New Tesla Cybertruck, tariff mayhem, Lucid buys Nikola, and more
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All right. We are live, everyone, for a new episode of the Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host. And as usual, I'm joined by the one and unique Seth Wittrahm. How are you doing, Seth? I'm good. All right. I'm sure that everyone is tired again of talking about tariffs, but we kind of have to give you an update anyway because it is undoubtedly...

the storyline that's affecting the auto market and therefore the EV market more than anything right now so we're going to give you a quick update on that then we're going to talk about a new Cybertruck that was released this week a new version of it the new rear-wheel drive has been significantly updated we're going to talk about that talk about Lucid buying Nikola's asset that was an interesting thing that happened in the middle of the night last night and then we have a few new EVs that we get some uh

specs and some looked at. So we're going to have all that good stuff. And at the end of the show, as usual, we're going to take you guys' questions. So I'm going to remind you as more people come in because we just went live. But yep, tariffs. We talked about them a lot last week, about how stupid the reciprocal tariffs are because they're not really reciprocal tariffs. They are... Let me mute myself, my notification real quick. Okay.

They're not the calculation. They were presented as half of what the U.S. get imposed on its export by these countries. Now the U.S. is being nice and they are only implementing half of those tariffs on other countries. But then the math was revealed to be as stupid as the trade deficit divided by the imports of those countries. And then they literally added

uh like the greek numbers for a four for four and a fourth to that uh to that equation which you know you divide that was the stupidest part yeah you divide four by a quarter and then you get one so that doesn't do anything to the equation it just makes it look fancy if you don't know what your you don't know basic maths or you forget your greek numbers but uh yeah it was

If you needed to prove just how stupid the administration is, then they thought no one's going to catch that. I don't know. Maybe it's some 5D chess move of like, oh, they're going to talk about how stupid we were and not about like, I don't know what it is.

Anyway, the tariffs were supposed to come in play on... And there was also a 10% tariffs on everything. And then the higher tariff on China that was implemented right away. And then China fought back with some tariffs on the US and then it escalated, escalated, escalated over the last week. So right now, the tariffs on China are at 145%, unless it changed in the last hour or so.

And for the US, so what Chinese good coming into the US? 145%. That sounds very reasonable. And then China fought back a few times. And now I think this morning it ends up at 125%.

tariffs on U.S. goods coming into China. So that's very fun. But what happened on Wednesday when the tariffs actually came in place, I'm talking about the reciprocal ones that were between 10 and 49 percent, they lasted about a good 12 hours or something like that from midnight to midday when Trump claimed victory once again and backed down from the tariffs.

His argument to save face was that, oh, we have 70 or so countries that are coming to the table. So we're going to pause the tariff for 90 days while we negotiate with those countries to remove so that they remove the tariffs that we say are there, but they're not there. So they're basically going to have to negotiate how do you reduce the trade deficit with the U.S. So how the U.S. builds better stuff that they're going to want to buy and whatnot. It's

completely ridiculous but anyway what that did is uh it did a good boost the u.s stock market that i was uh was having a tough time it went up like 12 on uh on wednesday as a stock went up like 20 or so which was crazy and uh the crazy thing is that

the weighted average of the tariffs didn't move at all from the reciprocal tariff. The reciprocal tariff were not as significant as people thought because most of the stock was coming from China. There's some countries that are having an impact also. But if you do the weighted average of the imports with the tariffs, the increase

on the Chinese tariff were almost as much as removing all the other tariffs or pausing, I should say. So the average went down from 27%. It was lower than 10% before Trump.

all the tariffs and impose on China and the reciprocal one and everything brought the average up to 27%. And now after the pause, it's back down to 20, it was back down to 24%, but then he kept the ongoing war with China of since Wednesday. Cause I think they changed twice. The tariffs just since when they, since Wednesday on China, uh, brought it back up to 25. So there's only a 2% point difference, uh, between, uh,

what they were on Wednesday morning and now. It's pretty crazy. Tesla stock went up 20%, even though the reciprocal tariffs have virtually no impact on Tesla's business. But the Chinese tariffs, as we've been reporting, is going to have a giant impact on Tesla's energy business.

As soon as they run out of the battery cells that they had from China over the last few months, they're going to have to increase the price of the mega packs and Powerwall unless, you know, Elon can negotiate an exemption with Trump because it was a close relationship with Trump, which is not impossible. But now that the

Yeah, when I wrote that it was at 25%, but now it's at 145%. It will more likely than not more than double the price of the mega packs and power walls produced in the US, which for the power walls, that's all power walls that Tesla is producing everywhere. Hundreds of thousands per year.

That's going to likely go down if that happens. And the mega pack, which represent most of Tesla's energy business, which is Tesla's only growing business right now, the auto business is going down fast, is going to be decimated by that.

I think this should be a big worry for Tesla. And at the same time, what's interesting about this is that it's sort of creating a rift between, for the first time this week, between Trump and Elon. Because Elon has been dead quiet about tariffs for the longest time, even though Trump has been campaigning on it for years, really. He was way into tariffs even his first term. But Elon never said anything. But now this week, we're starting last week, I should say.

I think even people close to Trump were surprised at how crazy he went with the tariffs. I think most people were expecting a 10% tariffs across the board. And then he went up with the reciprocal one and then he went crazy on China.

By the way, even the 10% base tariff, which is still in place right now on everything, is pretty bad. That alone is going to create inflation later this year. There's no doubt about it. And then the Chinese tariffs on top of it will create crazy inflation and a ton of other problems. But that tariff specifically on China, I think it got Elon thinking a little bit. And then he got into a spat with Navarro, the top advisor. Yeah.

sort of the tariff czar for Trump. A lot of people, I don't know if you follow that storyline, but a lot of people think that Trump was looking at how do I affect China? How do I, in his first term, how do I deal with China? Find me someone that can advise me just for that. And he asked his nephew, his son-in-law,

what's his name jerry fisher jerry kusher he he asked him to you know in his first term because sure was like a very wide-ranging role within the administration and kushar literally went up to amazon and like

looked at books about China and found, I think Navarro's book was called "Debt to China" or like "The Debt of China" or something like that, like some very high catching title. And he's a professor at Harvard, so he must be super smart and everything.

