Trump's Tesla ad, cheaper Tesla model, Mercedes CLA EV, 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, Seth? I'm good. All right. I hope you are because we have a big show today. We have a ton of news. This was a busy week.

All around, we have the Trump Tesla hat that we're going to discuss. That was quite interesting. I quite love the implication to it. We got some results from it, too, that I think are going to be interesting for our listeners. We have our updates on the Tesla takedown. We have an update on the cheaper Tesla model coming up.

We get a good look at the Mercedes CLA EV with all its specs. And it's a very interesting update, a big step up from Mercedes. And we get, at the lesser level, a sneak peek of the next-gen VVs from BMW.

And it looks like, again, we don't have as much detail as we do for the Mercedes, as we do for BMW, but it looks like it's also the Germans are stepping up big time with their EV. And a couple of other news. And then at the end, as usual, we take you guys' questions. So if you have any questions, you can put them in the comment section right now when I get to them in a minute.

At the end of this show, but let's start about this fascinating thing that happened this week on on Tuesday. So on Monday for context, because the context is important here. Tesla stock crashed 15 percent. Now it has mostly recovered this week since then at 15 percent, but 15 percent in a single day after the stock already crashed like 40 percent since its all time high just a few months ago. It looks like Elon Musk was panicking a little bit and he reached out to his buddy Donald Trump.

And Donald said that as a show of faith for Elon to help encourage Tesla, he's going to buy a Tesla vehicle. And then the next day, Elon brought a couple Tesla vehicles to the White House and they held a press conference in front of our house. And the press conference basically amounted to a commercial, an infomercial from the president about Tesla. And you may even see...

can he get like a good a good shot you can clearly see the talking points that was handed to trump and it's basically like a pitch with the pricing of each model it says all cars have self-driving just needs to be turned on with a fee like it was it was basically like a pitch of this vehicle done by the president which was like moonlighting as a tesla salesman for a day and you know i have mixed feeling about this because

It is Donald Trump who has been pushing misinformation about electric vehicles for years, now positively talking about electric vehicles, specifically Tesla, of course. So,

like in if if you put my mission glasses on you could make an argument that this is positive for the mission however you also have to take into account that Elon is his biggest political donor by far and he does that a day after the stock crashes and then

I don't know if you heard that said, but a day later, the day after the infomercials on Wednesday, New York Times and Axios reported that Elon has told White House officials that he plans to give Trump another $100 million in political donation a day after this. So it does like this. Yeah, it's a $100 million commercial. It's the most bad in the Republic thing I've ever seen.

So it is obviously sad for the US that this is happening. I'm not going to lie. But at the same time, it's not necessarily bad for EVs. That said...

It's not bad if it works. So obviously, this is Trump talking to his fans. And Trump has been... It's not the first thing that Trump is trying to sell to his fans. I mean, he's trying to sell steak. He's trying to sell fake universities. He's trying to sell MAGA hats. MAGA hats is probably his biggest success, I would assume, in terms of actual take rate. But is this thing actually working? And obviously...

Most people, even the MAGA people, I think would see through it in the first place that this is not like a legit endorsement of Trump liking Tesla vehicles. He doesn't drive. To start with, he's not allowed to drive. That's true. I mean, he's coming on an 80, so probably his best driving years are behind him to start with. But as the president of the United States, you're not allowed to drive. And even if he's not president, he probably wasn't driving himself like in New York or whatever. He had drivers around.

So yeah, it doesn't make sense as an endorsement. And when you know what happened with the stock, Elon, political donor, it's a pretty obvious quipocro. Quipocro, I don't know how to pronounce that. Quipocro, yeah. Quipocro. And so it devalues the endorsement. And sure enough, today we came out. So it's been just day four since the ad, so it's not like...

We have a ton of data, but the ad is more impactful right away too. So we did an inventory check on the day of the ad on March 11th and one today. And you see Model 3 listings were at 1,100 units. They went to 1,400 units. So it went up. Model 3 inventory went up. Model Y inventory went down from 2,300 units to 1,500.

Cybertrucks stay the same at 1,000 units. So what we get from that, so mult-inventory going up a bit, you know, it's normal. Tesla is producing them, selling a few of them, not too many.

And so no real impact here. It went up. Model Y inventory went down by 800 units. So you could say, oh, this is good. This is probably the Trump bump. And to a degree, it might be. But if you look at the actual chart here, you can see that the Model Y inventory has been going down quite rapidly over the last few weeks.

No more at the higher rate in the last few days than, as you can see, there was a bigger drop, actually. And that's purely because, as you know, in the U.S. right now, the inventory is all the old version of the Model Y that Tesla is trying to liquidate as it's a changeover to the new version of the Model Y. It started delivery last weekend. So...

It's just they are discounting them heavily. You can get one for like $35,000. So the drop, you know, I'm sure he sold a few hundreds of them maybe, but the drop was happening either way. And, you know, most analysts already expect Tesla to be at zero Model Y inventory at the end of the quarter as they move over to the other one. So nothing too crazy there. The Cybertruck hasn't moved at all. But to be fair, I think you can attribute that partly to a containment haul that we're going to discuss in a second.

So the real question is like, did it boost new orders for the new Model Y? And the answer to that is it doesn't look like it because I did check on the delivery timelines for the new Model Y with some Californian and Texas zip codes. And Tesla says that if you place an order right now, you can still get a delivery by the end of the month for the launch editions of the new Model Y. So...

