Tesla protests, Rivian earnings, Kia's new EVs, and more
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And we are live for a new episode of The Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host. And as usual, I'm joined by Seth Wintraub, coming to us live from the Dominican Republic. How are you doing, Seth? I'm good. All right. We may have a little bit of a delay. We might talk over each other a little bit more on this show because there's a tiny bit of a delay going on. We're not sure what's going on. It might be the distance because Seth isn't... Well, we're probably not too far from where we usually are. But myself, I'm still...

In the Arctic Circle now in Sweden in the north of Sweden where I came today for to test out the pole star lineup on ice and So we're gonna talk a little bit about that later on on this show and I haven't wrote an article on it yet because Literally just happened yesterday But I can still talk to you guys about it a little bit because there's no embargo and it was it was quite fun Let me put myself onto that disturb here. All right, so

But we have plenty of other things to talk about. We're going to, as usual, start with a few Tesla stuff and then get into the Rivian's earnings, a couple of other Rivian news, a few...

We have another one that bite the dust because of the another EV that bite the dust because of the Trump tariffs and changes. And then we have a little bit of a preview of what we're going to talk probably a lot about on the next week's episode of the Electric Podcast. Because the Kia, I think they call it the EV day, like they're big on vealing is coming up next week, I think on Monday. And they released a bunch of previews this week that are going to be interesting.

But yeah, last week's episode, we talked about the Tesla protests that were coming in this week over Elon Musk. And we looked at the result of that this week over the weekend. And it looks like there was kind of a significant turnout across dozens of stores in North America specifically, but a few in Europe too.

And people are out there trying to peacefully disrupt Tesla's operation for the weekend, try to get people behind the idea of not financing Elon Musk's hostile takeover of the government through Tesla. And this is good to see because we're seeing some bad protests about Tesla too. We reported a bunch of those, which obviously we do not encourage. Things like...

a store in Oregon that people shot at, a store in Colorado that was a victim of arson. Let's not resort to violence, everyone. You can peacefully protest. It's very doable. But it's interesting, this one. So

Bunch of protests across dozens of stores. And these, by the way, are ongoing. So they are taking over with the hashtag Tesla takeover. It is not just a takedown now. They've switched to mainly. And they're still organizing some that's coming this weekend and then the next weekend also. So it's an ongoing thing that looks like it's going to affect Tesla for a while.

But the Washington Post also this week was out at the same time. The Post was a little bit about that, about the protests, but they were also about employees within Tesla that are now starting to, I mean, more publicly speak up about their discontent with their CEO, but not entirely publicly, but within the company at least.

So the Omtainer are recording from a Tesla staff meeting, and I'm quoting for the report here, employees and senior managers at a recent staff meeting at one of Tesla's divisions openly expressed concern that Musk is damaging the company's business and sustainability missions, according to a recording obtained by the Washington Post.

So the employee said that Musk is tarnishing the brand. One senior manager even said that the company would be better off if Musk resigned. Inside Tesla, most discussion of this comfort with CEO happens quietly over lunch or in private messages. One of the employees who spoke with the post said the worker used external communication tools, fearing the company could be monitoring staff for signs of disloyalty. I believe it.

I mean, Elon is huge on that stuff. I mean, I remember... No, I cannot remember what was it. Maybe a leak to the media or something like that. But back in the day, maybe Seth, you remember it too, but there was a leak about some... Yeah, so they sent out an email with spaces, extra spaces throughout the email. And whoever got the email, they could tell who...

who leaked the email because they sent a different version to everybody. And they had extra spaces throughout, kind of like a signature. Yeah, I remember that one too, but that wasn't even the one I was thinking about. I was thinking to another one that's way prior to that, like it's early Tesla days. It was something that was printed. An employee printed something that he was not supposed to print it.

And to figure out what it was, the printer didn't record like who was printing what, but it could figure it out by just recreating the document that was printed and sending it to the printer and looking at the file at the printer, the size of the file. And it was exactly the same and that they fired the employee based on that. So that I remember. That was a while ago. But yeah, so...

i think oh and also within those two stories kind of merged together so this story and uh during the protest at one of the stores uh in uh i forget the store right now i think i think it was in california um yeah yeah it was the one in van ice and as the protest was going on in front of the store an employee

printed out again, said that on the piece of paper, we hate him too, most likely referencing Elon Musk, and hung that out of the window of the office as the protest was going on. So I'm sure that weaver printed that out is also quite in trouble, but I hope they're okay. Yeah. Lesson for Tesla employees is don't print anything out on the company printers.