So he basically read that book, gave that book to Trump and then, or the audio book maybe. And then Navarro became like his top tariff advisor. But in the economic community, economist, he's kind of a pariah, Navarro.

He cited in his book several times an expert called, I think it's Ron Vara that he calls him, which is an anagram of his own last name, Navarro. So he made up an expert that he's citing in his own book. So it looks bad specifically, but the guy is just obsessed with tariffs. He thinks that tariffs can solve all of the US problems.

So, you know, got on it with that guy because, you know, very tentatively kind of put it out there that he was officially against tariff very mightily. All he said was in an interview with the Italian prime minister, I think, this weekend, he said that he would like, he would hope, no, his word was he would hope that the U.S. and Europe arrive to a zero tariff free trade agreement.

That's it. And then after that, Navarro kind of slapped back at him because he was asked like, oh, it sounds like Elon, who's a top advisor to Trump also, is not on board with your plan for tariffs. And then Navarro had some cheeky comments about Tesla saying that Elon is not a car manufacturer, he just assembled cars, which is obviously wrong about that. And so Elon was right to clap back at him. But Elon being, you know,

Not a 55-year-old man, CEO of multiple companies, and decent head of a department. He's pretty much acting like a 14-year-old online. Instead of just correcting him, he called him dumber than a sack of brick. He said that he was a moron. He went full schoolyard. Did he call him a pedophile? Not yet. He's not a pedo guy just yet. That's some improvement there. Saving that.

So that created kind of a rift. Even though Navarro came out yesterday and said, oh, we're cool. Me and Elon, we're cool. The guy just called you in front of everyone a moron and double his second brick. We're cool. So, yeah, there's a little rift creating here. And I would assume that it's over the Chinese tariffs because Chinese tariffs are not good for Tesla at all.

And now we're starting to see some impact from it already. So last line, Tesla removed the Model S and X from the Chinese configurator, from Tesla's Chinese configurator. I would assume it's due to the tariffs because now they are up to 125%, basically more than doubling the price of the Model S because of course, Tesla produced the Model 3, Model Y in China, Gear Factory Shanghai. So those are safe for now.

But they import the Model S and X. It's not that big of a deal for Tesla. I checked the numbers and Tesla delivered just over 2,000 Model S and X in China last year. So they're not going to lose a ton of sales there. But I would argue that these were good sales for Tesla in China because Tesla basically doesn't make any money from the Model 3, Model Y in China.

They made some from the all-wheel drive version, but they sell very little of that. I think like 90 plus percent, the estimates are between 90 and 95% of Tesla's sales in China are Model 3 and Model Y rear-wheel drive. And the gross margins on those are China, which are cheaper than in the US, is very slim, like a few, probably around 2,500 bucks, something like that, converted to US dollars. And then when Tesla offers 0% financing on that, the...

The amount of that, basically, the equivalent of the impact of a 0% financing of subsidizing that is about $2,000. So...

kind of removes Tesla's entire profit from that. While Model S and X, they were actually making some money. But now that is gone for Tesla as of last night, they removed those vehicles. So it's one of the first casualties of the trade war for Tesla. But if I was Tesla, I would start to worry. I mean, I would assume that Trump is going to fold on China soon, especially like it looks like one of the main thing that made Trump fold on the reciprocal tri-riff, even his official statement

His official argument is that a bunch of countries came to the table to discuss, so that's why I'm folding. Is that on Tuesday night, if you were following the bond market, the yields on the 10-year and 30-year bonds in the US amid a big year for refinancing debt in the US were going way up, which were going to affect...

the US auction, trade auction, and also like the interest payment, which is one of like the big four horsemen of the US deficit with social security, military interest and Medicare.

You were going to shoot up one of those while you're already cutting revenue like crazy because he wants to cut taxes again. He's increasing the military budget to a trillion from 850 billion. And Elon is trying to get social security, but I don't know how successful that's going to be because that's political suicide for Republicans, basically. So is touching Medicaid, basically. So...

The only two things that Trump could have had an impact on for the U.S. budget was military and interest rates. And right now, those two are going the other way around. The theory right now is why they were shooting up on Tuesday was Japan. Japan is one of the biggest holders of U.S. debt, along with China and Europe. Obviously, also Americans are holding a lot of U.S. debt, U.S. government debt.

started selling so the japanese started selling their debt and like the the yield started to go up to go up to go up and trump likely panicked and he didn't admit it but he did say that he was watching the bond market on tuesday night and he was he said that people were feeling squeezy yeah you can say that again yeah um so now the same thing happened last night

though in this morning and it calmed down a little bit today. Last time I checked around noon, so that's good. But now the Chinese can do the same thing and start selling debt like crazy while devaluing the yen. And you're going to be in a good position to basically force Trump's hand again. So they might just wait a little bit and do it gradually, not come to the table and just get a better deal out of Trump.

They might do that or they might do it quickly. So this thing might end quite soon or it might not. But if it does continue long term and Trump just doesn't want to let go, I think Tesla's biggest worry is that

the status of Gigafactory Shanghai. Tesla is the only, not so soon, Toyota is supposed to have one also in the next year or so. But right now it's the only foreign automaker having a wholly owned vehicle manufacturing facility in China. And China is a pretty, the government has a lot of power, obviously. So they could change that status pretty quickly if they wanted to, I think.

