Xiaomi shocks with YU7, Tesla Robotaxi launch and more
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Three, two, one, and we are live for a new episode of the WTAJ podcast. I'm Fred Lambert, your host, and as usual, I'm joined by Seth Winthrop, joining us live from California. Lake Tahoe is still in California, right? Not Nevada. Yeah, we're on the California side of Lake Tahoe.

Uh, yeah. So sorry about the, um, weird timing of the podcast. Like I'm still in China right now. I'm flying back later tonight for me morning for you guys. And Seth obviously, uh, is on a West coast time today. So I pulled him out of a little dinner. Um,

while we can like squeeze in this little podcast. Well, little podcast, like there has been a little bit fewer news on Electric this week as we've been traveling and not posting as much, but there's still plenty to talk about. Obviously, there was the robo-taxi launch that happened right after last week's podcast. Plenty to talk about there. But now that last night, the Xiaomi YU7, which is the main reason I'm here in China,

was launched. I can talk about it in more details. And the big, like we already talked about it quite a bit because Xiaomi was not shy about releasing a lot of information about it over the last few weeks to even a few months, really.

But the big thing that was missing was the pricing. And now we have it, and it's something else. The pricing is ridiculous. So basically, like, the headline is a $35,000 Ferrari-looking electric SUV with over 400 miles of real-world rain. That's the tagline here. And when I mean Ferrari-looking, like, I don't mean, oh, like...

It's as good looking as a Ferrari. It is a Ferrari Puro Sangay, basically. Look at this. Ferrari Puro Sangay, YU7. Puro Sangay, YU7. It is extremely similar. Things are different here in China. They're not shy about it or anything like that. They respect it. They appreciate it.

Yeah, exactly. It's kind of an homage, if you will. And the CEO, Lei Jian, has been seen driving around the Purohsange. And what I've come to get, Xiaomi has this tagline, and obviously they have been calling the Apple of China for a while, and a lot of their designs are also inspired by Apple. And their tagline is bringing advanced cutting-edge technologies to the masses.

and to the masses meet at a lower price, basically. And that sounds like corporate talk, but they live by this. This is probably the best example because, like I said, Leijon was seen driving the Puro Sangue, and it looks like, basically, I'm paraphrasing what is thought here, but he was driving this car, and he's like, this is a great-looking car. What about we make it all electric with a crazy range of

And we pack it with Xiaomi tech and we sell it so that everyone can enjoy this. Like, wouldn't that be a good idea? And turns out it is a very good idea because 300,000 people, I mean, around that now over 200,000 in just three minutes. And I think now they're over 300,000 people reserve this. And this is not...

not a cyber truck reservation. Like this is actually like a serious commitment because it's 5,000 RMBs, which is about $700, but also is non-refundable within a week. So you place a reservation and then you have seven days to decide whether you're actually going to go through with this.

or not, and obviously 200,000 reservation, like you're talking about the serious wait time. Although the, although this thing is already in production, already in volume production, I was in the factory just two days ago and the, they were coming out of the factory already, uh, in, in significant volume. And, uh, they built out like a little bit of an inventory before the launch with a bunch of, uh, different configuration, like, like, um,

sort of designed by like pre-packaged by the designers with the recommended, if you will, colors and interior matching and wheel configuration, all of that. So the few batches of that ready to go that people are going to take delivery like right now, basically. But yeah, if you look at the specs, like

they're going after the Model Y and it's not me saying that, it's them saying that. Tesla earlier this year, when they launched the new Model Y, they had the best-selling car, no one's close tweet and everything. And then Leijon retweeted that, like, we'll see. And then they basically benchmark everything against the Model Y. Now, obviously, the design itself is subjective, but

To me, it's extremely solid. It's way more as long as what you said, but I would prefer a Perot Sange slash Wahoo 7 to the new design of the Model Y. But the specs is really where it shines. In terms of size, it's a little bit longer and a little bit wider, but...

still very comparable in size. The thing is the range. The range on this thing is pretty insane because they're packing like crazy battery pack in there. 96 kilowatt hour battery pack for the base version and the pro version, which are equipped with LFP cells, giving you 835 kilometers, 519 miles for the base version, which just has a rear wheel drive. And then the pro, which is all wheel drive, 770 kilometers, 478 miles. That's on CLTC, but

You know, with that patchy pack size, like WLTP and LPA would most like for sure with the rear wheel drive would be over 400 miles and probably a significant getting more. And the pro also most likely just over 400 miles on EPA. Same thing for the max, which has the more powerful motor with crazy acceleration. That's the one I tested earlier this week, 760 kilometers of range, 472 miles per

That compares to the Model Y in China. So we're comparing like apples to apples here because it's both CLTC. The rear-wheel drive has 593 kilometers, 269 miles. So, you know, 150 more miles for the rear-wheel drive of the YU7. And 447 miles, 719 kilometers for the long-range all-wheel drive, which you would compare to the Max or the Pro. And the Xiaomi being done there too.

So it's not as efficient because, again, bigger battery pack, more weight. It's also packed with features that adds to the weight and lower the efficiency. But I was only allowed to drive it on...

A month and roads that, like, they have, like, a private resort here that are like, a 4 kilometers long month and roads that we were driving back and forth on that. Because apparently, even though I got that temporary driver's license in China, they say that you can only you have to rent a card. So they have to rent the car in your name to be able to drive it on public roads. So, yeah, I was actually able to drive other cars on public road by renting them, but not this 1, because it was a Pre production model and not.

ready to be rent out basically that that's what he told me so obviously driving up and down mountain roads the efficiency is not a good look but i i managed to get to the setting so obviously this car is all in chinese they haven't translated anything of the ui yet because it's only available in china for now though there were plenty of

foreign journalists here. I was one of two North American journalists from a North American publication there. It was us and it was InsideEvis that was there. Other than that, it was like all European journalists, some UAE people, but it's clear that they're aiming to launch in those markets.

