogyny and everything but anyway

we're going to focus on the impact on the market that we cover which is the electric vehicle market and the renewable energy and uh one big winner that we didn't know like so tesla is in many ways the ev market in the us and this the stock skyrocketed from um the election added over 220 billion dollar to its valuation since the election that's a full toyota added to their value

In fact, if you look at this right now, Tesla, which has been the most valuable automaker for the last four or five years now, is now worth more than the next 10 biggest automaker combined.

Of course, Tesla is not really an automaker. It's an AI company, so that doesn't really matter. No, but seriously, the, this, this core business is still moving metal and rubber. They sell cars. That's still their business. And, uh,

And, you know, like the so we're trying to understand why do Tesla shareholders or Tesla investors or investors in general believe the market believes that Trump's election, Trump being the White House in the next four years, actually helps Tesla as a business. So there's a bunch of theories there.

There's the more conspiratorial theory that there's going to be some collusion between Elon and Trump specifically to help Tesla. Until we have actual proof of that happening, I understand that's a real concern. He gave $130 million to the guy and whatnot. So I understand, but we operate on proof here. So let's get that. So let's more focus on the policies here.

Which even then it's a little bit harder because what Trump says he's going to do and what Trump does are often, more often than not, different things. So we're not saying that this is going to happen, but like...

This is what he says is going to happen and whether he's going to do it or he can do it too because, you know, there's limitation. Is the House settled by now? Do we know if... I don't think it's official yet. Yeah, it was very tight. So it also depends on the Republicans securing the House. They do have the Senate on lock. So they have the White House, the Senate. They just need the House to get things moving. But we'll see. Yeah, Senate's 52 to 45 right now. Okay. Yeah.

And the House? I'm looking. So in terms of the actual policies that he has about electric vehicles, Trump was quite clear that he wants to remove all incentives. He doesn't think that EVs should have incentives, which is actually something that electric we have discussed. We're kind of aligned with that to a certain degree. If you also remove all incentive for...

fossil fuels, and you also account for the impact of those fossil fuels on the environment and their actual financial costs, which they have, which is proven factual. They have burning fossil fuel as a direct cost on all of us.

And that's what Elon used to call an unpriced externalities. And he felt like a carbon tax would be needed to be priced on that. He sort of, when he went Republican last year, he sort of floated the idea a little bit, but it,

didn't go well because all taxation is theft according to his new fan base. So it looks like he dropped it. So I don't think we're going to have a carbon tax. I don't think we're going to have even a removal of the fossil fuel subsidies, which are way bigger than the glaring tech subsidies. But anyway,

So in practice right now, what we're going to see likely is a removal of the tax credit. He will need, again, Congress approval for that. So he might be able to do some things on his own with executive orders that could restrain

access to the tax we did, but you cannot remove it completely without Congress. So there will need to be a repeal of the IRA, which he says he plans to do. You know, he appears to have some kind of democratic support of that based on winning the election. So it might happen. So what happens if it does happen? Iran said that he supported that,

even though it's going to increase the price of its own vehicle, of Tesla's vehicle, but it's going to increase the price of all electric vehicles. And Tesla is in a better cost situation to take that than the rest of the market. So short term, it's going to hurt. But mid to long term, it might result in competitor falling out. And then Tesla is the only one standing. And then it's...

It's basically winning the lotto. So there is that. Then on the other side, there's the tariffs. So this big economical plan, this big financial plan is imposing tariffs on goods coming from basically everywhere else other than the U.S.,

And it's not clear exactly how you think that's going to play out, but most economists agree that this will greatly affect the price of everything in the US, including cars, including electric cars, because the auto industry is globalized a lot and they buy parts from other countries and these parts are going to be more expensive, resulting in the vehicles being more expensive.

Now again, from the Tesla shoulder perspective and why the price went up a ton is that the way they see it is that Tesla is better suited to take that increase in cost because they are more vertically integrated. They do still buy parts from other places, but they think that this will hurt Tesla less than it will hurt Soda Automaker, and therefore they will fall. Tesla will stand and will be the last one to survive.

And look, as I'm stating that, it might sound like I'm negative on it, and I am. It's just I'm not saying that they're not right. They have good points on this because, you know, Tesla has already proved it, you know, in 2020, 2021, 2022, during the pandemic, the supply chain crisis that happened. Tesla fared way better than other automakers. So they have good points on it.

My issue with it and our issue, the electric issue in general, is that this will result in a massive slowdown of EV sales in the U.S. They will crash. If you remove the tax credit, you make electric cars more expensive or you force automakers to adjust the price down. They won't be able to cover the difference. It will be more expensive at the end. You make the tariffs lower.

EVs are going to be more expensive too. And every time the price of EVs goes up, the adoption goes down because even though they might still be competitive with the cost of operation thanks to gas savings, the people have issues with the sticker price. The sticker price being higher, the cost of purchase being higher, they cannot do it. So it is problematic. So I think even though the stock went up and everyone is, all the Tesla fans are trashing me for having sold, but I didn't sell...