The Trump bump is not great. Let's just say that. And I mean, this to me just looks like another just bad move by Elon. Getting your brain associated with one of the most controversial president of the United States in modern history is just not a smart move at all. But it's just one more dumb move. It seems like of all the people to get involved...

the people so the you have a venn diagram of people who would want to buy an electric vehicle and then you have trump people

And like that overlap is like very small. And of those people that aren't in the Trump camp, everybody else pretty much hate. You either love him or hate him. Trump, right? Yeah. So he's by putting Trump out there, he's alienated a huge swath of people. And, you know, maybe Trump fans, maybe 10% of them are open to getting an EV. So he's, you know, killed 90% of the audience and, and,

gotten 10%. Yeah. Want an EV and can afford an EV too. Like there's, uh, it's these, uh, the Venn diagrams come smaller and smaller and smaller. Yeah.

so yeah the cyber truck has been very difficult to move for tesla but in the last week cannot blame trump for that one because it looks like there's a containment hold on it so we look at some posts on uh the cyber truck owners club forums and on x and facebook and a bunch of cyber truck buyers are reporting that they had their delivery delayed and put on a hold and most of them are not being told much others some of them have been told a containment hold which in the industry it's

basically when an automaker finds a problem with a car, with a new batch, with a new production vehicle batch, if you will, and they don't want to deliver those vehicles because the...

whether or not they have the issue or not, before they need to verify in order not to issue a recall after the fact and having to bring those cars back as soon as they deliver them. So they hold on deliveries, checks everything. Sometimes everything is fine. Sometimes, no, they need to recall it or not recall it because they are still in their hands so they can fix the issue before delivering. But the issue, one person was told something about the issue. I have the, this is the Tesla app service,

dms and uh the tesla employee said that the it's the cantrell concern so it's a the cantrell trim is is this part of the vehicle here if you're watching it's basically the trim that's over the windows and uh close to the roof and uh we've seen problem with this trim before that it was just like fly off of the of the vehicle it's um

Even though Tesla says it's an exoskeleton and it's bulletproof and all that, we know that this is basically a lie. It is by all definition, it is a unibody design that Tesla had. I'm sure that Tesla at one point planned some kind of exoskeleton and they're still using exoskeleton in their marketing because I think they're sort of getting away with it because the doors and some body panels are stainless steel, do contribute a little bit to the structural integrity of the vehicle.

but it's a stretch like crazy because if you look at the actual body of the vehicle, this is a unibody system and they are strapping panels on it just like any vehicle, but not just like any vehicle because in some cases they are just gluing their panel on this and this is what's not working. Although the Kentrail one, I've looked at the part system and they do have brackets for it, but the brackets look good.

look completely on top rather than on the side and the trims is clearly on the side because you have a glass on top so I'm a bit confused about that I'm not gonna lie but at this employee says that it's a problem with this and that's already had a recall for trims like that flying off of the vehicle back in June so it looks like it's coming back like the I haven't really fixed the issue so we'll keep an eye on that as the the cyber truck yeah I put in the article a video here that's pretty useful like you can you can see the actual problem with it like this is the actual

trim can you imagine that thing flying off on the highway it's like a yeah i don't like don't like the sound sound of that it's like a machete flying at you also i i remember there were some um people some um i don't say criminals but like vandals that were just ripping them off with their hands yeah that piece yeah it's not it's not great like it's uh it's pretty for for a car that's like marketed at like

apocalypse proof bulletproof and all that this is this is not a good look so still on the trump infomercial for tesla at the press conference elon made the announcement and the way he made it he made it seem like this is this is a new announcement for tesla he says as a function of the great policies of president trump and his administration and as an act of faith in america

Tesla is going to double vehicle output in the United States within the next two years. So this announcement went viral. As soon as he said it, Trump gave him a big pat in the back like, yeah, there you go. There you go. The only problem with that is it is a complete lie. Okay. And not the doubling of the production capacity. I'm sure that that is what Tesla wants to do. There's no doubt about it. I don't know if they will be able to do it. I don't know if they're going to be the

He's going to have the demand to do it. But what's the lie is that this is a function of the great policies of the president and his administration. That is the lie because this is something that was announced months ago and years ago in some cases. And I did the math. Pretty simple, really. You take these charts here that Tesla shares every quarter. That is the installed capacity for Tesla vehicles.

And of course, this is globally, so you have Shanghai and Berlin also. But you can break it down, and in the U.S., it adds up to a million vehicles. However, the installed production capacity is not the same as the production or the output. So the output is way different than the installed production capacity. Tesla operates, you know, there's some varying estimates, but between 50% and 70% of its capacity right now. They are throttling production down. Why? Why?

Because they're having a hard time to sell those cars. So the Model S and X production is like operating at only 50%. The installed capacity is listed as 100,000 units, but Tesla delivered fewer than 50,000 last year. Model 3 and Y, over 800,000 units when it's producing fewer than 600,000 units.

And Cybertruck, I mean, Cybertruck is the weird one where Tesla is actually listing it at 125,000 units here. But in the last one or two pre-earnings call ago, they said that the install capacity is actually 250,000 units. And Tesla is producing less than 50,000 units right now or producing at a rate of 250,000 units. So really, at best, Tesla's production right now in the U.S. is about 700,000 vehicles.

So doubling that will mean another 700,000 vehicles. So people are like, "All right, what's within the next two years?" So what's the announcement here? Or the new vehicle or is there going to be a new factory? It's like none of that. None of that. Because if you do the math, so first you have the more affordable models that we're going to have another post about that. Though it's specifically about Shanghai, but they're going to come to America too.

