Tesla Cybertruck update, Elon Musk's terrible call, TSLA earnings, and more
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Welcome to a new episode of the Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host. And as usual, I'm joined by Sam Wintraub coming to us live from Paris. How is Paris tonight, Seth? Paris is great. I'm on a layover between two different events. One was the Volvo EX30. The second one is a Porsche doubleheader.

Yeah, double leather in Europe for Seth. So he's going to have a lot more to say about this in future episodes because everything that's happening behind the wheel, he cannot discuss right now. But soon enough, this is going to be on Electric and obviously on the Electric podcast. So stay tuned for that.

But we have a big episode to get to this week. Obviously, it was the Tesla earnings and a lot came out of that as usual. So it's going to be a Tesla heavy show as it usually is. But a few other interesting things too that we'll get into later on on the show. And at the end, if we have enough time, which we should, we're going to try to take a few of your questions. If you guys have any questions, any subject in the EV space that you want us to

get into tonight, you just put in the comment section and we'll get to it. Also, if you are a fan of the show, you can help out very quickly by just pressing the like button, pressing the share button, wherever it is on your app you're on right now, a thumbs up, all interaction helps the show and then you're free to do take a second. And if you're listening to your podcast app right now, if you gave us a five-star review, that is a tremendous help and we appreciate every single one of you that does it. All right, let's get right into it.

We'll get first into a little bit of a Tesla Cybertruck update, some from the earnings, some from not the earnings. The biggest one from the earnings obviously being the announcement that the Tesla Cybertruck delivery event is going to happen on November 30th. So that's next month coming in pretty soon. It's a little bit later than the official timeline that was end of Q3. But...

We're not exactly surprised that Tesla slipped that. It's still happening by the end of the year, so that's good news. The other thing that was in the earnings that was interesting was this thing here. This chart is familiar to you if you read Tesla's presentation every quarter. It's the current installed annual vehicle capacity. It was updated for the Cybertruck to a capacity of over 125,000 units, which

which is interesting. Again, this is the current installed annual vehicle capacity. So the name is like it leaves room to try to understand what it is. So install capacity, make it sound like it's installed right now, like if you can just feed it your supply and you get that number out of it. But we knew that it was always a little bit lax in terms of capacity

what the numbers are like almost a million at gigafactory shanghai which is obviously the the biggest most producing factory out there but uh we've never seen like a consistent million units rate out of them a hundred thousand model s and x like okay that's that's the probably the clearer example like tesla is obviously not producing a hundred thousand miles next years these days and it hasn't for a while so 125 000 is weird and then

We got a lot more details about that in the conference call that follow the earnings. But before we get into that, I want to...

Touch base on something that was just unveiled today that is very interesting is the Vindicator was updated to have Cybertruck's configuration in there. And that is some more concrete information, some more details about the electric pickup truck. Because even though Tesla is starting deliveries next month, it still hasn't released the official production specs and pricing. We assume that Tesla is getting around that by only delivering to Vindicator.

employees at that time so they don't have to officially announce anything in terms of pricing and specs and they will do so at the event. But in the meantime, this new decoder here reveals two configurations for the Cybertruck, a dual motor and a triple motor. The dual motor is referenced as standard and the triple motor, which is the E, is performance.

So when Tesla first unveiled a Cybertruck, there was a single motor, dual motor, and triple motor. There's been rumors that that has changed since people have talked about the quad motor that Elon referenced at some point. Now we don't have a quad motor and we don't have a single motor. That doesn't mean that either of those are never happening. It just means that probably Tesla is going to start with a dual motor and a triple motor version. We've seen from stickers on the release candidates in the wild, spotted in the wild, that Tesla

At least some of the prototypes that this has been testing out there are dual motor. So that is another indication, obviously. Then we have the gross vehicle weight rating, which is not the actual curb weight of the vehicle. It's the curb weight plus the cargo capacity, including passengers. So this is...

3,629 kilograms to 4,082 kilograms, which is between 8 and 9,000 pounds for one version. And then you have another version at 4,082 kilograms to 4,536 kilograms, 9,000 to 10,000. So not exactly sure what configuration goes in there, why there's such a wide range. I assume like there's accessories involved or maybe... Do you think it's just motor or do you think there's going to be a different battery?

I mean, that weight difference, like going from a range of 3,600 kilograms to 4,500 kilograms, I would assume that there's a big battery difference in there.

But that's a good point because we have the dual motor and the triple motor version. So that's no reference to batteries. So maybe Tesla has only one battery for these two models or two batteries, a long range and a standard range. It's not clear. But from the weight difference or gross vehicle weight difference, it would seem that batteries would need to be involved in that two battery range. I mean...

If we compare the gross weight vehicle rating-- Gross vehicle rating, I made a typo here. With the F-150 Lightning, the range of the Lightning is between 3,742 and 3,878 kilograms. The Cybertruck is going to be easier and/or has a bigger load capacity.

on the higher range than the Lightning because the lower range is actually lighter. So basically the base Cybertruck should be lighter than the base Lightning, but the Cybertruck could go heavier than the Lightning, which could hint at Tesla having a wider range of battery option, like some smaller battery and some bigger batteries.

which is quite typical. The Tesla is good at achieving a high efficiency. I know there's some controversy around the EP ratings and all that, but still, in general, high efficiency with smaller batteries than other automakers has achieved in the past. Also a little bit less conservative in terms of range than other automakers, to be fair. All right, so we add all that

So today, then some of the information coming from the earnings. But then after the earnings, there was the conference call that followed, which we're going to get into because it was a bit of a weird one, disastrous one that I called. And it started out with Elon Musk.

trying to temper expectation with a Cybertruck. And he did his usual speech about production is a thousand times harder than prototypes, which at this point we've heard that speech a hundred times. So when

when you hear it, they're like, all right, does it really mean anything now that you're talking about a cyber truck? It actually kind of meant something in this case. It wasn't just him repeating the speech. It felt like he was very emphasizing on like, Hey, this is going to be a hard one guys. So, um,

He even said at some point, we dug our own grave with the Cybertruck in terms of the complexity to bring to production. He emphasized we cannot copy other manufacturing methods for the Cybertruck like everyone does in the auto industry. You just copy someone else's manufacturing methods. You have, in this case, have to invent new manufacturing methods because of how different the Cybertruck is. By that, he means this is the first...

vehicle with stainless steel body since the DMC DeLorean. So it is a big step. So he said, I just want to emphasize that one. I think that this is potentially our best product ever. And I think it is our best product ever, but it is going to require immense work to reach volume production and be cash flow positive at a price that people can afford. That one is important right here. So I just want to temper expectation for a Cybertruck.

