A week with the Cybertruck, Mustang Mach-E Rally, Chevy Equinox EV first drive, and more
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Yes, we are live for a new episode of the Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host, and as usual, I'm joined by Seth Wintraub. How are you doing today, Seth? I'm good.

All right. I want to give a quick thank you to today's sponsor for this episode, Momentum, a new brand of lifestyle e-bikes from Giant Group designed to deliver a full range of innovative electric, hybrid, and city bikes with premium features, long assist range, and sensor technology that offer natural riding experience that are both energy-saving and fun. We're going to have a little bit more to say about them later on in the show, so stay tuned for that.

But plenty to talk about this week. I wanted to start out a quick update because I know last episode, by the way, we're doing this podcast a bit early this week on a Thursday night rather than a Friday. Just because tomorrow I have, I cannot talk about tomorrow too much, but we have a full...

Yeah. So, I mean, you guys have seen a bunch of leaks lately. I have nothing to do with that, by the way. But there's a lot of things happening right now. And apparently, I'm going to have a full day tomorrow. So, I will...

I won't be able to do the podcast. I don't, I think, so tomorrow is the first, yeah, next week I'm going to be able to talk about it on next week's episode, which I should be back home next week. Yeah, I should be back home. So that should be easier then.

But last week on the podcast, we opened up with... I just took delivery of the Cybertruck for a week-long review. So we talked a little bit about that. I guess I can give you a little bit of an update. I won't go too deep into it just because...

I'm still formulating my thoughts about it. I haven't posted my review yet. So I'm working also on the video. We filmed a bunch throughout the week. We have beautiful places around here. We went a little bit into the country, a place called right between Clay Allume and Ellensburg in the middle of Washington State. Absolutely beautiful ranch. Spent some time there with the Cybertruck playing around.

And, yeah, so I'm still formulating some of my thoughts with it, but I can give you a quick impression, really, because, I mean, it is a strange and unique vehicle that I appreciate it, really. Like, overall, I think my overall impression of the Cybertruck is quite positive, really.

I'm still ambivalent on the design itself. I cannot tell you that I like it. I cannot tell you I hate it. Sometimes I look at the truck and I'm like, wow, man, this thing is really something. And other times I'm like, am I driving an actual commercial dumpster? It looks like that sometimes. And also, it

It looks like that because it's dirty as a dumpster. Like this, this truck is completely stocked on that. I have, I just gave it back earlier today. Um, and, uh, it's, it's really dirty. And we tried to like clean it up a little bit for when we were taking like pictures or, or, or videos. But, um,

Yeah, it's going to look dirty in the video too. So not my fault. It just catches dirt pretty easy. And these finger stains on the door near where they would be during those, but they're not. They get annoying. So yeah, I would definitely recommend if you get a Cybertruck, put a PPF film on it.

Just to reduce those. And I know it's kind of frustrating because like part of the fact that you want to get a cyber truck and part of the selling point that Tesla has been using is that, oh, it's, you know, it's super rugged. You have this finished. And when you do get a PPF film, part of that is like protecting your investment. Vehicles and vehicles and investment. But like protecting

Protecting your long-term value of the vehicle because it does protect the paint. Now, you have no paint to protect. So you're not actually protecting much with the PPF foam. Other than if you put it on the bumper, which different material, those I'm sure it would help. And those are painted too. So yeah, it would help there. But for most of the vehicle, it doesn't help with that. It's just...

It's going to help reduce the visibility of the stains of the fingerprints and things like that. So, yeah, so that's one thing that I would note. But the actual driving experience, I know I, you know, I talked a little bit about it last week after just a few hours of driving it. But it is drive by wire is undoubtedly the future of cars.

of the industry i think it's going there unless they you know you find out there's some reliability issues and things like that like obviously this is quite new and there's a few other you know vehicle in the market that have drive by wire now but uh um the cyber truck is the first one i've driven and it is incredible the rear wheel steering also incredible uh i i really enjoy those it's um

I got into some airpin turns that felt like nothing. I was able to get some good videos of it of just me like turning around in the parking lot and having like a bird's eye view of it where you can see just how quick the turns are and you can actually see the wheels moving. So I can't wait to share it out. It's pretty cool. So basically, when I finished my week with the truck, I'm like,

I cannot wait to see all that Tesla technology package into something else. Like you want to see that rear wheel steering, you want to see that drive by wire, you want to see that 48 volt electronic system. Uh, you want to see all those things package into a vehicle that a little bit more accessible, not just from a pricing standpoint, because obviously the cyber truck is cheap, but, uh,

just from something that more people would be willing to buy. Because I posted something like that on my Twitter this week and people were like, yeah, you just want it to look like any other truck. And I'm not saying that exactly. I'm saying Tesla could have done something that looked more certainly like a pickup truck that's still different. Like Rivian, for example. Rivian did

you know, the general like form factor of the R1T is pickup like, but they were quite adventurous with the design of the vehicle. I think, you know, it stands out. You see a Rivian R1S, R1T around, you're like, oh, this is new. This is not something we've seen before. So I think Tesla could have done something like that, but more accessible and it would probably have been more successful. Probably would have been cheaper too, right? Like,

There's a lot of things in a Cybertruck. No one has built a truck like that before, so probably could have been able to make it cheaper, do you think? Yeah, and also maybe more aerodynamic since the hard edges aren't as nice as smooth edges for aerodynamics. So it would probably have had better wind resistance and more range. Obviously, everybody who sees a Cybertruck knows it's a Cybertruck. It's a very statement type of vehicle.

