Trump's dumb auto tariffs explained, Tesla in the crosshairs, new Nissan Leaf, and more
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We are live for a new episode of The Electric Podcast. I'm Fred Lembert, your host, coming to you live from Las Vegas. And as usual, I'm joined by Seth Wintraub. How are you doing, Seth? I'm good. I think in Las Vegas, we forgot to put up the browser screen. The browser screen? Yeah. Oh, sorry. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right. The sharing screen. So you're in Las Vegas. Why?

Yeah, I'm testing out the new Audi GT RS. The updated, the 2025, it's like a mid-cycle update, so it's nothing too new. I can talk about it a little bit. I just cannot talk about the drive impressions until next week. There's a little bit of an embargo on that.

But yeah, I mean, it's a very nice update. It's, you know, sometimes the mid-cycles update focus more on the design and such, but

It's different for the GT. It's the contrary. They updated a lot of the spec, capacity, features of the vehicle, and the design, not that much. A little bit, like you have a little bit more like of a honeycomb kind of grille. That's pretty nice. A nice vertical reflector in the back that's like race car inspired. I think it's pretty cool. So nothing too crazy on the design. A bunch of, of course, like package features.

It's a very high-end car that you can option from $120,000, although we do almost $200,000, I guess. There's a lot of options you can put on it. 12%

more energy in the battery pack, so more energy capacity. And they still managed to reduce the weight by 25 pounds. So slightly smaller, less weight, more capacity, a little bit more range, nothing too crazy, but more power to 912 horsepower. I think that falls into driving impression.

But yeah, I'm going to have a lot more to say about them. And they have a new crazy suspension system, active suspension, that's super quick, that you can do a lot of very interesting thing with that I'm going to discuss next week when I can talk about it. I was going to say you should send some pictures over to Aaron to throw on the social media. Yeah, yeah.

I got a bunch of pictures and I got some videos of me driving. We went on the racetrack with it, so we got some good footage of me driving it and whatnot.

Yeah, we have plenty to talk about this week. We're going to talk about the new auto tariffs that were announced this week. But we're going to try to explain them the best we can. But it's kind of confusing. And it's also very fluid, as you can imagine, as all the tariffs have been for the last few months since Trump took office. So we're going to try to explain.

unpackage the whole thing. We're going to talk a bit about Tesla, which is going to be in the crosshairs of those tariffs and the retaliatory tariffs that are going to come after. We have first official images of the new Nissan Leaf that are going to be interesting to talk about. And a bunch of new cars, especially I think from BYD that I put in there. Yeah, we have two. We have the GMC Sierra EV 2026 that comes with new entry-level packages that are interesting.

and two new BYD EVs from both sides of the spectrum, a new top-of-the-line BYD and a new entry-level BYD that we're going to get into that's probably going to shake the market in China. That's probably the fastest evolving EV market out there. Earlier this week, Trump announced an update on the tariffs. The tariffs have been delayed for a month since early March.

They were supposed to come into effect next week, April 2nd. She's probably April 3rd, end of the day, April 2nd, basically. And, you know, he's been talking about 25% tariffs on all cars, all auto parts coming from Canada and Mexico. And now over the last few weeks, he's been talking

you know, hinting at maybe there's going to be some exemption. Maybe there's going to be not on parts and all that. Now, it was announced this week. It was, as usual with the Trump administration, it was a complete mess of an announcement. Like there was very little detail at first. The details started trickling in over time. But at first, basically, Trump announced 25% tariffs on all car imports. So all cars that are not assembled,

in the US get a 25% tariff. So that, you know, a lot of them are assembled in Mexico. Some of them are important in Canada, not a massive amount. You know, there's a lot of cars coming from Europe, from the automakers there, from Volkswagen, the group and BMW and all that. There's the Koreans that are shipping us all the cars in the US. So all of those would be slapped with a 25% tariffs.

And then it sort of opened up like, oh, in terms of car parts at first, it was like everything that's under the free trade agreement between Mexico and Canada would be sort of exempt or at least for now. So for a month, those are exempt. Now, there's still the tariffs on the car parts coming from China. That's already in place. That's that's done. And from other countries also.

But when it comes to Mexico and Canada, which the entire supply chain, the entire auto industry in North America with the free trade agreement that Trump signed, was it 2020, 2018, 2020 when he was last in power? It simplified a lot of things because there's a lot. You can have a subsystem that ends up in a car assembled in the US that crosses border Canada, Mexico several times before ending up in a car.