Tesla has already announced that they plan to do two new affordable models based on, but not necessarily based on Model 3, they didn't say that, but we have sources that do say that, but produced on the same production line as the current Model 3, Model Y, because again, those production lines are under capacity. And the goal is to fully utilize those production lines. So again, that is 200,000 units that Tesla can have right there towards that 700,000 units goal, because...

US factories are not producing the multi-milli-wire Fremont and Berlin and Texas are under capacity and

Then you have the Tesla Semi, which they just finished the building for the Nevada factory for it. And the production, the volume production is expected to start later this year. And the two-year goal would put them in like in early 2027. So, you know, I don't know how much you can ramp up to that, but the goal is 50,000 units per year. So let's say they achieve the goal, whatever. It's going to be ambitious, but it's not impossible. By then, I mean.

So we're already at 250,000 units. And then you have the cyber cab, which is supposed to start production next year. And this one is based on the next-gen platform. It's going to be built. They're already working on the production line at Gigafactory Texas. And in terms of the production capacity on that, I mean, Elon himself says that he sees a volume production starting in 2026 of at least 2 million units per year, which is obviously crazy. But...

That's what he said. So though he said that that might be at more than one factory. So let's cut it in half, let's say, and a million units. So Tesla just needs to ramp up production from 2026 to early 2027 to 450,000 units per year. And boom, you have your goal of doubling the capacity. So Tesla already planned to double its output in the U.S.,

before Trump, before the election, even before Elon officially backed Trump. So Elon's comment was nonsense. But again, to his defense, he's not the only one saying that. There's a ton of companies that just recycled old announcements and attributed it to the new administration to get some brownie points with Trump. And it works every single time. And it's not like we're going to keep a check on all of Elon's lies too. That's all that we'll be doing.

All right. A lot of news that came out of this little event too. The Tesla takedown movement. So we've been tracking that a little bit. And like last weekend, they were at their ramp up again. And so people tried to mix those together, the Tesla takedown protests with our peaceful protest, grassroots movement movement.

Earlier this week, before that event, actually, Elon put his foot in his mouth again and tried to claim that the Democrats are organizing the whole thing. There's no evidence of that whatsoever. There is some Democrats promoting them, that's for sure. And especially since they've gained a lot of momentum, they want to attach their name to it and everything. So there's nothing stopping that. But he said specifically that AgBluePak, which is a

Democratic Party PAC was behind those protests without not only he didn't supply any evidence of that in his tweet about it he asked people to bring him evidence of that he made the claim and then asked for the evidence after which is you know classic Elon but um

Now, so with that $100 million that Elon gave on top of his $250 million to Trump to get the ad, he also got Trump to say that they're going to crack down on these Tesla protesters or vandals because they bundled them up together and say that anyone that's attacking Tesla dealership are going to be domestic terrorists, are going to be labeled as such.

and get linked here a sentence because of it but Tesla take down came out with a statement this is dissociating itself with any kind of violence it's a non-violent Grassroot protest movement they described themselves at is but they also had it that peaceful protests of public party is not a domestic terrorism which is true uh obviously we are against any destruction of property here like it's

didn't know we needed to stay there. It doesn't help your cause either because people are just going to claim insurance and Tesla's going to get some more business for fixing it. Yeah, the only argument you can make is like Tesla vehicles are going to be harder to insure, which might be the case, but they are harder to sell right now. And when you burn one down, Tesla's like, yeah, I'm just going to claim the insurance.

So, yeah, and they are coming back strong this weekend. So that was a few days ago. I've seen like the whole U.S. is blue with dots of protest this weekend. So it looks like it backfired quite a bit, this idea of like we're just going to crack down on them. Because, you know, okay.

I don't think you should, if someone burns down a car, the federal government shouldn't get involved and you cannot call someone a domestic terrorist or whatever. That's a little bit too much. It's a state crime. It should be local authorities that handle it and it should be handled and there should be a sentence and everything. But I lost my train of thought on that. Oh, yeah. No, I lost my train of thought again. Yeah.

Where was I going? So, yeah. But, okay, yeah. That is like, if they go and start rounding up people that protest peacefully at the Saudi leadership, that will reach a whole new level, though. Because we already saw with the student that was doing protests for Palestine that got arrested this week and they're trying to deport him. Like, there's a lot of that scary stuff happening right now. And so...

We're keeping a close eye to that because obviously people are allowed to peacefully protest. It's their first amendment right and they are perfectly welcome to use it. And if they start using tactics to prevent that because Trump is close to, Elon is close to Elon and vice versa, it's insane. All right, moving on. We got some report this week about the upcoming new cheaper models at Tesla. Yeah.

Specifically one based on the model Y. So this is coming from 36KR, which is like a tech media, sort of like the tech crunch of China, if you will. And the report kind of mirrors what we've been seeing for a while. So since Elon can sell the NV91, NV92 based on the new vehicle platform and only focus on the cyber cab for the new vehicle platform,

They can sell a $25,000 Tesla and then they plan to make closer to like $30,000, $35,000 vehicles on the Model Y and Model 3 production lines. And this report from 36Gurars mentioned a specific one that Tesla China led the development on. And it's a little bit worse than we thought. They are talking about using basically the Model Y, the same battery, the same chassis, the same powertrain.

and everything and just you know what we call um decontent which in the industry is when we just remove content from from a vehicle to make it cheaper and they even reference in the report what tesla did in mexico last year so we reported on that that tesla launched a version of the mobile 3 that's the content in mexico to be a little bit cheaper so it they use

uh fabric instead of the vegan leather and um the they remove like the screen in the back seat they remove the ambient lighting around the front end like a few things like that and they made it like 4 000 cheaper so this is still only available in mexico but now it sounds like they want to do something similar with the model y in uh in china but it could come to other market also

The idea is to launch it later this year. So similar to what Tesla also talked about new model, cheaper models. They also said that it might not be callable a Y, which would also be in line with the idea that's a different model, even though it was going to be very, very close to it.