He said that, but then he also said that he believes that it's going to take about 18 months for Tesla to reach volume production, which he puts at 5,000 units a week, 250,000 Cybertrucks per year. So he says, if you start next month, 18 months, that puts you through early 2025, basically, which is not that bad. I mean, I think... Why is that even stressful? Like, you wouldn't expect a Cybertruck to be profitable...

in the first six months or even a year. Certainly not profitable. Volume, I don't... I think the volume part is what got people because I got this whole thing and I'm like, all right, this is what we expected. What the more reasonable people that are watching this expected. I did get a sense that some Tesla investors...

were kind of hopeful that something would actually be better with a Cybertruck, that it would actually go faster because it was designed to be manufacturing easy and all that. But even though that is Tesla's motto as of the last few years to design for manufacturing, the Cybertruck kind of negates that with maybe that was still the motto, but

They also had to invent new manufacturing technique for it. So like it kinds of cancel each other's out on that front. So yeah, I think 25, 18 months, 2025, 250,000 trucks is all like very good. But again, to be cash flow positive at a price that people can afford, that's the other big one.

So don't expect the $40,000 to $50,000 Cybertruck anytime soon. I would now clearly put it after 2025. I think that's pretty clear. Or around 2025, maybe later half of 2025. Though at the same time, because Tesla sells 250,000 Cybertrucks a year, if it doesn't have a base version around 50,000, I don't know. That might be a little bit difficult.

But on the higher end of things, the good news is like it's very unlikely that this is going to go, sorry, I'm losing my voice, going to go over $80,000 because of the tax credit in the U.S. being only advantageous up to that point. So that would make sense too. Was there anything else on that front? And that was pretty much it on what he said about the Cybertruck. Yeah.

All right, let's jump into the earnings itself before we go to the other stuff. Just for people that like these numbers, we do like to discuss Tesla's financial results because they are one of the rare. Now, this is not the only one now. Thanks to Rivian, Lucid, Fisker, and Ford. Two big congrats to Ford for splitting Tesla.

their gasoline vehicle business with their AV business and giving everyone a look into the AV business so that we can see what their future is going to look like. That's great right now, but at least they are being transparent about it. Um, so we get an idea of what it is to be an all electric vehicle automaker, which is not Tesla's only business. I know, but it is what is driving the business by a wide margin. So the expectation this quarter was 24.25 billion. Um,

73 cents per share non-GAAP earnings and Tesla delivered 66 cents per share. So it didn't meet expectation on the earnings and it missed revenue pretty big at 23.35 billion rather than 24.25. So significant miss. Now, what was interesting with this is that if you were watching the stock price at the same time as these were coming out,

The stock price didn't take a big hit from Tesla having a miss here. Not a big miss, but big enough. And Tesla sometimes crashed even if it didn't meet expectations. So that was a bit surprising. I assume that the Cybertruck announcement kind of countered this whole thing because Elon hadn't...

at the conference call where he tempered expectation and all that. Yeah, it was just, it was, Hey, we finally have our delivery event date. We have even like this 125,000 units figure that was again, careful with that. So a lot of enthusiasm around that.

Now what happened after is the conference call happened and then Tesla stock started going down, down, down during the conference call. And then obviously when markets open the next day, 10% down, which is huge for a company the size of Tesla. Tesla is known to be a volatile stock, but still like 10% in a day is massive. Like you're talking about tens and tens of billions of dollars being wiped out. It's huge. So...

So yeah, I called it Tesla tumbles of a disastrous Elon Musk conference call. Why did I call it disastrous? Is it too much? I don't know. There was a lot of points that I thought were just not a good look for Tesla. First of all, the call starts and Elon is muted while giving his opening statement.

So we don't hear anything of like the first half of his old, I assume the first half because normally like, I don't know, he statesman lasts however long and it felt like it was a lot shorter this time. But the craziest part is not even that he was muted, is that Tesla unmuted him mid-talk. So mid-sentence.

And he just kept going like nothing happened as if no one told him, hey, Elon, no one heard everything you just said right now. He didn't go back and did it again. It happened again in the middle of the call. And again, it was like nothing happened. No one told him. And it's not on the YouTube or anything either. Oh, yeah. If you go on YouTube. Yeah, I assume he was completely muted. They couldn't really do it. But yeah, so that means that

Tesla pressed the button and like, oh, Elon is muted. They unmuted him. No one was willing to go to him and like, hey, Elon, sorry, we messed up. And no one heard what you just said, which we assume is important stuff that you need to communicate to your shareholders in the shareholder earning calls. But no, no one did that, which is scary to hell. Because, I mean, we've discussed this in the past before. It is a concern that we had for a while now that we believe that Elon is surrendered by Tesla.

Yes, man. And for the most part, I'm sure that's not... I'm not generalizing. I don't want to generalize too much. I'm sure there's some people that are willing to stand up to him. I would hope so. But for the most part, it looks like there's a lot of yes men around him that are not...

uh willing to deliver bad bad news to him and that was if you read the book the recent biography by um walter his action he mentions that several times in it so that also amplified my concern on that front and this example looks like another one of the another example on that side of things so it it is a problem when the c when people are not willing to tell the ceo what's going on for real uh the ceo needs to have

inaccurate picture of what's happening i know that it sounds like patio like oh it's just happening in on the conference call but if that's happening there it's happening other places and this one is just one that we could notice yeah it's not it's not great uh that was not the only thing that i didn't like about the call though obviously um at some point for example he

He's asked a great question that I was looking forward because I saw on the say.com where you upvote the question that they're going to ask. I saw that it was up there, so I was very happy. Like, that's a good question an investor should ask. It was, when do Tesla plans, if and when Tesla plans to take legal liability for the FSD beta or for the FSD period, I guess, which is a very, and they use Mercedes. They preface it with, yeah, Mercedes. Yeah, exactly.

And I think that's a very good question because that's the only step, only practical step that turns an FSD system or any kind of autonomous driving system into a practical one where you can actually say, okay, this...