So this car that they gave me, I was able to find that they already had 4,868 kilometers on the odometer and spent 1,133 kilowatt hour. But again, this was driven all week by like Chinese media, international media. So it, you know, people drive it a little more aggressively and they drive it up and down that mountain road. So it's not,

the greatest look, but that's still 4.3 kilometers per kilowatt hour of use. And then when you take into account, like put that thing in comfort mode and eco mode instead of sports mode, like everyone puts it for the test drive and driving a little bit more efficiently, and you can most likely get a lot out of that car. The powertrain,

The single motor rebuild drive base model has 235 kilowatts of power, 0 to 16, 5.88, which is also faster than the Model Y. They made sure to say that during the presentation. The Pro adds a motor to the front for a total of 365 kilowatts for 0 to 60, not 0 to 60, actually 0 to 100. So it's 62 miles per hour, 4.27. And, yeah,

3.23 for the max version, which I was testing. That thing is really powerful, especially if you put it in Sports Plus and you can customize your own mode with that. The level of customization in this car set is pretty insane. You can decide to put all the power in the back if you want, all the power in the front for some reason if you want to do that. You can balance it. You can

You can control, obviously, the suspension. So, yeah, that's the thing, too. Like, compared to the Model Y, the Model Y, the new version, has a big improvement in suspension, and it has active dampening. But this thing has active dampening and air suspension on top of it. So, it's five-link in the back, independent suspension with double wishbone in the front, on top of air suspension with three inches of travel that you can adjust. So, very smooth suspension on this thing.

Yeah, you can post the video on YouTube yesterday. Like we did a whole walk around live unedited with going to the features. There's just so many features in that thing. It's insane. Like I was, I,

I was expecting it because obviously Xiaomi's a personal electronics brand. Uh, they have, uh, they've been called like that again, like the Apple of China. And by the way, like the, the presentation yesterday, uh, it was, it was quite something, the presentation with Xiaomi, uh, it was three hours long and, the first two hours were about all their electronics and everything. And then at the end, they kept the, uh,

They kept the YU7 for the end. And they also squeezed a new AI glasses at the same time, the launch-aimed AI glasses. But it was very long, but very well organized. It felt a lot like an Apple presentation. So

obviously a lot of personal electronics in there, their iPads and their phones and everything. And then at the end, there was the car. So it felt a lot like, all right, this is like what Apple might have done if they were going with their car program that they killed. It felt a lot like that.

The driving experience, so even though the technology, I knew I was going to be impressed, and I was. Even with high expectation, it surpassed them. But the car aspect was obviously the biggest question mark here. And, I mean, we know the success of the SU7, the SU7, that they actually call it here. And, yeah.

and we know that the their approach and what has been their success in china talking to a lot of owners here and a lot of uh people in the industry is that xiaomi unlike a lot of the other chinese automakers which are doing super good in terms of the technology side aspect and the powertrain and all that they're not as much focusing on the drive experience and uh and obviously uh lay john

is like a driving enthusiast. And I actually talked to the guy that broke the Norbering record for them with the SU7 Ultra. And the way that this guy started at Xiaomi is teaching Lee John, he's a race car driver, teaching Lee John racing, automotive racing. And what he did, which was pretty smart, is that

Then he started a program at Xiaomi, which Xiaomi only has an automotive program since 2021. But he started teaching all his executives, it's high-level executive racing, so that everyone really understands the dynamic of a vehicle and how to approach a vehicle. And he told me that now they have a program, like 600 people in the program at Xiaomi are getting certified as race car drivers, which is pretty nuts. If you have like all your...

management level and executive level being racing enthusiasts it's uh it's a really a competitive advantage so they are focusing a lot on that and uh

And so the most impressive thing is like yesterday I got to drive the Su-7 after I drove the YU-7 and I got, we rented here. I'm here, by the way, also with a documentary series team for the Chris Spain's latest EV documentary that has been following him around for a bit when I report on electric vehicles. And they are here in China with me and the production team has been really, really nice. And when they realized, oh, you know,

You just drove the YU7 and not even the SU7. They went out there and rented me out, went out and I tested it. And it was actually a Funder series of those. One of the first 3,000 that they built. And now obviously they built like over reaching around 200,000 in just over a year and a half.

And I really enjoyed the car. It's closer to my Model 2 performance, I feel like, the driving experience. It's a really fun car to drive. But in terms of the comfort, the interior feel, the overall packaging of the vehicle, there's such an improvement with the YU7, even though the SU7 was already pretty good. So what really came out of the entire experience here with Xiaomi, and I'm sure that you can attest to the performance

uh chinese visa in general because you you went there not too long ago and tested out yourself is the pace of innovation is uh is next level like a year and a half between models they were in man they managed to improve so much and uh there's no sign of stopping down and i i talked to mr lee

Xiaomi gave me like a level of access, like truly, truly incredible level of access right after the unveiling. They had me sit down with Lee for an exclusive 30-minute interview. I haven't even had time to post it yet. We did so many things after the launch. It went so quickly.

Mr. Lee is the head of the program. It's interesting, he doesn't have any automotive experience. But now, I guess he's a race car driver now that he got certified and everything. But he came from the home appliance division of Xiaomi. So you see they're really out of the box thinking. The head of the program is an home appliance guy. Young too. Everyone is so young at Xiaomi. It's insane. It looks like the average age is 30 years old. It's crazy.