Because I didn't think it could go up. I sold because I think Tesla is not becoming aligned with the mission. And this is my proof here. This might be good for Tesla, but it's not good for electrification. It's not good for EV adoption. It's not good for the original mission to accelerate the entire industry to going electric. It does look like Tesla, like Elon wants Tesla to be like the sole company standing after all this, which...

should be worrying to people. Like it's not, not a good plan in my, in my view. Are we in the same place here instead? Yeah. I mean, clearly, uh, Elon kind of put his full weight and tons of money behind Trump and he didn't do that altruistically. I'm sure he expects something in return. Um, what that looks like is uncertain, but you know, could be big government contracts could be, I mean, obviously SpaceX is a,

is a concern, but you know, there's a lot of different things that ways that Trump, and you know, I don't think it's controversial to say that Trump is somebody who would pay you back for backing him. Like he, he certainly, uh, is known for that. So it'll be interesting to see exactly what that looks like. Is it, you know, is it making it harder for other EV companies to sell? Is it, um, you know, is it giving Tesla specific, um,

I mean, Biden was trying to give tax credits for union companies, which is most car companies besides Tesla. What if they did the opposite? Like only tax credits to non-unions? That would be wild.

But if there's odds on polymarkets on this, I don't think it would be high, but it's not impossible. Yeah, no, I've been saying for the last few months this love story between Elon and Trump, it's going to end badly. I don't think it's...

I give it about a year. By the end of 2025, I think they split back up and it's back to Elon, Trump calling Elon a bullshit artist and Elon calling Trump too old and needs to go into the sunset. I think this is likely going to happen.

But the other thing I should mention maybe that we haven't talked about a lot because that's on the EV side, but a lot of him calls this the AI company and he thinks that it's worth nothing without self-driving.

I don't think Trump is going to help Tesla solve self-driving, but they did touch the idea that Musk said that he hinted that he could work with Trump to build a federal framework to approve self-driving system at the federal level instead of going state by state, which would help Tesla because Tesla's approach is...

any road anywhere rather than geofence system like Waymo and all that. So it would help a lot if they can go like, you know, say states to states and everything. I actually think that's the right thing to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm actually on board on that. But, you know, I just...

That wouldn't justify for me like a $200 billion bump in valuation because that doesn't actually help Tesla solve self-driving and they need to do that before that would happen. So, yeah, I don't think that's that big of a deal. But, yeah, it would be helpful for Tesla. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, congrats to Tesla shareholders. You guys made some money this week if you sold. If you didn't sell, you never know.

You never know if you're banking on Donald Trump to do what he says he's going to do. It's not a bet that I would think. All right, Cybertruck. Cybertruck is not going too well. Earlier this week, we reported that Tesla is kind of hitting its backlog for the Cybertruck in the U.S. Now anyone can...

Anyone without a reservation can place an order right now and get it within 10 days. You can get a Cybertruck. So the backlog is basically gone. Tesla started deliveries in Canada this week, so that helps a little bit. But it starts at $138,000 in Canada without any incentives. So...

tough sell in my opinion but uh so yeah there will be would be peanuts in terms of volume but now what this did today is gonna help a little bit more it's they started leases so early leases for the cyber truck buyers in the u.s and there's some you know somewhat decent prices depends on how you value the cyber truck but with zero down 36 months uh 1200 for the dual motor 14 for the um

the tri-motor Cyber Beast. And then if you want to put $7,500 down, you can get it for $1,000 a month for the dual motor and $1,200 a month for the Cyber Beast. So something to consider. And going around the leases, you know, it helps kind of the loophole for EVs in the U.S. right now.

It gives you access. It lowers the requirements in terms of access to the tax credit so that people can use it more. So I think some people are going to take advantage of that. All right. All right. We have some earnings resolved this week. I didn't look too much into those. Lucid. I'm going to start with Lucid. So Lucid reported...

Net loss of just short of a billion dollars, up from 630 million last, not last quarter, but the same period last year. But they have $5 billion on end, and they claim to have enough liquidity into 2026. That's thanks to a recent round of funding powered by the Saudis, $1.7 billion. Okay.

In terms of revenue, they posted $200 million in revenue in Q3, up from $137 million, thanks to a higher level of deliveries. That's on 2,781 vehicles that they delivered this quarter. And of course, there's the Gravity that started the reservation this week, or pre-orders they're calling it, I think, starting at $80,000 for up to 440 miles of range. And it's coming next year, I think.

And then the year after that, it's the mid-range platform. It feels like Lucid is maybe like two years behind Rivian in the process, basically. And like 10 years behind Tesla? Yeah. But they want to catch up a little bit quicker to get to the next generation cheaper vehicles, I think, than Rivian. Rivian took its time between the R1s and the R2s. All right. Speaking of Rivian, I think we might have skipped over that one. Yeah, yeah, I skipped this one. So Rivian also posted their earnings. Yeah.

And we anticipated them to have a difficult earnings this quarter because of the lower deliveries, because of the supply chain issues that they have with a specific supplier. But it was actually not the supplier's issue. Apparently, it was on the Rivian side. But we already went into all that. So what did they report September?

Gross margin were minus 45% versus minus 39%. But again, that was because of these issues affected greatly. And the transition to the next generation R1s was still ongoing in Q3. So they expect most of that deference to be felt in Q4.

The big news from Rivian for this earnings really is still related to the gross margin, but it's the fact that they still guide positive gross margin in Q4, which was the goal since last year.

Despite these issues, despite like you look at the gross margin here, they go through from 36 to 46 to adjusting down a little bit for two quarters to minus 44, minus 39. And now went back up to 45 and they still somehow believe they can get to something marginally positive next quarter. So I guess the impact was really felt here. But obviously, yes.