This is not just a driver assist system anymore. It is actually a self-driving vehicle because we, the self-driving system, take responsibility for it. In the case of Mercedes, of course, it's a limited period of time, but still useful. Tesla hopes to have a wider range of opportunity to activate it. Anyway, that was the question. And the answer was...

People already think that we have liability apparently because they're suing us. Like, okay, like that's not an answer to the question. And then he went on a little rant about like, oh, Tesla, we're having a completely different approach than these Mercedes-Benz and all that, which, okay, you do that. I understand that you have a different approach, but you're still going to have to get to that step.

at some point even with your approach otherwise you don't deliver on your promise of robotaxi because uh robotaxi the robo has the responsibility or in the case manufacturer of that robot which is tesla so then he went on this rental like or it's different than mercedes because we have uh now achieved baby agi which is

Really, really BS. Yeah, I mean, Elon's use of the word AGI is kind of all over the place. Anyway, so him like skating around a question like that, it makes it look like they have never even thought about this step.

that's what it makes it makes us feel like and that's extremely worrying as a someone that has a fsd package vehicle i'm like this is the most important step in your promise of delivering a self-driving vehicle like you have to take responsibility at some point and you haven't even thought about that it sounds like it is extremely boring or if they have thought about it they have not made a good job to answering that question at least we can agree on that um

So there was a bunch of moments like that. I mean, most of the conference call was him complaining about macroeconomics and more specifically the interest rates, which I'm the first to agree that it has a massive impact on Tesla's business right now. It has a massive impact on anyone's business right now. It has a massive impact on my car purchasing myself. Like I would be...

in the market right now for a new car. I mean, 2018, my Tesla is getting older and all that. I would be willing to upgrade at this point, but I need to be willing to shut out $50,000 out of my pocket or give several thousands of dollars to a bank, which an interest rate, which I'm not willing to do. So yeah, I see how it can affect a lot of people and Tesla. However, it's completely out of Tesla's power.

So, and it's very frustrating when you spend half the call complaining about something that's completely out of the company's power. And then when you're asked a question about something that is within the company's power, you just skate around it. Like that's just not a great look, in my opinion. Did you feel that, Seth? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, but this isn't the first time that it's kind of gone this way. I was surprised it dropped 10%. I know initially it was up before the actual conference call. So in real money, it probably dropped 11% or 12%. Yeah, I mean, it dropped today too, I think. Yeah, it left another 3.6% today. So that's two big days down. It's almost like getting below 200 soon. Yeah.

It's a big deal. But the thing with Elon, like, you know, Elon likes when the stock go crazy up, he goes right away like, fuck you, the short Tesla shorts, fuck you, like you're getting destroyed. But then when the stock gets slashed like that, he tells Tesla employees, oh, don't worry about it. Don't think about the stock price and all that. Like, don't worry about that. That's not a healthy behavior. It should be more of like, all right, the stock is,

went down like crazy. It's a message from shareholders. Like what, just what happened? Like, it's not, it's not the way that we see, we see fit. So, but he doesn't seem to get that message. It doesn't, he doesn't care about that stuff. I mean, it goes back to his famous comment. Don't remember when it was, but I remember it was with the,

CNBC was interviewing at some point and he says like, you don't care when you say something on X and it just crashes your stock and you lose a lot of money or on paper and all that. He's like, I don't care. I don't care. He doesn't care, but all his investors might care. It's just not a good look. To be fair, there was another thing that maybe, I mean, it's related to his comments about the macroeconomics also, but

might have affected the stock negatively from the earnings or from the earnings call at least. He was asked about Gigafactory Mexico and the timeline on that. And he basically announced that Tesla is pumping the brakes on Gigafactory Mexico. To be clear, he made it... I don't want to put any misinformation out there. He made it clear that they still plan to do the factory. It's the timing that is not as clear anymore. Previously, the timing was like, we're going to do this super fast. It's going to be a Shanghai 2.0 and all that. Now it's like...

We've ordered everything that has a long lead time now and we're working on the construction side and all that but we don't know when this is going to happen because I'm worried. I'm speaking for Elon here.

I'm worried about the macroeconomics and where it's going and everything. And then also then Drew chipped in and was like, we also have plenty of room at Gigafactory Texas, which plays into what we reported last month where we heard that the next generation vehicles are actually going to be built first in Texas before being built in Mexico, which was the original announcement here, like manufacturing next-gen vehicle. That's what Tesla said when they announced Gigafactory Mexico. It was like, this is where we're going to build our next

next-gen EVs. Now, everything points to Tesla slowing down, pumping the brakes on Gigafactory Mexico. Still happening, but probably later, focused on Gigafactory Texas and building the new Robotaxi and cheaper vehicle there. So we're going to keep an eye on that, see when Tesla actually gets the foot off the brakes for Gigafactory Mexico.

One of the silver lining of the earnings was the energy storage business, which is still booming like crazy thanks to the big ramp up in Gigafactory, Megafactory in Latrop, California.

90% year-over-year increase in energy storage deployment at now 4 gigawatt hour a year, which is great. It's a good 16 gigawatt hour of annual capacity, which is still less than half of what Lytrop is supposed to be able to produce. But they did say that there's two phases to it. The first phase has been ramped up and now they're moving on to the second phase, which is going to be the one that enables the 40 gigawatt hour capacity.

So this is great news. Obviously, some power walls in there too. But at this point, we believe that Megapack is responsible for the vast majority of energy storage deployment. You see this chart here. It's obviously big growth in the business. And interestingly, also, Tesla said that it's contributing now to profits. Yeah, I think he said something to the tune of,

there's bigger margins on energy products than there are on cars now. Yeah, which had been like a big question that people had for a while. Like, all right, this is great. This is increasing like crazy, but what are going to be the margin on this? And Tesla always said that they hope that eventually it's as big as the cars. Obviously, they said that

When Tesla had like 25% gross marginal cars, now Tesla has like 18% gross margin. So that might be why now it has equal or surpassed the car because the cars went down and this went up.

But this chart here is not the energy storage profit, by the way, it's the service and others, which one of the things, again, is that I've been complaining a lot about Tesla not being transparent lately, that this is another example. Some of Tesla's business are becoming big enough that Tesla should break these down separately from their vehicle business and their service business. Tesla's service business itself is probably going to be getting pretty big right now with a fleet of like 4 million vehicles. This is a multi-billion dollar business a year.