I think right now it's not in their best interest, but it could change if the trade war continues. All right. Reminder that we are live. So if you guys want to ask questions, you can put it in the comment section right now. We'd appreciate it if you do question.

dash and then ask your questions so we don't go into the discussion that you have in the comments between you guys, which you're perfectly allowed to do. So yeah, if you have a question about any of the topics that we're discussing today and you want our take on it or you want a specific question, you can ask them. Or if you want any other topic in the EV world or renewable energy world that you want our take on, you can ask that right now in the comment section. And we're going to get to it in about 20 minutes or so. Tesla unveiled the new Cybertruck rear-wheel drive.

And it's a lot different than what they previously announced. So when Tesla originally announced the rear-wheel drive, it was supposed to be $61,000. No, $39,000. Yeah. I need to be even more precise here. So...

I'm talking about the production version that was on Vila 2023, Seth, you're right, in 2019, it was supposed to be like $39,000, $40,000, something like that. And then the production version was on Vila and it was increased to $61,000. And that has been the case since late 2023, but the vehicle was not supposed to come until late or mid 2025, which is basically right now or a little bit early.

So Tesla launched this Cybertruck Real Drive, which is now called Cybertruck Long Range because it doesn't have a smaller battery pack, which is the big question now. Is this a new model or is this replacing the $61,000 model?

Cybertruck Rear Wheel Drive, I think it is replacing it, honestly. I think basically Tesla has realized that the Cybertruck is not going to be a big high volume enough vehicle program to be worth making two battery pack for it. So they're making a single battery pack. They're sticking to 123 kilowatt hour battery pack and now just offering the Rear Wheel Drive version.

But this thing is a complete flop. And listen to me. I know people call me a test later or whatnot, but you're going to understand why real quick. So it has more range than previously announced. It was supposed to have 250 miles of range. So now it's at 350 miles. And it's actually the longest range Cybertruck because it has the same battery pack, but it's a little bit lighter thanks to the only a single motor rear wheel drive.

But it's $70,000 instead of $61,000. So it's only $10,000 less than the Zoll Motor all-wheel drive Cybertruck. But now look at everything that they removed from this.

So obviously you lose the all-wheel drive, which is one of the top features for a truck. A lot of people like to have all-wheel drive on a truck for many reasons, whether it be towing, whether it be off-roading, whether it be just like winter driving, everything. But now it also removes the tonneau cover, the tonneau at all. So there's no tonneau whatsoever on this standard. So you don't have the motorized tonneau. You cannot have the motorized tonneau as an option.

You can have a soft to-do and an option that you manually remove for $750.

Okay, so it's not too expensive and it does increase your range by 12 miles to 262 miles, but then you have to remove it manually every time. And this can be a bit annoying because as you know, the Cybertruck bed, if you have the tunnel on, you cannot see off the back window and you have to use the screen for the back window. They don't have a screen in the rear view mirror like most other automakers that have a situation like that.

So it can be a bit annoying. But you remove that, which was one of the coolest features about the Cybertruck. They removed the adaptive suspension. There's no air suspension. So you lose a lot of ground clearance. So that's also a big problem. You lose the light bar in the back. Okay, that's not that big of a deal. You use the rear screen in the backseat. Okay, also not that big of a deal. But you even lose the bed outlets.

the electrical outlets in the back set like the 240 volts and the little one. Yeah, that's a real bummer because it can't cost that much to run wires. That's my point. It's like one of the cheapest of these features. Maybe not the rear screen, whatever, but the adaptive suspension for sure, the tunnel for sure. It's the cheapest one and it's one that has a big impact. Huge. Yeah.

for no good reason. At least make it like a $500, even a $1,000 option or whatever, and you can get it. No, if you want it, you have to go to the Cybertruck all-wheel drive, which brings me to my point that I wrote in this article here when Tesla released that last night. It's like, I feel like this is meant to make the $80,000 all-motor Cybertruck look better, look more attractive price-wise. Because for $10,000 or more...

You lose a little bit of range, okay, but you get all wheel drive, super useful in the truck. You get the motorized tonneau, very useful also. You get the adaptive suspension, extremely useful, especially lowering when you want to get more efficient, higher up when you want to go off-roading or in a situation where the high snow or whatnot.

Then you have all the smaller things also, like you have textile seats instead of the fake leather, vegan leather one. Not that big of a deal, but annoying too a little bit.

You lose a few speakers. When I reviewed the Cybertruck, I didn't know that the sound was incredible in it. So I don't know how bad or worse it's going to be than the main one, but they were starting at a very high point with the main one. So you lose that too. So basically for $10,000, it feels like $20,000 worth of option that they removed for $10,000 less.

If they would have sold this thing for $60,000 like that with the same battery pack and everything, I would have said, "Okay, but for $70,000, this is a complete flop." I'm sure they're going to sell a few of it for some of the crackpots people that absolutely love the look of the Cybertruck and the $10,000 makes a difference for them affording it or not.

but that's that's like very few people because I think the more reasonable people that do like the Cybertruck is not necessarily about the look it's about like drive by wire which is still there and that's cool that's cool but uh um the adaptive suspension the internal cover the bed outlets in the back all these are the cool features and uh they are removing all of that for ten thousand dollars and the all-wheel drive obviously

Yeah, and also they're selling current inventory for like $70,000. Well, with a tax credit. So that thing is also going to get the tax credit, to be fair. So technically it's a $62,500 vehicle. If you're in the tax bracket, that allows the tax credit, obviously. But yeah, I think that for most people, this is a flop. It's going to help test a little bit, but like, all right, now...