So these things get pretty complicated and that simplify the whole thing. Now, for now, it's only a 25% on the vehicle that are not assembled. And next month, May 3rd, and that's the weird thing here, all the parts that are currently exempt through the free trade agreement between the US, Canada, and Mexico are going to get slapped with the tariff, although...

They plan to figure out by then, which is probably impossible within a month, the percentage of the parts that are made in the U.S. in each of those subsystems so that that would be exempt from the tariffs. It's an idea, I guess, but I doubt that this will be implemented. It's going to be super complicated to figure all that out within a month.

The other thing that we're hearing too, so again, this is a few days away, but it's changing already. Like Canada, the Prime Minister of Canada talked to Trump apparently yesterday. And the Premier of Ontario, where a lot of auto manufacturing and part manufacturing is done in Canada, also talked to the U.S. Commerce Secretary yesterday.

And now what we're hearing is that there might be some exemption on this. It might be a full exemption on the 25% tariffs on cars produced in Canada if 50% of the parts come from the U.S., which already some vehicles probably would fit that description.

And then there would be probably, even if that's not true, it would be a 12.5% tariffs versus 25% potentially. So again, the entire situation, completely stupid, also completely fluid, could change at any time because nothing that Trump has really said about the tariffs really came true other than like the steel and aluminum tariffs, which are also already in place in Canada and will continue.

increase the cost of all vehicles soon because a lot of vehicles in the US do use uh steel Canadian steel and aluminum again the Chinese parts tariffs are on so that will increase costs also and now all of those vehicles again maybe except from Canada will so I put a list together here if you want if you

are interested, you can go to the article that I did on the Trump tariffs where I put it in there in light also. All EVs available in the US come from. And you can see from the list where they're being made. So if they're going to be slapped with a 25% tariffs. So you can see all of Audi's vehicles are built in Germany. Most of BMW's EVs are also built in Germany. So those will be slapped with tariffs. GM should be fine with the Cadillac brand for

For the Cadillac brands, they're made in Tennessee and Michigan, so you're good. But then you have the Blazer EV, you have the Equinox EV. Both are made in Mexico. And also, when I say the Cadillac are good, they're just good from the 25% tariffs. They're also probably going to have to increase in price on the parts tariffs if they go in place. Then, yeah, the Silverado is good. The F-150 is good. Mustang Mach-E is built in Mexico, so that's going to hurt.

You have the Genesis EV. The G80 is good because... No, it's not good because it's from Korea. But the G70 is built in Alabama, so it's good. So you have a bunch of situations like that. The GV60, also Korea-based.

The Hummers and the Sierra EV are good because they're in the US. I mean, I'm not going to go through the whole list here, but you can see that if there's a particular EV you're interested in, it's a useful thing to look at because obviously it's going to have a big effect on the price. The Polestar are interesting, for example, because Polestar, I mean, they have set up their plan now in South Carolina for the Polestar 3. So

they they're going to be okay with that but they were hoping that oh we're going to be able to deliver the poll star 4 in the u.s even though we know we won't get the uh the tax credit on it we're going to produce it out of south korea instead of china and that will allow us to to enter the u.s market well now you're going to be slapped with a 25 tariffs i'm but i'm sure that just i just discussed what happening with the canadian i'm sure that the same thing is happening with south korea also so

All of that will be changing, will be moving. It's a very fluid, very weird situation. And what's interesting is to look at it through from the highs of Tesla. Because Trump was asked if Elon advised on the tariffs. And Trump, you know, is very by the book. And he said, no, no, no, of course not. Because it would be a conflict of interest. So Elon didn't...

Yeah, they're really afraid of conflict of interest. That's their number one concern. Yeah, top priority in the White House right now. I mean, Trump literally just pardoned Trevor Milton, the CEO, the founder of Nikola, after he gave him like $1.8 million between him and his wife. That's all a pardon cost? I feel like that's a good $1.8 million. That's a great deal on a pardon.

Yeah, I mean, nowadays, like, fraud is basically legal as long as you defraud the people enough to make enough money to give a few million to Trump's campaign, then you're good. It's an interesting concept. Yeah. Very late-stage Catullus concept. Very late-stage. But...