So it would be nice to break that down separately from the energy storage business, which is clearly also becoming a multi-billion dollar business a year. And then you have also the supercharger business. Now the paid supercharger, Tesla said that it's becoming profitable, which is great too. It would be nice to see the actual economics behind that. Because if Tesla is producing profitable energy,

profits from that supercharger business, it would be a great example for all these other charging station operators that are not being successful, profitable right now. If you look at the stock price of company like ChargePoint, EVgo and all that, they're crashing like crazy. They haven't been able to prove profitability yet. So that would be a great example to set there.

Yeah, the other thing is obviously the solar business is down year to year 49.9 megawatt. That is in line with what we've been reporting at Electric over the last few months that Tesla has been making a switch to a third party, relying more on third party deployment and relying more on they want to own the brain behind the solar project rather than the solar panels and deploying themselves as the...

the solar project. So the new solar inverter is being deployed instead, the power wall and the gateway and all that is also brains that, uh, can be useful for Tesla from the Tesla electric and virtual PowerPoint, uh, standpoint, which we think going to be a huge business for Tesla eventually. All right. What else? What else? Oh yeah. Today we learned of, uh,

A new diamond lever that Tesla is pushing, and the weird one is this one went the other way now. Tesla is allowing people that have free supercharging for life, unlimited supercharging for the life of the car on older Model S and X, to transfer that supercharging to a new car, either a Model S, a Model X, or even a Model Y now.

So this is a 180 from what this was doing earlier this year, which was trying to bring back in inventory all those cars that has free supercharging to remove the free supercharging. And they gave incentive for people to exchange for upgrade to a new car.

like $5,000 cash for that free supercharging, which values the free supercharging pretty high. And then they even gave like six years of free supercharging on your new car if you gave up your unlimited and get the cash on top of it. So like big incentive. Now they're like, all right, is this a good sign that they have some demand issues? It's like, all right, now you can upgrade and you keep your free supercharging on your new car. So complete 180. But I understand why. I mean, I would assume that there's still

a few hundred thousand people that might have cars with free supercharging that that's going to be around the world though not just in the us obviously and um and the reason that they are holding on to that car and not upgrading because normally like i don't i'm generalizing it and because every time i say that i get emails from people i keep my car 20 years whatever most people that buy luxury vehicles um

upgrade their cars more frequently than a lower end of the market. It's just that how it works normally. But you see a lot of people with $100,000 Model S and X that are still driving 10 years old car at this point, eight, seven, seven and up to 10 years old cars because they have this free supercharging. And so Tesla wanted to get those off the road because

I would have to assume that if you look at the data from the free supercharger fleet, it's probably only like a 10-15% of them that actually are costing Tesla a lot of money in terms of free supercharging. Because free supercharging for the average EV owner like myself,

it's a few hundred dollars a year that you're getting as an incentive, as a surplus, because you're not using the supercharger network that much. If you're a power user of the supercharger network, well, that can be your whole charging for the year. It can be thousands of dollars worth, which is why Tesla was offering $5,000 for it, because they know that it can be worth that for those AV users. And now probably that after making all those attempts to get those car backs, Tesla still finds that there's a core group of people that are not...

are not wanting to upgrade to give up those free supercharging. And this is an opportunity to get them to at least upgrade their cars and still get free supercharging. And I would assume, obviously, this deal was still put together. I haven't seen the contract for it. But I would bet my life on this, that if you look at the contract...

there's going to be some kind of restriction on your new free supercharger for life. So probably like you cannot sell the car with that free supercharging, things like that, that would like reduce the value a lot of it and enable Tesla to finally like have an end to the program at some point. Anything to add on this set? I wish they did it retroactively so I could go, go find my old free supercharging Model S and,

Well, that's one that Tesla got back, right? They have it back now, right? Yeah, they have it back. Fred and I have been talking over the last couple of weeks. The guy I sold my Model S to had a drive controller issue. And it's kind of a rare Model S. It's got the third row. It was originally a Model S40, but they switched it to a Model S60 and software locked it. This is way back in 2013.

But it had free supercharging for life, like all Teslas did back then. And I was like, you should sell it to an Uber driver. Uber driver in New York City would pay a ton of money for it because it's got a third row. It's great for big rides, unlimited supercharging. And just driving around the city, you don't have to go that fast, whatever. It's not going to do too much damage to the car. But

the drive controller issue uh you know you need to fix that before it becomes fine yeah it's just too expensive to fix and it's a great idea the taxi thing but i would assume that i i thought a lot of those taxi regulation of uh like limitation on like cars that become 10 years old like normally like they don't accept that so i wouldn't be surprised if that's an issue even the car works great you're still like 10 years old and we need a new one whatever it's a weird one it's a weird one

all right in our weekly next update the toyota jumped on board this week they announced a deal with tesla to adopt nags and uh have the supercharger access um obviously this is all the dumb nose falling we had the very tail hand of it i think now it's just um it's just volkswagen in the major automakers i think other than that everything everyone was as announced i think

yeah there's small ones like mazda i don't think that ever announced but yeah well i mean don't have evs either um not that toyota has a big fleet either but uh interestingly so like for the most part every one of those announcements have been the same like i'm sure tesla like

just copies the contract and like change the name hyundai from toyota and things like that but there's a little change you know before it was okay our new evs that are going to be launched in north america are going to have max as the standard plug starting in 2025 and then starting in 2024 we're gonna make an adapter available to our existing av owners

to get access to the supercharged network. In this case, 2025 for that option and 2025 for the adapter too. So the adapter coming about a year later from Toyota. Not sure why. I would assume maybe because they are late to getting on board. Like the Tesla assumed that there's going to be some kind of bottlenecks on these adapters at some point. But we just discussed earlier today. So then you can get those on the third parties anyway, but...

I don't, I'm sure some, some of the automakers are going to make some deals to make them free or AV discounted or something like that, because just, it's going to be a big difference if you have access to a supercharger or not. Like it's, it's, there's a lot of value in that.