Maybe Tesla is going to sell 40,000 units a year, which is still like less than a fifth of the planned production capacity. So, you know, the total commercial flop. They launched it in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East too. I think Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, and United Arab Emirates. So maybe that's, you know, another 5,000 units or something for the first year. And then after that, people get bored. Still on the Cybertruck at the same time.

this that happened last weekend though after the our last podcast this has removed the range extender option from the cyber truck configurator last time i check and i kind of want to check right now because uh i felt like this was probably something that they forgot to to remove and uh forgot to announce oh i mean you're not gonna announce it i think they're gonna if they kill it they just kill it but uh in the spec

So it was removed, the range extender, which for those people that don't remember, the range extender is a battery pack that Tesla planned to put in the bed of the truck that extended the range closer to what they initially promised the range would be and wasn't at the production version. But, oh, I think so. I think so. Yeah, yeah. Now it's fully removed. Okay. So yeah, the product is dead, I would assume. So last weekend, they removed it from the configurator. You could reserve it for $16,000.

Now, but it was still in the spec. It would tell you the range with the range extender, which I think I put it there. Yeah, the range would go up from 325 miles to 445 miles for the dual motor and 300 miles to, I didn't put it there for the Cyber Beast, but something similar for the Cyber Beast range.

Now this is gone. So they removed it. I'm not too surprised. Like I was curious at first with the idea of like having a range extender battery as a concept. But as soon as we learned that and also it makes sense, obviously, that you need to install it at the service center. So you need to go there and back if you want to remove it.

And it takes obviously a third, as you can see here, of your bed. It's just for $16,000. This Cybertruck is already much more expensive than it was supposed to be. It sounds like another flop from Tesla. All right, moving on. Yeah, this is a story that I just posted today because the Cox Automotive Report just came out. We get some data about all the EV sales this year in Q1. So basically year-to-date in the U.S.,

And 10% increase for EV sales in Q1 in the US. So that's good. I do think that it might be having an impact also from the tax credit, like the fear of the tax credit going away is starting slowly. And I know that this is going to have to go through Congress, but the new budget bill is being pushed right now. So we're going to get more details about if they can include the tax credit or not.

But there's a good chance that by the end of the year, the tax credit is gone. So some people are trying to secure that before it goes away. But we see some great improvement from, you know, Porsche went back up quite a bit. Toyota, obviously, we talk about the BZ4X having a good increase. Volvo going up a lot too. Jaguar going up. All right.

go up from basically nothing. So, JMC had a big increase. Of course, they released a lot cheaper vehicles in the second half of last year. So, in Q1, they didn't have the cheaper version of their new EVs. Ford is up 11% as one of the biggest delivery of EVs in the US. So, that's good. BMW up 26%. Cadillac, 37%. Chevrolet, 114%. Obviously, early last year, they were missing a lot of EVs too.

But Tesla, a lot of people are talking about Tesla. It's still the biggest automaker in the US, EV automaker, I should say. And they were reporting, Cox were reporting 128,000 deliveries versus 140,000 last year. So down 8% while the rest of the EV market in the US went up 10%. But that's a mistake. I don't know.

the problem it's not an only cox's problem here like i think i showed that uh picture before but this is the most opaque automaker when it comes to releasing data this is an example for those that are watching and not just audio only but you see a report here that's a report from ford official report just for us sales and this is the testless only report which is global sales it's completely ridiculous the difference like there's so much more data from ford than

than Tesla. And this is by design. Obviously, Tesla wants to keep the information to itself. They don't want people to dive into it. But we can have this data.

It's just Cox is not the best at coming up with this data. It looks like they are putting an estimate of 128,000. They're not far off, but they're significant still. The best way to find U.S. data, because the U.S. doesn't release the data, at least not soon after the end of the quarter, but all the other markets that Tesla sells vehicles in do. So what you can do is just accumulate all the data from all these other markets and subtract that to Tesla's

own report of global deliveries for that year. And that will tell you not just the US, it will give you US and Canada because Canada is also similar to the US, the way that they release their data. It takes a little bit of a while, like a month or two after the quarter has ended. So what it comes up to, it's 212,000 deliveries in all of the markets. You subtract that to 236,000 deliveries that the US reported and you add up to 124,000 deliveries annually.

in the US and Canada, which is already down from what Cox reports in the US. Now, Canada, this quarter, we're not sure how many deliveries exactly. There's the whole thing with the

rebates that Tesla did and they reported like 10,000 deliveries in January and whatnot. But now this week they admitted that this was a misunderstanding and everything. Let's say realistically should be closer to about 5,000. Might be a little bit more, might be a little bit less. I don't know. But if we say it's 5,000, the US is fewer than 120,000 deliveries now.

So Cox is off by over 8,000 and Tesla is probably down in Q1 in the US by about 15% rather than 8%. So it's kind of significant. Obviously, the Model Y changeover has an impact on that, but it's not just that. As usual, it's more than that. There's clearly some brand issues for Tesla in the US. You know, when you have the proud boys that have to counter protest. Yeah, that's not a good look. Yeah.

If your brand is down to like, oh, the product boys is on the other side, you're like, oh, you guys are having some issues. All right. This came out last night. I couldn't sleep last night and I opened up my laptop and then I saw this press release from Lucid. They sent me like, hey, we're buying Nikola's factory. Oh, interesting. So as you know, Nikola went bankrupt a few weeks ago.

After years and years of controversies and issues, they finally went bankrupt. And they still had some assets, not that many. And like even the factory, they don't really own, but they have like a lease deal on it. So a bunch of equipment in it and all that. So it went to auction this week. And Lucid was the winner of that auction. Apparently for roughly $30 million, they got the factory in Coolidge outside of Phoenix.

The image on the left here, that's about just 25 minutes away Lucid's own factory in Casa Grande in Arizona. So it made sense for them to buy that because, again, I don't think they're buying the factory. I think they're buying the long-term lease on it basically. And then there's also Nikola's headquarters in Phoenix about an hour away. So they are buying that also or buying the lease, whatever.