But, you know, that that's a good thing and a bad thing. So I think some people are going to be shy away from it. But I think, you know, RJ Scringe, the CEO of Rivian, said it earlier that like there's room in the market for everything. Like people who want a Cybertruck, they're going to get a Cybertruck. People want a Rivian, Rivian. F-150 Lightning, Silverado RST, you know, lots of range.

You know, that's capitalism. That's the market. There's stuff for everybody. Yeah. So, yeah. So, again, overall, I'm very happy with the truck. The biggest downside, in my opinion, now that especially I just came back with it from, you know, a little bit of a longer distance drive and I had to stop for supercharging and the charge rate is the biggest downside of the vehicle. Like, it's the, by far, the worst charging Tesla vehicle out there. Yeah.

What kind of speed did you get?

You get the 250, you'll get to 250 just not long. That's why Tesla on its website, they quote only like 10 minute charge instead of quoting normally like a 10 to 80%, which most people do. They say like, are you going to have 136 miles in 10 minutes, which is true actually. If you come in around, like I think I supercharged three times and all the three times I was at, I think between 10 and 20% state of charge each time I came in.

But you get that for like a few minutes. And then as soon as you hit like around, you know, 45, 50% state of charge, it drops drastically. And yeah, the last 50% takes just too much time for me. It's weird. Now Tesla says that it is working on that. And then over the years, software updates should improve that. And I believe them because they've done that before. But right now it is kind of a bummer.

So on this, until Tesla improves that, it's not really a road tripping vehicle. And obviously also affects like your towing ability if you're towing long distance. You already have a much shorter range. So the charging capability is the big difference maker in those occasions. And now if you don't have that optimized, you're kind of screwed. So yeah, I was not impressed with that.

All right. Let's talk about a little bit more about Tesla. We have just two, three posts about Tesla. And then we are going to have my Mustang Mach-E rally first drive that I can finally talked about after last week. And then we have a few vehicles unveiling. Well, one vehicle unveiling and one first drive from the Equinox EV from Scooter 2 that I recommend you guys go check out.

But unfortunately, around Tesla in the last few weeks and probably in the next two weeks, too, there's been one main story that's been dominating the news cycle. I cannot wait to be done with this, people. I've been reporting on this for too long and I cannot stand it anymore. It's the Elon compensation package. And there's been some development this week.

Glass Lewis, one of the proxy firm, the shareholders of his or his firm that, you know, represent a lot of the I don't know if represented the right world, but advise the a lot of the institutional investors, which are going to be the difference maker in this vote. Glass Lewis has pronounced itself against the package, but this is nothing new because they were also against the package last time and it still passed. So I don't think it's that big of an impact. But, you know, there was a few of

Other efforts from Tesla this week, for example, they started buying ads. They bought more ads this week. We already talked about that. So Elon, they offer, if you prove that you voted your shares, you enter a chance of a raffle to win a Gigafactory Texas tour with Elon and Franz.

Now, you don't have to prove that you voted for the proposal that the boards are asking you to vote for. Obviously, that's the goal, which is weird because the other ones, they're clearly making it like, yeah, yeah, yeah, vote for this. The ads are clearly saying what you should vote for, not just vote. This one is just vote, which I assume it has to do more with the Texas vote than anything else because the

Tesla needs a high turnoff at Texas votes since they need 50% of the outstanding share rather than 50% of the voting shares. And yeah, I'm starting to think that Tesla might be more worried about that now than anything else because, yeah, yeah.

I think there's about like a 60, 40% chance that the vote will go through for the competition package. And if it's about that, if it's close to 60%, that means that the Texas vote could be very tight too. But now there's been another development on that front.

The lawyers for the shareholders that initiated that lawsuit, which again, the guy was just like a prop, basically. It's the law firm that found the shareholders willing to do that. They filed a complaint in Delaware over the case saying that Tesla's votes are basically a way to circumvent the judge's decision in Delaware. So, yeah.

McCormick, the judge, was basically going back to Tesla. He's like, is there any truth to this? And Tesla called that rank speculation. And I'm going to quote the judge here. If I have interpreted the defendant's position incorrectly, so the defendant being Tesla here, then defense counsel, as officer of the court, are duty bound to correct it. In the meantime, the defendant's statement gave me great comfort. So basically, the judge painted Tesla in the corner here. They're like, all right,

You're saying that you're going to go through with this case in Delaware where the jurisdiction is right now. So this vote, which again is more like a poll for the compensation package that Tesla is going to use, I guess, in the appeal process, which is going to be in a while too.

while the Texas move is kind of a basically Tesla's arguing that the Texas move vote has nothing to do with this case and that's what they're doing and a lot of the advertising they're doing about it they're saying like oh Texas is our home we have no business being in Delaware which you know I mean we registered in Delaware it's not like someone forced them to but anyway

So they're saying like, it has nothing to do with it. It's not going to, because a lot of the Tesla, um, like especially the Elon fans have been putting forward this argument that, uh,

We vote for the compensation package again. So it is approved again. And then we vote for the move to Texas. And then we can litigate this in Texas instead. And with the vote being re-approved, it's going to be smooth in Texas. No problem. But basically, the judge right now, Tesla has told the judge, no, this is not what's happening. We're moving to Texas for whatever reasons. But we are going to continue to pursue this case in Delaware as where the decision came from.