So either it's that or it's Toyota doesn't care about whether it's 2024, 2025 because they don't expect to have a significant fleet of vehicles in those years. That's also a possibility knowing Toyota's history in the EV space. All right, moving on from Tesla. Big announcement this week. I'm going to let Seth take it from here. All right, Electrek has signed a five-year title sponsorship deal with the IEF.

for Formula Sun Grand Prix and American Solar Challenge. So this year we did for the first time, we sponsored the Formula Sun Grand Prix. It was in Kansas. It was a ton of fun. We got to meet a ton of college kids and some mentors and some industry people. Tesla was there. Blue Origin was there. A bunch of software makers were there.

Great experience. Good time. You know, we think we can do a lot of good work with this organization. We're going to make solar racing a lot more fun. Maybe we'll get some tele televised, you know, live televised action. Maybe we can get some deals going with other racing leagues. Maybe the NCAA gets involved. We've got lots of ideas. I think this could be a lot of fun. So we signed a five year agreement with,

the terms of the deal aren't disclosed, but, you know, it's going to get, it's going to get the IAF a lot of money to kind of expand the program. It's going to allow us to kind of

piggyback on some of those relationships that we foster for these things. And probably most importantly of all, we're getting the next generation of engineers, the next generation of car people, solar people. We're helping them along the way. So I think it's a win for everybody. Giving them a bigger showcase, basically. A big showcase, yep. So I think it's good for everybody and we're really excited about it.

Yeah, I mean, I think this is a big opportunity for like, obviously, we're giving them money directly for that, for the exposure, but also we're probably going to bring them indirectly some money by...

So Electrek trying to put more eyes on this very cool challenge, this very cool competition that they have. And we hope that other companies also jump on board and contribute to these events that are hopefully going to get bigger every year of those five years that Electrek is going to be partnering with them. So if you guys...

want to help out you can reach out to and you can go to the post in that uh on electric and the show notes right now and uh there's uh you posted the emails in there i think so right yeah i saw you put a few ways to contact people or at least yeah links uh yeah you have a link to get in touch right here that's a direct email to uh to jordan i wasn't sure

All right, moving on, we have first image of the Volvo EM90. So it's a nice little electric minivan coming from Volvo, which is going all electric pretty fast, faster than most other legacy automakers. And this is going to China first, but I think they already confirmed plans that it's going to Europe. And I'm not sure about North America, but...

So I actually got to talk to Volvo this week about that. And they said they have no current plans to bring it to the US or North American market, which is kind of a big bummer. And I think the European part is even a few years out. They're going to have an announcement, I believe, in December.

uh, in China, um, for this rollout. It's built on a, uh, Zeker thing, just like, um, the EX 30. Uh, it looks amazing. It's like one of those things where like, why not just try that in the U S like, I think it would do really well. But you know what? I think I'm seeing like, cause it's not the first like Volvo Zeker car that's been released in, in, uh,

in China. So I think maybe everything that Z-curve is not being exported everywhere else. It might be like a relegation-based issue because obviously Volvo makes cars in China that they ship to North America. So that's not the issue itself, but maybe it's the ones that are based on Z-curve that might have... This is the Z-curve, by the way. So yeah, you can see the resemblance.

But yeah, I mean, this is the segment of the market that is under serve in the EV space, the minivan version, the minivan segment. Yep. We got this week, we got the EV6, the Kia EV6 pricing for the 2024 model year. That is hitting the dealership pretty soon.

And it includes a new trim, a new light trim starting at a cheaper price. So let's go right in. That's what you guys want to see is this charge right there. It's just charged. So the new light version is available. And I love Kia and Hyundai for that where they make it like you can mix match your batteries and your powertrain. It's so great. So you have the light.

rear-wheel drive, you have the long-range rear-wheel drive, and you have the long-range all-wheel drive, and then you have the same thing for the wind version, and then you have the GT version, obviously. But the small battery pack is only available for the rear-wheel drive. So that's new, though. That's new. And that starts at only $42,600.

You get 232 miles of range, but I would assume this is a pretty serious 232 miles of range in terms of AP. It's something that you should be able to get. Then you have the longest range with the 310. This is a long range with a rear-wheel drive unit. You can get it also in the wind version. You get 310 and even the GT version gets the same. That's a little bit surprising. Yeah, it's also surprising that the light rear-wheel drive gets more miles on AP.

58 kilowatt hour battery than the GT gets with a 77 kilowatt hour battery. So that's a super inefficient. GT is still super inefficient. And also Kia told us that they were going to make the GT way more efficient this year. And it was because of they basically...

uh didn't make a uh version of the gt that was you know had efficient tires or whatever yeah but this still looks like that's gonna be the gt line on rear-wheel drive and the ural drive like they are pretty efficient at 310 and 252. yeah i mean relatively but yeah my understanding was the gt was actually going to get more efficient and at 218 miles that doesn't appear to be the case

Well, I think it's because of the way they name it. Because if it's the GT, they mean like the GT, like the one with the full sport package on it. But like they call the GT line and rear-wheel drive and GT line all-wheel drive. So they couldn't mean any of these really. But you can see the big difference is obviously the horsepower with the sports version is way more powerful at 576 horsepower. This used to be a supercar like just a decade ago, really. All right.

So we've been complaining a lot about GM's output in the EV space. Like they have all the vehicles lined up now and everything, but they just don't seem to bring the volume just yet. And we've been suspecting that...

GM's problem might be the dealership model might be part of the problem. And we're seeing that happening with the Chevy Blazer EV right now. There's been a report that's from our partners at CarDirects that the new Chevy Blazer is being marked up at the dealership by as much as $10,000 over MSRP, which for a $60,000 vehicle is...

is pretty expensive of a markup. Obviously, it's the very early days of the Chevy Blazer EV, so they're trying to take advantage of that. But...

I mean, this has happened almost every time a new EV has launched a market in the last few years from Ligasi Automakers. And we've seen most of them taking approaches to try to avoid that because it gives such a bad name to these EVs when they come out. They're like, "All right, I really want a Blazer EV, but I'm going to get screwed $10,000 off at the middleman that's in between the manufacturer and me." It just leaves a bad taste in people's mouth and turns them away from those EVs, and especially at the beginning of it.

um most of the makers have announced efforts to quell that like they've been warnings the dealership they don't have any power on the final price that the dealership comes to but they've been like warning them that if we catch you doing that well maybe the next time that we allocate evs to you guys

There's not going to be that many. And that creates this vicious cycles of, all right, do you get dealership that they're marking up EVs like crazy? And then you have the issues of dealership not having any inventory. So the two issues are combined together. So it creates this mess. Not a great look. I keep wanting to find the positive of dealership. And there are some. There are some great dealers out there, but it seems to be so far and few between all the shitty ones.