Yeah, yeah. But I'm happy to see, you know, some push. I knew that obviously employees were discontent. We have like sources within Tesla and everything that every now and again will let us know. But I'm glad to see that it's getting some momentum within the company. It's not like they're not all blind to what's happening with Elon Musk. I mean, if you guys have been following the news this week, it's crazy.

one the the meltdown is just continuing right now to a level i've never seen before but moving on from that i know people some people don't like to talk about mass too much i understand it um nissan is apparently turning to tesla as a potential investors after the under deal fell through so last week we reported that uh it's just i think a week or two after the uh nissan and the

an understanding. They signed the deal with Honda to merge the two companies. The deal fell through. Apparently, it has to do with Nissan thinking more that it was going to be a merger and Honda seeing it more like a takeover. So they both backed off. And now Japan is a little bit scrambling here because they were okay with

Nissan and Honda together, both Japanese company. But now there's some Chinese company apparently sniffing around Nissan, including Foxconn. And apparently Japan is not too fond of that. And now they put a high-level group of Japanese together to...

approached Tesla as a potential critical investor in the company. And they even got Hirlo Mizuno, who was a former Tesla board member in that group. So at the very least, it looks like they will be able to have a conversation with Tesla because of the caliber of people in the group. It is even also the former premier, Ushahidi Suga. And they are the

They're talking to Tesla. They said one person of the group, according to Financial Time, even said that Tesla has showed interest in acquiring Nissan's plants in the US. I don't know about that. Even Elon kind of sort of dismissed it on Twitter, like not entirely, but he said, we're not really interested in that because he hyped the CyberCab next generation on box production line in Texas. So,

And I'm not surprised. I've been saying it for a while. There's been plenty of rumors over the last few years of Tesla taking over this and that factory. And Tesla has not done that since Fremont factory. And they've been quite clear that they don't want to repeat that. They prefer to build factories from the ground up than taking over one and having to redesign it from basically completely. So, yeah.

i think like i said i think we're probably i can see them having a discussion because you know the connections here but uh i doubt they will go much further than that and tesla is having its own issues obviously you know trillion dollar company it's they're doing a lot better than nissan on the stock price front but on the fundamentals front it's uh it's something else and i i'm sure that people within tesla

that are not named Elon Musk or aware of that and it would probably push against something like a big merger. And Elon, I don't think Elon himself is interested in that. So if you combine those two together, it looks like it's not going to be happening, but they're going to try. All right, we got good news from Tesla for the Cybertruck this week. It's not the debt machine that some claim. So other people were claiming that the Cybertruck would not be safe

for plenty of reasons because of its novel design and structure. And the fact that early on, with just not that many Cybertrucks out in the world, there were a few fatal crashes and severe crashes that happened. So people are like, all right, maybe this is when Tesla break its tricks of a five-star rating. But no, NHTSA finally released its own independent crash testing result for the Cybertruck.

applies to the 2024 and 2025 model year Cybertruck and they got a five-star rating which is the top rating you can have with four-star rating for a passenger five-star rating for everything except for passenger safety four-star and also rollover test which you know I don't think there's many pickup trucks if any that are five-star rated for the rollover test I also got all of the ratings for the ADAS system

acts of safety. The one thing though that hasn't been tested on, but NHTSA is working to test that, is passenger safety. And that I have more doubt about the Cybertruck scarring high on that just because of, hey, I mean, you don't want to be hit by any car. You don't want to get hit by a pickup truck. But the Cybertruck, you specifically don't want to get hit by that. You don't even want to be hit by it going slow or anything.

Yeah. Or Carl says, you mean pedestrian safety? Yeah, I think. I think this is not what I said. I said passengers. Oh, yeah. Pedestrian safety. That's what I meant. All right. Tesla deliveries are expected to go down to levels not seen in more than two years.

so with tested deliveries now we have a new way to predict them uh prediction markets are getting into the uh delivery prediction game you know the those markets that they're they use basically financial incentive to make prediction about certain outcomes specific outcomes and and the the became very they've been around for a while obviously but uh with with the rise in crypto and

bidding markets. You combine them together and you focus on different outcomes. And they became very popular during the elections, the US election last year.