So this basically confirms that, unfortunately, we're going to be in this mess no matter what, no matter which sides wins, if it's a yes, if it's a no. This is going to be an ongoing problem for a while because right now the next thing that's happening is in July, I think. Yeah, July 8th, you have the earring over the $6 billion in legal fees that those lawyers are asking for, which is plain ridiculous. So...

This is the next thing. And after that, then there's going to be most likely an appeal from Tesla. But this could take like months, if not years. Because Tesla is also trying, like Tesla said that the vote is going to be material, the vote on the comp package, not the Texas vote.

So people think that Tesla is trying to use the rectification law in Delaware to do that. But also you have legal scholars there that say that this doesn't apply in this case. So if Tesla is really trying to do that, they will fail. So there's possibilities that Tesla is just using it as a position of strength going into the appeal, which would make sense, I think. But...

But at the same time, you have this position of strength that they're creating with the vote. If it goes, go through, obviously, which again, I think there's a 60% chance that it will go through. But at the same time, Elon is just giving and giving and giving ammunition to the plaintiff side nonstop with these threats of fit breaking, fiduciary duty about the AI stuff. Most recently, he tried to say that the

The case is about like he called the people that are voting no oath breakers as if like I'm voting no. I don't remember taking an oath through Elon Musk to give him $55 billion for like no actual CEO contract whatsoever. Anyway.

So if you've been following Tesla's SEC filing, it's been nonstop SEC filing, having to share Elon tweets and retweets from his sycophants, which is going to be, everything's going to be used in court. It's going to be, I'm basically warning you, everyone, that it's going to be a mess for the next few months, if not year around this issue. It's not going to be fun.

Mexico, Tesla Gigafactory Mexico, still in the plans, according to the local government of Nuevo Leon, next to Monterrey, where Tesla is supposed to build a factory. Factory was announced in March 2023. At the time, it was supposed to happen really fast. But then in October, Tesla pumped the brakes on the project. Elon said that he's worried about global economy and that they wanted to focus on building next-gen vehicles based on the UNBOX project.

in Texas rather than Mexico and that he specified that the project is still going to happen even though they ordered some long-leam atoms for the factory, but he couldn't say when. And now it's leaving the state in a weird kind of situation because the state is heavily investing in the infrastructure around the plant for Tesla to build the plant. So now Ivan Rivas, the new level secretary of economy, stated this week that Tesla

that they are still investing in that infrastructure. They are still talking to Tesla. And he says, we have not had any change in signal from the company. And he said, however, he said, I could not say that we continue working. The only thing that I could not say and that is not defined is when they are going to start. But Tesla is coming. Tesla is coming.

So, yeah, it's a very strange situation where they are investing heavily right now, but Tesla is not telling them at all when they're going to build. They're just not telling they're not going to build the factory. And this situation is kind of weird because right now, as we've seen the change of plans for Tesla in Texas, where they've greatly reduced the plan for the on-box vehicles, cancelling two of them and only keeping the Robotaxi.

it's reducing the number of equal program on the new platform, which was supposed to be built in Mexico, kind of reduce the need for the whole factory. So I wouldn't be surprised if there's an actual change of plan with the factory in Mexico, which I hope not. I know for the locals, because obviously they're investing. There's always changes to plans. It feels like.

So it wouldn't be surprising. Especially when you have Elon as a CEO. All right. This I thought was really cool. We know that after Elon fired the entire Supercharger team, we explained the situation basically shortly

The short version is Elon asked Rebecca Tenucci, the head of charging at Tesla, to fire 15, 20% of the team. She does. Then they meet again and Elon asks for further layoffs and then she pushbacks against further layoffs. Elon's fire her and the entire team to set an example as he sent an email after that to other executives mentioning it and saying that if they don't follow through with the deep cuts that he's requiring,

then they will have the same fate. Now, we knew because of that, that it was not due to any kind of change of plan for the supercharger network, even though it does seem that Tesla is reducing its overall investment, is still investing in new stations and more chargers.

So what they did is they started re-hiring some of them back, which is kind of a weird situation. But we've heard a few weeks ago that it was about a dozen members of the 500 people team that have been re-hired. And now we learned of another one, Mr. George Bahadou, Senior Manager of Site Acquisition and Business Development for Tesla Commercial Charging. And this week...

He announced on LinkedIn that he was re-hired two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, I was asked to return to Tesla in my previous capacity, ending up business development and site acquisition for Tesla Charging. I accepted. Now, here's the interesting thing. He decided to quote Tenucci on this.