Yeah. Still with GM, we had another bad news this week. We had confirmation that the Silverado EV is going to be delayed by pretty much another year, all the way to late 2025. They say that has to do with a slowdown on the investment at the GM Orion plant. Orion? Orion. Yeah, it's not all Silverados. It's just the ones that are going to be built at that plant, which was supposed to be a big share of them.

So that just means that Silverado EVs are just not going to be delivered in big numbers for at least a year. The Orion assembly plant is also where the Bolt was made. And Jamie did a post about, well, if you're not doing anything there, why not just start up the Bolt production again? Yeah. Which we did more as a, you should do it than like us speculating that they will do it. But sometimes it works. I don't know. Yeah, sometimes.

and another pickup truck that is being seeing a big slowdown is the f-150 uh ford announced this week that the f-150 lightning is losing a production shift so they are cutting 700 jobs with the say is not related to the uh union strike but is that what they say did they actually give a reason for uh supply chain issues as a reason behind the cuts okay did not say how long it will last

A lot of the times when they don't say that is because they are permanent. Ford claimed to be working through processing and delivering vehicle health for quality checks after restarting production in August. So yeah, there's been this big... Not a great year for the F-150 Lightning. Obviously, there was the big recall and then production stopped.

And volumes are not quite what they need to be. Some dealerships were holding on to some inventory too. So there's a lot of problems with it. I'm not saying that the program is dead. I'm just saying that the program is nowhere near where Ford said it was going to be. And at this point, because it's still very much a first-generation car,

uh vehicle for ford and they already have been quite open about the next generation being a lot better because it's going to be uh you're going to share fewer parts with the gasoline version it's going to be more designed to be electric from the ground up and everything uh that if the lightning might be like a big of a dud to be honest as a as a overall vehicle program for ford in term of complete volume first generation volume from the beginning to the end because this the new generation is coming in 2025 set i think right

Yep. Yep. Pretty soon. So that is just like a year away at this point. So like if they delivered, like I don't know how much they are at this year that we put it in the post, but I don't think it's that many. So the year sold 3,500. Yeah. So yeah, I don't think they broke like 10,000 units a quarter so far. So it's not, it's not a great look.

Yeah, especially compared to the gas version, which is the best-selling car in the world. And compared to what they said, they would be at $150,000 a year, too. That was the goal for the first generation, and they're nowhere near that. So, yeah, a bit of a dud. Finally, before we get to you guys' questions in just a few minutes, let's talk about Nissan Leaf EV qualifying for half a credit in the U.S. So, we're almost a year into the program, right?

And the Leaf didn't qualify for the new reform tax credit, which was a bummer because Leaf, along with Tesla, they were one of the first to lose it because they reached 200,000 units in the US. And not a lot have done that. They didn't gain it back because of the restriction on it. But this week they announced, hey, you know what?

Eligibility for part of the federal EV tax credit puts LEAF within reach of more customers ready to make switch for the EV. It's getting a $3,750 tax credit making the base version. Is that the price with the credit? No.

No, I think that's the price without the credit. It started at $29,000. So you can get a $25,000 car here, basically. Obviously, this is the 40-kilowatt-hour version, so there's not a lot of people buying EVs below 200 miles these days, but there's still a market for it.

if you don't get out of the city too much and you want a smaller car this is perfect for it and a lot cheaper it's just it's not clear why they didn't say why they just figured that out now or if they changed something with the car that makes it um qualify it's really not clear but out of the blue we have it at least for a few months so i wouldn't be surprised if by the end of the year uh it's not the case

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a shame. The Nissan Leaf batteries used to be made in Tennessee. Yeah. But they sold off that part of the business. I don't know. Nissan seems to be not making great decisions, generally speaking. You want me to talk to them? I'm going to go see them next week. Yeah, please give them. You're going to HQ, so give them a stern talking to. Yeah, I will. Maybe get their act together. All right. All right.

Let's see. William D'Angelo from LinkedIn. Do you feel that Elon sandbagged this quarter and lowered the bar purposely? Well, obviously not enough because Tesla actually missed expectation if they would have properly stand barred the market.

They would have beat expectations. But I did say that I didn't like the market expectation. Like from what Elon said last quarter, I would have lowered my expectation. I did personally lower my expectation lower than that. So Tesla would have basically met them. Wall Street was somehow a bit more optimistic. Yeah, but he's got a follow up there.

Have you heard any movement from people with orders in the queue to update their configurations? I'm assuming that he's talking about a Cybertruck. No, there's been no chatter on that. Seth and I have been talking about this, but we wouldn't be shocked if Tesla only delivers to employees by the end of the year, especially if they're literally just going to have December to deliver. It's going to be the event, November 30th, and then only December. So shocked if a regular customer gets cars in 2023.

All right. Mike, the car geek is wondering if Tesla can reach 125,000 late next year, it will hurt Ram. Their 1500 REV won't start until late 2024 at best.

I don't know if it's going to hurt anyone at that point. I think it depends on the market. Obviously, if there is some kind of relaxing of the interest rates and all that, I think the market is going to be like a resurgence of demand for electric vehicles and trucks in particular. So I wouldn't be too worried about that.

And Tesla itself is not too worried because obviously it has a lot of backed up demand for the Cybertruck. So you don't have to be too worried about that at first, but maybe at the end of the next year, it's different. Yeah, a lot of questions remain on the Cybertruck. Question, why is Elon tampering expectations on...

gigamexico what is holding gigamexico up it can't be macro factors or interest rates well you literally said that it was macro factors interest rate and honestly i don't see why we'd be lying about that i i think they were when they announced it earlier this year they thought that maybe they would see more signs of market recovery by the end of the year and um and be willing to go full full steam ahead with gigafactory mexico and then they didn't see any of those signs

And then they fell on plan B, which is let's just build a next gen in Texas first. I wouldn't see why Elon would be lying about that. It makes no sense. All right. Joe Donnelly is wondering what's going on with Nikola Motors. I think Nikola Motors is completely over.

You look at the stock price right now, around $1 a share, and there's still a ton of dilution coming their way because of the new convertible nodes that have a quick timeline turnaround. And they are putting more shares like every week, basically. It's not a good look. And then you have...