But the smart guy obviously talked only to him through a translator, so it's a bit more difficult. But he told me that they are aiming to launch a new vehicle every year now and improve on them every time. And also, unlike Tesla that has difficulties managing several legal programs at the same time, they are...

doing like almost like internal competition where the team that is in charge of the Su-7 is in charge of the Su-7 and keeps working on the new Su-7s and keep improving on the car no matter what. Obviously, they share knowledge between the programs and everything, but now the YU-7, the team that built that is not in charge of keep improving that and so on so that like you keep competing between the different vehicle programs. So I think that's pretty cool and that's exciting like a new vehicle every year like I want to see what's next here.

but again 200 000 reservation in three minutes set um so it's nuts yeah and what what got me like a little bit uh a little bit bummed down the same time is like all right now they have like no reason to expand globally at this point because they already had a 30-week backlog of orders for the su7 now they're gonna have a 50 week on the yu7 probably going to cannibalize some cells for su7 so it's going to normalize a little bit but

but they cannot satisfy demand in China now. So why would they expand globally anytime soon? I still think it's the plan, but I wouldn't expect it to happen too soon because there's no point when you have a 50 week long backlog of order in China, there's no point in going another market. You're just going to anger your customers more. Yeah, go ahead. So I think we have a little bit of a delay because I'm on my VPN.

Yeah, I just think it's good to have so much interest. I feel like Xiaomi has done a really good job of kind of capturing the imagination of the local market. Yeah, I mean, they've taken advantage of already their brand recognition on the personal electronics side of things and everything, and they doubled down on it, and now the EVs are becoming their flagship products and driving everything else. They are good at the little things,

like this product here like for for the for the su7 they have uh a couple analog buttons for for the temperature and everything on the center console which is really nice uh but obviously most of it is touchscreen based uh and the voice command so obviously i don't speak chinese but i i my production staff does here and uh we had an instructor driver during the yu7 launch

that spoke also very good English. So we were able to like play with the voice command. And it's more like a chat GPT experience than it is like actual voice command where you have to say the exact right thing and everything. It's more like a regular conversation that you have with the AI that can access all the features inside the vehicle. So we're starting to see that more. I see like Volkswagen is implementing chat GPT, but not for every function inside the vehicle. So it's like, can be like a separate,

separate large language model versus what is related to the voice command. But for Xiaomi, they have their own thing obviously on their phone already. So now they are integrating that in the car and it's working very well. I would like to see it in other languages, but again, there are no way to do that until they launch globally. But other than the voice command, everything through the touchscreen. So

They had accessories where you can add this seamless looking that looks like it's stuck on the vehicle, but it's actually just snap at the back of the center display. And then you have some nice analog buttons, again, just for temperature control. And you have the dial for the volume. So those are the main thing that people normally complain about, people that love the analog buttons. They want media control and they want EC control. So that's there.

The Su-7 has a very good heads-up display, but the YU-7 went with something completely different here.

It's hard to show on camera. So I have a picture here and I showed a little bit of there in my YouTube video, but even then it's sort of expensive. It's an actual display that sits at the end of the dash, but it's on a fully black background and it runs completely from the driver's side to the passenger side. And it's separated in like three sections. And you see a little bit here, the screen shows a,

the customizability of all these different sections. You can change like an instrument cluster on the left side. Obviously, that's probably what you want. You can have a clock on the middle or you can have like your efficiency control. You can have your navigation. You can change everything. It's all interchangeable and very easy to do. But what's interesting is like

the way it's sitting, it looks like a bit of a heads up display, but it's clearly a screen. So it's a little bit brighter and obviously not just a driver can see it. Everybody can see it. So I was a little bit skeptical at first when I got into the car. I'm like, oh, this is more like gimmicky and everything. But when I started driving the vehicle, I was like, no, this is actually like it does replace the heads up display because

you don't have to change your vision. It's just at the bottom of your field of view. But it's not also in the space of your field of view. So it's like a best of both worlds situation. I really enjoyed it. And they have like those little avatar, which again, everything is customizable. So if you think it's too like stylish and everything, you remove it and you're pasted by something else. But the little avatar, like if you take a left turn really fast, it will like blow away on the other side and everything. It's pretty cool.

The level of comfort in the car is absolutely next level, both front seat. So even the driver's seat can go zero G position with a leg rest at

10 point massaging system and I've been in plenty of like luxury vehicle with massage system and they feel like just like little hair pockets in your back and everything and you don't feel like much this is a lot closer than like those mall those mall chairs or airport massage chair that you have like actually like I would I would use this

The back seats are also reclining at 135 degrees. They also made sure to beat Tesla on that with the new Model Y adding 120 degrees, I think, reclining back seat. You also have like an optional fridge in the back that's actually pretty cold. You have...

A ton of storage all across. Again, they're really good at the little things. So they even have these mounting systems that they had in the Su7, but this one, the YU7, they went a little bit better where they are self-powered. So there's power in them, 27 watts of power, and they sell those little, so they sell a lot of nice little accessories, obviously, so it's a big aftermarket for them where you just plug them in and you can add all of Xiaomi's like

equivalent of like dash cam cameras, GoPros or phone mounts for your phone and everything. And they are all going to be powered with that. So it's super seamless. You don't have any cables floating around or anything. It's really good for that. We used it for our GoPro camera in the car. Like we just put it in and it worked out.

They have other magnetic stuff too, like for glass holders, for tissue holders. At the launch, they made a big deal about the tissues. And then they have the ADAS suite that is absolutely nuts. So they call it the Xiaomi HAD. So it's only in China right now. So it's only at assisted driving. Only level two is available in consumer vehicles.

I did a robo taxi drive, by the way, yesterday set with Baidu and flawless, flawless. That's, that's a level four system because it's a commercial ride dealing, just like the robo taxi service at Tesla lunch in Austin. Although there's no, no one in the passenger seat ready to press the kill switch as we're going to discuss in a few minutes. But yeah,

Yeah, it's working on public street in Beijing. In Beijing, it's a little bit limited in the area that it covers, though it's even bigger than Austin, Texas. But like in other cities, like in Wuhan, they cover the entire city now. So it's happening here.