To quote this quote by our former fearless leader guided me, you work at Tesla because you hope to have at least a small impact on our collective future, aspirationally to leave the world better for our children and grandchildren and their children and grandchildren by accelerating the transition to sustainable energy. And that mission is too important to allow any distraction. Rebecca Tenucci.

So you had it that one of my, quoting again, one of my mentors told me to follow my heart. My heart is with our customers, our site hosts, all the stakeholders that make EV charging possible and the Tesla mission of changing the world. Charging is still one of the main blockers to EV adoption and there is much work to be done. Over the years, we have forged amazing site host relationship and I'm excited to get back to working with them to solve this. All right, what this is telling me

This seems to be exactly the kind of person you want working at Tesla. Someone that is completely pro-emission, doing something very important at Tesla, which is finding sites to build supercharger stations and working with property owners to make that happen.

Someone who seemingly really liked his last bust, Rebecca Tenucci, who was leading the charging team for a while, a team that built the best network in the world. So you have to ask yourself at some point, like, if someone is firing that kind of people at Tesla, are they good for Tesla? I'm just going to put that out there. Yeah, especially as like just a huge block of people. Like, I'm sure he didn't go down the list of every single person involved and said, oh, this guy has been...

This person's been working really hard. I mean, they fired the guy who was like living in his car so he could work like 24 hours, you know, 20 hours a day. Yeah, I've heard about that one. You're right. Yeah, I mean, obviously he didn't do that. And so he knowingly fired a bunch of great people and then he just, you know,

I hope that if he asked them, they would come back. And it looks like it worked for George here, but I'm sure it's not going to work for other people. Like George is a better person than me. Like if you fire the entire electric team's set and then you ask me to come back after, I'm going to think twice about it. Fair enough. Like you drug, you like school a little bit too. No plans. Yeah. Let's talk about momentum a bit. All right. All right.

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All right, let's talk a bit about the Mustang Mach-E Rally and, you know, more broadly. Is this working? Yep. Okay. And more broadly, the 2024 Mustang Mach-E model year. So there's been a few updates with this new model year. And this set line basically like captures it. Ford is getting more comfortable with EVs. So, you know, Ford...

Last year or the year before that, they kind of separated their business a little bit, launched this Model E division to separate their EV business with their gasoline-powered vehicle business. It's headed by Doug Field, former engineering leader at Tesla and Apple, and he actually worked at Ford in a previous life before that. And he's kind of modernizing the...

Ford's EV business and you see it happen. Ford was always good at making cars and the car part or their EVs has always been good. But when it comes to the electric powertrain, to the software, it wasn't their forte. Even though I already like the Mach-E, I reviewed it twice before and I reviewed it positively.

In fact, my main gripe with the Ikea has always been the charging for long distance, not ideal using CCS, using Electrify America and all that. Now that Tesla opened the network and Ford was actually the first to partner with them getting the ball rolling, this is basically solved for the most part.

And combine that now with the 2024 model year, which you see them kind of coming into their own as an EV manufacturer, getting more comfortable with electric powertrain. They have these new electric motor. They are borrowing the electric motor actually that they developed for the Lightning, for the rear motor on the GT and Rally version of the new Mach-E. They are going with LFP cells for the standard range version. They...

They greatly improved their thermal management system throughout the entire vehicle, resulting now in even faster charging time. Actually, now they are talking about 36.2 minutes from 10 to 80% on all the extended battery pack trim. And, yeah,

And even though they don't have that peak charging rate that we just discussed for the Cybertruck, for example, at 250, they do have a very good charging curve that's actually better than some of Tesla's vehicles, depending on the condition. We actually went to this supercharger station in New York.

Renton here near Seattle in Washington and I filmed this video here where you have a 16 stall charging station supercharger station and you had as many Tesla vehicle as you had Ford vehicle at the station which is pretty cool now the only downside of that is that we ended up basically blocking two charging station because the key this is a v3 charging station the cable are not long enough yet we're really hoping for more v4 station and that I have longer cable

So yeah, you block two stations when you use that many Mustang versus Tesla vehicle because you have to park the other way. But there was still enough space for other Tesla vehicles, so it wasn't too bad. And I talked to a few Tesla owners there, and those that were charging to 80% had a very similar charge time. Those were charging to 100%. The Mach-E had actually a faster charge time, so I thought that was interesting. Maybe that's the big buffer.