So it gives Lucid 884,000 square feet of extra footprint in Arizona for manufacturing and R&D and all that. So it's a good move for them. And they're also talking about they're going to offer more than 300 former Nikola employees in Arizona jobs. So that's also very good. So it's going to reduce the impact on the local job market for Arizona, especially in manufacturing.

And it's going to enable Lucid to grow a little bit faster because Lucid right now, obviously in their own factory in Casa Grande, they are starting the production of the Gravity, which is an important vehicle program for the company as an SUV in the U.S. market.

But the real big thing is the next generation vehicle coming from Lucid. They're going to a bit like Rivian doing the R2 and R3 after doing the R1s. Lucid is expected to have a similar transition to a little bit smaller, lower price vehicles coming soon. And these factories, by the factories, this footprint, let's say, is going to help them get there faster, including these employees from Nikola.

But obviously, I think it's fair to note that Lucid is a much better financial situation than Nikola was over the last few years. But it's still not a perfect financial position. They're still losing money. They're still not profitable. But for $30 million, it's probably a safe bet to move at that. I'm for the move. BYD.

announced its first vehicles that are going to get the ultra-fast charging that we talked about a few weeks ago that they unveiled, this 1,000-volt, 1,000-kilowatt charging that can basically charge the vehicle in less than 10 minutes, 250 miles in 5 minutes and all that. Like gas speed. Yeah, pumping gas speed. So the first vehicle to get it is the R, the Henhel and the Tang L SUV. The Henhel... Such a weird...

name it's uh it's just a 30 000 vehicle equivalent to 30 000 in china i should say it's basically the size of a of a model s so it's a it's a sedan sorry it's big if it's the size of a model s yeah yeah it's a it's a not a small car uh looks pretty good too look at that yeah i like it

Yeah, and it has 83.2 kilowatt-hour battery pack with BYD's blade batteries. So the same one that Tesla put in the Model Y in Europe, in Berlin. 435 miles of range, 701 kilometers, but that's CLTC. They were talking about 250 miles of range in 10 minutes, but 10 to 70% in 20 minutes though. So like you can get a quick... No, no, no, sorry, sorry. That's 10 to 70% in six minutes.

20 minutes is full charge, which most of the time you don't go full charge. You go like 90, but you can get to 70 in six minutes. That's crazy.

And you have five minutes, $250,000, so you want a quick boost. And then you have the Tang L, which is the SUV version of it, which is a little bit more expensive, starting at $32,000. It can go up to $38,000. It's crazy. Full-equipped, $38,000. You have this SUV with 435 miles of range on CLTC. I would assume it's over 350 miles, the EPA range.

But my theory with the Chinese automakers, like why do you have like such crazy specs and all that? They have DigSeq AI in there. Part of my theory for this, like, you know, with the battery,

the range and the charging capacity is that they have incredible manufacturing, incredible technology and all that. That's true. But also I think one of the thing is that they are a little bit more cowboy about their approach and they don't care as much about maybe longevity. It's still quite new, the EV industry in China, at least the modern one with high performing EVs.

I would like to see some data long-term on how the longevity looks on it because you can get more power out of a Tesla. You can get more charging rate in a Tesla if you don't care as much about the long-term damage that you do on the backsheet pack. So I think there's some of that I play to. But I also think that it's the technology aspect. I think they also have improvement in technology. But on top of it, so that the difference is even more significant, I think they're a little bit more cowboy about it.

We just talked about that because I posted, I haven't wrote an article on it just yet, but I posted in the room, I said, I don't know if you saw that, the Yang Wang U7 parking, automated parking, where it's like, it spins the tire to move on the spot to park, like parallel park. That's another example. It looks super cool. It's useful and everything, but then you don't care about the longevity of your tires that much if you do that. Like if you did that on asphalt, at least.

All right, BMW released some new specs, some new range specs for the 2026 i5 and iX models.

For the i5 here, the 2026 model year increase roughly 5% across the board depending on the version and the wheels. You have the eDrive 40 and the xDrive 40. I think it's all rear-wheel drive and all-wheel drive. That's the difference. You get 5% more range for the 19-inch wheels.

So now you have 310 miles on this. The 20-inch version gets 300 miles. It's 8% is the bigger difference. And then on the all-wheel drive, you get 5% and 4% difference with the longest range version getting 278 miles on range and 259 for the 21-inch version. And you get similar improvement for the iX SUV version.

So even a little bit better, he had a 7% higher range on 20-inch Ario wheels, summer tires, and that gets you to 240 miles of range. The price also went down, but that's because they released a new iX Drive 45 version. You get starts at $75,000 for 312 miles of range. The iX is not cheap. It's not a cheap vehicle.

I haven't driven it since it came out, though. I know it improved quite a bit. You also get a new screen on the iX with the 2026 version also. A new curved OLED, I think. It looks pretty cool. All right, two more news articles, and then we're going to jump into the comments section. So if you guys have questions, now is the time. I'm going to get there in just a few minutes. Sorry. I'm still a bit congested.

The Kia EV2, we've been talking about it for a while now. It's supposed to come next year. It's supposed to be the new entry model for Kia in Europe. Unfortunately, I don't think it's going to come to North America anytime soon. But we had a better look at it with the latest model here, the latest concept that was unveiled in Milan this week. It looks pretty cool. I don't know about these...

suicide doors suicide doors that other name for me yeah but um i3 doors yeah bigger i3 doors i like the outside the outside looks pretty good i don't know about the the inside looks very concepty to me right now so i don't know how significant it is to look at that but the uh the outside looks pretty good yeah

Supposed to have 300 miles, 605 kilometers on WLTP. Starts at around 30,000 euros, which is 33,000 US or so for now. I think that would do well in the US. Yeah. Without a 50% tariff, obviously. This replaces the Kia Soul, you would think? Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, it could. They would need to bring it probably in production soon.