And they say that they're waiting to see the demand for the new version of the Model Y. So probably they want to take advantage of the demand they have from the new version and not cannibalize that with a cheaper version and just take advantage of having a little bit of a higher price for a little bit before launching it. But there was also another report that came from China also today that's very similar to this one that said that

The vehicle could be a little bit smaller and about 20% cheaper, which would bring it around $30,000, which is pretty good. But personally, I think, especially in China, I think this is a mistake for Tesla because they, especially like if they would have launched like a completely new model that's not based on the Model Y, it would have been different. But since it's based on the Model Y, it's just going to be a little bit smaller, fewer features, not as high-end material.

not only the cannibalization of the Model Y is going to be really big, it's going to further deteriorate Tesla's brand in China, which already has been suffering from, you know, used to be a premium foreign brand that...

that warranted a premium price also. But with the Chinese EVs becoming so much better, not necessarily better than Tesla, but I mean, but better than they were before and higher quality and more luxurious, Tesla has lost that in China. And now it's becoming less and less the premium brand and more just like a regular brand there. And then if you continue that way with a cheaper vehicle, that's the same as your best-selling vehicle, just cheaper.

and less luxurious you're gonna really cannibalize not only the model y but you're gonna come out you're gonna destroy your already super tin some analysts troy tesla which what i think is one of the best analysts on tesla stuff already it's made that tesla is not making any money right now from selling vehicles in china so uh this is just gonna be really squeezing tesla real tight i think all right this was interesting that it came out yesterday tesla sent out a letter to

what's his name? Jameson Greer was President Trump's top U.S. trade representative. They said in a letter in which they said, as a U.S. manufacturer and exporter, Tesla encouraged USTR, this is U.S. trades, to consider downstream impact of certain proposed action taken to address unfair trade practices. So basically what they're saying is like, the trade war that you started might make us a target of retaliatory tariffs, right?

And they didn't explain why. Obviously, this is just as a manufacturer and exporter. Obviously, Tesla can be more directly a target because of the association with Elon Musk and the Elon Musk association with Trump. Sorry. And we already made it clear that Tesla is not impervious to the tariffs that have been proposed by Trump because they...

They take 25% of their parts for US-made vehicles from Mexico and an undisclosed amount on top of that from Canada. They make a lot of the machinery for the factory, including the one that they are developing right now for the next-gen CyberCab. They make that in Canada, the Ibar, but it's not called Ibar anymore, but they bought Ibar and then they made the machinery there.

So it's going to impact Tesla directly. But Tesla is also worried of downstream impacts directly on Tesla. And they are right to be concerned because we have seen that already. We reported before on Toronto removing the incentive for taxi services to use electric vehicles if it's a Tesla, but not the other EVs.

And now we have BC Hydro that runs a rebate program for EV charging station. Now Tesla products are excluded from that. And the BC Energy Minister, Adrian Dix, is also reportedly considering removing Tesla from the rebate on EV purchase program.

So that's no joke. And we also reported on several Canadian politicians saying that they would put a tariff on Tesla vehicles coming to Canada, 100% tariff. So the NPD leader said that. And he doesn't have really a real chance of winning the election coming up, but there's a chance that there's a coalition that could form. And if it does, he could get some power and state that.

So Tesla is basically nervous about it. And they're like, they're concerned about retaliation for the company over the tariffs. And I tell you, Seth, I wouldn't want to be working in Tesla's policy team these days. No. Because you're walking a very fine line because, you know...

These all Trump's action or hurting the company, but at the same time, your CEO is the best buddy with Trump. So you cannot say anything. And also, I would know that, you know, Elon has been praising Trump like crazy. I mean, he says that he loves Trump as much as any other straight man can love another man. That's an actual quote. That's an actual quote, by the way.

And, you know, he's praised a lot of his action, but he's been completely silent on the tariffs. He hasn't said anything about the tariffs, which is – that –

I mean, there's a lot of things that Elon has done over the last few years that have highly disappointed me. But that's like, that's a coward right there. Like you can, all right, you can praise him at every corner when you like his stuff. But when he clearly doesn't like it, I know that Elon thinks this is dumb. I'm for sure Elon thinks this is dumb. He cannot see a good way this is happening unless he like, he really...

He really wants to annex Canada also. I don't know what's Elon's thing on that, but the tariffs and stuff. Because Trump's obvious goal here is to put economic pressure on Canada in order to annex it. He's been pretty open about that lately. The last tweet he had on this, he straight up said it like, oh, well, we can all back off of that if you just become the 51st state. So Trump is basically saying that he's willing to,

to cripple the North American economy, both the U.S., Canada, and also Mexico. He's willing to destroy the livelihood of millions of families in Canada and in the U.S., all just to be the guy that conquered Canada and annexed Canada for the U.S. It is

gross it is completely insane it won't work either like you just do damage in the meantime uh but uh yeah it's so supporting any of that is just it's madness like there's no excuse for it whatsoever

All right, we're going to take a break from Tesla. I'm sure some of you are going to be happy about that. We're 31 minutes into the show here. It's not too bad. We did have the show on it, and there's a lot of things happening with Tesla. But let's talk about something pretty cool here. Mercedes CLA EV. They unveiled the vehicle this week, and there's a lot to like about it. It's a big step up for Mercedes and for EVs in general, I would say, depending on the price. The only thing we don't have right now is the price, so we'll get to that a little bit later, but

Look at these specs, Seth. Did you look into it a little bit this week? Yeah, I love this car. Yeah. 85 kilowatt hour NMC battery pack. Apparently, that's the secret sauce for Mercedes here. It's a 20% bump in the energy density compared to the previous generation of HVCO. On top of, you know, Mercedes has been investing a lot in efficiency. They have their Vision EXXX, whatever, prototype that we...