But now that the elections are over, they need other things to bet on and they expanded to literally anything. If you didn't think of it, I almost guarantee you that there's a market for it. Even though there's not one for the self-driving yet, I've been trying to reach out to them to make it, but it's not happening. But Kalshi has made one for Tesla deliveries.

And for Q4 now with half a million dollars in volume on this, so there's a lot of volume that move around trying to understand this. So why I mentioned the volume, the volume is important. More volume generally means, not always, but...

It's more accurate the more there's volume because there's more people that actually are betting money on this. And right now it stands at 359,000 deliveries for Q1. So that's something. So that would be down 7% year over year.

27% quarter over quarter. And it's a delivery volume that Tesla has not seen since Q3 2022. So since then, Tesla has brought online Gigafactory Texas, Gigafactory Berlin, more specifically, ramped up production at those factories, fully ramped up Gigafactory Shanghai. They've launched a cyber truck. They've done a lot of things since then.

supposedly self-driving, if you believe Elon. And now deliveries would revert back to that moment, which if ever there was a time to worry about Tesla, I think it would be now. But the stock is not back to that level. In fact, the stock kind of keeps going up. I mean, it's not up this last week or two, but...

previously it was quite a bit yeah it's it's done this year so far or this month over the last month but it's uh it's still up from the elections so people still take into account more the the fact that uh that this the anticipation of collusion between the trump administration and elon then

the actual fundamentals at Tesla, what's happening. And also, you know, there's the idea of Tesla's going to solve self-driving this year, which, you know, we already reported on that, but we think that Elon kind of moved the goalpost quite a bit on that. And he's going to claim a win probably this year, but it's not going to be what was promised since 2016. We're going to get a new feature from Tesla based on some pretty strange situation, but still,

So it's something that people have been asking for a long time, and that's virtual queues at superchargers. So when the supercharger is full, probably every Tesla owners have seen that before, but when a supercharger is full, there's a physical queue that's going to create itself at the supercharger station where the car is going to park, set it away to try to make a line. But there's a lot of limitation with that, especially if the line gets a little bit too long because you're in a parking lot, there's limitations.

Sometimes double line is going to create, sometimes it's going to be a line from one side and a line on the other side, and then you need to know which one came first. It's a nightmare. So it created, and a lot of people have been asking, like, it would be quite simple for Tesla to just create a system, like Tesla knows when the supercharger is full. So it knows when a car come in at the supercharger, you know, if you use a navigation system or you can, if for non-Tesla vehicles, now you can probably use the Tesla app too, and

And as you arrive, you just put yourself on the queue, click, and then the supercharger won't work for anybody else than you. It's pretty simple. But Tesla has not done that. But this week, they did have this video here. I'm going to play, but I'll cut this sound. Do you hear that? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I'm going to stop it there, or I'll cut the sound maybe and keep playing for people to watch. But the guys, they pushed each other. It got physical, and they started yelling at each other. It was like a full-on fight. I think no punches were thrown, at least, but over that exact situation that they just described, because the queue was messed up, and someone thought that they would be first, and someone else caught in, and so forth.

so it took that for Tesla to finally do that because that the Tesla charging team responded to that video saying virtual queuing pilot starting in Q2 at select sites I I don't even know why like okay sorry and then he said goal is net consumer experience improvement for roughly one person cases of wait time so to actually get some data here one person of the time that people go charging there's it's full

i think that's quite significant like it's it's it's pretty one percent of the time like if tesla has

millions and millions of charging sessions a year like it's it's significant um wider rollout this year if feedback is positive i mean i'm i'm sure the feedback is getting positive anything is better than just free for all when the site is full so i don't know why we are questioning that but we also continue to expand the network 20 percent year over year closely tracking site level demand

closely tracking I think that's probably a statement like we we reported that since you know on fire the entire Tesla charging team the charging rate went down the charging deployment rate went down it got a little bit back up in q4 but before that it was down and it was before that tracking already below the deliveries ramp up but that has changed since this is the day we went down also

But now you have to take into account the fact that Tesla is also onboarding non-Tesla vehicles to the network. That obviously is going to increase the demand for Tesla Supercharger. And again, I hope that Tesla Solutions is going to include them too. I'm sure it's doable through the app. Okay, one more Tesla news. We have the first look at the first public Tesla Mega Charger station for Tesla semi-trucks.