Yeah, the big buffer health, obviously. But I think they're reducing that buffer too, and that's how they're getting more range too. So the 2024 version is getting 20 more miles for the standard range version. For the extended range version on rear-wheel drive, which now has 320 miles of range, which is good. The GT gets a 10-mile bump to 280. And now you have the Mustang Mach-E at 265, which is the same powertrain as the GT.

is just has its suspension is right one inch higher has different tires different a little bit aerodynamic with a new spoiler and all that so you you lose 15 miles off of that but i'm going to talk a little bit about that because um it is uh it might be worth it even though i'm an efficiency guy i like to be as efficient as possible i was really impressed on them about the uh mikey rally

So, yeah, basically, I feel like they're coming more on their own as an active vehicle manufacturer and also with software. So, you know, Jim Farley was one of the, you have to give him credit, he was one of the first legacy automaker executives to acknowledge that Tesla had this big lead on software. And he also understood why. He understood that Tesla vertically integrated a lot of their vehicle subsystem and they implemented the software directly in them, giving them the ability to

to over-the-air update most of the vehicles rather than just like the infotainment and things like that. They had access to everything. So Ford has been working hard on doing the same. And now they say that 85% of the Mustang Mach-E's module are OTA update updatable. So that gives them a lot more freedom.

And one of the examples that they're getting better at the software is like if you take a look at the new FordPass app too, it's a decent update. The last time it felt a lot like a car maker's app. Now it feels more like a tech company app a little bit. It's just as simple as that. Yeah. And then the Rally. So the Rally is, like I said, it's like the GT app.

but raised one inch higher uh tuned for both on the road and off-road and uh also you have some you know rally inspired appearance the mainly the uh the the rear spoiler here it's pretty huge then uh rally uh wheels tires and you know some decals and whatnot and and the the seats to a

Well, the seats are actually from the front. They are the same as the GT. So, you know, big sports seats with not the side control side support, but the back of them are different in the rally for some reason.

Yeah, and I got to drive it off-road, and I'm not much of an off-road rider. I never drove Rally before. So, you know, I was able to drift it a little bit, which was fun. But I cannot really give you a good comparison off-road. I did drive with, I think, I cannot play that. I think you have to open a new window.

yeah like this um i did did i did do a hot lap with uh adrian formo was a french rally driver one of like the top five in the world i think uh so he gave me an actual like look what it looks like if you're actually a good rally driver a good off-road driver and it was really impressive like the guy is a pure machine and like look at this drift here

And yeah, it was a ton of fun. And after that, I talked to him. I was like, what do you think about this? It was his first time driving an electric rally car. Obviously, there's just none of them out there. I mean, there's some custom ones and one-off, but this is the first consumer rally car. But he loved it. I mean, he said he wouldn't drive that as an actual competition car, but

he said that it was like too easy, basically. The car is so good that it makes it too easy. And I get it. It's a very easy car to drive. And obviously with one pedal drive, you don't use the one pedal driving on this, of course, but it is in the instant torque. There's no lag. You're not waiting for like a turbo lag or anything like that. So the reaction time is a lot faster. So you get a feel for the car a lot faster. You don't need as much of a...

learning curve for it.

which I thought was interesting coming from an actual pro driver. But I did drive the car on the road and the suspension really shines there too. So you take it off of off-road mode and you put it in sports or whatever. And I was really impressed with the drive. Like if you live anywhere that has, you know, in Quebec, our roads look like a war zone every so often. And

this this suspension would go through like i would i would go on purpose i felt i'd feel bad but i'll go on purpose over potholes with this thing and you just don't feel it it's insane um so i think i mean depending on your needs obviously i think it might be worth it uh for the 15 miles that you drop off the gt version to get the rally i'm not i'm not even kidding

The look is not really my thing, though. The look's a little bit too, like... The white wheels or what? I'm not mad at the white wheels, but everything, like the giant spoiler in the back and everything, it's not... The blue's a bit obnoxious on top of it, too, but there was a green version of it that was actually super good-looking, and it tames the look a little bit. It's a little bit less obnoxious to me.

uh but i know people love that style too and obviously this is objective okay cal corner tore into four for dropping the ball on the mackey refresh it's it's not a refresh though it's not like it's a model year update there's no there's no refresher it's more like an incremental change here i i wouldn't certainly not call that a refresh

but but i mean the rally is a new trim in the new model year and it is definitely more different than than the rest of the lineup not gonna lie but i wouldn't i wouldn't call that a refresh all right our home scooter managed to get a nice uh first drive in the chevy equinox ev and uh his steak is uh is what i was hoping for really is that we kind of have like this uh more like boring

Just regular car that's an affordable EV that meets people's needs. This is a slow-moving... People like to use all the EVs, this quick-moving, instant torque and everything. And you have that in there. It's just you don't have the 0-60 to come with and everything. It's a front-wheel drive, just regular SUV car.

that you can find it affordable price and it does the job.

Now, obviously, there's some drawbacks like the GM doesn't have the Apple CarPlay and all that. And scooter was not too happy about this one. And front-wheel drive is not for everybody either. Some people prefer it. Some people prefer rear-wheel drive. We're talking about the 3LT to start with at 213 horsepower, 236 pound-foot of torque.

0 to 60 in under 8 seconds. Wow. You don't see that too often with EVs. But yeah, you also have another version at 288 horsepower, 0 to 60 under 6 seconds. That's with the all-wheel drive and air-cool induction motor. The fast charging, 150 kilowatt, which again,

I mean, it's not the 250 at Tesla, but the charging curve is more important. I don't like the 10-minute session quote here either. They say 77 miles in 10 minutes. I prefer when we share 10% to 80%. It doesn't look bad, too. No, I like it. I mean, they could have probably just made the Bolt charge faster, but it's a little bit bigger. You're cutting a bit for me, Seth. Oh, sorry. My opinion is they probably could have just made the Bolt charge faster. Yeah.