We urge them to launch a production version of that. But even though they haven't listened to us on that, they do incorporate some of the efficiency improvement they found on that to the other EVs. And 0.21 drag coefficient, very good. They are talking about WLTP range here of 492 miles, 792 kilometers here.

That is wild. Also using an 800-volt system capable of hiding 200 miles of range in 10 minutes. Top charging, DC fast charging range capacity of 320 kilowatts. So this is all top-of-the-line stuff here. Like, you cannot do better, really. This is like...

lucid range it's not the w it's the wtp.epa but like 400 492 miles like it's gonna be over 400 epa it's gonna be like what 410 420 and it like looks like a really nice car and yeah yeah let's talk about the looks a little bit because you know i i think you too but we've been kind of critical about versity's design when it comes to evs yeah the plastic

It looks plasticky at times. This one is the best one I've seen so far from Mercedes. In white, especially in white like that. This is the two-quarter rear view. Incredible. The front end is still not my thing. I'm still not a fan of it. Not a fan of the light bar. Not a fan of the fake grille. But look at it in white.

Yeah. Not bad. In white, it kind of works. So it's not crazy. The size of it, it's basically a Model 3. It's going to be a Model 3 competitor, obviously in the higher end of the Model 3. It destroys it with the specs. Yeah.

The interior, very much a Mercedes-Benz interior. It's a little bit busy for me, but they've made a lot of improvement in the UI. They're using Google now. They have a partnership with Google. They have Gemini AI directly in the car. They use Google Cloud, the automotive AI agent that they offer, and their latest operating system, the MBOS. MBOS, excuse me.

But it's Google that's making a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to like trip planning and charging and all that. So this is very good on that front. Yeah, Gemini is also – did you say Gemini? You also have ChatGPT 4.0 in there. I don't know. It's like CarPlay Android Auto. Yeah. Yeah.

So it will be available in two versions, the 250 plus and the 350 4MATIC. The 250 plus is rear-wheel drive, 260 horsepower. The all-wheel drive 350 has 349 HP. That makes sense. And you can get...

So the range, the top range of 492 miles, 792 kilometers is for the rear-wheel drive version. But you don't lose that much with the all-wheel drive. You go down to 480 miles, 771 kilometers of range. Again, WLTP, not APA. But the...

The efficiency difference should be like the WLTP doesn't take climate control into account, anything like that. So having an all-wheel drive or rear-wheel drive system doesn't really affect anything like that. The efficiency hit is going to be similar on the WLTP as it will be on the EPA. So both these cars are probably going to be over 400 miles, both versions of these cars, of this car, I should say. And red looks like the three-quarter view of the back looks great.

Now, the real question is the price. So how much is this going to cost? We don't know yet. This is coming, I think, later this year. But this CLA is like an entry-level Mercedes. In the U.S., it starts at $45,000. I know. It's very tempting. And so the other thing, we don't know the price, but we also don't know when it's going to be in the U.S. and Canada. Yeah. Yeah.

That's my big question. Yeah. I mean, I would assume it would come. Like, it's a killer product. It better come. If it doesn't come, that's going to be problematic. But when, though? Is it going to be like a year after Europe? I hope not. I hope not. I would hope it's going to be like late this year. And I would hope it starts at like 55, maybe, something like that. It's going to be more expensive than the gas-powered CLA at 45. Yeah, especially with the big battery. Yeah. Yeah.

you know, I wonder if they'll try to make it, you know, after rebates, you know, maybe 10 K more or something. Yeah. I mean, it starts at 55 and then Mercedes likes its options. So like if you start having a lot of options, right. Not going to be cheap. If you're on the all wheel drive, it's probably over 60. And then you have like a few like packages and everything. And like, you can easily get that thing to $70,000. I'm sure. Um,

But I think it's interesting either way. Like even that, like if you can get a 400 mile car for like $55,000...

That's killer. That's going to take a big part of the higher end of the Model 3 market. Gone. We're going to get to BMW because BMW is not sitting on its hands on this. This has shook up a lot of the luxury market this week when it comes to electric vehicles. But obviously, BMW was already working on their thing. But this is our next article. BMW has given some sneak peeks.

So it's not definitive stuff, but we get a better look at the i3 and iX3 are going to be the two next generation, the two first vehicle on the next generation system from BMW. And they're talking about similar things that we just talked about Mercedes. So a 20% increase in energy density from the new NMC cells that they're using. A lot of that, like, you know, we are called Tesla haters a lot, but, you know, I give credit where credit is due.

A lot of those improvements are copied to a certain degree from Tesla. So they're switching to cylindrical cells, which Tesla has led for many years, instead of the prismatic or pouch cells. So this is part of the improvement here. But they are kind of leapfrogging Tesla now because Tesla has been a little bit stinging on that front, on the range front and everything. Like what we just discussed with the CLA, it's ahead of Tesla for sure. Yeah.