So public is the important point here because there's one at the Tesla Gigafactory Nevada or next to the Gigafactory. And there's been a bunch of mobile ones too that Tesla has deployed. There's also some at the Tesla's customers too. So there's that. But the first public one is coming to South Los Angeles. And it's going to look like that. This is the site plan. So it's 12 mega charger stalls that are long stalls. So you can pull in with a tractor and trailer there.

and um also going to include a 1600 square feet animity building with a lounge vending machine restroom and parking for staff so it's going to be staffed there so it's going to be like a proper little truck stop i guess and it's going to be and you know between gardena and and carson right where the uh 405 and the 10 the 110 meet in south of central s so those are both you know big

corridor for traffic including truck traffic, but and also not too far from Long Beach where there is the port so there's a lot of you know things that arrive at Long Beach and they go to the 110 or the 405 to to go to where they need to go so it makes sense to have a charging location there the mega charger as the name implies is able of charging at one megawatts and or over a megawatt and

and this says that you can charge at this smi to 70 in 30 minutes so that's that's pretty good no no exact timing on when that's going to happen so this is applying right now for the construction permit and it's also at the at the site that there's already a building on that is set to be destroyed later this year so it might it might take a while before this thing actually works also i'm sure that's going to be

Quite a fun mess for the permit building and all that for something that powerful of 12 megawatts tall. Yeah, so a couple things on that. How close to the design center is that? It looks a little bit close to the airport there in Torrance. Yeah, you're right. Torrance is right there. So I think the design center is...

So is that-- I think that's the R part, that R turn? Yeah. It's designed specifically right here. Interesting place to put a truck megacharger, because why-- inside of LA doesn't seem like a big route for trucks. Maybe put it between LA and San Diego or Las Vegas or San Francisco. But inside of LA, that's an interesting choice. I wonder if it's for short travel or something, or as a experiment.

Yeah, it's the first one that maybe makes sense to keep it closer to home. But yeah, you're right that generally speaking, I think the most useful one are going to be the ones between big centers where you're going to be moving stuff between. So yeah, maybe like that you said between San Francisco and LA would make sense. I'm sure there's going to be one too. Also, it's near the port of Los Angeles, Long Beach Harbor. So maybe that's just for trucks coming in and out of the port.

Yeah. And Watt EVs, which operates a fleet of trucks at, I think that's Long Beach, they just announced that they ordered a bunch of Tesla Semi. So maybe that was part of the deal, something like that. I wouldn't be surprised.

All right, moving on from Tesla News, we've got some Rivian News and then the Genesis GV90 and a bunch of other news. But before that, I want to remind you that we are live and we take questions live. So if you have questions for us about any of the topics that we discussed today or any other topics in the EV world, you can put them in the comment section right now. We're going to get to them in about 15, 20 minutes or so.

Also, if you do enjoy the podcast right now, just hit that like button, that follow button, whatever it is on the app you're listening right now. It helps the show a ton. And if you're listening to the audio podcast, if you can give us a five-star rating, only if you enjoy the show, of course, we would appreciate it a ton because we get hit these days a lot with these Tesla, these Elon, not even Tesla, but Elon fans specifically, who just hate on us for not listening

you know, just kissing his ass all the time. So yeah. And also we're going to start addressing some of the comments. If you guys have some good comments for us in the, in the Apple podcast, I don't think Spotify has comments, but put some comments in there and we'll, we'll address those.