November 2nd, I think is their earnings. And it's going to be disastrous because from what we're seeing with the recall, they're recalling every truck that they've ever delivered and they are going to have to replace the battery pack on every one of those trucks. And then they're going to have to, they have to pay for everyone to ship the trucks back to them because they're apparently not good to drive. Now they said in their latest release, so they are paying for everyone to bring back their truck. That is bad by itself, but

Then there's the credibility look on it. Like Nikola was not sitting on a very big reserve of credibility to start with. And then you have that on top of it is like, how do you trust the company going forward? I don't know if there's customers that, you know what? The silver lining of this thing is this. There's still a bunch of customers backing Nikola. Why? Why?

Because they're super hungry for zero emission trucking, heavy trucking, zero emission. They see the regulation coming on top of them. They see what's happening. They see they need to adapt to this new market and go zero emission on the heavy trucking. And they just don't have that much option. There's Volvo. There's Freightliner. There's Cascadia. There's...

Tesla with the Tesla Samai, but the volume is not there. And then you had Nikola, which a lot of red flags, but they were producing them. They had 200 of them. So like you buy them where you can. And it looks like some customers now are like stuck and like, all right, we took a risk and now we're screwed. But

They're still keeping the company alive just barely, but I just don't think they will last. I think the next earning is going to crash the stock. If that doesn't do it, the convertible notes will do it. And then...

The thing at this point is like, even though the company has some cash to survive, it's like you need some momentum at some point. You cannot just survive on like, "Hey, we have a little bit of cash and we can keep things going." At one point, people just, all the employees that rely on stock options, they just see those like going away super fast. They're like, "All right, they don't get excited." The turnover is crazy. I mean, they went through like four CEOs since their founder went to jail.

Wait, is he in jail? Well, no, he's not in jail right now. I think he's waiting for sentencing, but he went to jail at some point, I think, when he was arrested. It was at least booked. That's how it works, I think. He was convicted of fraud. I can say that, at least without being sued. Okay.

And so I think at some point, they were able to hire people to lead that company because no one's going to want this. So the interesting thing now is like, is there someone who's going to pick this up when it's going to be worth like $0.10 a share? Is there some company that's going to do it? What I was thinking earlier this week is like it might actually be interesting for a company like Freightliner or any of the big companies.

truck makers just as a like oh this this company was supposed to disrupt us and and kill us and now we're buying it for 10 cent a share like it could be like a good a good story behind it for them uh but i don't know if anyone wants to touch that toxic crap yeah i'd go bankrupt first

All right. Paul text asked if Micah is going to be on the live stream. Well, Micah was on the earlier live stream for those wondering he's, he's doing okay there in Israel, even though it's kind of a bad time. Yeah. But yeah,

Yeah. So he's still with us here. Yeah. In his last post, he discussed a little bit this situation, if you guys are curious about it. And if you look at one of his last posts in the Electric Tech section, he shared a little feedback. So if you want to leave a comment on that or something, if you want to send him some positive thoughts and whatnot, he can do it there.

All right. Zafad Bebel Brocks, when FSD takes responsibility, do you think an occupant could jerk the wheel or hit the brake causing a he said, car said incident? I mean, technically, I assume yes, but yeah, with all the logs, the data information, like if

tesla has cut so many people and he said car said the kind of incidents in the past with data admittedly they haven't always been completely fair with that there's been a few situations where tesla is like autopilot was not active yeah they activated itself a fraction of second before the crash like there's there's been things like that so i'm sure there's going to be situation out there at some point where in front of a court or in front of an

arbitrary, like whatever it is, like if Tesla is forcing people to go through, there is going to be some of these arguments. But for the most part, I'm sure that whenever Tesla is willing to take responsibility, there's going to be also a black box in there that's going to make sure that if someone tries to do something, they can call them out for it.

Justin Moore with a question we get every few shows. Is now the time for Elon to start to think about stepping down as CEO of Tesla? He clearly seems distracted by X and SpaceX. And I just wonder if the pros no longer outweigh his baggage.

Yeah, I mean, I've always been on the fence on that question, but I'm kind of getting off the fence and on the side of hiring an adult CEO. Because what I just discussed about Nikola Tesla doesn't have that problem. Or X, like the problem that I'm sure X also, you know, wanted some kind of like puppets that were just going to do whatever they want because he's obviously...

still wants to rain on this thing because it's in a 44 billion dollar hole right now uh so he doesn't he was fine with not being the official ceo but yeah i'm sure it's pretty clear that i think i think in the book it said that uh he um he told i forget the the woman's name or i don't know if he told her but it was there was something about him saying that i'm still like

the guy behind doing like right steering the company uh linda yeah but yeah but with um with tesla like tesla could attract like a very solid ceo like they would have their pick of the litter like not easy role i'm sure a lot of people are not like doesn't want that pressure but a lot of people want

It's a prestigious position. So they could hire someone that knows what they're doing and could have an impact. And Elon has always said that it's not his goal to be CEO forever. He wants to be at one point just product architect. And since then, he's been calling himself the techno king. So that has kind of put some doubts in my mind about him still being true to that statement. Yeah, yeah.

So I'm thinking that just because like you saw that call this week. The call seemed like Elon was like disinterested about it. He seemed more concerned about things out of the company's control than things that are within the company's control. And he's skating around questions. I didn't like it. I didn't feel like he was being a good CEO and like pushing for his shareholders. I didn't feel any kind of fight in him on that front, which was...

which we did feel before in the past. Yeah, I wonder if he could take on a different role, if that would make everybody happy. But I kind of feel like he owns 10% of the company. So it's hard to see him taking a backseat to anybody. Yeah, if you take that role, you probably know you also like

you're not really the number one at tesla yeah right just just like uh twitter or x yeah all right uh would you rather have free fsd transfer or supercharger miles assuming you can't get a ton of referrals like you guys i mean just i don't think the referrals affect any of that now

Right. You know, I was thinking Seth, when he announced that today, I was thinking, you know, it would be real nice if I can, because I have a Model S that has free supercharging and I have a Model 3 that I have FSD. Combine them. Could I give them both back to Tesla and they give me a new Model S where they transfer my free supercharging on it and my FSD on it and then I pay like whatever, like the $10,000, $20,000 difference and get like basically for $10,000, $20,000 and I give up two of my cars, but I get...

a brand new model S with free supercharging and free, not free, transfer my free supercharging and my FSD. That would be sweet. It's possible that they will do that. There's every possibility. They might not even know that they're doing that.