Where is Kiosk Production? North Carolina? Yeah. But that's the EV6, EV9, obviously. All right, the last piece of news before we jump to the comment is about Foxconn. Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time, as our friend Ben Kenobi would say.

Foxconn has been talking about going electric for a while and they had in other markets and in the US too, but it was kind of a flop. They took over the Lordstown factory in Ohio and then Lordstown went under, didn't go well. Then they had the Fisker partnership with the pair that also went under.

Not a lot for the giant Taiwanese electronic manufacturer when it comes to electric vehicles. But they have this, how do they call it? The Foxtron brand, I think. Yeah, Foxtron is the brand that they were looking. So they were both... They were talking about being a manufacturer a la Magna, maybe, and have built cars for other brands. And that kind of was the deal with the Ohio plant and Lordstown. But now...

It sounds like they are more willing to do, okay, since it's not going well with the US, we're going to go with our own vehicles, with a Foxtron brand. And I haven't seen that. So there's two vehicles that they're working on right now that an executive announced this week is going to come to the US. The Model D, which is a multi-purpose vehicle, MPV. So I assume a van that's going to be designed by Pinaferina, the Italian designers.

And then the other one is already in sell in Taiwan, the Model C, a crossover because they look like an N7. So let's click on this because I have not seen that. Looks pretty good. It kind of reminds me a little bit of the new Leaf almost. Yeah. With maybe some of the classic light bar in the front, which is very Chinese right now. Model Y went that way to compete with China.

But yeah, that thing, they're talking about it coming as soon as later this year. But if they do that, they say it's going to be imported, which these days with the tariff for good luck. But they say that they plan to also produce it in the US eventually. So you might see Foxconn bringing that vehicle in production at the Ohio plant relatively soon.

That could be interesting. It would be one of the rare Chinese automaker that would actually successfully do that. Unless you count like Polestar or something like that, which I don't really count, but it's kind of the same deal really. When I say Chinese or Taiwanese, I should say. I don't know. All right. Let's jump into the comment section and see what you guys have to say. All right. Good evening from Europe.

Good to see people across the pond. We're not trade partners anymore, but we're still friends. Well, trade partners. I'm Canadian. Still Canadian. Yeah, Canadian. All right. Just did spring cleaning on my Cybertruck with the second time using Barkeeper's Friend. The truck looks awesome. I love this thing and would buy it again if I needed to. Good for you, Greg.

Did you see the news on the new ChemPower More setup, like Alvatronic, but bigger and better? 600 kilowatts to 1,200 kilowatts and 6 to 12 plugs. This will be super popular in Europe. Delivery started in Q4. 6 to 12 plugs. So you have to split that between the capacities? So it's 100 kilowatts, basically? Yeah, I guess if all are going at the same time, but theoretically, if only a few are being used, more power per plug.

If that's the case, then that's nice because it's probably going to lower the cost of installation quite a bit. But yeah, you would need to also, if there's only like two or three cars, then you should be able to do two or 300 kilowatts. That would be nice. Yeah.

All right. Hello, Europe. Good afternoon from the laughingstock of the world. That would be us, the United States. Skeptic, no worries. Loads of opportunities. All right. Opinion, I think the long-range Cybertruck should have been 59 instead of 69. I think that's K. Go for, I believe, the all-wheel drive version instead of the long range, unless you're looking for that extra 25 miles.

Yeah, that's basically my point. It makes the $80,000 version look good more than anything else. Price-wise, look good, obviously. Design-wise, it's another thing. Opinion, we should try to distance ourselves from China. They're manipulating their currency way too much. I agree, losing the plugs in the bed is a big deal. Scrapping the outlets in the Cybertruck is a surefire way to attract construction fleet buyers.

I think that's sarcasm maybe. Yeah, it's very useful for companies that actually use it as a work truck. Were any customers asking for this? Sure, they want a lower price, but with most features intact. Yeah, I think that's the point. Yeah. Question, do you think they're still losing money on the all-wheel drive and Cyber Beast? And that's why the long range is so expensive for what you get? As a whole, the vehicle program is for sure losing money.

uh the only time that they made a small profit is when the front loaded the cyber beast in q three i think in q3 last year um then then they went back as losing money in q2 thank you four sorry and then in q1 now it looks like tesla delivered five to six thousand cyber truck max in q1

So they had to troll down production on top of holding a bunch of inventory. Like last time I checked, they still had over 2,000 Cybertrucks in inventory, which is huge. So that's money losing. Like holding a 2,000 vehicle, like 200 something million dollars worth of vehicle that you're not getting any revenue for is bad.

So it's losing program as a whole. Maybe they managed to decrease the cost a little bit, but I would assume not by that much if you look at the long range vehicle. Because if you look on this truly, the only thing about this truck, it was the idea of make the 80,000 look better, which I think that's an actual, I'm not a marketer and everything, but I've heard marketing people

use that as a real tactic, especially in consumer electronics and whatnot. You've been covering Apple for a while. Have they ever done that? Come up with an iPhone that is not a really good deal but makes the other version of the iPhone look pretty good? Yeah, I think recently the new, what is it, the 16, it was the SE replacement. It doesn't have MagSafe. Everybody's like, what?

So it's actually kind of an analog to this a little bit. It doesn't have key features. So if that's really the strategy, then fine. But other than that, if it's not, if it's like really, like if we want to make money on that $70,000 truck, we have to remove all these features, then it doesn't look good for the cost structure of the Cybertruck because it means that it's...