But yeah, so Tesla was in the crosshair of this whole thing. A lot of the media and a lot of the shareholders declared Tesla the big winner of these tariffs because all of Tesla's vehicles that they deliver in the U.S. are built in the U.S. But there's more to it. And even Elon was the first to admit it. Sawyer Merritt was basically the chief propagandist at Tesla these days on Axe.

it was like we pointed it out like how good this was going to be for tesla and elon had to reply important to know that tesla is not on skate here the terrorist impact on tesla is still significant of course it is because tesla used a decent amount of parts from china

That's going to go up in price. They use steel and aluminum from Canada going up in price. And then there's 20% 20 to 25% on all vehicles produced in the US have parts from Mexico. Now we don't know exactly what's going to happen with that.

If Mexico is going to get a similar deal as Canada is supposedly going to get, it's unclear. But that they have another month to figure out apparently. But like I said, we don't know exactly. Then Tesla gets a lot of its manufacturing machinery from Canada also. So that's also bad. But I think the other thing that's going to be pretty bad for Tesla here, it's what Tesla already warned the U.S. government about is retaliatory tariffs imposed.

being targeted specifically at Tesla. So, Tesla is basically becoming a political pawn at this point because we have to keep in mind that people always like to get a little bit touchy about that, especially Tesla and shareholders because they feel personally attacked. They're like, a bunch of people attack Tesla directly to get through Elon Musk. But,

Let's start with the fact that what Trump is doing right now is unprecedented. He's breaking free trade agreements on their dubious reason. Some of the ones that he actually installed, too. That he signed just a few years ago. And then he goes around and says, we negotiated this. It's like, it's kind of you and your people. So...

So it makes sense. A lot of countries are panicking, including our leaders in Canada right now. They're like, what do we do now? And it makes sense to go after the company that kind of financed Trump's election, and that's Tesla. Elon sold a bunch of Tesla stocks and financed Trump's election win. So a lot of people are turning to Tesla right now. So in the UK, for example, the UK is also...

Like all the British automaker, I don't think a single British automaker has assembly in the US. So all the British cars that are sold in the US are made in the US.

in the UK or other assemblies in Europe also. But so now the UK government is negotiating with the US to get an exemption on there too. And Rachel Reeves, the UK finance minister said that they're still hoping for something within the next few days, but they are sort of introducing Tesla into the negotiation because she said,

We are looking at the zero emission vehicle mandate, which is why some of that money goes to Tesla and looking at how we can better support the car manufacturing industry in the UK. So basically, the UK has slashed, to be fair, its electric vehicle incentive quite a bit, but they still have some. They have exemption on paying both the first year and standard rate annual vehicle tax. So that's significant. And they also cover up to 75% of the cost of charging stations. So that's also like...

a good amount um so basically she's saying like hey if uh you guys uh go with that uh we might think about the removing tesla or maybe removing every automaker from that uh us automaker from that program and we're seeing canada although canada did it before the tariffs officially came in place though they were already threatened but canada went even further this week

But there's two aspects to this. So we already discussed this suspicious $43 million in rebate that Tesla filed for in Canada in January. So basically, to make it a short story, Canada, the federal government has a $5,000 incentive on the purchase of a vehicle, was running out of money from the program, so announced to automakers and dealerships that they're going to pause the program in mid-January.

I think they gave like a three or four days notice, something like that to the dealership. So that obviously also gave a boost to people like try to get their car delivered in time. And Tesla filed for, they basically claimed that they delivered over 8,000 vehicles in that single weekend when the program ended for a total of $43 million in rebates.

And that was from just four locations in Canada. And it's physically impossible to do that. There's no manpower. There's no capacity to deliver that many vehicles. So the presumption here is that Tesla pre-filed a bunch of rebates and figured out, oh, we'll figure it out later how many we delivered and whatnot. But the thing is that that froze a bunch of funds that other dealership, non-Tesla dealership,

That actually delivered the cars in time to the customers and gave them the $5,000 credit. And then the dealers then have to go to government. It's like, all right, give me my $5,000 back that I gave to the customer. There's, I think, a couple of thousand of deliveries like that, that the dealers are not getting paid because Tesla just took all the money from it, from their pre-filings.