Now, these design here are still very much like prototypes. Like it's not – it looks pretty crazy. But this is going to be the new i3 set. I like it. It kind of hits. Like it's interesting. A little bit more boxy, but again, super – Wasn't there a China i3 that looked kind of sedan-like?

I think so. They already have something in China. But it certainly doesn't look like the good old i3 from 2013 to 2019, whatever it was, it stopped production. And then you have the iX3, the new generation of the iX3 because this is already still for sale. That is going to benefit from those 20% increase in energy density, the new electric motor. So they have a new video of that here. I'm just going to stop that for good testing.

You do get another great look at it either but it looks like a significant update to the iX3 also. The i3 is going to make its first official appearance later this year and will launch in early 2026 so about a year from now.

And they're talking about 30% improvement in range, so it's not going to be as crazy as the CLA probably, but it's going to get close to 400 miles, like in the high 300 probably, because the current version of the i4, for example, get around 300 miles, and you can expect boost in range in charging also. So we're going to keep an eye on that. They're going to be unveiled in the coming months. All right, we have three more news articles to discuss before we jump into the comments section. So if you guys have questions for us, now's the time.

You can put them in the comment section and we can get to it in just a few minutes. So let's talk quickly about the BZ4X updated. Toyota just gave the BZ4X the glow up it deserves. Peter is nice. Peter is being nice. It's the glow up it needs. It needs rather than deserve, I think. But this doesn't look bad. I'm not mad at it. But I've never had a giant problem with the BZ4X design. I had a problem with how it drove and...

the range and the charging, but those are things that are being improved right now. So

They are now using some battery preconditioning for the fast charging, and that's going to help a lot, especially in cold weather. However, it's still capped at 150 kilowatts of max charging rate. So this is a little bit like last gen when it comes to EVs. But the preconditioning should help greatly when it comes to the charging rate.

uh this is gonna have uh OTA updates which is useful I didn't know it didn't have that the two battery options are 57.7 kilowatt hour and 73.1 kilowatt hours also available in uh forward wheel drive and all wheel drive this is another thing I'm not a fan of I prefer rear wheel drive the smaller battery is only going to be for the single motor front wheel drive too

Yeah, and the old battery was 71, I think, kilowatt hours. So it's not a huge bump up, but having the lower pack will make the base price lower, I'm sure. Yeah, but I mean, this thing is already super cheap. You can get it, like you can lease it for like $200 a month or something in some places. So yeah, you're right. The battery is a small upgrade, but it's not crazy. The range they're talking about now...

Okay, so yeah, we put an estimate on the EPA. So the estimate on the EPA is up to 252 miles. Okay, now it's 252 miles and it should be around 217, 280 miles. So a 20 or so bump in miles of range for the BZ4X.

So nothing too crazy. I don't think it's like this is going to help probably. But the only reason Toyota is selling this right now is because they have crazy deals on them. It's pretty cheap. Right. I guess also the Subaru Solterra will get the same upgrade. Maybe we'll hear about that shortly. We should expect that. And the Lexus version too. They have a Lexus version of it.

All right, the Rivian came out this week with a big software update with a bunch of different things in it But the biggest one was and for ends free driving. So they went a little bit similar to Tesla's with the FSD update last year where you now you're monitoring They are monitoring the driver's attention rather than having their hands on the steering wheel. So very useful and

uh it's for highway assist so it's only on the highway unlike fsd and i haven't tried it yet it's just for the um r2s that are the second generation of the r1s i should say so it's not for the older version so it's only the version built since uh q2 of last year i think

But this is a first big step towards what Rivian is trying to achieve. They are doing a fully in-house autonomous platform. All the R2s have a very extensive hardware already inside the vehicle. They have a very powerful computer. They have very extensive sensors. And they claim to have the best cameras in any vehicle in North America. And I believe them. They have a very high-tech camera in there.

Now it's all about developing the software to release increasingly better autonomous driving assist system. And right now, so right now it's hands-free, but it's still level two, just like Tesla for highways. And the next goal is for next year to achieve ends and I-free. So a level three system again for highway, which I think is going to be quite important, quite groundbreaking. Yeah.

Now, when you're on the highway, you're going to literally be able to look at your phone, do some emails, even watch a movie or whatever. So if you're going a long distance on the highway, it's like a lot of times that it gives back to you.

They are also releasing a new rally mode. So I had some preview of that when I tested the new R2s. I keep saying R2s. It's the second generation R1s last year. So it tightens the steering and throttle response for driving on ice, mud, dirt, and asphalt. They have a really cool animation too when you put it in rally mode. It's pretty cool. Then they have their performance upgrade too. I think we already reported on that too. So it's...

It's for both Gen 1s and Gen 2 dual motor vehicle with standard large or max battery pack for $5,000, $7,200 in Canadian. You get a boost to unlock 665 horsepower in those vehicles. So pretty good. Tesla did that at one point with the Model S and X too. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Oh yeah, a lot of people have been requesting that you can change your wheel type now.

so that it can take that into account. So if you decide to change your wheel on your car, you can enter that in the system, and it will take that into account to calculate your range estimate. So your range estimate is going to be more accurate based on your wheels. So that's cool. Yeah, especially if you're doing winter tires or winter wheels.

Yeah, winter wheels, if people go off-roading and they have different wheels that they want to put on. So these type of vehicles, they will change their wheels a little bit more often than most. So it would make sense. I really like those new wheels. I don't know how new they are, but the design, the full-length aero wheels from Riven, they look solid. Yeah.