I mean, the dimension of this versus the Bolt, it has to be a little bit bigger, no? It's wider and it's longer. I mean, it's about the same length as the EUV, but it's a little wider too. And it's got a nicer dashboard as well. Yeah. And all TM and all that. Yeah. Here's the interior here. So we're showing some picture of the interior for people that are just listening. Yeah. The dash is nice. The interior overall is nicer than the Bolt EV. There's no doubt about it.

Yeah, I recommend that you go check out the Is First Drive impression. It's not our full review. We haven't had that much time with the car just yet. And this is the little bit more expensive version of it. The $35,000 version is coming later this year. So for now, you have the 3LT four-wheel drive trim that we tested at an MSRP of $45,000.

You can add the tax credit on that. So you do bring in the price under $40,000. Talking about a range here of 319 miles. Not bad. Yeah, it's just that right now it's hard to convince me to get that over a Model Y. Yeah, I agree. It doesn't have anything super special over the Model Y.

But the cheaper version might be like, that might make the difference here, which is obviously that was the model that, you know, Chevy was, or GM as a whole, was more pushing as this is going to be our affordable EV. But funny enough, this week, GM ended up saying that the new Chevy Bolt EV is going to be the most affordable EV on the market in 2025, which is kind of an interesting to say. So the quote here is from...

from Marissa West was the new head of North America for GM. And she says she's really excited about the Bolt coming back to the market after the little yats between the previous generation and the Altium based, which I'm already surprised. So we're already excited to get the Bolt with the Altium architecture underpinning to have the most affordable vehicle on the market by 2025. So I guess it would be cheaper than 35,000. Even cheaper. I mean,

If she really means it, there's EVs cheaper. The Nissan Leaf is $28,000. You're going to have to be cheaper than a Nissan Leaf. The Nissan Leaf range, what's the Nissan Leaf range these days? She meant long-range EVs. You can consider the Leaf long-range. The cheaper version might be shorter range a bit. It's kind of weird because it still has Chattamo.

there's a 2024 technically leaf but i think maybe they just have a lot of extras they just keep slapping new model years on the inventory yeah i don't know how many they are selling though after that it's the aria which starts at 35 500 which is going to be similar to the equinox ev later this year but now we're talking about 2025

What about the compliance cars like that Mazda EV or the... Oh, yeah, we're counting those. Yeah, I mean, there's... No compliance car. Okay, no compliance car. I just decided that. Yeah, still on the GM front, the new Cadillac Optic was unveiled this week. And this is their new entry-level premium EV from Cadillac.

So I looked at the design of it when it was unveiled this week, but honestly, I haven't looked too much at the specs. So it's six inches shorter at the wheelbase than the Lyric. It comes with an 85 kWh battery pack with a standard dual motor all-wheel drive. So all-wheel drive is standard, okay? Up to 300 miles of range. That's Cadillac's estimate, not EPA. Wow, everyone is going with this 10 minutes and...

10-minute charge up to 79 miles. Yeah, I guess I think you're going to extrapolate. All right, well, what do I get in 30 minutes? I don't like that. It doesn't work like that. Right. I like this angle. This looks nice. Although if you're used to 10-minute gas station things, you're like, well, I can go 80 miles. But also you cannot think, okay, I just need to stop for 10 minutes so I can just stop.

you know, every time I do about 70 miles, I stop for 10 minutes and then I'm go back to go. But then if you do that, you're always on your top 50% state of charge and you won't get that many miles in 10 minutes if you're a higher state of charge. So yeah, it's really not an ideal way to talk about it. You have the giant 33 inch diagonal advanced LED display with 9K resolution. That's crazy. That's more than my TV.

Super Cruise on this is available. Speaking of Zalvo's also on the Equinox and I think Scooter positively reviewed it on the Equinox. All right, we have some dimensions here. 190 inches long, 84 inches wide with mirror, 65 inches tall, which is a little bit bigger than the Model Y basically. A little more pictures of the interior here.

200 horsepower with the all-wheel drive system. And it's going to be offered in two trim, luxury and sport at a starting price of $54,000, including destination fee, coming late fall. And you have European spec and sales to look at later this year for the European market. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. It's always like the cheapest luxury. It's kind of an opposite. Yeah. Looks good. Yeah. And...

Yeah, GGM has always said that catalog is going to be their flagship brand for EVs. So they're sticking through to that. All right. Speaking of like the Volt EV becoming the most affordable EV in the U.S. market in 2025, Jeep this week announced that they're going to come with a $25,000 EV in the U.S. very soon. So I don't know what that means very soon exactly, but it could mean 2025. I mean, normally when you say very soon, I expect like within a year or two.