The Cybertruck basically costs $70,000 to make before these features are sold. So it's not a good look. All right. Rear-wheeled Cybertruck feature. Culling is more proof that Tesla and EV truck profitability is miserable and make no sense at all. Battery costs are still too high and the effect is underreported. But at the same time, Tesla is out there claiming like the 4680, which the Cybertruck is the only one to use, is the cheapest battery that they buy or compared to the batteries that they buy, I should say, because they make it instead of buying it.

So my only thinking on this, and I have an article coming out on that because I'm still gathering some data. But it's like, yeah, okay, if you're not lying, it is the cheapest battery out there. It's also the worst battery out there because that's the only thing that makes sense for the Cybertruck. Otherwise, it cannot be the cheapest and also be good because otherwise a Cybertruck would be way better vehicle than it is.

All right. Carl has a theory. They never intended to make the vaporware range extender. Elon lied and the whole thing was absolutely falsely advertised to Cybertruck buyers. So they just put that fake extender in there as a bridge to the previous range. But I think in the teardown of the Cybertruck, they did find the connection for the extender though. So they did plan for the extension. So

So I don't know, maybe it was at least a concept at some point. I'm pretty sure that what's happening right now, what we see with the Cybertruck long range replacing the rear wheel drive, most likely, it's not confirmed yet, but I would assume so. And the range extender is like Tesla is figuring out that the Cybertruck is just, it's a flop. They're never going to make $250,000 a year. So it's not worth having new SKUs for a new battery pack at smaller range and range extender and all that. It's just not worth it. So...

I think that's the idea right now. All right. Carl, I hope the upcoming small EV truck fixed the profitability problem by requiring less battery capacity. Thinking Kia, Telo, Slate. Yeah, Slate. We talked a little bit last week. It was like a stealth company that's coming out. Apparently Bezos is in there and whatnot.

Now this week we learned that it's probably going to be a very cheap truck, like a $25,000, $30,000 truck that they're working on. So that's basically what you asked for last week with the Maverick, like an electric Maverick. Even cheaper than that. Yeah. It'd be nice to have the Ford name behind it. Carl's skeptical that Tesla reports factual sales number. Elon runs Tesla like a corrupt monarchy. And if we learned anything from Elon's public display of wellness and lies, their word is meaningless.

Yeah, I came out. I didn't bring it up on this podcast because we focus more on EV and whatnot than Tesla as a whole. But I have an article that I'm pretty proud of that I released this week that if you guys haven't read yet, you should check it out. It's called Cracks are Forming in Elon Musk's Armor of Lies. And it's specifically about his effort to secure control over AI. And it's based on all the latest release from OpenAI that's now suing Elon Musk.

And you can clearly see the difference between Elon's public persona and his private communication because they release a bunch of emails, a bunch of text messages and all that. So it's undeniable proof that Elon lies. And not only that, that Elon is willing to lie and cheat his way into having control over artificial intelligence.

And his effort moved from first open AI, he tried to gain control of open AI, failed, moved to Tesla, tried to develop an AI at Tesla. And then he screwed up bad when he sold his share to buy Twitter for an overpriced valuation. And then tried to regain that at Tesla through his compensation plan. That failed. Then shredded Tesla shareholders.

to get more control or you won't build the eye product that's the one of the rare time when he was actually honest when he was like yeah hey i told you that tesla is an ai and robotic company but i'm not going to build the eye product there if you don't give me more shares because my real goal in life right now is to have control over ai and then when he did he's like he founded xai instead resource tunneling from tesla to xai and now i guarantee you what's going to happen

In June, mark my word, in June, Tesla shareholder meeting, Elon is going to try to get Tesla to invest or even buy, I'm not so sure buy, but at least invest in XAI, which just absorbed Twitter. So Tesla shareholders are only going to pay twice, are going to pay twice for an overvalued Twitter. First through Elon selling his shares, developing Tesla stock, stock crashing.

And now that he had XAI buy Twitter for the same price that he bought it based on a completely made up valuation again. And now he's going to get Tesla to invest in XAI. Previously, he said maybe a $5 billion investment. I'm pretty sure that's going to change now, especially with Tesla being in some financial troubles in the next few years at the rate they're going. He's probably not going to want Tesla to use its cash reserve for that. I think he's going to use, he's going to try to get Tesla to do a share investment

investment in XAI. And since he owns probably about 50% or more of XAI slash Twitter, these shares are going to go to him under his control. So that's going to increase his control in Tesla. So that's his real goal. And you know what? Tesla shareholders are going to gobble this up. They're going to get screwed again. All right. We'll see. How do you invest based on that?

prediction i mean i would stay as far away as this last stock as i could i don't i don't know if i would short it because i it's it's not based on reality it's not it's not based on reality like the the best way to trade this last stocks if if you could and i wish i could do that maybe i could try to do that with an ai or something but you would need to create an index

that tracks the level of confidence, like you have an index for the level of consumer confidence in the US, which is crashing by now, by the way. But if you can have an index that tracks Tesla shareholders' confidence into Elon Musk. So if you believe Elon's lies, then Tesla stock goes up. If people start not to believe Elon's lies, the stock goes down. So that's the main thing that affects the stock right now. And of course, the global market is also affecting Tesla. I'm not going to lie about that.

All right. What is the best state of charge to keep a plug-in hybrid vehicle? It's often mentioned that for a Bev, you should keep it at 80% or less for battery health. But what about a plug-in? That's a good question. I imagine it's still 80%. I mean... Yeah, though it's kind of a bummer because you're so limited in your range or EV range. If you have like a 40-mile PHEV range, you want to use... You're probably going to drive about 40 miles a day if you want to...

I mean, I would follow, obviously, your instruction in the owner's guide. That probably is going to tell you about it. But it's a good question. Maybe you should look into that because it's interesting. Because if I have a PHEV, I never own a PHEV, but if I had one, I would kind of want to have the full EV range I can have every day. Greg Poland says, FYI, if you have a local car show or hangout, take your Cybertruck there. Here where I live, they love it and the Corvette people love it too. All right.