But yeah, in the YU7, they have an all-weather suite that has the latest NVIDIA computer, the Toru chip with 700 tops. They have the LiDAR mounted in the front that has a range of 200 meters. They have a 4D wave radar, 11 cameras, 12 ultrasonic sensors.

Right now, it's, again, just a level two on the highway. It felt a lot like back in the day when Navigator on Autopilot came out. They stole the whole UI of it anyway, so it looks just like that too. But the performance are very similar. So active traffic-aware cruise control, lane-keeping, automatic lane changes. It's just that you have to keep your hands on the wheel and keep attention all the time.

And they're not talking about achieving full self-driving or level three, anything like that. They are saying like they are making their best to future approve the vehicle. And then there's rumors like that, that right now in China, that level three is going to be approved soon for consumer vehicles. So once that approved, then Xiaomi is going to start making, releasing updates towards that. So towards having like a ends off experience on highway driving and

They have the LiDAR system. They already have a nice little demo where you can just activate it, and then you see the cloud points starting to appear with the trees and detecting all around the vehicle, which is pretty cool.

The safety, they were big on safety too, so they know like it looks pretty clear that the YU7 is going to be like their first international vehicle going to other markets and they want to make sure it's crash worthy. The SU-7 already got the five-star rating in China, but a lot of people have questions and stereotypes about Chinese EV not being as safe and Chinese standard not being as high, which

I actually don't know if that to be true, to be honest, but it sounds like they are ready to achieve. Mr. Lee asked Mr. Lee yesterday and he said, yeah, the crash test is to be ready for global markets and they developed their own ideas

alloys and they basically had it like almost like a roll cage inside the chassis the normal chassis they built a high strength alloy system that they had it here in the in the door panels to make it the entire chassis a little bit stiffer but also they squeezed it inside the entirety of the uh of the b pillars and and the um

top part of the frame through the roof. So it's basically a roll cage that's covered by the rest of the chassis. It looked pretty cool.

But yeah, the pricing is what stole the show here. And throughout the entire presentation of the YU7, Lei-Zhang kept referencing the Model Y and a few other vehicles like the Porsche Cayenne too. So looking at the specs, you can actually go against the Porsche Cayenne with those specs, with the quality level that they're talking about. You can actually go against that pricing, which is twice as much as the Model Y in China.

But then when he started to talk about pricing, he made it clear, he's like, "Oh yeah, we're going after the Model Y." And he made actually for each variant announcement, he compared it right away with the Model Y.

So the YU7 standard starts at 253,000 RMBs, which is about $35,000, which is insane. It's about 10,000 RMBs less than the base model Y in China. The Pro, so the first all-wheel drive version, gets started at basically 280,000 RMBs, which is the equivalent of $39,000. I think this one is like the biggest difference. I think it's almost like a 30,000 RMBs difference with the long-range version of the YY.

which is the all-wheel drive too. So that's why they compare it too. And then the Max, the one that I tested, which is the most fully loaded one, even though there's still plenty of options that you can add on top of it, is 329, basically 230,000 RMBs, which is the equivalent of $46,000. And this one is like, I think, 20,000 RMBs cheaper than the Tesla Performance. And then you can add a bunch of options and everything. They have like nine different colors on this thing.

I think three or four different interior colors, then you can add a lot to the interior, to the zero GCs and all that. Those are optionals. Yeah, basically, if this was available right now in the U.S., this probably would be my next car. Really? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. In a hard case, really. You don't even need an English operating system? No.

I mean, I would assume that that would be like, if they were launching in North America, but no joke, like, if I can get it at this price and I don't, I don't have to pay a tariff. So, for example, like, if I could, like, buy one out of China and I just imported myself and even like pay like the $5,000 in a container or whatever. How come I can?

Yeah, I would probably do it. It's just like going to the DMV and getting this thing played and everything probably won't be that complicated. But no joke, it's such a sweet vehicle to drive. Such a great experience. A crazy range for that pricing. Super comfortable.

The user interface, like, I'm sure they are working already to translate this whole thing into a software update and, um.

and get that on because but I mean, I'll learn Chinese because I'm going to be back. So I'm going to be back here testing other Chinese EVs because the main thing that I came out of this with is like it's the pace of innovation. Like Tesla launched a single vehicle in the last five years of Cybertruck. They updated the Model Y, which is I think even like Tesla fans will agree that it's kind of a mild update for the five year update.

So this, with basically, what, 16, 18 months between the launch of the SU-7 and the launch of the YU-7, it's such a big improvement in packaging, such a big improvement in quality, such a big improvement in overall feel of the vehicle. Even though I think the SU-7 is more fun to drive, it's a performance sedan versus what is basically a family-size SUV that's very sporty.

It's truly impressive. And then the fact that they ramp up the production to 300,000 units capacity per year in just over a year. I understand why the West is scared about that. I understand why Jim Farley said the 27 is his favorite car. I understand why he built an entire Schankwerk team to replicate basically the platform that...

Xiaomi built and yeah, and they're one of many, they're one of like a dozen other companies that are doing very well in China right now in the EV market. So, and there's 80 different manufacturers, auto manufacturers in China. It's massive. So yeah, 200,000 orders in three minutes. And so we got the other big headline here. All right, let's talk a little bit about the RuboTaxi launch here, Seth.

So it did launch on the 22nd, as promised, but as expected, as we learned, we talked a bit last Friday on the last podcast because we just had seen the invites that there is a

There's a passenger in the front seat, a Tesla employee, a supervisor. So this is not actual unsupervised self-driving. It's 100% supervised. It's just they moved the supervisor from the front seat to the passenger seat. And they have the finger on the kill switch. You can even see there's still the stop and pullover function in the center display. But they also have their finger right on the...

door on latch passenger side door on latch bottom. I'm sorry.