3,000 vehicles produce more than the deliveries, and they also expect both production and deliveries to get up in Q4, which is going to help greatly on that. What do you say about the R2? R2 will be a lot of fundamental drivers starting at 45. Yeah, there's not that much news on the R2 front. There's the new Volkswagen deal, of course, that's helping. You know,

EBITDA loss of $2.83 billion on this quarter. So everything is bigger scale than we were talking about Lucid. But they also have much bigger coffers. Did we share how much cash on hand they have? Because that's something important to track. We don't have that right now. But I think they have more cash than Lucid does, right? They must have. All right, should we do a quick read? Yeah, let's talk a little bit about our friend at Allset.

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Yeah, if you guys want to check out, we also had a sponsored post with them this week that gives a lot more details about if you want to franchise this in your area because we listed where they're located, but it's somewhat limited even though they're Canada and the U.S., but there's plenty of markets to get into. So if you want to spend time with electric cars, a good way is to wrap them and get into the business of racking them so you can check the post on Electric too and know more about all sets of franchise business.

Also, if you do enjoy the show, we would appreciate if you can give us a thumbs up, a like, a subscribe, whatever it is on the app you're doing right now. It's free to do. It takes just seconds and it helps the show a lot more than you think. We appreciate it when you do. And we are going to have plenty of time this episode to take your questions. So if you have questions about any of the topics we're discussing today, about Trump's impact on the EV industry or all that, you can put them in the comment section right now. I want to get to it in about 20 minutes or so.

as we get through these other posts here all right so we got all the details and pricing for the updated 2025 ionic 5 which is an important vehicle i think because um i mean the ionic 5 has always uh since it's been on the market has been you know next gen evs from the koreans and uh the some interesting features like bi-directional charging and um

just an all-around like solid ev but the 2025 version now in north america makes things a lot more exciting as the first non-tesla ev to adopt the nax port standard so you know you're going to be able to use the supercharger with that car like any other tesla um so this is this is a big impact and there's a lot of improvement on uh on the 2025 version here like the the

The pricing is interesting. So starting at $42,500, that's for the standard range rear wheel drive, that still gets 245 miles of range. And then if you want to get the extended, did he call it extended range? The SC version, I'm not sure if, no, it's not the SC version.

The bigger battery, the 84-kilowatt-hour battery, you get the 318 miles of range for $46,000. So it's a $4,000 upgrade to get 50, 60 more miles of range, basically. A little bit more power, too. Yeah, you do get 225 HP versus 168. And then you have all these versions all the way up to the 58-kilowatt.

$1,000 if you want the all-wheel drive dual motor with 320 horsepower. But you do get less range with that. So a lot of options for the Ioniq 5 here, 2025. There's something for everyone, basically. And we already discussed the interior update with the new steering wheel.

Redesigned HVAC system. The exterior also got new headlights. The styling hasn't been greatly updated since the original unveiling, but it's a slight update that's a little bit more modern. And you get half the tax credit for the Ioniq 5, right? I think so. Yeah, but I think Ioniq 5, the deal is like leasing. Like you can get that car for $400 a month, leasing straight up.

So if you come from an ICE car, it's basically a free car for most people because if you drive just a decent amount a month, you probably have more than $400 of gas. And then you account for the electricity cost, which is pretty low depending on your market, unless you use maybe the supercharger network a little bit too much. This is probably one of the cars I would go to if someone has a recommendation now for going electric.

uh this is uh at least ionic five great choice i think all right this car you like a lot said the ex30 has been confirmed that's gonna come before the end of the year to the us so it's been up in the air a lot this car with from volvo the x30 because it's was produced and while it still is produced in china and since the tariffs have been in place there's no way that they're gonna bring that

to the U.S. for any reasonable prices. But Volvo has been accelerating its plans to build a car in, is it Belgium? It's somewhere in here. Belgium? Bruges.

Okay. And we thought as of late, we thought it would slip into 2025, but now they are saying that, yeah, again, Belgium, yeah. They say that it's going to come sooner. So by the end of the year, we should see the car in the U.S. Did they already say the starting price in the U.S.? It was like 35, but sometimes those things slip. I'm not sure if we have the official starting price in the U.S.

Oh, yeah. 44 for the Plus Ultra version. The single motor is going to be $35,000, but that's going to be next year. Yeah, they're starting with the twin motor version. So you tried this one, did you, Chip? Yeah, it's a great vehicle. So you think it's more like that's going to be the competitor to like the Equinox EV? Yeah, I mean, it's a little bit higher end brand, a little higher just quality trim.

um it's fast even the rear wheel drive one is pretty fast 3.4 seconds here to 60. that's equinox is not doing that um it's kind of like what the bolt could have been if the m wanted wanted to do something like that it's it's a great little vehicle um it's tempting to buy but it's 4 000 pounds it's pretty heavy yeah

i mean volvo doesn't uh they go security first like always right so sometimes it can be a little bit heavier 153 kilowatt charging not the best but still like 25 minutes at 10 to 80 you cannot complain too much it's a relatively small battery so yeah at that kilowatt it's filling up pretty fast

Yeah, I mean, this thing has been taking over Europe for the last year. Yeah, I think it's behind Tesla. It's the number one seller. Yeah, behind the Model Y. And even better than, I think, the Model 3. Yeah, so now that production is starting in Belgium, if they can ramp that up and enter the U.S. market, I don't expect as much success in the U.S. as it has and still having in Europe, but it should do pretty well.