And to be fair, Stenland, this is not completely new to cheap EVs. They have the $20,000 Euro Citroen EC3 that's in Europe. And now he says we'll have a $25,000 Jeep very soon. He said that at the Bernstein conference earlier.

earlier this week. Now they already have the Jeep Avenger EV in Europe, but that's 35,000 euros, which is $37,800 US. So we're talking about a more than $10,000 price cut here. It's significant. Wouldn't be the first EV to launch in the US for Jeep. We talked recently about the Wagoneer S, but that is a much more expensive EV.

So, yeah, TAVRS, the Stenlintis CEO, this week said, if you ask me what is an affordable BEV, I would say 20,000 euros in Europe or $25,000 in the U.S. Our job is to bring the safe, clean, and affordable BEVs to the U.S. We'll do it. So, yeah, we'll see about that. I mean, you know, I have nothing against Stenlintis, but they've been, you know, they've been a lagger when it comes to electric vehicles. So, yeah, I need to see that happening.

All right, we have one more post and then we're going to jump into the comments section. So if you guys have any questions for us, you can put it in the comments section below and we'll get to it in a few minutes. Rivians this week, Rivians CEO, RJ Scaringe, had some comments, like some warnings about the upcoming Q2. So obviously Q2 had the factory shutdown, you know, the move over to the new R1S, R1T, and

There is the inventory also that they've been using while there was a factory shutdown. So you won't really see the impact of this new version of it, which is supposed to drastically cut the cost of the vehicle. Not necessarily the price of the vehicle, I mean the actual cost of the vehicle. We've been talking a lot about that recently.

The Rivian's main problem right now is that they have negative gross margin. They're losing money on every one of their cars and they are aiming to reverse that by the end of the year in Q4. And to get there, it's just, you know, they have efforts on every side of things. They had some layoffs, they are re-connexion contracts with suppliers and the factory upgrades are the big ones. So this week, Skyrim Skyrim said,

implement a whole host of changes. We'll just discuss that. The upgrade introduced a dramatic cost reduction in material costs, the CEO and founder said. Due to the shutdown, Skyrim 1.1.2 is going to be messy. That was at the Bernstein conference too, by the way. We have another quote here.

From an investor perspective, the second quarter is going to be messy. Yeah, that was the same one here. We will deliver a very small percentage of these newer vehicles in terms of costs in Q2. So that's it. You won't see a lot of these benefits until you get to Q3. So the deliveries, if I'm understanding, they're starting in the coming weeks, if not days. So that's going to be just basically a month or so of those deliveries.

which is going to have an impact, but then the impact is going to be balanced with the rest of the quarter, the factory shutdown. It would be ideal if they could separate the gross margin for the new vehicle versus the old one, but even then that won't be fully baked in because they won't be really ramped up to production to full capacity or at least not for the full last month. So I don't know how they're going to present that.

Skyrange added that their upgrades are contractual, hoping or wishing costs were lower. These were negotiated with suppliers over the last 24 months. So yeah, there's a lot of renegotiation of contracts with suppliers to reduce costs. Added 100 new robots for automation and increased line rates by 30%. That's great. Cut 41 components in the battery pack down to 16 now. Wow, impressive.

So that will create more efficiency. I don't like politics. I need to be careful about what I talk about here because I have some information that I cannot discuss. And then there's, he talked about NAX adoption a little bit. So that's the R2 mid 40s, but we kind of already knew that. The R2 suspension will use struts, going to be lower cost than the R1 air suspension, right? Yep.

After beginning shipping, R1 owners tested the NAX adapter last month. They said there was a shortage, but they are shipping now. Yeah, we've heard a little bit about that. Apparently, Elon's firing of the charging team included a lot of people that had to do with the NAX project, and that created some shortage of NAX adapters. Yeah.

I think RJ basically confirmed that here. Over time, we will be switching to the NAX connector along with moving our charging network over to that. Reven expect to incorporate NAX charge port in the R1-T1S and go and start in 2025. That's what everybody's saying right now, basically. Yeah. All right. That's pretty much it for what he had to share. He basically gave everyone a little bit of a warning of, you know,

Careful when we release our Q2 numbers, like it doesn't tell the whole story. That's basically what he's saying, I think. Right. And I guess we could expect that anyway, because it's a big switch over. All right. Should we jump into the comments? Yep. All right. Justin says, good features. A shame it looks the way it does, though. Imagine an R1T-like truck with those features. Yeah, I think we talked about the Cybertrucks. Yeah. Polarizing looks and weather. Yeah.

There would have been a better solution to that. Slovenian, it's the Bolt of Teslas. We're talking about the charging. Not quite as bad as the Bolt, but Bolt was like, what, 60, 55 kilowatts by the end? Yeah. Carl in San Diego, don't do business with Elon. He's unreliable. That's in reference to the Mexico plant.

ideal employee for any company dude doesn't know his worth we're talking about the employee that went back to tesla yeah quoting tanuchi before she was fired not after she realized that tesla is in deep crap and elon is irrational i don't know if tesla is in deep crap the people who are willing to quit tesla were the real indicator that they are in trouble and elon doesn't have a plan to fix it they lost their demand and are over capacity vaporware fsd and robots won't fix

Alright. Skeptic says Kyle Connor tore into Ford for dropping the ball on the Mach-E refresh, so I'm getting mixed signals.