And every single one of them have that. But we've seen actually a few interventions already from the supervisors, but the intervention we've seen more than clicking on the screen. So I don't know if it's just that, but actually we've learned from Tesla has only invited a bunch of influencers of Tesla influencers and Tesla investors on X that have been obviously praising the system, even though it's basically FSD with someone from Tesla driving you around.

It's definitely a kill switch that they have their fingers on. Everybody is driving with their, not driving, like riding with their finger on it, ready to go. So already saw quite a few interventions already, quite a few mistakes. The car drives on the left lane, on the wrong lane, then come backs in.

Kim Java's got like a, what could have like the car did a big phantom breaking event that like threw her around a little bit. And they assume it's the sun glare though. We don't even know. Tesla has not to have this issue with that. Um,

oh yes there is the the time they were drop off in the middle of an intersection so the road taxi like determined that the drop-off point would be like before the end of an intersection like a four-way intersection and the tesla influencers they came out like oh okay uh okay yeah we're dropping off here and then like they acted like this is was okay when the car drops you off in the

Oh yeah, one of the first interventions was a UPS truck was like backing and the robotaxi was kept going forward towards the truck so the supervisor had to hit the button. We see the car driving like 27 in the 50 miles per hour zone, 32 in the 20 miles per hour zone. So blatantly breaking traffic laws. Yeah, in this video here, it break for a police vehicle that was...

Park on the side of the road with their lights on. So you can see in the video here, like it was not a safety issue whatsoever. And the police vehicle was certainly not after the road with accuracy at all. It was just intervening on somewhere. And I think it was a parking lot on the side of the road. You can see it coming up here in a second. Yeah, they are on the side of the, another intersection on the side and inside of a parking lot. And the car like phantom brake for it basically.

did it again now. Obviously, this is a little bit dangerous if you have someone behind you. Some people said that there was a crash, but I think it was just a very tight squeeze that freaked the car out a little bit. There's a lot of questions about this. This, to me, with all the problems, it looks like

FSD with the supervisors on the passenger seat, which I'm not mad at it, by the way. I'm being called a Tesla hater for saying that. If Tesla is going to launch something like that, I would much prefer that than they would go without it because obviously it's safer. It's just that I don't understand what is there to be crazy excited about because to me, the only reason you get excited about that is I've never experienced FSD. All these people have FSD. Yeah, it's FSD with somebody...

instead of the driver's seat, they're sitting in the passenger seat. So everything that it's actually doing, we've seen FSD do before. So it's not like, okay, there's the little ride-dealing aspect of it that they added some software. Sure, that's okay. But I just was in the Beidou Apollo Go and they have that too. It's nothing crazy. Waymo has that too. And Waymo is way more impressive because Waymo doesn't have a supervisor in their car. So I just don't understand why this is so impressive. And

I guess the idea that they have and the stock went up like 10% on the first day, it came back down quite a bit after that. I think people came back to reality and also people saw like Uber going up at the same time. It was like, yeah, Tesla or Rotex was supposed to kill Uber, but now Uber is doing like very well. So what is that about? So the...

The idea here is that Tesla could scale a lot faster than Waymo, and we've seen no evidence of that really because, again, this is basically FSD optimized for us. By the way, now we have the actual region. I don't think Jamie put it in this post, but it's basically South Austin, so it's like half of the size of Waymo's service area in Austin.

And the idea is like now Tesla is going to completely outpace Waymo, which is, again, bigger in Austin alone. It's also in San Francisco and the South Bay and Los Angeles and just is spending 50% in those markets. It's in Phoenix. It just launched this week in Atlanta. So I... All right. In my view, like even if...

Tesla just confirmed that it's about six years behind Waymo because six years ago, basically, Waymo had exactly that. So, robo-lexi service with a supervisor in the passenger seat.

And about a year later, they removed the person in the passenger seat. They still have some testing around, by the way, with people in the passenger seat for their highway services that they're trying to deploy in some markets now. And obviously, in other markets, when they start testing,

But they also have a working service without it. So yeah, Tesla is like either six years behind Waymo and that's if they remove the safety driver within the next year, basically. But the idea is like now it's going to scale a lot faster. Why? Because it's vision only, which, you know, Waymo has vision. They just also have LiDAR too and they have mapping. And yes, that has too, but Tesla has vision.

had extensive mapping and ground-truthing of its system in South Austin before launching this service. So I really don't see any strong evidence that Tesla is going to catch up to Waymo anytime soon. And even if for some reason it can scale like three times faster than Waymo, you're still years away from this system even being remotely profitable because Waymo is still not profitable. And it does 200 plus thousand paying rides per week.

And now also Tesla is facing another problem with the Robotech C, where the Texas has just passed new legislation to introduce new rules for autonomous driving system, where for having a commercial service like this one, Tesla is going to have to prove that it complies with level four. Where am I? Charging system here.

It's almost breaking. Okay. To level 4 SAE, level autonomous driving and a supervisor with a finger on the kill switch, that is not level 3. That's still level 2. So...

would not be able to offer this as a commercial service with the supervisor. And it wouldn't want to anyway. Like, Tesla doesn't want a scale like that. Obviously, it's not scalable to have, you cannot have thousands of robo-taxi out there with someone in the driver's seat. It's not as, it's the same problem that the

taxi has. You still have to pay someone in the car. It makes no sense. So yeah, Tesla is going to... And this law is coming to effect September 1st. So Tesla has to figure out something by then. But to me, it's pretty clear this whole thing is like a stock pump. I think Tesla is panicking a little bit with the automotive business going down rapidly. It looks like it's going to be down about close to 100,000 units here over a year in Q2. We're going to know in the next few days on July 2nd.