I don't know, man. Like if you want a hot hatch, 3.4 seconds, zero to 60. It's not Tesla. Uh, lots of room in the back for, you know, it's like an SUV looks pretty good. Yeah. Pretty tempting.

All right, we have an announcement this week with partnership with LG Energy Solution, which I think is already a supplier for them. But the new supply is explicitly for the R2 lineup coming up. And it's a deal on the new 4695 cylindrical battery. So they're going even a little bit bigger than Tesla's 4680, a little bit taller, I should say.

And this new deal is pretty significant. I think they went into the details here. 67 gigawatt hour over five years, which 67 gigawatt hours should be enough for hundreds of thousands of vehicles, which is what Rivian is aiming, obviously, with the R2. They already have over 100,000 pre-orders for them, for the R2 model. So right now...

Is it the 2170 that is in the R1s? Yep, Samsung. So it's like Samsung, like Model S and like Model 3 and Y use the 2170 in Tesla vehicle. Model S and X, I think, still use the 18650, if I'm not mistaken. It's interesting how the market evolves with that. Yeah, and it's also interesting that Tesla did not upgrade the Model S and X. I guess just the numbers aren't there.

Yeah, I mean, Bolesnack's basically going away now as well. All right, this is interesting here. Even though my hope for the US EV market has gone down a little bit this week after the election. Well, I expected that Trump was going to win anyway, so they've been going down for a little bit. There is some hope.

With this, with the used electric car market, which is, you know, we are very focused on the new car market at Electric because that's what's driving everything, obviously. Long term, we need all new cars to be electric in order for the transition to happen. But most people don't buy new cars. Most people buy used cars. But the electric used car market is still quite immature just because, you know, even though the EV revolution has been going on for over a decade now,

The volume, especially in the US, volume hasn't really happened until the last few years, which limits the used car market because the used car market relies on volume of new cars. But this is about to change and this is the interesting thing. GD Powers released a new report about the EV lease return volume.

So the report says that next year, so the lease return went up quite a bit from 2023 to 2024, but they expect it to be flat or even go down a bit in 2025, just based on lease data from the last three, four years. Leases are generally two, three years. So that's when the impact is felt. But thanks to...

And the federal tax rate and the IRA, and thanks to the little loophole that they put in there for leases, a lot more people are leasing EVs now because they're great deals. But that will also mean that there's going to be a lot of lease returns that are going to be. And look at that increase here. We're talking about $220.

150 000 more vehicles are expected to come off their leases in 2026 versus next year so that sort of makes 2026 the year of the use ev in the us where you're gonna have just a lot more volume and use evs you know they can be a good deal obviously

This could change fast because if Trump removes the tax credit, that will have the effect of raising overall prices and reduce the discount that you're going to get from a used EV because obviously – well, even though the IRA does have a tax credit for used EVs too, which has been great, if you remove both of them, then what happens is that it was already smaller for the used EV, and that will just increase the gap between the two tax credits.

but anyway it should still re result in a significant reduction in use dv prices as well as an increase in volume which they come in in hand obviously but um but yeah you use the ev especially coming off their leases you know they are two three years old

And not bad deals because normally they still have a significant warranty on the batteries, on the powertrain. And often they are sold by dealers with another warranty on top of it, like a bumper-to-bumper, not necessarily a bumper-to-bumper, but a more general car warranty because they take care of it after the leases and make sure that everything is running and whatnot. It's not as attractive as a new car warranty, but still attractive.

It's interesting. So I think it's going to make the market a lot more mature in 2026, 2027, and get a lot more people into EVs because they're going to have access to buying one themselves thanks to the used car market. This is something I, you know, a little silver lining for the week for the EV market. I think it's going to be exciting.

Yeah, I mean, it opens the EVs up to a whole new audience of people, which I think those folks have been really looking forward to getting an EV. And, you know, the bolts and the leafs and stuff like that, it's

It's going to be better EVs, too, that they're going to get to buy now. Like, you know, in 2026, buying a 2023 or 2024 IONIQ 5, like, it's not a bad deal. Like, I wouldn't be... I would be glad to be driving that. But, yeah. Yeah.

Anyway, one quick, before we jump into the conversation, one quick note about Aptera. You know, we talked a little bit about them last week. They had their production in 10 vehicles doing the low-speed testing. This week, Scooter dove a little bit deeper into their fundraising efforts, which hasn't been doing great.

They've been, for the last few months, talking about their effort with US Capital Global, where they've been trying to sell $60 million worth of current overall notes. And according to the latest filings, I'm sorry, they are $400,000 worth of $60 million. So it's pretty bad. And the CEOs, the co-CEOs are talking about

Going back to crowdfunding, because to be fair, they did raise an insane amount to crowdfunding, like $135 million to crowdfunding, which is insane. Though there are limits to crowdfunding. Like at some point you hit the ceiling. So I assume that they hit that ceiling with $135 million and then they needed to go to the bigger wells for the funders.

for the comfortable notes and uh the wells are not dying they don't they don't like it they don't like the company and i understand why like it's not it's not an easy sell of a company uh you're making you know a vehicle with limited utility you can see it here it fits two people you know there's some place in the back for luggage and everything but

It's limited. It's not even a car. It's an auto car in most markets. Some markets even have to have a helmet on. I think it's not going to be very popular in those markets, but there's plenty of markets you don't need a helmet to.