So the Canadian government is still trying to figure that out, what happened exactly. So they froze the funds that they haven't delivered to Tesla yet because it doesn't make sense. And partly because of that, but it sounds like it's mostly because of the tariffs, the new transport minister, Christian Freeland, announced that Tesla will be banned from... The program is paused right now, but it's expected to come back, will be banned from the future program of incentive in Canada. So...

so tesla is very much in the crosshairs yeah is that again oh that's not great for them yeah no i mean canada is not a huge market obviously uh but it's uh it's a decent one especially when we have the incentives and if they're expected to come back it's uh it's gonna hurt tesla for sure um speaking of irritating tesla in the uh in the us you know that says home market and it's the us is tesla's most important market too sometimes it does deliver more cars in china but

They don't make any money delivering cars in China right now. Tesla has such heavy competition in China and has to reduce prices so much and has to offer financing incentive that if they make a gross margin on the vehicles, it's very low single digits. And some believe that it's even like no money that they make on cars in China. So the US is where they actually can make a few bucks per car delivered.

But we are trying to figure out exactly what kind of brand damage Tesla has in the U.S. right now. And YouGov and Yahoo News ordered a survey. They surveyed 1,700 U.S. adults between March 20th and March 24th. And let me preface this. I put it at the end of the article. Probably I should have put it at the beginning of the article because already I saw an X like everyone is challenging. It's all the bunch of biased liberals that they surveyed.

Most people surveyed here are moderate towards conservative. We see here like only 10% liberal, 16%, 10% very liberal, 16% liberal, 33% moderate, 20% conservative, 9% very conservative, and 12% not sure. In terms of political affiliation, 30% Democrat, 32% Republican, 27% independent. So very diverse groups.

leaning toward the right survey here. And here are the results, very interesting results. So the more actionable question was, would you consider owning or leasing a Tesla in the future? 18% said yes, 67% said no. We're just talking about considering here. Not sure, 13% already own or lease a Tesla, 2% in those 1,700. So,

Not a great look for Tesla. And then when you ask them why, most people that did answer no said partly or fully because of Elon. Only 27 said it's like nothing to do with Elon so that they just like wouldn't buy a Tesla for whatever reason. Like some people see Tesla as like having qualities issue or maybe you don't want to buy an EV. I don't know.

Then the survey also looked at Musk and Tesla's favorability within the sample size. And Elon is not doing great. 39% only favorable versus 55% unfavorable. So that just a few months ago, just before the election, it was the opposite of that. So it was actually a little bit more people were favorable than not.

And Tesla is also tracking fairly closely to the result with Musk. So it looks like Elon is sort of dragging down Tesla's brand with 37% favorable and 49% unfavorable with more undecided people than with Elon. So Elon is more polarizing than Tesla. So yeah, this is just not a good look for Tesla in the U.S.

And then the last thing we talk about for Tesla is the delivery consensus that was released today. So next week, we're going to have the delivery result, production and delivery result for Tesla, probably April 2nd, just around market open. But before that, Tesla released, the Tesla's investor relation department released a company compiled consensus of what people think the deliveries are going to end up at.

So this quarter, they surveyed their 27 analysts and the delivery consensus is 377,000 deliveries, which would be Tesla's worst performance since Q3 2022. So we have to go back almost three years or two years to get the delivery result like that. Of course, a lot of people are blaming the Model Y changeover, but also there was the Model 3 changeover last year and Tesla did a lot better than this. And

And also there's other issues. We've seen Model 3 sales being down 30% in Europe. And also that 377,000 is the compile consensus now, but it doesn't mean Tesla's going to hit that either because some analysts see Tesla like 15,000, 20,000 units beyond their debt because they

the analyst consensus actually started this quarter at 450 000 deliveries and we already knew about the middle wide changeover by then like we knew it was happening and uh and that's what people thought that so it's delivering and it just went down and down and down all the way through the quarter to end now at 377 000 almost 75 000 units below what it was just a few months ago just two months ago

But I think a lot of that is what happened since January 28th and Elon's Doge effort and all that. That put a lot of strain on people and a lot of brand destruction. But they also updated the 2025 consensus at 1.85 million, which I also think is pretty high. It went down basically by the amount

of people adjusting their consensus for the first quarter. But I would assume that after the actual result next week, that number will also go down because people are going to have to readjust. It's probably assuming that this is going to grow in 2025 after being down 30,000 units, which was Q1 of last year. It's going to be hard.