And Tesla doesn't have the excuse of the Model Y changeover for that. So it's a tough situation for Tesla because the idea was like, all right, all this automotive business going. So yeah, the remote taxi, that's pretty much it. Well, we're going to keep an eye on it and everything. But I think if you're a Tesla investor, if you're a Tesla fan, you should temper your expectation a little bit and

and also just come to the conclusion just admits that if tesla is not releasing any data about this it's not a good look like they've never released any data about fsd and there's good reason why because it doesn't look good and uh now it's uh they answered all nets this question that was due by the 19 by the way uh but they also asked it so not to release them normally this is public and they said don't release any of that that wouldn't be good for us uh why do you think it wouldn't be good for that because

because it don't look good because it's basically a demonstration for a show. It's not an actual scalable service in the short term. Other bad news for Tesla is Omer Ashfar. You remember that guy yet? Yeah, it's tough.

Yeah, he kind of became Elon's chief of staff after Sam Teller, who was a long-time well-known chief of staff of Elon.

And so he was kind of, you know, not a glorified assistant. That's not fair because, you know, he was an engineer and he had some project that he was leading and everything. But he was like the right-hand man of Elon. And then he sort of took the blame for something. He's seen, obviously, as the chief of staff, he's seen like an ultra loyalist to Elon. And when there was this little problem at Tesla where Elon was –

trying to build a glass house literally in Austin and looking at some like very difficult to get custom glass system for the house, which Elon denied publicly on Twitter at first when the report came out in the media. But then it was confirmed by his biographer in this biography that it was actually happening. So another like quick, easy Elon lie, like, oh, the media is lying about me. He's like, no, turns out it was all true.

So the glass was hard to get. So apparently they went through Tesla to get it, which even I'm sure that Elon was planning to pay for it. I don't think Elon was like literally trying to steal directly from Tesla. He's so good at stealing indirectly. He was not going to do it directly. Or I don't know. Maybe he thinks he's completely above the laws and everything.

But you're not supposed for a public company to use the company resources for private benefits. It's as simple as that. So even if you were planning to pay for it and everything, just using this as resources, supply management resources to get the class is against regulations.

So there was an investigation on that. Apparently, a few people got fired and apparently, Omed was next. Omed was going to fire, which would make sense because if someone was managing that for Elon within Tesla, it would have been Omed. But ultimately, it was for the benefit of Elon. So what happened is that in 2022, shortly after that happened, Omed moved from Tesla to what company?

SpaceX. So a lot of people saw this and I think it's a fair assumption that Omed was taking the blame for this mismanagement at Tesla and got a slap on the wrist and maybe didn't get fired but resigned and Elon was like, nah, it's not a problem. I'll just have you work on some project in SpaceX at the time and you can just follow him around all the time as my chief of staff. You're just not on Tesla's payroll.

But then two years later, last year, he came back at Tesla and had a big upgrade from being chief of staff to project director in the ICU office or whatever, to basically leading our operation in North America and Europe.

So quite the upgrade. And now we're told by a new article on Forbes that he's been let go, apparently. He's been fired. Elon Musk fired Tesla's head of operation in North America and Europe amid declining sell on both regions and actually vehicles brand failing popularity, according to people familiar with the matter. Tesla, Elon hasn't commented on it yet. Omen hasn't commented on it, at least at the time of writing this article last night.

But this is a big deal, obviously. So Omed is taking the blame for Elon again, because obviously if Tesla's sales are down right now, it's because of Elon. It's not necessarily because of Omed, even though he was an Elon loyalist for sure. So it looks like he took the hit for it.

By the way, we're going to have time to take a few questions maybe in a few minutes. So if you guys have questions, I know a lot of people are watching live today, obviously, because we didn't give you any notice ahead of time that we were changing the time and everything. And it's also very late. 1 a.m. on the East Coast. Yeah, on the East Coast. And I guess you're still on East Coast time too, Seth. Yeah.

Feels like it, yeah. Yep. And for me, I need to go grab a ride to the airport in the next hour or two.

All right. But if you guys have questions, I see Gandalf is there. David Pern was our regular on the podcast. I appreciate you. David is there. So if you guys have questions for us, you can put them. We're going to get to them in a few minutes. Before we talk about a little two or three more news items, I want to talk about the Electric Formula Sun Grand Prix. It's a very cool project that Electric has been sponsoring for the last few years now, and it's coming back. Is it next week? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, it's...

July 3rd through 5th will be like the big race days. Yeah, unfortunately, I won't be able to be here again. Like the timing is so bad for me that I'm literally coming back tomorrow. Well, two days now with all the flights and I need to be home after being out for like a month and a half at this point. So I'm going to miss it. But if you guys are around in Kentucky, right? It's in Kentucky. Is that again?

Bowling Green, Kentucky. Yeah, Bowling Green, Kentucky. It's a very cool challenge where a bunch of students from a different university all across North America. Well, now we have the full team schedule here. So Purdue, Kentucky, Florida, Berkeley, UT Austin, Iowa State, RIT. I don't know what RIT is. Is there like this North American university? Do we have European this time? No?

No Europeans, but Puerto Rico, yeah. Yeah, Puerto Rico's in there. McMaster is in there. Montana State. Toronto. Montreal. Calgary. So a lot of Canadians are competing this time. So they're going to compete. So it starts on Monday with the scrutineering. It's going to be on Tuesday. Then you have the Outer Challenge. You know what that is, huh?

oh yeah it's uh the math software thing okay uh which continues on thursday then you have some odd track time on thursday also with uh evening charging morning charging on friday more hot tracks again charging and then another day of odd tracks on the fifth saturday uh with the awards similar money at the end so this is this is great for

If you're in the business, if you want to recruit some potential engineers, these guys have real-world experience working on actual electric solar vehicles. It's a great project to learn, and it's also just a great project to

help push efficiency in electric vehicles. So come check it out at the National Carvet Museum Motorsport Park in Bowling Green, Kentucky next week. And Seth, are you there the full week? Are you there a couple of days? Yeah, I'll be there the third through the fifth. Jeff Benjamin is also going to be there for video. And Aaron, our social media guy, is going to be there from the second to the fifth.