Okay, well, one quick fun post before we go. We got a first like real world look of the controversial ultra luxury EV from Jaguar that they kind of unveiled with the rebranding that they did last year. Last year or this year?

uh yeah I this year is going by so fast like everything is so crazy it's just it's going like that like we're already mid-march right now and uh it's funny because like you look at this picture and I have a video too that I can play and everything and it's it doesn't look real it doesn't make any sense like you look at the eye like I know if you're just listening right now it's not gonna be fun for you guys I'm sorry but like we're watching an Instagram video right now and

It doesn't look like it's like it tricks your eye where you're like, no, this is not a real car. And you have people coming out of it and like, no, it's actually a real car. Like even the interior looks unreal. It's not necessarily a compliment that I'm making, by the way. Like, look at this. This is actually supposed to be a real picture in the street of Paris right now. Doesn't look like a real picture to me. No, it does look like a rendering. Yeah, it looks like a real picture.

It's a huge car, but there's not a lot of cabin space and not a lot of visibility from the windows. I mean, it looks freaky, but usability-wise. Yeah. I mean, it's not a real car anyway. They're talking about having one based on it coming out soon, though, the mid-20 production. Okay, so yeah, unveil later this year, but it's going to be a four-door GT, so it's not even that either. Right.

So it's a GT variant of that. So there's some design accent of this thing, I guess, that they're going to transfer to that. It's going to be 150 to 200, roughly $200,000 car. Yeah, it's a weird one. And not necessarily a good thing either, because the last car that was unveiled that people looked at it in real life, they were like, eh, that doesn't look real. It looks CGI. It was a Cybertruck, and that thing has been the fluff like crazy. So not necessarily a compliment.

All right, let's jump into the comments. We have plenty of comments, it looks like, today. All right, we'll start out with Elon Musk is a Nazi. All right. Hal Kay, who was with us, I think, the whole show, he says, I've never even considered buying a Tesla, but I'm going to get one as soon as I get some down payment in a couple of months.

will not let corruption destroy an incredible company such as Tesla. What corruption? So this guy has never considered buying a Tesla, and now Donald Trump sold him on a Tesla. All he needs to do is get some down payment in a couple of months, and he's in. Does that sound like a good idea? Does that sound like he can afford one? Maybe not. Yeah. Hall, like...

I'm not trying to persuade you not to buy a Tesla. If you can afford it, go ahead. I don't care. But don't get into some kind of financing situation just because you want to encourage Tesla, encourage Elon or anything. It's not worth it. Please don't do that. Yeah, I get the little text one or something. Get a used one. What is the next Tesla Trump linked product? Cyber dog whistle. Okay.

All right. Hal's back. Yes, such a horrible guy advertising America and how he wants it great. Such a horrible person, isn't he? How dare somebody want to make America great? Yeah. I mean, our only problem with this is that he is making a commercial for the products of a company controlled by his number one political donor. Like, if you don't see a problem with that, using the White House to make everything –

it's just cheap it's gross yeah it's like public stuff like it's it's not great yeah it is um i have to say i don't think i've ever felt like i was in the movie idiocracy as much as uh watching that commercial oh we should maybe we should play that video that uh wall street butts had on whatever yeah i tried to find it on youtube the original one i think it's the daily show that made it it's it's

Aside from Polestar, who I think are offering like $10,000 or something for Teslas, are there any other EV companies offering incentives for trading in a Tesla?

Periodically, there's been offers. It's not new. They call it the conquest discount. So they go after a specific brand and everything. It's fairly frequent. And Tesla is obviously in the EV world. They are often the target because it's a bigger target. But right now, the Polestar is the only one that I know of. I don't know of any other one that's active at the moment.

All right. Hal's back saying, y'all keep trading your Teslas. We'll just drop the prices for the rest of us to get them for cheaper. Trade all your Teslas in voice. That's exactly what's happening, by the way. The used Tesla prices are crashing right now like crazy. If I try to trade in my Tesla right now, they give me a gift card to Starbucks and two goats. It's crazy.

All right. Sites like Electrek, spelled incorrectly, probably wouldn't exist without Tesla revolution. How quick we forget. Probably right. Probably right. That doesn't mean we're wrong about Tesla right now, though. Doesn't mean that. All right. Back from Facebook, boycott Musk companies, F Elon and the swastikars. Yeah. Okay. All right. I don't know. Yeah. We can skip some of those that are just propaganda and everything. Exoskeleton quotes.

If Tesla wants more MAGA purchases, they need more superchargers in rural areas. Nothing wrong with superchargers in rural areas. I have several family members in Mississippi that would like a Tesla, but the lack of charging makes them hesitate. Fred, I think you have some firsthand experience with this. Yeah, I actually did a road trip. I did two road trips with electric vehicles down south going through Mississippi, going from like North Carolina all the way to Mississippi and through Alabama. Yeah.

And with my Tesla, it wasn't so bad. I have to say there are a few superchargers out there, not that many. So if you want to go to the more rural part of Mississippi, for sure it's not ideal. But if you want to go from Jackson to up north, like Memphis or something, it's not that bad. Same thing from Jackson to New Orleans or Jackson to Birmingham, Texas.

All the main roads are pretty well covered. When I did it, again, that was a few years ago. I did it with the Mustang too. I had the bigger issue without the supercharger. And back then, of course, you couldn't use the supercharger network with Ford vehicles. Now you can, so probably a lot easier. But yeah, I think it's only fair if you're like, we're talking about real rural areas that are far from the main cities in Mississippi and other southern places.