All right, moving on from Tesla, we have plenty of interesting news, but I want to remind you that we are live and we take questions. So if you guys have a question, you can put them in the comment section right now. We would appreciate if you we would start with question dash whatever and then ask your question so that we don't have to go through the dialogue going between you guys in the comments, which you're welcome to do, by the way.

uh and um we're gonna get to that in just a few in a few minutes and if you do enjoy the electric podcast we appreciate if you give us a thumbs up a like whatever it is on your app it's free to do takes a second and it helps more than you think so we appreciate when you do it and if you're listening on your podcast app right now if you can give us a five star rating only if you think we deserve it of course uh it would that helps a ton too because we get hit with one star rating every week by uh

People that think we are Tesla haters, even though we are not Tesla haters, we just hate seeing Tesla's brand getting destroyed by an egomaniac. All right, let's talk about the GMC Sierra EV. They came out strong this week. So it's the 2026...

we don't have all the details yet we don't have all the range specs uh and all that but uh they they basically announced the new trims for 2026 uh gmc sierra ev pickup that um do you have it now by the way are you sure i do have it it's right now yeah the high-end one yeah okay so you have the top of the line so they started out with their you know bigger battery pack bigger trim and all that but this summer with the 2026 version

Apparently, they're going to release it in 2026 pretty early. They are introducing a bunch of new trims, especially the AT4 and the Elevate. I'm pretty sure those already exist within the GMC lineup and everything. This is their first...

Electric vehicles. So we're not that familiar with them. But the 84 trim is like an off-road adventure vehicle. It's two inches higher ground currents with lifted coil suspension, 35-inch all-terrain tires. And it starts at $81,400. It comes with the Crab Walk, with the GM Super Cruise, and

An exclusive interior color, 12,300 pounds of towing capacity. By the way, Super Cruise on the Sierra is pretty nice. Yeah. It changes lanes. I was kind of surprised. I mean, the one thing that it doesn't do great is that you have the Google Maps because GM is like, we're doing Google maps.

And you're navigating and the Super Cruise and the Google Maps don't talk to each other very well. So Google might be saying, make it right here and, you know, right at the fork. And Super Cruise is just like, didn't hear that. I'm going straight. It stays in the left lane. Right. So they haven't integrated well. But one of the things I like the most about it is the heads up display. So good.

Man, a good heads-up display is really nice. The same thing with the Audi. I don't know if I could... Well, I mean, it's the same one that they have in the other Audi anyway, but the Audi has a great one. And most of them are very nice these days. Tesla, that's another thing that Tesla didn't introduce just because like, oh, self-driving is coming, so you won't need it. It's like, man, it's such a nice feature.

And they're getting pretty the competition in China. Also, like they all have that and it's putting a lot of pressure on China. Then you have the elevation standard range trim. That's going to start at $65,000. So that's going to start going after the cheaper Silverado, cheaper Lightning. And whenever the rear wheel drive Cybertruck comes out later this year, it's going to be a very similar price range.

And that also has the MultiPro tailgate. Oh, no, not the middle gate. The AT4 is the one that gets the mid-gate. And then you get the MultiPro tailgate for the base version. And this one has 18-inch machine-face wheels. And then you can add options like the Super Cruise and the mid-gate and all that.

and you get the three okay the 84 gets 350 kilowatt charging well 300 which is still not bad for the for the base version so yeah you have all the pricing here so the elevation with the standard range 65 000 extended range 70 basically 73 000 and then the 84 standard range 81 400

91 if you're on the extended range and then you have the denali that set this testing out right now that starts pretty low at 72 but that's the standard range battery again and then you have the extended range at 80 and then the max range which get uh how much miles you have on that thanks yeah 475 miles it's insane it's it's insane 100 but it starts at a hundred thousand dollars so obviously yeah

more expensive so we don't have all the range figures for all these different version again the standard range and extended range so it's gonna be less than 475 miles so like the extended range could still be like pretty good could still be like 380 400 miles something like that while the standard range i would assume that they're gonna aim for low 300 high 200 something like that

But, you know, it's probably going to be very competitive at like 65,000 for the elevation and 84,000, 84,000 beating 82,000. Yeah, I mean, it's a great vehicle. And that max range, you can obviously tow for hundreds of miles. And also, like, you know, it's got the 300, sorry, the 240 out at 30 amps. So you can power your house for weeks, maybe months. It's a huge, huge battery.

Oh, yeah, it's massive. All right, BYD. So BYD unveiled two new vehicles this week. The first one I'm going to talk about is the Quinn LEV. That's the low-end vehicle. It's going after the Model 3 and the Xiaomi SU7. So...