Alright, so you can talk to Seth, you can talk to Jeff who's also a big into electric vehicles and Aaron is also an EV nerd that does a lot of our social media stuff and he's been right on top of the Electric Solar Challenge Grand Prix for a while. We get a little bit of news on Lucid that they're

Slowly, one little drop at a time, releasing a little bit of information about their next-gen midsize EV platform. Now that we learned it's going to support three different vehicles in the $50,000 range, so a significant drop in pricing down market for the brand. What they released this week is confirmed. They keep using that word, like three top ads. I've never actually...

Heard that word in the automotive industry. Do you know what that means? Uh, not sure. Yeah. I don't think, I don't think, uh, Peter explained it in the article. Like, uh,

I'm not even sure what that term means. But more specifically, they're going to do an electric crossover, not too surprising, very popular platform, Model Y best-selling car in the world crossover. They're going to do a sedan, and they're going to do a third vehicle also that they haven't talked about just yet. But the first two are going to come right back-to-back pretty quickly, and then a turn one a little bit later next year, it sounds like.

Obviously, Lucid had just a lot of expansion with the bought out a lot of the infrastructure from Nikola in Arizona after the bankruptcy earlier this year. And they do believe that that's going to help them ramp up a little bit faster because they have a lot of infrastructure ready to go. And it's already close to their existing Mesa Grande facility in near Phoenix. Then we have a couple of Cadillac news updates.

The Optic 2826 has been revealed and obviously not a giant update because the Optic just came out, but it's rapidly becoming a bestseller for the Cadillac branch, which is going all electric. And the big update is a bolting NAC system. So it comes with the NAC connector now and has direct access to the supercharger network without having to use an adapter. So that's pretty useful. Other than that...

I don't think there's many changes. All the different trims are 302 miles of range. There's a 9K resolution display, 33-inch display. That's massive. Charging 150 kilowatts, they're talking about 79 miles in 10 minutes. I need to test out the Cadillacs a little bit more. I'm going to actually test out to do a full review.

of the Escalade IQ end of August so I scheduled that for the end of August I'm gonna have 10 days I'm gonna drive it with a bunch of friends all through BC Vancouver Whistler then we're gonna go to the Vancouver Island so I've never been to the Vancouver Island so I want to I want to check that out I know Seth you love this this region yeah Victoria is amazing

Yeah, so we're going to quick stop in Victoria and then maybe some of the little towns around. And we're going to be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in the car. So we need a big car here. So let's use this occasion to test out the Escalade IQ system.

But obviously, this is top-of-the-line stuff. It's like in Canadian dollars. I think it's like 160,000 vehicles that it's made. It's closer to 100,000 in the U.S. But it has like a giant range and everything. So it's perfect for like a big family or friend's road trip. But they also downmarket with the Optic as the entry level. So do we have the price on the Optic here? Yeah, starting at $54,000. So it's a lot more affordable here. Then you have the Lyric also.

And now you have the Celestic. They started the deliveries, at least. This thing is insane looking and also cost $250,000. It's inbuilt by Cadillac at their vendor-built Cadillac house facility. And we haven't heard much about the vehicle for a while. At first, I thought it was already being delivered. I thought we wouldn't hear about it much because...

It's $250,000. Who's buying that? It's people that came a little profile and have more money than God. So 655 horsepower all-wheel drive system that gives you a 0 to 60 in 3.7 seconds, which is pretty good for like that big of a basically it's kind of a wagon shooting brake. Yeah.

303 miles of range on a 111 kilowatt hour battery pack, 55 inch display, standard HD interactive display, 212.6 inch entertainment display for the screen, the rear passengers, 38 speaker system with climate sense. And each one is also like highly customizable. You can basically have it soon do exactly what you want.

It's an insane vehicle. If someone takes delivery of that, because obviously they don't do much press drive on that. They don't really need to. It's just a crazy vehicle. But if someone that is an electric fan that is taking delivery of that and want to give us a quick tour, we'd love to check it out and do a quick video about it and talk about your experience with it. So just putting that on there. All right, that's pretty much it for the news this week.

Again, not too many comments because it's 1 a.m. All right. David Pern, level three autonomy means not Tesla. Tesla doesn't do responsibility.

Okay. I mean, they do for the robot taxi though, because like the person that's actually responsible within the car is a Tesla employee and it's a Tesla program and they are self-insured. So yeah, if something happened, Tesla is fully responsible with the robot taxi. So I guess in that sense, you can say it's a little bit level three, but yeah, like effectively it's level two FSD with the driver being in the passenger seat and being a Tesla employee. Yeah.

All right. Gandalf says, will these developments make Tesla finally put the HD radar into their vehicles? What do you think? You think so? I think probably not. You know, I'm actually – I'm going to take the other side of that argument. I think they will. I think they're going to get on ball by the Rubeltax. Yeah.

I know I say a lot that the Robotech C-Lunch is like a stock pump and everything, and I do think that it's a big part of the equation. But I think there's also a part of Elon that he convinced himself about the vision aspect and the neural nets being the only way and the vision only is going to work. He talked himself into that a lot. So I think he believes it, and I think he's going to get a little bit humbled by it.

running the Robotext C service for a while, not being able to scale as fast as he thought he would. And then at the same time, way more like just running with it like that. So I think...

I think with that reality kind of hitting him in the face and him being open to radar for a long time. You remember, Seth, when we were still DMing with Elon in 2022, I think the last time we talked to him, I was DMing him to the electric account and we were talking about radar. And I was like, what's the holdup with that? Why are you removing that in the car? And he's like, yeah, well, right now we feel like vision only is safer than

with the radar fusion. But he admitted right away that if there was a high definition enough radar, which is what Gandalf is talking about here, it would be safer than vision only.