But it's possible that that would be possible. Yeah. I mean, right now I'm letting my parents use my Model S. So I don't want to take it away from them either. But if they could get their own car, which doesn't seem to be happening either because of allocation issues, but that could be an option. But I don't know. You're more optimistic than me that Tesla would go for that. I don't think they would. I think they would go for it. And they would give me peanuts for my Model S too, my Model S signature. They don't value that.

I think you would get peanuts for it, but I think you have a possible chance of getting both only because they would overlook the fact that you could do that. Not because they would want to give you that option. But I think it's pretty rare that they would do like a trade-in with two cars though. I don't know if they have a process for that. Yeah, I don't know.

uh i've been christoph has kind of a very general question is the demand for evs declining in the us i would say the demand for all cars is declining exactly interest rates um you know i think just it's hard to get a new car now with uh you're paying like double per month or something crazy yeah funny story like uh yesterday

CNBC reached out to me and they're like, hey, Fred, we want you on the show tonight to discuss why electric vehicles are being overdone right now and automakers are scaling back because there's not enough demand for them. And I was like, yeah, sure, I'll go on the show. And then before we booked you completely, they're like, can you just give us your thoughts on that? I'm like, well, yeah, sure. I completely disagree that EVs are overdone. I think that basically said what you just said, like all the EVs

All the vehicles are being affected by the microeconomics and especially the high interest rates right now. And obviously EVs with the higher sticker price to start with, they are being more affected because the value of EV is more long-term on the ownership,

with the gas savings and all that, well, that doesn't change your monthly payment at the starts and with the sticker price and your down payments are higher. So it affects maybe EVs disproportionately from cheaper gas-saving vehicles. But it doesn't mean that the demand is not there if the macroeconomics would be there. And then they were like, all right, we'll go the other way. Yeah, you got to keep it quiet until you get on the show. Then you'll never get invited back. Yeah.

All right, Nick Cedar, the Tease Toyota e-pickup is exactly what many people are waiting for. A long bed, short cab, EV truck. Why won't Ford and GM see this? So you're talking about the one that they are testing right now in Australia, I think. There's no plan to bring that to North America, unfortunately, for now. We'll see. It would be nice, though. We're going to try to talk to people next week at the Tokyo Mobility Show from Toyota, see if we can talk to someone that would be interesting.

All right, David WS, Elon said the design and manufacturing would be easy for Cybertruck. Everything is lower cost and cheaper to make, but the retail price is high. I don't know if that's in context. I think they wanted to make it easier, but it kind of spiraled out of control there. And I think like, to be clear, I think...

they are making it easier. It's just that there's also a few things that they had to do very differently. And those few things might create bottlenecks in the production of a Cybertruck. So once they work through those bottlenecks, yes, the Cybertruck could be an easier truck to manufacture at the end of everything and possibly even be cheaper, possibly. Elon is just telling everyone, wait for it. It's going to be a while before we figure this out.

All right. Follow up question. Tesla should make a steel and painted version of the Cybertruck. Well, it sounds like a steel and wrapped version, not a painted one. It sounds like this is where things are going. Yeah. All right. James Corrine says, question, if Herbert Deese was still at VW, would Volkswagen have adopted NAC's connector already? You'd probably be first. You'd be the head of Ford. No. No.

I mean, they still have a lot of time. I don't think it matters because I think they will anyway. They're not going to be the only ones in North America not to have NAX, not to have access to the Supercharger. I don't think they're dumb enough for that. I would hope they're not dumb enough for that. Also, in a few years, they would be the only one with CCS. Yeah. I guess James is more precisely asking would that happen sooner possibly, but I don't think it changes anything.

Is Cybertruck's imminent release suppressing old-timey manufacturers' electric truck demand? Possibly, but if you need a truck and you're willing to go electric for your truck and you have access to one in dealers right now, you're better off getting one of those than a Cybertruck because Cybertruck is a wild card right now on when you're going to get it.

Like we said, we think employees only this year. And then with that slow ramp up, that's going to take 18 months to get to 5,000 units a week. And Elon confirmed that there's over 1 million reservation for it. And there's tallies that say that it's up to 2 million now. So it's between 1 and 2 million at this point. Good luck. Good luck getting one. All right. Elon seems to have changed. I agree. Stu says US EV sales are up 50% this year compared to last. All right. There's numbers there.

You could use that on CNBC. We're up 50%. Dan Oberstay, has the resale value of my 2013 Model S gone up since there might be someone who wants unlimited supercharging, might want to buy mine to trade in? I mean, that's kind of what we discussed a little bit. The unlimited supercharging miles might be good for somebody who's just going to go crazy.

to the supercharger over and over and over again. Like, uh, what's that company in, uh, LA that goes to Vegas? Well, they're, they're done now, but it was test loop. That's the one that bought my mall X from. Yeah. For them, for them, it were, it's worth like $10,000 a year or whatever. Right. Yeah. All right. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but not that much.

all right next eater with the last question so far is vw must be dragging their feet on nax because of ea agreements that is possible but not really because he can can and has adopted the nax too they said they will take nax so

Yeah, I guess. I mean, but they might have some agreement with EA that they're only going to be whatever. And any of those charging station operators can have NACs and CCS too. And they should have both at least for a period of time. A couple of years, yeah. Yeah, so. At least until the adapters are ubiquitous. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Until the adapters are everywhere, then yeah, I have both. But yeah, it makes no sense.

Anyway, appreciate every single one of you listening this week. That's it for the Electric Podcast episode. We've been doing this for a few years now. We're in the hundreds at least. Yeah, maybe 200. Maybe 300. All right. If you do enjoy the show, please give us a like, a thumbs up, subscribe for the next episode. The next episode, we're going to have to figure this out exactly what time it's going to be next week. Are you still traveling next Friday? I'll be back. You'll be back, but I'll be in Tokyo soon.

12 hour difference it's gonna be a little bit tougher one but we're gonna try to figure a good time to make the show uh closer to there i'm gonna be at the tokyo mobility show next week so if you guys see me there uh give us a high five whatever say hi and uh we're gonna we're gonna let you know when the next was gonna happen have a good week stay safe out there bye