It's very similar in size as those two vehicles, same segment. They're just going to try to destroy them at the low end of the market. So both the Model 3 and the Xiaomi is a bit more expensive. The Xiaomi is a little bit less expensive than the Model 3. This one is starting at 120,000 yen. That's basically $16,500.

uh that's for the base version and you can get it up all the way to 32 500 no that's excuse me the model 3 start at 32 it's basically half the price of a model 3 but the same size and you can upgrade it up to basically 20 000 you see the image right here it's a good looking car for a less than 20 20 000 car fully equipped two battery pack size they're both using byd's blade lfp uh cells

which is the same cells I think that Tesla used in the base Model Y in Germany, in Germany, I think. But they are configured here at 46 and 56 kilowatt hour for 470 kilometers, 292 miles of range, 455 kilometers, 238 miles of range.

CLTC range so you can assume like it's closer probably to like 250 and 300 but still you can get a 300,000 300 mile vehicles for less the equivalent of $20,000 there because and you also get the smart level 2 just like their BYD is equivalent of FSD in there it's available for I think it's included even and then that's what we were talking about here in terms of option like

It's impressive. You have the 15.6 floating infotainment system that you can see here in the middle, very similar to Tesla's system. Then you also have a 12-inch wide heads-up display system on top of an 8.8-inch driver display system. So you have your instrument cluster, your heads-up display, plus a large 15-inch screen. And you have a mini fridge built in the back. Yeah.

the xiaomi also has that i think that's to compete with the xiaomi a little bit and yeah five radars 12 interesting sensors 12 cameras uh that powers the uh god's eye system level two driving system that the wid has so very impressive new entry for byd at the lower hand in china though i would assume that it would eventually try to bring that to other market too because it is like one of the the quinn lineup is one of the most complete one in terms of uh features

And then at the high end of the market on the Yang Wang, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly. Yang Wang is the top of the line brand from BYD. They unveiled the new U7, which looks to be a kind of competitor to Xiaomi's SU7 Ultra. So it's another like crazy horsepower, 1300 horsepower in that thing. It's crazy. And it starts at under $90,000.

So it's not as crazy as the Xiaomi Ultra that starts at $70,000 for 1,500 horsepower, but still, it's insane. I wonder if people are going to try to import those, like the import luxury vehicles. Maybe. I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, look at that thing. So yeah, basically 1,300 horsepower, 960 kilowatts.

0-60 in 2.9 seconds. Sorry, 0-62 in 2.9 seconds. So that's 0-100 kilometers an hour. So you're getting very low 2 seconds there. So not as crazy as like the S37 Ultra or even the Model S Plaid, but still pretty crazy. Size-wise, 5,000 millimeters long, 2,000 millimeters wide. It has the top-of-the-line Godi A system with

which has the equivalent of Navigate on autopilot like Tesla has, a bunch of ADS features, 135.5 kilowatt hour BYD blade battery system for up to 447 miles of range. So that's very good because I think the Ultra has lower range than that because the Ultra went more with the performance rather than the range. This one, you still get crazy performance and also very good range. 500 kilowatt charging range.

Very impressive stuff. You cannot only, let me just zoom in on the pictures there. You have the interior is offered in like a four seater configuration like you see here or a five seater configuration. Oh, we have a passenger display in the front too. Very extensive instrument cluster. Rear window cameras instead of the rear. You also have mirrors though, I think. Yeah.

They have DeepSeek AI integration. You remember DeepSeek? It's like China's open AI equivalent. Yeah, it's getting into like DeepSeek, getting into cars, getting into robots already. They're not kidding around. Yeah, very impressive stuff from BYD here. It's crazy that they can do that and they can also do like that $16,000 Quinlan thing.

all right last thing we're going to discuss before we jump into the comment section is the nissan leaf that's coming up later this year it's making its comeback as a completely different vehicle so that that's something i've been thinking about for a walk is if you remember said a year and a half ago two years ago whatever nissan brought me to japan and they showed me their entire lineup of electric vehicles coming and everything but they had me like signed an nda and everything i couldn't even talk about it i'm like these

They showed me like six different EVs that were supposed to come in the next few years. None of them have come yet. But the Nissan Leaf was on them. They showed me a Nissan Leaf. And I'm like, this is not a Leaf. This is like a nice little crossover SUV type of thing. And now they finally unveiled it. A lot of people are making comparisons. Like this is basically an Aria and a fair comparison, I think.