i wonder yeah i haven't i haven't checked out uh cal's review of it cal was like on the wave after me i think so i i didn't actually met him at the ford event so i didn't know that he was not happy about it but yeah more of a face i mean more of a facelift like the rally is a bit of a facelift sure but even the other vehicles there's this they're not they haven't changed that much i wouldn't call that facelift it's a new model year with some incremental improvement to the powertrain and the systems

Alright, it's my understanding the Bolt was unprofitable and maybe never would be. Equinox was designed under an Altium program, assuming battery prices would have fallen a lot, bringing battery production in-house. Skeptic, I think GM has potential winner in the Blazer EV, but it's getting surprisingly little pricey. I think the Blazer EV looks really cool. Some good specs. I think you can get real wheel drive, front wheel drive, and all wheel drive. So three different options.

but still a little pricey, I think. The killer question for GM, are they going to ever profit from Altium EVs? I mean, they're charging how much for the Hummers? I think the Hummer is profitable. I think the Cadillac Celestic is profitable. Yeah, that's the best. $300,000, they're making three of them.

Yeah, so yeah, I think that's part of it. I think GM is not ramping up production as much until they do get their costs under control. Yeah, it's not like the bold days anymore that they're willing to sell out a loss to get the credits.

Ismail Nye Yusoff says, making EVs really affordable will be a challenge for non-Tesla EV manufacturers due to their problems with selling enough to achieve an economy of scale. Only Chinese have a chance. I mean, the Chinese are doing great, but I don't think they're the only ones that have a chance. I think, is Ford making money on the Mustang Mach-E? No? No.

uh no they're not they're losing a lot of money but um well they're losing money as a whole like the whole model e is losing money but i don't know the mackey program itself is is losing money do we know that i think it is i think i read it is and and a lot but um hyundai seems to be doing good kia hyundai seems to be doing pretty well uh rivian after this messy quarter might be doing a lot better

Yeah, I mean, I think Q3 is going to be the big test for Rivian. And then Q4 is when they're supposedly going to turn a little bit positive with gross profit. So if they can do that, they're going to be a real challenger because going from losing $38,000 per car in Q1 to making some money from it in Q4 just over a year, that would be crazy. I know, true.

Traditionally, you solve profitability with volume, but if your battery costs are what kill profitability and the battery resource competition continues, you can't fix the profit problem with scale. There's not a big battery resource competition right now. I mean, there's no... Like lithium is under control. Nickel is under control. Cobalt is under control. And a lot of people are not even using cobalt right now. So yeah, it's...

Right now, it's not that big of a problem. It could become one again at some point, but right now, it's not too big of a problem. All right. Battery costs already fell a lot over the last decade. That's true. Yeah. Ford is losing $100,000 per EV. Yeah. Is that a gross margin or is that like the MOLLE E division though? I don't know. I have to check.

Hey guys, unrelated, but what happened to Quick Charge? Love that Daily Dias. Let's bring back Mikey G. Unfortunately, Mikey G was a little overwhelmed, but we have Joe Boras coming in to save the day. He did his first Quick Charge yesterday, and I think he's got another one set up for today, so that should be pretty interesting.

Carl and Sandigo, Fred, all these resources will be a big problem if we try to even build 10% of new cars as EVs. But that's already the case. We're at 10%. Yeah. I think globally we're over 10%. In the US, we are around that, like 8% or 9%, but globally we're way above.

way over 10%, I think. So, and, you know, those prices are also in anticipation of a ramp up. Yeah, I mean, Ismail is right here. You also have Redwood doing recycling work. So I think that's going to also, as we ramp up, it's going to compensate. But obviously, you know, during the ramp up, the recycling is going to represent a small percentage of that. But yeah, I'm still super excited

optimistic about the growth of EVs is just that certainly this market situation that we have right now over the last few years have impacted it and these interest rates has impacted it for sure making you know more expensive vehicle a lot more expensive to buy due to interest rates but

you know, hopefully in the next year or two. It's probably delayed my prediction that, you know, the tipping point will be 2025. Probably, you know, if everything goes well, maybe 2026, but not too far out behind that, I think. All right, that's it for us this week. I appreciate every single one of you that tuned in live, even though we did the episode early. If you do enjoy the show, I appreciate if you can give us a like, a thumbs up, a subscribe, whatever it is on the app that you're watching right now, because we're live everywhere. If you're listening to the podcast live,

audio version you can give us a five-star rating on your podcast app that helps a ton and we appreciate when you do it and we'll see you same time not same time we're gonna see you next time it's gonna be friday because i'm finally gonna be back in quebec gonna take a little bit break from trip no that's not even true i'm not gonna take a break from traveling going to spain in a week and a half or something oh nice for what uh the uh q6 oh nice that's the uh mccann

Yeah, the Audi mechanic. No, they have their own twist on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They don't like when you say that. No, sorry, Audi. They both don't like it. Porsche doesn't like it either. Yeah, you heard about the twist in the back end. All right. We'll see you next week, next Friday. Have a good one, everyone. Have a safe weekend. Bye-bye.