Yeah, we still appreciate if you do give us a five-star rating on Spotify, but you're right, there's no comments on there. But if you want to ask a question through Apple comments, Apple's reviews, we're going to start doing that. So if you put the comments there, because that's the way to ask a question or to suggest a topic for us without listening to the show live, which I know a lot of people cannot do. Most people that are listening to the show are not listening live. Okay.

all right rivian had its uh earnings for q4 yesterday and it beats expectations and but most importantly that the main expectation was not just the earnings which was uh lost of 70 cent per share um well 68 46 per share the expectation was 68 and uh the revenue was a big beat at 1.73 billion versus 1.4 expected

But really, the big thing was, are they going to be gross margin positive on the trucks? And they were $170 million positive, which is a big change. It's basically a 10% gross margin over Q4. While they were losing like 36% just a few quarters ago. So it's a massive change. There's some caveats there, obviously, obviously.

they would not have been able to achieve that without credits. But that was also the case for Tesla for years and years and years. So we're not too surprised here. Really, the most important thing here is that they reduce... Oops, we lost set for a second. They reduce their costs per vehicle by $31,000 year over year.

That's very impressive for a company that sells vehicles at like $80,000, $90,000 a vehicle. Reducing the cost by $31,000 is big. Now, obviously, if it wasn't for the credit, they would still be negative. But still, if they can do that again over the next year, which I don't think they will, but if they can do half of that, they would be in the positive, which would be massive.

They still have also enough money to run for like three years or something. So that would put them deep into the ramp up of the R2 vehicles. So that's also very good. What else? Oh, yeah, the stock is down today, though. And that's not too surprising because the thing that's... Do we have the guidance here?

Yeah, here. So the guidance is what kind of tanked the stock a little bit, which is not too surprising because obviously Rivian is its main market and its almost only market. I mean, it's two only markets, Canada and the US, and those are expected to go down quite a bit for electric vehicles in 2025. So it's expecting between 46,000 and 51,000 deliveries in 2025, which is a little less than what they delivered last year.

So that's not great, obviously. But we kind of expected that. It's not that big of a surprise. The volume growth is going to come next year with the launch of the R2 and then the R3 after that. So this should be a ramp up in 2026. I don't know how big that's going to be because I think first half of 2026 is the R2 production launch. So...

volume production, probably not until 2027 or high volume production. But still very encouraging stuff. It looks like the company I'm now very confident that the company will survive. We discussed that a lot over the last few years, the level of confidence in that. And they showed enough progress for me that now I can see them getting into volume production of the R2 really.

And theoretically, they'll get to the point where they're making R3s and other vehicles at some point. Obviously, they need to make those too profitable also. And they're going to be cheaper vehicles. It's going to be more difficult to do, but it's going to be a higher volume vehicle.

And, you know, Tesla, until the Model 3 also, was not making money that much. They were gross margin positive. And I think they will... Actually, they did guide for gross margin positivity throughout the entirety of 2025, a slight gross margin on this end. So that's going to happen. So, you know, Rivian is basically where Tesla was during the ramp up of Model X. And the...

are now transitioning to Model 3 and they're learning a lot from Tesla's mistake, obviously. I think a lot of Tesla owners that aren't fans of Elon Musk's latest activities are moving to Rivian and that might be even helping their sales a little bit. So shout out to Elon for the help. Yeah.

i mean scooter just took delivery of its um r1s uh yesterday or today and he and he said that at the at the delivery center the they said that the the guy that was delivering the car said he delivered like seven rivian last week and six of those seven uh had a tesla trade in the same time so that's a pretty high number i hope that rivian is

moving those around quickly because the resale value on the used teslas are going down quite drastically because a lot of people are doing that there's inventory of used teslas is going out pretty bad right now yeah all right so right before the earnings actually riven also launched the california june edition r1 so both for the r1 uh s and t these are a new off-road version of the vehicle

So I kind of looked at that launch rather quickly, but my understanding is that these are kind of base tri-motor R1s, but instead of having like the...