Still a concept vehicle that we're seeing here in just a few angles. So you have this front end here, which I like. It's kind of like a bird spreading its wing type of front end with the headlights. I think it looks pretty cool. I think it's a good take on the light bar because everyone is doing a light bar right now. So I think this is at least a little bit more creative with it. And I think they did that.

you have a little bit of a more of a side angle here you can see it's very much a crossover smallest uv type thing this was a prototype that was spotted earlier this year so you can see it's still quite low so it's still kind of more leaf like than the area where you're going to be sitting a little bit higher the other side here again another crazy angle

But yeah, this thing is supposed to come later this year. We're going to have a full-on deal, all the specs. I think what I see is I know people a lot are comparing it to the Ariya, but I think the Ariya might be a little bit too pricey for other people. So I think Nissan is not too worried about bringing a vehicle close in form factor since...

since they figure it's going to be probably lower end than the aria is i think i think that's the thinking yeah it would be nice to see some more form factors though from nissan especially like truck pickup suv yeah i mean it would be nice to see a lot of things from nissan they uh they're supposed to be they're supposed to be a leader in evs they had the the leaf in 2010 and then the aria like 2021 or whatever made no sense all right let's jump into the comment section all right

Speculor says, question, what other Hyundai Kia EVs will they build in Georgia? And then a follow-on question, will Nissan build a new LEAF in Smyrna, Tennessee? So Hyundai Kia, you have the EV9 now that's produced in Georgia. The Ioniq 9 is coming and you have the Ioniq 5. So basically the Ioniq 6, I think, is the one that's going to be increasing prices a lot.

And Kia, the EV6 is not produced in the US either, I think, right? I think it's coming from Korea. Yeah. So that's a bummer because I think the EV6 is a really nice car too, so it's going to be a lot more expensive. The Leaf in Tennessee, I don't know. That's a good question. I would assume so if they want to launch it in the US now. Yeah, they should. Lucid is offering a 4K discount to Tesla owners who traded in for the Air. I think that's quite a bit less than the...

Polestar. Polestar? Yeah, Polestar 3 is like $20,000. $20,000, yeah. They're going pretty aggressive. All right. "When did Donald Trump become concerned about fentanyl? Maybe we should remind him his key advisors ODing on ketamine. There's no way for Canada to fix a problem that doesn't exist." I think we're talking about the Canada tariffs. That was one of the- I think it's purely a technicality at this point, the old fentanyl thing at the border. Everyone knows that it's not true,

And that Trump is just using that as an excuse to have the executive power to enforce, to break the free trade agreement. But it's just like us as Canadians, we cannot do anything about it. So it's like you guys could be mad at your president lying to implement a policy. But I think we're way past that at this point. I think most Americans are...

like they know it's happening with every other policy. I've seen it here in Las Vegas. I've seen billboards paid by Canadian government that basically like trash the tariffs. They're like, tariffs is a tax on your grocery, some things like that. So it looks like the Canadian government is trying to fight back directly with the US voters. Don't know how much this will work, but.

Yeah, I don't know if Vegas is the place for that. Anyway, whatever. Skeptic says, I think the U.S. is about to enter the find out phase of the F around and find out with its extreme protectionist nonsense. Yeah, that's fair.

Jamie, our colleague, says 1.8 million. I think we're talking about Trevor here. 1.8 million to avoid 675 million in restitution. Amazing return on investment. That was the restitution. I thought it was like less than 200 million that he owed or something. Still, either way, it's pretty good. I feel like that's the first good investment Trevor's made. Yeah.

and uh Trump all right Anderson 999 LOL love the stream title but hope Maga crazies don't come for electric for speaking out against the dear leader uh Canada yeah yeah and our coming for us I don't know what you mean by coming but they've been like we we've been feeling the hate that's for sure yeah

Question. Are Canadian Tesla dealers completely Tesla-owned? Something I read implied those Canadian incentive cheaters included privately-owned Tesla dealerships. I don't think there's privately-owned Tesla dealerships. No, that's not the case. What people who support the tariffs don't understand is 20% is the cost at port. It's going to change hands, and every time it increases that cost, it also applies to the original 20% added. Yeah, that's something that people... Oh, sorry. Yeah, I don't know. What was the second part? Yeah, it makes a whole... Yeah, it's like... A good example would be like the...

The Mustang Mach-E, for example. The Mustang Mach-E is built in Mexico, but the battery pack is built in the U.S. So you have... It creates jobs in the U.S., building the battery pack and everything, and then it has to ship it out to Mexico. And then Ford assembles it in Mexico, ships it into the U.S. for the most part. In North America, Mach-E is mostly sold in the U.S. So now what could happen at this point is...