It's – the market for it is somewhat unclear for most people. But there's a core group of people that really like it because it might actually be something that even though we don't – most people don't want now, it might be something that we need because it is ultra-efficient and –

Some people are trying to see it now. I saw a post that was going viral today on X from like a Cybertruck owner posting how much it cost them to supercharge for a road trip, a 600-mile road trip. And it basically was equivalent to using a 22-miles-per-gallon vehicle with gas because of the cost of electricity.

So I think a lot more people are kind of waking up to this idea that your EV also needs to be as efficient as possible. And there is a big difference between this and even my Model 3, which is a very efficient electric car. This is a lot more efficient. And, you know, even though going all electric and going all renewable energy is going to have a tremendous impact on our emissions, right?

what would happen even it might not be enough like we already were seeing it was it was like 18 celsius yesterday and you know we're approaching like early mid-november right now it's supposed to be six on average in november here uh and that's that's montreal actually and then it's showing again it's probably like a degree or two lower than that and it was it was 18 here in

Uh, and, and it's also like, uh, the variability is going like to the roof, uh, in most, in most, uh, regions, like the, the changes in temperature are crazy. And, um,

And we're hitting new records in terms of warming all the time. Like, I don't like to be the alarmist, and we're not alarmists. Like, sometimes when we have, like, hard data that scares us, we're going to share it and everything because, you know, it's kind of our jobs, too. But for the most part, we are technology-focused. We are, like, focusing on the solutions rather than the problems. But...

Sometimes when I close my eyes at night and I think about this, I do get scared and I do understand the alarmist people on this because I think it's going to be a hard problem to solve. It already is. And I think going, you know, Aptera is like we're going a little bit further. We're going like ultra efficient. And, you know, that might be what we actually going to need as a next step.

after electrification is like just going ultra efficient with those EVs to lower the impact even more. I'm not saying that it's going to be most of the market. There's going to be people going through the after-hustler cars, but I think that will make a big difference if we can take some of the market away from that. Just my thought. Yeah, posts are really cool looking. They're powered by the sun. Like there's just so many...

really cool aspects. I mean, you can even camp in the back. There's enough room for one or two people in the back, uh, to lay flat, kind of like the model three. So I don't know. It seems like a really cool situation. I, I would love to get my hands on one of these. I wish they would make them. Yeah. No, I, I, we're both on the list. Yeah. I really want them to, to succeed. I know it's going to be hard and I give them right now probably like a

20, 25% chance of success, something like that. But I wish them the best because I think we need what they're doing. I think the best case scenario for them is like a company like Foxconn or EYD or something swoops up, swoops them up, throws a bunch of cash their way, makes the supply chain a lot better. Yeah, they should go to the Chinese. Yeah.

Chinese will be into that. Yeah, they're going to take your stuff. Anyway, yeah, they're going to do it anyway. And I don't blame them. We need it. So if it fails and they do it, yeah, that's for the better. But they could invest in them and they could just license their models and do them in China because this car would do great in China also, I think. Yep, all over the world. And even better in BRICS countries.

All right, let's move to comments. Thanks in advance for the insight. Maybe it's time to stop focusing too much attention on Tesla. Unhealthy fascination with him has led to Musk becoming the number two to our new self-proclaimed dictator. Well, Tesla is still a huge part of the US EV market, the majority of the market. So, yeah, we have to focus on them because we are US-centric, right?

North American centric. I think most of our viewer of the podcast, most of our readers on electric is about 50% us. And then you add Canada to that, you're over 60. So it's, uh, it makes sense that we're us focused and Tesla is a massive part of the market. And if Elon is way, it's going to be the only thing in the market. Yeah. Yeah.

Cool says Trump adopted Elon. Paul T. It's as much the fact that the Democrats will stop crapping on Elon as Trump will be positive for. Not sure what he means by that, but it is kind of interesting that Elon seemed mostly Democratic or to be a Democrat ish until I think.

COVID, right? COVID's when... Yeah, I mean, the F Elon thing that the state representative said in California kind of got the ball rolling. But it's also his daughter, I think, and the woke mind virus thing got him radicalized. And then not getting invited to the EV summit. That's the worst thing that the Democrats have ever done to him. He said that this week. I retweeted that. One of his sims said it. That's the worst thing that

Dave said that was not inviting him to the EV Summit. And then he responded, yeah, to that. And I'm like, what? Like, is that really what happened? They didn't invite you to their little party and you got so upset that you...

Gave $135 million to the arrangement. I guess you got to invite Elon to your parties. Yeah. And look, I'm not saying that they shouldn't have. They definitely should have. But at the same time, it was just marketing fluff, this whole thing. And it was union-based. It was union-based. It was not like, we don't like Tesla. It was like, look, we're just doing this for unions. We love unions.

Yeah, it was more that than it was more we love them than you hate you. And it's also it was to announce that the legacy automakers were phasing out internal combustion engine for battery electric. So Tesla doesn't announce that because they already do only battery electric. So I'm still saying that they should invite them at an EV summit. Biden was a complete imbecile for saying, Mary Barra, you did it with the EV. Completely agree on all that.