a sand interior that comes with the trimotor normally which is you know the nicer interior it's a new interior that's a little bit dumbed down you know for uh ruggedness if you will and then on top of that the uh yeah the adventure interior they call it and then to compensate for that because it's the same price as the regular trimotor uh the uh the offer

a bunch of uh off-roading packages uh to to replace that so that includes our california badging direct cloud packages all-terrain package sound plus vision package power tunnel cover one pair of dark cargo crossbars max tracks recovery boards and mass track recovery board mount looks pretty sleek too

so basically the i think the all-terrain package is probably the biggest thing in that so it's it's it's off the it offers you the opportunity if you like more of an off-roader you can switch the ascend interior on the tri-motor for uh the all-terrain package that's i think that's the biggest take away from the those wheels are kind of reminiscent of the uh maki rally you know they yeah off-road wheels it's a good look yeah you should you go ahead sir

oh i just think it's good look oh yeah yeah it's beautiful and uh so yeah the wheels is the main thing but also have a spare tire that comes with the package a reinforced underbody shield and uh and yet a max tracks system which helps you recover the car when the truck when it's in deep sand

and it's the same price as their regular trimotor so 100 000 bucks for the t and 106 000 bucks for the s yeah it looks good looking let's look at the pictures a little bit bigger here okay you can get the dark wheels and you can get the light with it looks really good with the light wheels i agree yeah i wonder how they affect the range probably not too much no i don't think it's too bad because they're covered at least all right we get um well at first look

I don't know if I would call it a first look but the Genesis GV90 confirmed that the production version is gonna come with these coach doors here. So that was the new lawn concept on the 90 was based on that concept.

but a lot of the times you see a concept like that and especially i've coached or without a b pillar and you're like okay like it's a concept maybe it's not going to make it to production but genesis has been talking about like now we think that we have the technology to make it make the chassis rigid enough that you don't you really don't need a b pillar and the um the 90 was spotted on a truck with camouflage but you can see

that he has coach doors and it doesn't seem to have a d pillar i mean we cannot confirm it 100 on this but it does look like it's not and if you also combine that with the comments of the of honda genesis it might make sense so it looks like the 90 is going to be launched with the coast doors without a b pillar which is interesting

The vehicle is slated for production in early 2026. So we're just a year away and expect it to be about $80,000. So it's going to be the, it's not, and it's not like going to be like an EV9 version of Genesis version of the EV9 or something like that. This is going to be the next generation. It's going to be the first Hyundai Genesis vehicle on the new EM platform instead of the EGMP.

So what is the difference between what is it called coach doors and like suicide doors? Is that the same idea? I think the same idea might be just the size. Look at this thing. Look how big it is. The suicide door, I think might be like there's just a smaller one and like it's just like a half door. I'm not sure. But I think the takeaway here is more the fact that there's no BPLR than those are coach or suicide door.

well i think yeah i mean suicide isn't a great marketing term right probably

That's true. Yeah, I never got that too. I don't even know what's the point of it. Why is it suicide? The lack of BPLR might be more suicide than the fact that the door opens up the wrong way. But I'm sure if Genesis is bringing that to market, they've done their research and it's going to perform well in a side collision crash and a rollover crash too. It's important, but we'll see about that.

All right, we got the next victim or likely victim of the Trump tariffs and changes. The Jeep Compass is now, you know, up in the air, kind of unsure if it's going to make it to North America because it was supposed to be built at the Brampton plant in Ontario.

but which has been kind of production shutdown since last year or even before that. Yeah, 2023, it's been production shutdown. And they've been working on retooling it for the production of the Compass and other vehicles. And they announced this week that...

that they are shutting down the progress on this. So Mr. Lou Anne Gosling, the head of communication for Stenlantis in Canada said, "As we navigate today's dynamic environment," very dynamic, "Stenlantis continue to reassess its product strategy in North America." Gosling added that the decision is to ensure that it is offering customers a range of vehicle with flexible powertrain option that best meets their needs. You can tell this is written by a PR department.

Yeah. Also, it doesn't make sense because I thought the Compass was also, anyway, it was supposed to come in electric, hybrid, and gas powertrain. It was supposed to be like a tri-powertrain, like ionic, you know, original ionic type of deal. So, yeah, it's,

If it's not going to be built there, and I think obviously that has more to do with the fact that the tariffs are coming. Even here, I've been talking with Polestar and I've been talking with all the other journalists here, especially the journalists here that go on all these press trips and they talk to all other...

manufacturer all the time and there is a clear sentiment right now in the auto industry for any manufacturer that produce vehicles in either Mexico, US or Canada and it's fear and confusion all over the place no one knows for sure what's going to happen I think Trump again today said that 25% tariffs are coming April 2nd I think he said

uh on cars and so on cars that would be one thing if it's just on cars like it like at least i mean it's not good obviously it's bad especially with uh free trades uh with with with the markets that have free trades agreement with them but uh if it's on parts and everything it's not just

Other countries are in trouble. It's U.S. manufacturers. You know, you can get an example of like the Ford and 150, for example, like they have like something like 20% of the parts coming from Canada, 20% from Mexico and some assembly in Mexico, some assembly in Canada and some assembly in the U.S. It's like it would increase the price of basically everything that's in those markets by a lot and complicate things.