All right. Got some more from Hal in case you're... Maybe we can just skip all this. There was a correction to an article. I sent this over to Scooter, but on the PG&E announcement with GM Energy, their vehicle to ex-pilots are not exclusive to GM. Ford F-150 hasn't been eligible for a year. Then it continues, we will soon be adding the Kia EV9 with wallbox Quasar 2.

With more to follow, I also have a number of options for a commercial Vita X pilot. That sounds very interesting. Fenwick Hildenbrandt says, don't forget that 100,000 roadsters that will be sold by next year. Yeah, why didn't Trump get a roadster?

I mean, he's not going to drive something. Why not drive a non-existent? Yeah, but Fenwick is right. Tesla still lists the Roadster install capacity as in development, but that has been the case for like six years now. So it doesn't matter much.

"Jaguar burned unsellable D-types being converted to XKSS models in '57." Oh, a little history lesson here. "Fisker parked 338 unsellable Karmas at a port in Superstorm Sandy." I don't know if that was on purpose though. Was it? It's hard to say. -I only remember the part of the story that he lost a bunch of them in the Sandy hurricane, but I don't know.

I don't know if they were there. I mean, I guess it was inventory vehicles that they were trying to sell. So I guess it's a fair comment. Yeah, so the unsellable Cybertrucks are burning. Maybe that's a good way to sell those. Well, I mean, some of them are getting burned through arson. Let's be honest. Though the one in Seattle, there was one attack. It was reported as an attack, but then the police didn't say it was an attack, at least not at first. They were not sure. So I don't know.

But there were definitely some attacks. I'm not going to lie. All right. Dan Oberstay, the name of the new cheaper Tesla. Why not? Rumor has it that Musk even switched to Trump shampoo. It's all platonic, but still weird. Moving on. That's weird that two people from two different platforms have the same comment. It's so nice that Trump is a puppet for the rich. Money can buy you the United Rich of America. All right. Let's try to get some more.

Musk's interests are entirely AI driven. He's using rudimentary AI to ax federal employees a quarter of a billion to have access to your social security number and Medicare data. Trump, Musk and Trump are corrupt. That CLA looks better than the Model 3. Look, that resembled Neo after his mouth was removed in the Matrix. What? That's a weird one. Oh, yeah. I see it. I just, yeah, I saw it.

Yeah, the Model Y, the new Model Y, I'm not the biggest fan of, especially from the rear. It just doesn't make any sense to me. The front, it's okay, but everyone is going with this light bar these days, so it's nothing too crazy. The Model 3, I still very much like, though. Is the CLA better looking than the Model 3? Not ready to say that just yet. I'll need to see the CLA in person, to be honest, but...

I mean, the specs are certainly a lot more interesting. It's not as quick, obviously, but for a term of the range, it's crazy. Mike, the Car Geek says, CLA looks more like a Mercedes, but I'm really interested to see the BMW new class designs revealed. I think it's going to be somewhat competitive with the CLA, yeah. The Chinese i3 was literally a BMW 3 Series with no changes, but full BEV. Yeah, probably not going to look exactly like that new one. Right.

What is your experience with driving in the snow with a rear drive EV using heavy regen? Seems suboptimal. I did have a Model 3 that I drove quite a bit in the snow. The regen on that, it wasn't super strong. But there was times when it was a little bit icy that I would take the regen off because I didn't want to regen and start fish channeling or anything. Yeah, there...

it's the only reason where it would make sense to actually remove the region it's in those icy conditions personally I don't mind it too much especially with these newer vehicles they're like they're pretty good at compensating with the traction control so yeah traction control is great on EVs yeah so you can actually like you can tell right away if like you're letting off the accelerator and you

you get, you get this pretty quickly if you have traction or not, uh, with the region. So it's not the end of the day. They have great things they're doing now. Like, you know, uh, all these doing it, I know Tesla started doing it recently too, but a bunch of them are doing it where you, you, uh,

If you're letting go of the accelerator in the cold, because you're talking about the snow and everything, sometimes you don't have the regen. And that can be dangerous too, because if you're expecting regen and you don't have regen when you let go, that's a problem. But now they are compensating where you can fake the regen with the mechanical brake when it's too cold. So that's also really great.

All right. Cyber, I feel like FSD safety numbers are helped by driver monitoring. Yelling at you if you touch your phone. Probably the world would be a safer place if there was driver monitoring with people in control. Probably. Yeah. Makes sense. Skeptic says the only thing that can stop that jag is a moderately high speed bump. Yeah. I mean, it's very much a concept vehicle. They all are super low.

Trump-Elon using our tax dollars to promote Tesla is not okay and it's not an efficient use of our money. Fair. I mean, that's like problem number 600 of that situation. Jaguar appealing to only the very rich is like GM building the $300,000 Cadillac Celestique. Oh, yeah, I haven't thought about that in a while. But in Jag's case, they don't have any tight plans for what goes below that model. So no future.

Makes sense. All right. Well, that's pretty much it for us this week. We do appreciate it.

Hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, you can give us a thumbs up, a like, a subscribe. All these things help a ton. If you're listening on your podcast app, these days we get attacked like crazy by the Trumpers and the Elon fans, the Elon cultists and all that on our reviews. So if you can counter that with like a five-star review, only if you mean it, of course, only if you enjoyed the show, we'd appreciate it a lot. And we're going to see you same time, same place next week. Be safe out there. Have fun.

Bye-bye.