Not a reason to put the climate denier in the White House, though. Like, it seems like a tiny bit of an overreaction to not getting invited. Like,

Since when we don't get invited to Tesla event and like, I mean, you can argue that we went sour on Tesla. I would argue against that, but it was way before that, that we didn't get invited. I mean, the reason we didn't get invited was because we were evenly covering Tesla. Yeah. Or scoops too, that we were told a bunch of times that they didn't like it and that we scooped them.

Which is fair. Should we reveal one day our conversation with Elon on Twitter? Yeah, when he called me an asshole. You should NFT that. All right. How long will the stock honeymoon last? How fast will Trump-Elon say something crazy before Trump actually gets into the office and crashes the stock? What do you think? Is the stock going to crash anytime soon? Yeah, I mean...

The way I see it right now, as much as you can say that Tesla is an AI company, it's still quarter to quarter. The earnings are important, and those are based on selling cars. And if Trump does what he says he's going to do, it's going to hurt Tesla's U.S. sales, and Tesla's European sales are not doing well.

China is doing okay. They are holding their own in China very well. But so far they are down like 5,000 units this quarter. So it's not perfect either.

It's not 5,000 units, not huge in China, obviously, but they are down quarter to quarter today. So U.S. is important for Tesla, obviously. And I think sales will go down short-term to mid-term in the U.S. until the others drop, until Tesla is left without any EV competition in the U.S. It sounds like that's the goal. That's the optimist goal in the next four years with Trump. So not big on that. I don't think that's a good plan to have.

I think the original idea of elevating the whole industry to go electric was the better approach. But, you know, I might be wrong. I don't know. Yeah, and there's still some parts of Tesla that are doing that, like the supercharger opening. Yeah, that's fair. All right. Antonio says, how long with the stock? Oh, yeah. Also, how long? Like, you know, no, I cannot say that. I don't know. Like the stock can go...

be rational for forever. So, so you don't know. Yeah. You know, I actually saw on some interview, I thought it was interesting. Elon was saying owning a public company is like, you know, somebody's at your house and they're just yelling values of your house, even though nothing has changed. They're just outside yelling, you know, a hundred thousand, 200,000, whatever, and nothing's changing. So I don't agree with that. It would be two people.

agreeing on the price and exchanging the price of a share of your house all the time. It's two people. It cannot just be one because there's two people agreeing to a price on the market. That's the whole idea of a market. Yeah. So Carl in San Diego says, I'm not clear. It's conspiratorial that there will be a collusion between Musk and Trump. Musk was present on calls with world leaders that Trump took, specifically Zelenskyy.

My bigger concern is the Wall Street Journal came out with a story about him and Putin having a lot of conversations. That seems problematic, especially with SpaceX satellites, all that stuff. Starlink. Yeah. Rohan Patel was the...

The policy chief at Tesla for a while commented on that, and he said that the way he read the report, which I think sounds fair, is that Elon has to report these calls to the Wall Street Journal, to authorities, I mean. And the way that the Wall Street Journal reported it, in the headline they said secret calls, but then with the sources that they said, like sources said that Elon talked to Putin like whatever times, how many times,

It sounded more like they could have just gotten that from Elon actually reporting to the authorities his calls as he's required to do. So I don't know about that because if that's the case, if he didn't report them and they were truly secret like the Wall Street Journal claim, I would hope that the authorities would get on that. But you never know.

Colin San Diego at Electrify Everything in Vancouver this year, they remarked that Canada has unfortunately become inundated with SUVs and pickups more than ever before. Is that your impression, Fred? It is becoming a lot more popular, yeah. I mean, we follow the U.S. market, and that's where the U.S. market went. So we do get a lot of the similar cars in the U.S. market. So, you know, buyers, they buy what's on the lot often, so that happens. Yeah, it's...

Canada, if you're in the US, don't think that Canada is like Europe or something in terms of cars. It's not the same at all. Let's go to Quebec City. Yeah, Quebec, I feel like maybe Ontario is definitely the closest market to the US. Quebec is a little bit different for sure. Oh, you meant Quebec City looks like Europe? You mean, okay, yeah, you're right. Old Montreal too. All right. I appreciate Electric is a watchdog regarding Tesla. We need that.

Yeah, that's what we're trying to be. We're trying to be a watchdog. So Mr. Turkey Neck, who seems to be a big Hyundai Kia fan, says Hyundai and Kia seem to be leading the pack when it comes to advancing their EV line. The Volvo EX30 is built in China via Belgium. I don't know. Is he insinuating that it's an assembly only in Belgium or something? I think they have a pretty big factory there. They've been building Volvos there for years. So I don't know that that's true or not, but we'll come in.

Noah Davis has a very long-winded thing that we're not going to be able to get to, but sorry I came in late. If not too redundant, could you please summarize the overarching statements that the incoming administration has made regarding supporting or not the EV industry and EV manufacturing in the U.S., which I'm likely to put you at this point? Thank you. That might be a post for later discussion. Yeah, so you mean like should we summarize all the statements that Trump has made on...

on these EVs and EV manufacturing? Like, to be honest with you, it doesn't hold that much value. Like, the only thing that he says clearly is that he wants to remove the incentives. Yeah.