Like never before. It would be very interesting. And obviously, it's already happening because of the tariffs also on Canadian aluminum and steel. So that's already into effect. It's already throwing a wrench in a lot of people's plans. All right, Kia. Kia on Monday is going to have its EV day. It's going to unveil a bunch of new things. But they gave us some previews.

uh first one is the pv5 it's an interesting looking kind of id buzz reminiscent van here it's gonna come in uh two sizes and a passenger configuration and a cargo composition but i think both of them also come in two sizes i'm not clear about that way we have these images and we have a little bit of information but all the specs and all that are going to come on monday with the ev day

they talk about uh confidently linking the itech upper cabin with a more rugged and perspectival lower body so this is the passenger version with windows all around and this is the cargo version without windows um not a ton of details and i think we have some some sizes 177 inch long 74.8 inch wide 74.8 inch tall so from the back it would look

square um and if you so that that's the compact model and then they're going to be a bigger one we don't have the size on a bigger one but uh probably something bigger to the id more comparable to the id buzz which is 195 inch long 78 inch wise it's like four inches wider and uh almost 20 inches longer so probably something similar in size you know and then the other vehicle that's going to be on vlan monday is the

EV4 that's gonna be the low cost well other than the EV3 but we know we're not getting the EV3 North America so it's gonna be the lowest cost Kia available in North America and also short on specs and we already had you know a lot of leaks and all that but this is the first official images of it looks kind of a baby EV6 really but a little bit flatter a little bit longer about looks longer because it's flatter sure it's not longer

um there's a little bit of a spoiler here uh the glass kind of extend into a half panoramic roof oh not on all there's here it's black okay okay that's the edge back version okay so you have the sedan version and the hatchback version oh okay oh the hatchback version could be interesting yeah interesting size

I don't know. Some details is that a new CCNC infotainment system with dual 12.3 driver and navigation stream. So it's going to be, because we don't have interior pictures right now, so it's going to be like a large infotainment driver display and then an infotainment display. Okay, so it's going to be the same as the other models. It's based on the EGMP that we talked about earlier. Also expected to feature at least 300 miles of range. That's great.

there's going to be a gt version too so that's that's the gt line here uh sporty rear bumper and triangular motive on the wheels okay it's expected to be about uh between 30 and 40 000 and has been kind of touted as the uh the mold 3 competitor for kia and we're gonna have all the details on monday i guess model y too with the suv version

or the hatchback version maybe i don't know well it's the hatchback version i think i think it's going to be smaller to be honest yeah and probably cheaper too probably cheaper than the muller why all right let's get into the comment section all right cronk go 11 p.m wow elon wins his bad boss every time how in the world can anyone think that merging your company with tesla right now would be a good idea are you serious well yes

and japan is a bit different they don't listen that much to what's happening in the u.s yeah look at the stock price alone yeah yeah also like they look at who could buy us and and they prefer tesla to to china because the the other one in line is foxconn apparently oh interesting

We talk about pedestrian versus passenger safety. And then, NC, on a bicycle, I recently approached a Cybertruck from behind and quickly realized that if I were to rear-end one as a cyclist, the top rear top corners would cause horrendous injury. Yes. It's a sharp vehicle, and I don't mean that in an appearance. All right. The Cybertruck.

the cyber truck five star rating is nizza now a subdivision of doge uh that's amusing probably not instead of insisting i'm sure i'm sure that the crash ratings happened before the takeover but still yeah i mean there's real concern about all that so it's oversight and it's a oversight of tesla right now that uh elon is the co-president right

Carl says, instead of insisting that we all migrate to NACs, the EV industry should have focused on the very, very simple step of painting a lane to public charging so everyone knows who's next. Yeah, well, I don't know. All public chargers have to move. Also, NACs I don't think is a bad thing. Also, all public chargers all need easy-to-see lights to indicate which one is available and no light meaning broken unavailable. That would be one way, I guess, of seeing that. I think it's more...