But then I was thinking at the time, I was like, well, there's, so there's no high definition enough radar for, for that to work. But isn't that just a LIDAR system, like a high definition? I know, I know it's not like it's lasers versus, versus radar, radial wave technology, but it's the LIDAR laser system is just more high definition, it's higher definition than the, than the, the radio wave.

And now they are increasingly more high definition radar. The one in the YU7 from Xiaomi, they call that 4D Wave Radar. It's extremely, extremely high definition. And they combine that also with the LiDAR on top of it. And also, they don't have the same excuse that they used to, that, oh, LiDAR is so expensive and so hard to run and requires mapping system and everything.

All of those problems have also been worked on a lot and they've become less and less of a problem. So I think Tesla might, with the fifth generation of their hardware, hardware five coming up soon,

I wouldn't be surprised if we see a radar on top of it. Probably not a LiDAR because that would be like Elon will have to eat so much shit for just thrashing LiDAR for so long. But a high-division radar, I wouldn't be shocked if that's on this fifth-gen hardware suite. This is probably the end of the year or early next year.

All right. Dave Perkins back. Remember the days when Tesla fans laughed at the idea of a competitor catching up? How funny is that today? I think in the context of Waymo being, what, about five years ahead? Yeah. They are completely ignoring that. I know I've blamed the Tesla fans a lot on this, but I think it's really part of the problem because now Tesla feels like they only have to impress their social media influencers on X. And the...

they are so easy to impress. It's like this weekend, like all the drive, they, they said, it's like, they've never seen a Waymo. We've never seen the drive for Waymo. They ever got inside the Waymo. Cause, cause that's the only way you get impressed by that. It's if you've never seen a Waymo because the Waymo is way more impressive on that front. Uh, you don't have a supervisor ready to press control. It just works. And, uh, it's also like they have never seen FSD before. They're all like always putting FSD video out there and like, Oh, like,

Never seen that. It's incredible. It's like it's almost the same thing. I don't get it at all. So, yeah, it's the Tesla fans here are just always moving the goalposts. All right. Pavel says, love the balanced views here. Thanks. Appreciate that, Pavel. Thanks, Pavel. Matt B says, China has 30,000 lithium fires yearly. BMS on all Chinese cars are inferior.

uh we're gonna probably need a source on that i don't know if that's true or not yeah i don't know about that and uh speaking of that china just passed some new regulations now that that strengthened the requirements for batteries quite a bit and i would uh look at two things for that one most chinese evs are lfp cells now and lfp cells have way fewer time more event than uh and nickel rich batteries and i thought it was really cool so xiaomi did address that quite a bit so they like the because most of their

Sue seven, Sue seven, and now why you seven or LFP with the two base configuration? Well, I don't know how many people buy them max because it's, it's also very great value that max, but it's definitely more expensive. Uh,

It's the only one with NMC cells in it. And for the YU7, they did something really cool where to comply, especially with the new regulation that requires, like, basically that you cannot catch fire. Your batch rack cannot catch fire. And so they have LFP for the base one. And then for the NMC cells, they...

they reversed it so there's prismatic cells but instead of having the connectors on top they put the connectors at the bottom which has its own problem like people don't do that generally because then the gravity like forces the electrolyte down more and then you can have more corrosion on the connectors and so they had to develop a new electrolyte with CATL to address that and also add different connectors that are not going to corrode but the goal of that is like

They made the battery safer, obviously, so they don't want to catch on fire. But if it does catch on fire, the heat is going to dissipate downwards instead of upwards towards the cabin. Instead, it's going to go downwards towards the ground and would greatly increase the safety in case of a thermal event.

All right. And then Tim P says, do you think Tesla will be forced to end the Robotaxi pilot in Austin in September due to Bill SB2807 in Texas that was signed by Governor Abbott? No, I don't think so, personally. I know a lot of Tesla bears are jumping on that, but Tesla is very close, especially Elon is very close to Abbott, very close to Tesla.

legislators, I think they will find a work around that. It is pretty clear in the legislation that they have to comply with level 4 SAE autonomous driving technology. Right now, the Tesla system doesn't really fall under that. But in

I feel like these days, laws in the US, if these are kind of guidelines, really, especially like securities laws and all that. So I'm pretty sure that this is going to find a way around that. All right. Last. So I'm not quite sure which question this is from, but how will the performance be for extreme cold weather conditions? Will the handles freeze? Not sure where... Probably the YU7, I would think she's asking, right? Yeah. I mean...

I was surprised by that. They did all the testing in China, and they did the testing at minus 41 Celsius, which I don't even know what that is set in Fahrenheit. It's pretty damn cold. They have that in the mountains here, so they went and tested that in the mountains. And yeah, they took the cold testing very, very seriously. And yeah, you're right that in general, there's a lot less harsh or winters in China. But yeah,

they feel confident about it. Like they designed, especially the YU7 to be a global vehicle and all kind of temperature. Now they are doing it. So they did already like two rounds of

Cold weather testing, warm weather testing, and they're continuing to do that right now. When I was talking to Mr. Lee last night, he was driving me to an after party in his own Su-7, and he was saying that after this, he's going to leave to go to the cold weather testing again.

in the mountains and then another warm tester testing again in the south and then go back up later for the cold weather, another run of cold weather in the north. Alright, I think that's pretty much it for the comments. Yeah, Sean, it's minus 40 too, the same thing. When it's minus 40, it's C, it's minus 40 Fahrenheit too. Yeah.

Yeah, okay. Thank you, Sean. All right. Well, that's it for this week's episode of Electric Podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. And next week, we should be back on the regular time. I'm going to be back in Quebec. Seth, you're going to be back in New York? That's right. Yeah. All right. We're going to see you same time, same place next week. Have a fun one, guys, and be safe out there. Bye-bye.