I don't think he wants to get involved in what they should be manufacturing or not. I don't think that's really the point. It's just that if you remove the incentive and more importantly, if he gets into the carbs, well, at least he tried that last time he was in power and couldn't make it happen. Remove the carbs goals to penalize automakers who are not electrifying fast enough.

So he's going to try again, I'm sure. Is he going to be more successful this time? I don't know. Best of luck. But in effect, that's the two main policies he's trying. Remove the federal incentive and then try to attack the CARB states on their own ground in terms of their electrification goals. All right. Mr. Perkin next says Seth ignores the Kia you just talked about in favor of the EX30. I think not.

The EV3? But it's not there yet. Yeah, I don't know about the EV3. I mean, the Kia Niro is kind of small like that. I don't know. I'm less excited about the Niro and the Kona just because they feel like

Last generation EVs, to me, compare it to the EV6, IONIQ 5. Yeah, and they've made some updates to them, but they're still, you're right, like charging and everything. But Seth loves Kia. Seth, like the EV9, you reviewed it super positively. Yeah, that's a great car. I don't think that's fair. And the EV6, like everything. They have a really solid lineup. I saw a 2018 Model 3 on the Volvo lot this week for $25,000. That's not surprising for...

That price. We have too many SUVs and trucks in Canada. People love their gas guzzlers for some reason. I think it's a fair call that Aptera should get pulled under the umbrella of a big company with no head start. Maybe Suzuki? Sure. Why not? How big is Suzuki?

Not big. Yeah, if the Japanese want to do it, that's fine. Toyota, Nissan, we'll take anybody with big pockets. And that's to Mr. Turkin, I think, agrees. Question, I know Tesla doesn't do mapping like Waymo, but does it learn and remember specific road conditions and intersections? And if so, how quickly? I can drive somewhere I have never been before, comma,

And we'll immediately learn and remember for the next time any unique conditions that came across. So it becomes easier. Does Tesla learn a specific intersection like a human will? So I know there was a pattern on this at some point. It was a while ago. So I know that they've been working on this. I don't think that it's been implemented yet. I don't think there's an implementation of like, oh, there's a pothole here. I know there's a pothole. I know I take that road all the time. I need to get around it.

um yeah i don't think that's i mean polls is like one of the main things where i intervene on the highways now with the pilot and fsd like it's i see them and i see the cars not moving at all and i'll take over so it's not it's an issue but of course the uh end-to-end on highways is also not the same um it's not it's not into energy on highway versus um on city driving so

might have a difference but i don't i don't remember also i have a like a city road here that's just like afghanistan it's it's wow it's like a war zone and uh i take it as the on it and it just it goes right over puddles so it doesn't doesn't seem to detect them at least not on my hardware 3 build which is already getting behind hardware 4.

All right. Well, Friedman says, mentioned earlier on the day of the RoboTaxi event, I tried to move my Model 3 four feet forward using, what is it? A-

Actually smart summon. Actually smart summon. Failed to move it at all. Long ways to go. Yeah, we had a report this weekend about this. Apparently a lot of people, like the day of the Rotax 7 seems a little bit while ago. My understanding is more like the recent, a recent update that broke a smart summon for some people. And we had an example of this gentleman in Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada, who actually had

a good use case for Smart Summon where he had a very tight spot. He bought his Model 3 for that. He wanted a car with Smart Summon so that he could just get out of his car, park it in that very tight spot because you cannot get out on either side of that tight spot. And then you could just plug it in from there and he's good to go. And when he comes back, he unplugs it, Smart Summon out of the spot. Perfect. So he's been using it for a while and I think that the Smart Summon was working. And then with the

actual smart summon, the latest actual smart summon update, it didn't work anymore. It couldn't even move a bit. And like you, it just needs it to move just a few feet back so that you can actually get in. So now he has to... And then, of course, Tesla is not doing anything because you cannot talk to anyone in Tesla about that. And so now he basically has to get out of his trunk, which is insane. That's hilarious. I mean, it's insane. It's hilarious. But it's just funny that that's the solution. Yeah. Yeah.

It is in a straight line like Will, too. Like it's an actual, like, let's be honest. Most people who use SmartSummon use it to impress their friend in a parking lot, you know, late at night. They're like, hey, look at this. My car drives by itself. And then when it's actually time to use it yourself, you're like, yeah, I'll just walk to the car while I'm back and save time and save some stress on having to watch it because, you know, you hit the curbs a bunch of times. We've seen it countless times.

This is an actual use case, and then he gets screwed by Tesla. It's pretty wild. All right. In a straight line in a driveway, no Teslas absolutely do not learn local roads or learn an individual basis. All ADAS are operated on preloaded software, modeled for AI-based FSD, not AI learns locally. You know, there was that thing about potholes, right? Like it would learn where a pothole was, and it would slow down.