Because mind you, like right now we're just talking about the crazy, stupid Trump tariffs, the U.S. for things coming into the U.S. But now the other side of the coin is the retaliatory tariffs that are going to come from all these other countries that were smacked with the tariffs. So you could see like Mexico. All right.

let's put a 25% tariffs on that battery pack. So now Ford is going to have to pay like 25% on that battery coming into Mexico and then ship that car back to the US getting a 25% there. None of this makes sense. That's why you had free trade agreements to make it all make sense and make everyone a winner with assembly of vehicles, with parts of vehicles, with raw material production, which Canada's strengths because we have a lot of metals. But

He threw all of that through the window. And even though what's most likely to happen, tell you, is that he's going to walk back most of it, if not all of it, and

And all these fans are going to say, that's what's funny. When he says tariffs, his fans are like, yeah. When he says no tariffs, his fans are like, yeah. It's like, all right, what's the actual policy here that you're encouraging? Are you voting for a policy or are you just voting for a schizophrenic leader that's just changed his opinion with the

I was going to say with the wind, but it's mostly with bribes and whatnot. All right. We have one dissenter. Wolfrosh says, this will likely save the U.S. car industry, which was doing well already. So I don't know if it's going to save it. Calling it dumb, yet not giving any evidence of why, just shows you're a clown. No, I mean, that guy is not a person at all. We gave plenty of evidence of why.

I should clarify, though, the real why. The real why is that this will increase the cost of all cars sold in the U.S., regardless of who produces it. It's going to increase it. And when you increase the price of a product, you reduce its market. Fewer people are able to afford it. Fewer people are going to be able to buy it. That's as simple as that. It's like it's economics 101. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Carl says, question the Rivian micromobility spinoff startup acknowledgement that was called also that Rivian sees a serious issue with their long-term sustainability viability. I suspect 39 tons of CO2 to build the R1T shocked them. I don't think they care about that, to be honest with you. I think they're just trying to keep their eyes on the prize.

you guys talked about that for the podcast too like yeah so that's a good plug for now yeah we haven't i mean it's pretty pretty new news but um yeah yeah all right moving along og codec says if most car prices go up due to tariffs does that makes tesla pricing almost competitive no but tesla's prices are going to go up too that's the thing yeah and they were already competitive price wise

uh let's see we're moving a lot of conversation this time all right Mike the car geek says what is your opinion of Elon fave unfave somewhat very uh I think he's ventured into the unfave territory yeah I don't like he still does a few things that I can I agree with and everything but for the most part I think he loves the plot and he uh

He's not doing himself or anyone any favors other than, you know, we just learned today that his Doge team is now slashing around in the SEC.

To me, it's pretty clear what he's doing in the government right now. He's cutting down all the agencies that were putting pressure on him, which in his heart, I'm sure, I don't think anyone is really truly evil. I think everyone has good intention and just place it

They just frame it in a certain way that justify their action. So I'm sure that in his mind is like, oh, all these people are coming after me for the wrong reasons and all that. It's not fair. That's a word that he likes to say. Well, that's not fair. You're the richest man on earth and you're like, oh, life is not fair. Like, come on. So now he's making sure that these agencies are not going to affect his business at all.

I think the people is stronger than the engine C's though. I think the grin damage is bigger. Clarification, the EV6 in 2025 is US built. So previous EV6 is no. 2025, yes. That's good. And then the new Chevy Bolt will be US built. On Wednesday, somebody on Red said, we're retooling the plant now to start building the Bolt in the early fall. We'll probably have a few built for crash test purposes in July. Yeah.

Nice. That'll be good to see. We're supposed to see the Bolt. Yeah, the old Bolt was US built. It would be weird if they moved it offshore. Yeah, we should start to see some pretty soon. I would actually like to see the new version. Yeah. This weekend, apparently, I'm going to be tracking that closely. I'm pretty busy now in Vegas for this weekend. But tomorrow, the Tesla takedown movement is announcing their...

their biggest uh protest ever there's supposed to be like 200 protests in the u.s 500 globally like they're ramping things up it's supposed to be like a a big day so we're going to be tracking down see how that goes we hope that if anyone listening to us plan to participate in those things that you do it peacefully any violence is not good for the movement i think and um just make your make your heart your voice heard and uh and let's hope for the best

All right. That's it for the Electric Podcast this week. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please give us a like, a thumbs up. And we're going to see you same place, same time next week. Have a good one.