Greg loves the Cybertruck. I get it, Greg. We're not anti-Cybertruck here. If you love your Cybertruck, I'm happy for it. I reviewed it somewhat positively. There's a lot of things I love about it. But price-wise, value-wise, you cannot make an argument.

Loving the design of it and all that. When I review a car, if I don't like its design, I don't review it negatively because someone else might like it. I only review design if it affects the utility, the efficiency, and all that.

i i give my opinion obviously like if i like it i'll give it if i don't like it i'll give i'll give it to but i'm not gonna say like don't buy it because it's ugly like if you find attractive buy it but if you focus on everything else on the cyber truck it just doesn't make sense the new long the new long range cyber truck for seventy thousand dollars you can get a civil rado evlt at the dealer's price right now for the same thing you get

50, 58 more miles of range. You get all-wheel drive. You get so much more for that same price. You cannot argue that. That doesn't mean that your Cybertruck sucks. If you like it, you like it, but we have to be honest market-wise. All right, let's move on. Martin Hughes, the way to encourage trade dialogue is to say, yeah, you're kissing my ass. That's the art of a great negotiation, clearly. Yeah.

Question, long range cyber truck can't get you outlets from the mobile. I wonder what that means. Do you think the outlets work in the front? Isn't there a front outlet?

No, not that I know of. I don't remember seeing that. I think he means maybe like the mobile charger, but it's not bi-directional. You have a mobile bi-directional charger, but that plugs into the power share at the house if you have the power share. Yeah, power share adapter. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I think you still have power share with that. So yeah, that's good. Yeah.

If PowerShare was one of your main features that you like about a Cybertruck, then the $70,000 is a better deal. Maybe if that's your main feature, you don't care about all the rest because you still have the 123 kilowatt hour battery pack. And the $10,000 difference basically pays for the PowerShare installation and PowerShare hardware. So yeah, if that was your main feature in mind, yeah, we just found a good idea for the Cybertruck.

$70,000 Cybertruck. Good market for it. Probably not a big one, but still. Mike Angeles has a question. How does Trump's actions impact the OG mission of Tesla to accelerate the transition to EVs, etc.? Has it slowed or halted this mission? When will USC EVs dominate? I think obviously it slows it down. Well, it slows the growth down, but we see it's still growing. It grows about 10% in Q1. But again, Q1

It's not clear. It's too early to see the impact of Trump because Q1, like he just took over power. I think a lot of people also, I think there's an effect of, like I said earlier, to go buy an EV before the tax credit go away, even though we don't have the clear timing on that just yet. But I think it's going to come somewhat soon. So that has a short-term positive effect. Long-term, I think, like Seth said, I think probably going to be negative or something like that.

Another question, EV advocates keep saying battery costs mean we're at parity with ICE tech. When will the consumer see cars on the lot less expensive, like for EV versus ICE? I think we're starting to see that, right? So is he asking when are EVs going to be less expensive than ICE? Or just, I guess, less expensive, yeah. At the sticker price?

At the sticker price, I don't think it's the case quite yet. But you have to look at the average new car sale price in the U.S. that's been going straight up for years now. And I think it's like close to $50,000 right now, which is wild. It was like at $36,000 like four or five years ago, which is nuts. Yeah. Maybe just before the pandemic, for example, it was like $35,000 or $36,000. And now it's at $50,000. $50,000.

You could buy a Model T for $200 just after the war, the Great War, obviously. But even with inflation, what is that? It's like, what, $3,000 or something? It's not that nuts. So the average cost of vehicles in general went up. So...

The ownership cost is EVs are already cheaper. But I do know that psychologically it's very hard for people. The sticker price is also very important. And there are a lot of EVs that are very comparable to their ICE in the same segment price-wise. But I think we're not too far away. I think especially if, I mean, the...

We're going to see how the tariff and trade wars impact things because not only ICE vehicles are going to go up and not only EV vehicles, ICE vehicles are also going to go up. So we'll see how things settle. But after that, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if sticker price wise in the 2026, 2027, you start seeing some comparable EV vehicle being cheaper than ICE at the sticker price. And then when you ownership costs, it's already there. Right. Yeah.

All right, we're kind of running out of questions here. Greg charges his Tesla to 60%, only out of town at 100%. 60% is too low, though. You can't get it to 80%. Keep it at 80%. It's not a problem.

Sylvain was an expert technician in electric vehicle, says that PHEV have a bigger buffer than BEVs. That's interesting. That makes sense actually. That means you can charge it to 100%. It's like when Tesla had software-locked battery packs, then you could charge it 100% anytime because you were not actually charging it to 100%. That makes sense too.

Well, Greg's agree with what we said about the Cybertruck. So he loves the Cybertruck, but he's at least reasonable about the public perception and the actual spec versus value proposition. So that's good to hear. Yeah, you're right. I think that's pretty much it for us this week. I mean, thanks everyone for listening to the show. And I know it's crazy out there. I know that a lot of people are panicking and everything, but try to...

Relax, and the storm will pass eventually. And we'll be there every week to talk to you about how it impacts the electric vehicle and renewable energy world. And if you do enjoy the Electric Podcast, please give us a like, a thumbs up. That helps the show more than anything, and it's free to do. It takes a second. You can subscribe also, obviously. If you're listening to our podcast app through Apple, Google Podcasts, Spotify, if you can give us a five-star rating, that helps the show more.

a ton and especially these days because uh we always get attacked by like uh elon and tesla fans giving us one star rating just because they think we're too critical of tesla uh which you know they are allowed to think that but i think we're being pretty fair all right that's it for us have a good one bye