I forget. I don't think it was ever implemented. I think they talked about it. It was kind of like an idea. Yeah. All right. Big one here. Domestic automakers face a conundrum balancing immediate profit opportunities with the long-term viability of their enterprises. The absence of stringent emissions regulations may lead to a focus on the profit centers like internal combustion engines, trucks, and SUVs.

potentially delaying ev advancements in next generation vehicle development this is a huge long-term advantage for tesla at the sacrifice of the future domestic auto industry exactly i mean that's it tesla becomes the entire domestic auto industry in the us like because right now you're right like everything you said is correct and that would lead to basically everyone else going on there except for tesla and even those ev startups because those ev startups like lucid like like rivian

need those incentives, those subsidies, just like Tesla needed them for years. So Tesla is basically, well, Elon, through his support of Trump, took advantage of all these incentives for Tesla and then closed the door behind him. They call that pulling up the ladder after you climb. Yeah, exactly. And they pull up the ladder and everyone is left on the ground floor. It's sad because that was not what he said he was going to do.

Mike, you sold all these shares. Is it a congrats, Mike? I assume you make some profit on this. And look, all these trolls on X are like, yeah, they keep sending me screenshot of the Tesla stocks today. I'm like, it generally doesn't do anything to me. Like, I'm happy for, I'm literally happy for them. You make some good cash. I didn't sell because I didn't think I could make money off Tesla.

Anyway, there's plenty of ways to make money on the stock market. I'm having a blast right now just shorting DGT every now and again. But anyway, I did it because I invested in Tesla for the mission, and I just don't see it aligned with the mission, especially with Elon at the helm and what they're doing right now. Tesla is still delivering a lot of EVs. I'm happy for that. Because he sold his Tesla stock to buy Twitter, Twitter,

to turn it into a propaganda machine and then sold Tesla stocks to also finance Trump's campaign. That's, I think, is going to reduce, result in exactly what Andrew just described.

i just i cannot be involved in that that's it like it's it's an ethical issue for me more more than a financial issue though i i do think that the tesla stock can also crash too like that's a real possibility but it's not my main driver in that article that i wrote when i sold it clearly stated i think that tesla is becoming on the line with the mission that's it all right uh eric says it's uh he's talking about um his

My mom's self-driving Tesla. She got the free trial. One development, it had no speed limit. Started driving 35 miles per hour, but the limit is 25, so it slowed down with the scroll wheel. How does Tesla learn this? My mom's development has a sign that says 25 when you turn in.

The car switches from 40 to 25 when it sees the sign. So you're probably in auto max speeds feature. So you need to, you can just remove that feature and it will, it will stick to the, um, uh, to, to the speed limit if it detects it, obviously. So unless, so you have on the screen, the speed, the speed limit, you have like the sign, the speed limit sign. So if it was 25 there and going 35, that's just because of, um,

the auto speed adjust you just remove that feature and it will stick to that or you will you can also put it like speed limits plus whatever miles per hour you're comfortable with you can do that too personally i kind of like the auto speed thing especially because where i live

Like there's a long country road that's like 50 kilometers an hour where like no one goes 50 kilometers an hour on it. And the car will actually go the speed of traffic there. So that's, I like that. But it's not for everyone for sure. All right. EV3 and Insta not coming to the USA is Kia Hyundai's fault. Companies have long chosen not to compete with profitable models here. IE EV9 yes means EV3 no.

You know, that kind of goes back to Volvo bringing the EX30 here. They've had the EX30 in Europe for a couple of years or at least maybe a year now. They're slow to bring it here. I think there's an opportunity. I mean, you know, it's maybe just my bubble, but everybody loves driving. Like people who buy the Chevy Bolt love the Chevy Bolt. I have a feeling that there's a lot more people who like the EX30 actually looks good. Like the Bolt looks like.

It's not a great looking car. It's not the best. The X30L is a big interior improvement in my opinion. Yeah, yeah. Super nice interior. They have that like long speaker in the front. It's just, you know, Scandinavian design. It's, you know, SUV like. So I don't know. It just seems like that car is going to do well. And I think the EV3 would do well here.

Um, whether it comes here or not, we, you can skip that one. I basically insert, like, uh, inserted with what I just said about my, uh, why I sold it and sold because I thought it will make more money.

I don't care. It's nothing to do with it. All right. Biggest gift the administration gives Tesla would be a national standard for the regulation of autonomous driving. We sort of discussed it a little bit. Like it would be, you know, probably the right thing to do. And it would have an impact on Tesla, but not until they solve self-driving, which I think is the bigger problem than regulation right now.

All right, Carl says, people assume that ADAS systems read speed limit signs, but I suspect that almost all ADAS speed limits are using GIS map speed limits. I think probably both. I know Tesla and others can see, even Google can see, well, Google's using GIS probably, but you can actually see the speed limit signs in the UI. So they're definitely gathering that. Yeah, I mean, you can...

You use the map and confirm visually, and that's probably the best approach. All right. The one development, it works 25 miles per hour. They have a development wrongly listed speed limit is 35. That happens. So, yeah, that is a bigger problem for sure. Especially if you have the auto speed adjust on and it detects the speed higher than it is, then that's problematic because then it can go a lot higher. But I think it's more based on the speed that people drive on that road.

So I think not too bad at the end of the day, but something to watch out for. Like everything with FSD, you need to...

You need to be safe. Let's end on that note, everyone. This weekend, if you're driving with FSD, try to be safe. If you're driving without FSD, try to be safe too. But that's it for our show this week. I appreciate every single one of you that sent comments today. That was cool. If you do enjoy the show, please give us a like, a thumbs up, a subscribe, whatever it is on the app you're watching right now. And I hope you have a safe weekend. I'm going to see you same place, same time next week.

Have a good one. Wrong button.