important online someone someone is parked there you're not supposed to be parked if you're not charging it anyway so if someone is not parked there then it's it's available all right uh welcome to the united states uh you're in europe right i'm in sweden right now in the arctic circle i think he thought he thought i was in canada that's why he's saying that i think uh so david canada says i think elon doubled his monthly tesla tweets the other day by mentioning the cyber truck crash test rating in a tweet

Yes, he hasn't been tweeting much about Tesla these days. Richard Kuhl says Tesla is supposed to be testing dye pack on supercharger cable that sprays out dye if cutting of the cable occurs. Yeah, we talked about that last week. The federal loan for Rivian might still get yanked, possibly even by Elon. He's arbitrarily breaking government contracts under the name of Doge.

That would be hugely... Yeah, that's a weird one. And they talk about that this week, that they might take away the loan, even though it was passed last minute by the Biden administration before Trump took office. Yeah, and it would be certainly weird if that happens, especially since Tesla also got a very similar loan around a decade and a half ago. Not as big, but with inflation probably as big. Yeah.

All right. Martin Hughes says no point in the Tesla tie up with Nissan from Tesla's perspective. Yeah, I don't get it either. Yeah, I believe a Cybertruck with the unreleased range extender gives it similar range to the R1T with Megapack Maxpack and makes the bed of the truck about the same length as the R1T.

is that right i think that r1t has a pretty is it bigger will be bigger yeah after that would would be bigger still uh well no would be bigger cyber truck has a bigger bed now and i think it would be a little bit smaller than the r1t if you have the range extended pack it's also six thousand dollar expensive and it doesn't exist yet right

any thoughts on different batteries or configuration being used in the extra space in the cyber truck battery compartment uh yeah i don't know there is extra space in the battery compartment if they were they wouldn't offer a range extender on in the bed they would just add that capacity in the in the battery department i'm not sure you're gonna have to specify that all right uh from x my says i just ordered rcv that's really in 500 what are your thoughts uh congratulations

I don't know what you can do that. You can do that without just a fleet, just a single one. If you do some. Yeah, I mean, it could have been a you can have a fleet of one. You can have your own business like you could have a sold. You know, I could order an electric RCV 500. Maybe I should do that. Anyway, that might be fun. Man life it.

All right. Sylvan, there is no extra space. It's safety spacing in case of fire. And actually, the space is on the underside of the truck. So it's in case something goes through the casing from the underside. Oh, OK. OK. Meaning in the underbody of the vehicle. OK. That's right. All right. Some clarification. It was called the suicide door because if traffic hit it while you were getting out, it would slam close on you. OK. That would still happen. That's worse. That's worse than hitting you and then you hitting the door.

I'll get it. Thanks, Icarus. I read that too, but I wasn't sure if it was confirmed. I hadn't been able to confirm that extra space was used in other EV trucks for the Tesla models, but it makes sense. All right, we got two more. Nissan Tesla is pump and dump Tesla style. Maybe that's true. I mean, it was announced today and Tesla is down like 5% today. Oh, I think he means for Nissan. Oh, for Nissan. Oh, yeah. I'm not sure. It was kind of a long shot. Yeah. Yeah.

all right last question at the moment ian smith if a guy doesn't smoke pot and talks about 420 all the time it probably has another meaning perhaps a certain historical austria austrian's birthday so we're talking about uh hitler there oh i didn't see that one coming at all yeah he's not wrong he's not wrong that's right he was he's big on 420 and he's not a pot smoker

Interesting point, Ian. All right. Well, that's it for us this week. I'm going to go to bed because it's 11 p.m. here and I fly back tomorrow morning to Canada, the 51st state of the U.S. soon enough.

But thanks a lot, everyone, for listening to the show this week. We appreciate you. If you do enjoy the show, please give us a like, a thumbs up, a subscribe. All these things help the show a ton. Also, like Seth said earlier, if you give us a five-star rating on the audio app, you can ask us a question for next week's show through that with the reviews on Apple Podcasts. So we appreciate when you do that too. And we see you same time, same place next week. Have a good one.